Kunstler: The Jive Economy

Memo to nation: we’re not really growing, we’re shrinking. Is this necessarily a bad thing? I dunno. Unlike, say, the stockholders of Toll Brothers I’m not so sure that “housing starts” represents my idea of a healthy economy — since it really means we’re destroying every cornfield and cow pasture left outside our cities, which will play havoc with our national life when the reality of our Wile E. Coyote agribusiness fiasco starts to hit home and we discover what cornfields and cow pastures were really all about in the first place.

Likewise, the standard processors of news media go orgasmic when they announce car sales figures of 11 million units annualized, or something like that. Isn’t that wonderful: more cars on the San Diego Freeway and the Cross Bronx Expressway. Ever larger parking requirements for the new WalMart. More trips-per-household to buy milk and Fruit Loops. Do you really think that more suburban sprawl makes this a better nation? When our soldiers bleed out in the sands of Central Asia, will their last thoughts be of the curb cut between the Best Buy and the Burger King?

Kunstler.com