It's all about perceptions

Warning: This is incoherent. It's almost 3:30am and I should have been working or have gone to bed hours ago, but I got stuck reading US news.

Random thoughts:

The perspective people have here of the US is very strange. If you overlook resentment over geopolitics, economics, culture, etc., the US is actually the country to aspire to. I sit in my econ classes learning all sorts of random stuff, and somehow the US always comes out on top. Maybe it's true, statistically speaking, that "the system" in the US is a pretty good one, at least compared to everyone else. But it's hard to believe that when I get back to reading political blogs like DailyKos. It doesn't read like the monolithic "we kick so much ass" it projects in the statistical tables. The political system is remarkably stable compared to pretty much anywhere else, though whenever I'm back home or paying attention from Paris it seems so fragile, progressively undermined by purging of minorities from voter rolls, electronic voting machines, Fox News, Minute Men, and all the rest. It literally seems like a madhouse, yet it's the anchor of the world economy and the geopolitical order. I can't imagine how much more fucked up the rest of the world must be like, which is why Colombia should be interesting.

In other news, it sometimes seems like economists live in a different world. The massive consumer debt and negative savings rate that people are so worried about? It's just balancing weak domestic Chinese demand and it will eventually work itself out (if there isn't a crisis before then). Which is true. Outsourcing jobs to India, workers training their replacement from a developing country, no problem, this is just India getting its shit together, finally, 120 years after deindustrializing (thanks England) and getting mired in poverty. Which is also true. But people understandably have trouble thinking about the welfare of some guy in India who has to fight like crazy (and have been lucky enough to be born in the right state) to get the shitty call center job that put me through junior college. And this will be a glorious, well-paid career no less, assuming India doesn't slide backward into deeper poverty. Of course, no one wants to see their job shipped overseas, but damn, those people need it way more than we do. Unfortunately for India, though, service sector jobs don't need much labor (it's a minuscule number of jobs that are heading over there), so they're going to have to find something else for the 70 million poor, uneducated young people who will be entering the workforce in the next five years.

Did you know that Argentina had the 10th largest economy in the world before 1929? Yes, this is the economy that imploded five short years ago after decades of mismanagement and waste. How the mighty can fall ...

Ah yes, the world is a crazy, crazy place, and I'm amazed that it hasn't imploded yet. Or perhaps blown down/apart like a house of cards is the more appropriate metaphor. In any case, let's all appreciate how incredibly sweet we have it over there in the old US of A. Despite our president, we are the envy of the world. Look at all the stupid things that happen in that country. Look at all the obese poor people everywhere. Read that again: obese poor people. That was an oxymoron for most of human history. Sigh ...

They admire our messy legal institutions, our expensive universities, our decadent car culture, our sophisticated financial markets ... people, we can't just blame American cultural imperialism for this one, the fact is that we live in a world where things in way too many places work so badly that America is the gold standard. Europe may be a hell of a lot classier, but they have their own major issues, like finding jobs, and having enough kids to stablize their population. And great bread isn't everything when way too many jobs (in France) pay minimum wage.

Anyone reading this, I hope you appreciate the paradise that is the coastal US and the incredible luxury of your humble, student-loan laden lives. You'd never make $18 an hour coloring in utility maps or sorting legal documents in France.

I know you guys aren't self-centered idiots, and I don't mean to rant or chastise. I just had to let out the mindfuck that has been building up over the year. Gnite y'all.