Here’s a good example of what I mean by “talking down the economy”:
For the second time in as many months, President Obama has taken the nation that elected him president to task for its own lackadaisical economic performance on the global stage.
Obama told a group of CEOs today that the United States has gotten “lazy†and that America lost its hunger in promoting itself in a global marketplace.
“We’ve been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — ‘Well, people would want to come here’ — and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America,†he told the CEOs who are gathered on the sidelines of the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings, which the United States is hosting this year in Hawaii.
Workers in the U. S. work longer hours than workers in Japan, Germany, France, and the UK and have for years. FDI continues to increase here. Who is this “we”?
What’s the president’s point in this line of argument? That the U. S. must work twice as hard to stay in the same place?
My view, contrariwise, is that policy, set by policymakers in Washington, DC including this president and his predecessors for at least the last 30 years, has caused an enormous torrent of malinvestment in the U. S. and that malinvestment has resulted in greater income inequality and less economic growth than would otherwise have been the case.
We spend too much on our military, we spend too much on healthcare, we don’t protect our workers and industries while subsidizing trade with countries that subsidize the hell out of theirs. We import too many unskilled workers and not nearly enough skilled ones. We have maintained a ruinous fiscal policy for at least the last generation. Lazy, indeed.
I agree. Lazy? Americans? We live for work to a degree that no one in Europe does. We’ve built our entire society around a single-minded obsession with working and making money.
Dave,
Can’t argue with anything you wrote, and I always find something to bitch about.
What’s the president’s point in this line of argument? That the U. S. must work twice as hard to stay in the same place?
Obama’s point is that we’re not making him look good, and he’s going to call us names until we do make him look good.
How does what he said not simply restate what you said in Limiting Risk. Isn’t the “flight to safety” a strategy of the economically lazy? (And I don’t mean the workers.)
I’m not absolving this administration or any other of abetting this, understand.
Because laziness is failing to apply one’s efforts zealously, not zealously applying your efforts to what will provide the greatest return. The fault in that latter case belongs to whoever set up the incentives.
OK, sorry to break up this unusually agreeable discussion, but come on: look at the context. Obama was not speaking to or of the American people at large. He was speaking to business leaders. In that context “we” becomes what the leaders of America’s corporate world are doing, and it has nothing to do with the behavior or work performance of the American people.
Moreover, it’s also clear that Obama’s use of the word “lazy” here means complacent – see “taken for granted” in the next sentence. And that is absolutely true here. There is a ton of complacency in the leadership of US industry, marked notably by the risk-aversion that you yourself Dave have called out many, many times.
Is ruinous fiscal policy a major contributor to that complacency? Certainly! And perhaps such words would be better addressed to the US Senate in that regard. But corporations also shape policy to an unusually large extent here, and I see nothing wrong with pointing out to CEO’s the effects of their collective decisions. I’m no Obama fanboy, but this post does not even rise to the level of nit-picking.
If that’s the interpretation we should be using, I think it’s an extraordinarily poor choice of words. There’s another context that should be considered: the president’s routine running down of business executives. Does that suggest a reasonable “we” interpretation to you that combines the president and the business executives? If he means you he should say you and if he means complacent he should say complacent.
I think that the audience to which he was talking would be more likely to use my interpretation. The “we” that included both business executives and the president is the American people. And lazy means just that. Not working hard enough.
Sure it’s a poor choice of words. But the tactic of the partisan media, including bloggers, to jump on the poor choice of words of their opponents is IMO one of main reasons we don’t have a more civil political dialogue right now. My inclination is to read a poor choice of words as a poor choice of words, not an opportunity to take offense.
As for Obama’s use of the word “we” – that’s how people speak in relatively small meetings when constructive dialogue is the goal. The fact that he’s criticized CEO’s on occasion does not preclude agreement in others, as anyone above fifth grade should know. If anything to me it suggests the naivete of a man who despite all evidence does not realize how much his own words will be turned against him.
Well, what is the President going to do about this?
“Well, what is the President going to do about this?”
That’s a good question. What was the point of saying it to begin with?
Sorry to harp, but here’s the full exchange beyond what was quoted in the ABC news link:
Source
It’s even more obvious from this that Obama was not criticizing American workers, or even CEO’s, as lazy, but rather policymakers who govern foreign trade decisions.
(And yes, in response to Steve’s question, Obama’s policy response is milquetoast. But that’s par for the course).