There’s a really good post today on Daily Kos on America’s Lost Decade. I’ll quote the penultimate paragraph because I think it’s spot on, but the whole thing is worth a read.
“We have spent a decade — and yes, it should be said, under the proud banner of conservatism — doing nothing, as a nation. We have wasted our advantages, and put our own infrastructure in hock, and allowed the greediest and most crooked among us to dictate how the rest of us should live. We were told that giving money to the rich was good, and giving respite to the poor was sinful. We were told in supposedly serious books by supposedly serious men that giving up our jobs and industries would make our nation rich. We were told that our companies knew more about how to govern a nation than our citizens — and we let them draft our laws, and lobby our government, and we squeezed the middle class at every possible opportunity. We were told many, many stupid things by people who now, by any rights, should end up on street corners wearing nothing more than rags made out of their own past pronouncements, but who sadly will never be nearly as inconvenienced by their actions as you or I have been.”
The only thing to add to that would be – we were told we could borrow and spend our way to prosperity forever…until it all came crashing down.
Problem is, the conservatives have lost power but we are still being told that. That makes a second “lost decade” increasingly likely.
But on a positive note, I don’t consider the 00’s a total lost decade…among other reasons not relevant to this blog, it featured the OGL and the birth of one of my favorite game companies, Green Ronin!