Who would have thought that in a country as developed as the US, we would encounter the typically socialist problem of a shortage of everything. It's a phenomenon so visible that the current president, until recently seen as a liberator from Trump's horror reign, has already been nicknamed "Joe Empty Shelves."
Commentator Derek Thompson offers an interesting explanation for the unprecedented phenomenon in the October issue of The Atlantic: The tricky part of the problem is that while the U.S. national economy is not currently experiencing a stagflationary slump similar to that of the 1970s. The country has clearly entered a phase of pandemic economics, where GDP is still seemingly growing but people are already suffering from shortages of a shocking number of goods. Starting with medicines, automotive parts, semiconductors, cargo ships, containers, and labor.
That's just the shortage of everything. As long as the global supply chain is running smoothly, we don't pay any attention to it, it's like the natural state of the world. Today's disruption of everything is a warning that when the dominoes are falling, it is not only forward that the cubes may fall. Everything is slowing down, from the preparation of a cappuccino in a café to the movement of the queue outside a clothes shop. Even the traditional postal service cannot be relied upon. They've just announced that they are cutting back on air shipments as part of an investigation, so shipping of everything will be slower with all the consequences you can imagine.
How do we get out of this?
I don't think we can count on a radical change in the American people, human behavior doesn't change that fast. In times of crisis, relying on the globalist advantage of outsourcing and cheap labor abroad seems foolish. It would take targeted growth in domestic production, but there are few things the ruling progressives hate as much as growth targets. Progressive government emphasizes redistribution of income and goods. It sees the whole point of its social endeavour as achieving the greatest possible equality, which is its greatest virtue.
An important lesson from today's time of scarcity of everything is the recognition that you cannot redistribute what has not been produced. The best program for ensuring equality always begins with a program for achieving abundance.
So says Derek Thomson of The Atlantic magazine in a commentary by Yefim Fishtejn on CRoPlus (24.10.2021)
Let's have no illusions. A similar scenario threatens all developed countries. We will be paying for the belief in endless growth, when our wealth and prosperity is based in no small part on the labour and mineral wealth of poor countries. Incidentally, that is also where a huge amount of the waste that the 'developed' world produces ends up.
Jan Šinágl, 25.10.2021
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