The Most That You Can Keep

[Geee]

PjMedia:

An opinion piece carried by the Associated Press contrasts what Erica Werner calls the new “spare, fundamental” American Dream to the “rhetoric from Obama’s 2008 White House campaign.” The soaring promises have vanished; in its place is the new line that Obama is the best candidate to keep you from losing it all. “With the economy showing no signs of life: no jobs, mortgages they can’t pay, dwindling retirement funds and college savings,” it is hope of a different kind. The residual aspiration is you can actually have a “job, a house, a college education for the kids, health care, money for retirement,” some day anyway.

The article quotes Xavier professor Michael Ford, who explains that the downsized dream is pretty much all anyone can still believe in without laughing out loud: “It’s pretty basic stuff (Obama) talks about and I think as it turns out that’s pretty much where the dream is right now.” But Werner says it’s working, because now Change You Can Believe In is real. Hoping for food on the table is so much more convincing than promising the oceans will fall and the Earth will begin to heal.

And speaking of food, MSNBC says a new poll shows Americans really want smaller portions at food outlets:

 

What if the server at your favorite fast food joint asked if you wanted to downsize your order, instead of asking you to supersize it? That’s a strategy that might make some patrons happier — and a lot thinner, a new study suggests.

Consumers want higher gas prices too. Describing the steps necessary to remove the carbon threat driving global warming, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” It was an idea the president opposed — unless it could be done gradually:

I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US automakers, then I think ultimately, we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy than we do right now.

Then presumably higher prices would be alright. Some on the Democratic Party’s left wing argue that this does not go far enough: a certain amount of poverty — just how much is open to debate — should be an actual policy goal. Greedy Western capitalist consumers already consume too much of the world’s resources, so the thinking goes. Lower levels of resource consumption are actually good for the Earth. Then there is the argument from necessity — that higher levels simply can’t be delivered. Sorry if President Obama campaigned on them — he misspoke.