Thomas Friedman, "Win Together or Lose Together": We Just Need to Pull Together

In his latest op-ed, "Win Together or Lose Together" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/Friedman-win-together-or-lose-together.html?_r=1&ref=opinion), New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman would explain the United States's economic decline in four paragraphs:

"Our slow decline is a product of two inter-related problems. First, we’ve let our five basic pillars of growth erode since the end of the cold war — education, infrastructure, immigration of high-I.Q. innovators and entrepreneurs, rules to incentivize risk-taking and start-ups, and government-funded research to spur science and technology.

We mistakenly treated the end of the cold war as a victory that allowed us to put our feet up — when it was actually the onset of one of the greatest challenges we’ve ever faced. We helped to unleash two billion people just like us — in China, India and Eastern Europe. For us to effectively compete and collaborate with them — to maintain the American dream — required studying harder, investing wiser, innovating faster, upgrading our infrastructure quicker and working smarter.

Instead of doing that at the scale we needed — that is, building muscle — we injected ourselves with massive amounts of credit steroids (just like our baseball players). This enabled millions of people to buy homes they could not afford and to fill jobs in construction and retail that did not require that much education. Our European friends went on a similar binge.

All this debt blew up in 2008 in the U.S. and Europe, and that led to the second problem: Homeowners, firms, banks and governments are all now 'deleveraging' or trying to — meaning that they are saving more, shopping less, paying off debts and trying to dig out from mortgages that are under water."

Fascinating. No mention by Friedman of disastrous American involvement in overseas wars. No mention of the demise of the enforcement of antitrust laws, which has resulted in the elimination of companies, competition and jobs. No mention of the elimination of the uptick rule, which has turned US financial markets into a cash cow manipulated by predatory big players, instead of a home for investment, which has in turn choked off cash for promising startups. And the list continues.

Friedman's one-paragraph solution?:

"If juggling all these needs at once sounds hard and complicated, it is. There is no easy, one-policy fix. We need to help people deleverage, cut some spending, raise some revenues and reinvest in our growth engines — as an integrated strategy for national renewal. Something this big and complex cannot be accomplished by one party alone. It will require the kind of collective action usually reserved for national emergencies. The sooner we pull together the better."

"Pull together"? Friedman's solution to save the economy sounds a bit like the lyrics from the Youngbloods's 1960s hit "Get Together":

"C'mon people now,
Smile on your brother
Ev'rybody get together
Try and love one another right now
Right now
Right now!"

Thanks, Tom, and hurry off and tell Obama. I'm sure he can't wait to hear the good news: Pull together, abide by the "five basic pillars of growth," "deleverage," and salvation is around the corner. Sweet.