A Nation of Spoiled Brats - Ed Luce Interview by David Rothkopf | Foreign Policy

April 19, 2012 9:49 AM

...FP: You went through Gary, Indiana, and you talked to people in Gary. They were at a casino. They were in a town that was devastated. I had this sense of hopelessness for these people. There is no future. There is not going to be a manufacturing resurgence that they're going to take advantage of. Casinos are kind of strange machines that seem to prosper by sucking the last bits of economic vitality out of a community, because the poor and the old go there and give up their money. And so for a moment, it looks like something is prospering, but at the end of the day it's accelerating decay. I mean, is that your view? It seems like another component of your point about spoiled children. What is your feeling in terms of the problems of the grown-ups?

EL: Part of the reason I to talk about these casinos is to use them as a metaphor for the bankruptcy of public policy, particularly urban public policy. Casinos, sports arenas, and convention centers don't generate income for those who've lost their jobs. The casino is a particularly apt metaphor for the intellectual bankruptcy of thinking, because, if done well, you can generate short-term income and tax revenues. But the costs are pushed back a little bit further, so the balance sheet doesn't show what it's really doing to your community, which is drastically raising all sorts of social bills that you're going to have to pay, whether it be about policing or by prison services or a penal system or indeed the further decay of the community.

A Nation of Spoiled Brats

...FP: Final question is what does all this mean for the rest of the world? If you're in China; if you're in India; if you're in Singapore looking at the U.S. as a stabilizer, when you see this descent, what do you think the impressions ought to be? Should there be looking for new leadership, finding new structures, giving up on American leadership, expecting a period of fumbling on the part of the United States? What are the geopolitical consequences of the conclusions of your book?

EL: I think you could get a paradoxical one in the short term, and you might already be seeing it in Asia, which is that the more America's punch declines, and the more China's reach extends, the more popular America's going to get in that neighborhood. We're all going to remember that America is a country of immigrants that welcomed people from all over; that America is a country that has universal values, however annoying and selectively they might sometimes have been applied. This could never possibly apply to China. And that's without mentioning China's political system, which is obviously not democratic.

So I think the paradoxical short-term response might actually shore up American power in parts of the world where it is in greater demand than there was before. But that's the short term. If you look at that asymmetry, and when America says it seeks to sustain its global footprint, it's not talking about closing down bases. Indeed, it's setting up new bases in places like Australia. It's going to find it hard to afford this indefinitely. It's very expensive.

In contrast, all China seeks to do is to challenge American supremacy in its own backyard. They have asymmetric goals here. The Chinese increased their defense budget this year by 11 percent. America's allegedly cut its defense by 8 percent. Actually, it's probably a bit of smoke and mirrors there. It's a high and inflated baseline. So maybe America left its defense budget essentially flat. But if you have that for a few years all of a sudden the talking point that's always on the tip of our tongues -- namely, that America spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined -- isn't going to be true any longer. It doesn't take too many years like these for that to cease to be true.

I hope that in the near future America will be able to remind itself that strength comes from its domestic economic muscularity and the degree to which America can again be a beacon to the world, a model worth emulating, rather than by the range and deployment of its weaponry, or by the spending power of those at the top. But I'm not optimistic -- given the trajectory of the debate today and in recent years -- that things will necessarily shake out that way. I wish I could see more cause for hope.

posted by y2karl (6 comments total)

"One reviewer said my book should be renamed Time to Start Drinking. If I was asked to write one on Britain I might call it Time to Start Sniffing Glue."

Article wins major points for the Airplane reference alone.
posted by Osrinith at 9:56 AM on April 19, 2012 [6 favorites]

i get that this is an interview and not hella structured, but i am surprised that guy identifies nasty structural economic trends and then is like "well i dont know why people bother to blame washington, it's like.... culture...man"
posted by beefetish at 9:59 AM on April 19, 2012

We're all going to remember that America is a country of immigrants that welcomed people from all over; that America is a country that has universal values, however annoying and selectively they might sometimes have been applied. This could never possibly apply to China.

The Chinese economic development model could be considered to be universal - it's being exported to Africa for example. And anyway, compared to the US, Chinese values are ancient and influential, at least in north and southeast Asia.

In fact, the Chinese model is, in the short term, more powerful than the American model. There is no emphasis on influencing the political or social culture of recipient nations. It's all about the economy.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:59 AM on April 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I thought that this was a rather crappy article. Beyond the general statistics about social mobility, GDP, he really doesn't offer much in terms of reasons why the decline besides generic governmental gridlock and the bogeyman of all political stripes "culture". I think the picture that FP uses to illustrate the article proves the point: WTF does that have to with anything in the article.

So you've got this kind of weird tandem of apathy versus fanaticism that reinforce each other. But what I found most interesting, and continue to find most interesting, is the education problem -- the problem of K through 12 and the lack of early childhood learning for those at less advantaged levels, the problems with student loans and with community colleges. I think it's a portal onto America's competitiveness problem. But it's also a cultural problem.

The approach of parents to their children's education is a case in point. If we're talking about American values, the first- or second-generation immigrant spirit that might be conjured up in a Tiger Mom or in some Italian family in Brooklyn in which parents force kids to study at night is a truly American value. I have no nostalgia for what I didn't experience, but I do feel that the swing towards celebrating the child, elevating the child, over-praising the child, boosting constantly at every opportunity the self-esteem of the child, assuming the child is a fragile little eggshell that can be broken at any moment, is something quite un-immigrant and therefore quite un-American, and also a great disservice to the child.

What the hell do these paragraphs have to with each other, besides as beefetish said, "education culture....man". The first paragraphs decries uninvolvement with early childhood learning, and the second says we're coddling them. Make up your mind.
posted by zabuni at 10:02 AM on April 19, 2012

Americans might be ignorant about the Middle East or Europe, but they're certainly aware of their own situation. They are certainly aware of the problems here. And I think, as [GE CEO] Jeff Immelt said, if globalization were put to a referendum in America, it would lose

Luce and Immelt are wrong, or they are talking about a much smaller and higher class of Americans being polled. The problem isn't that the military costs so much, it's that the majority of Americans (rich or poor) bought into the notion that military action can solve any problem, and particularly problems simplified by a compliant media to the childish equivalent of "they hate our freedums." Globalization wins, because the extent of most Americans' knowledge of the world comes from colonial wars that our equivalents of Pravda sell to us, and we're duped into thinking we are spreading democracy, when we're really just opening new markets for goods and services, displacing local economies for the benefit of multinationals (such as GE). Cf. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:11 AM on April 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

i get that this is an interview and not hella structured, but i am surprised that guy identifies nasty structural economic trends and then is like "well i dont know why people bother to blame washington, it's like.... culture...man"

Because the politicians serve their constituents, for good or for ill. Yes, big lobbyists and whatnot are also a major factor, but they're not puppetmasters presiding over an army of marionettes. The various cultures of the US have a number of significant preconceptions about what work, government, and identity look like. The James Carvilles and Karl Roves of the world can sometimes play these factions like a fiddle, but just as often these would-be manipulators fall on their faces when they don't understand what they're up against. People overestimate how much the people can be controlled, and people also underestimate how much influence the electorate can have on politicians. It's complicated, and on the national level especially, it's a morass.

The first paragraphs decries uninvolvement with early childhood learning, and the second says we're coddling them. Make up your mind.

There's no contradiction in what he said. He was decrying coddling and the focus on self-esteem, while also singing the praises of Model Minorities who make it their mission in life to ensure their kid a spot at Yale. Those points are fairly generic and cliched, but they're perfectly consistent with one another.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:11 AM on April 19, 2012