In the article, Hollender quotes a recent NYT column by Thomas Friedman:
Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”Can I get an "amen"?
As a recruiter in the Information Technology industry in the late 1990's, I admit to being part of the problem. I can't tell you how many entry-level, 25k-per-year kids I took and put into jobs that were way above their heads at double or triple the salary. All of the sudden the people who were once perfectly happy in manufacturing or customer service jobs, making an honest and decent living, were thrust into the next higher tax bracket, and their old jobs sent off to China and India because the positions were no longer desirable to us. And besides, who could live on 25k per year anymore?
With all this new found money, everyone deserved a new car, owned a home, went on vacations, and spent without thinking. We all lived the high-life for a number of years, myself included. But, as Friedman says in his column, we can't do this anymore!
He quotes Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert (and blogger: http://climateprogress.org/):
We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children...You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior, but it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, "This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate ..." Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.To that I say, "YEAH!"
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