American Economic Truths

"In my early days in Hollywood I tried to be economical. I designed my own clothes, much to my mother's distress." Gene Tierney

An overwhelming amount of Americans in today’s society have never grown food, caught game, raised meat, ground grain into flour, or even fashioned flour into bread. If faced with the challenge of having to (literally) cloth themselves; meaning getting clothe material from live animals to make the clothes and then onto tailoring the clothes for themselves or building their own houses, these Americans would be hopelessly untrained and unprepared. Even to make minor repairs to machines, which surround them, these particular Americans must call on other members of their community (whose business it is) to fix their cars, repair plumbing, or whatever the minor repair may be. Paradoxically, perhaps, the richer the nation, the more apparent is this inability of its average inhabitants to survive unaided and alone. Short of a catastrophic war, it is highly unlikely that many Americans will know the full meaning to struggle for nothing but pure existence. Nonetheless, even in our prosperous and secure society, remains unnoticed, an aspect of life’s precariousness; which lies as a reminder of the underlying problem of our economical survival. This unfortunately, is our helplessness as American economic individuals.

It has always been a curious fact to me how Americans can feel security against some of the most impoverished people of the world. Impoverished countries where a human being with his too few calories of energy scratches out for himself a bare subsistence, we however, in America find the economic insecurity of the individual many times multiplied. In many countries, the basic expectation of human continuity is far from assured. In the vast continents of Asia and Africa, in the Near East, even in some countries of South America, brute survival is the problem which stares humanity in the face; everyday. Millions of human beings in other impoverished countries have died of starvation or malnutrition in our present era. Whole nations are acutely aware of what it means to face hunger as a condition of ordinary life. For example, it has been said that an Egyptian man, from the day he is born to the day he dies, never knows what it is to have a full stomach. In many of the so-called underdeveloped nations, the life span of the average person is less than half of an American. Not many years ago, an Indian demographer made the chilling calculation that of one hundred Asian and one hundred American infants, more Americans would be alive at sixty-five than Indians at five! The statistics, not of life, but of premature death throughout most of the world are overwhelming and crushing.
Heilbroner, R. (1962). The Making of Economic Society. The Basic Elements of Economic Thought in the Context of History.


I believe the United States has survived as a rich nation only because an army of others on whom we can call for help to do the tasks we cannot do ourselves for us. If we cannot grow food, we can buy it for another country; if we cannot provide for our needs ourselves, we can hire individuals in other countries for the needed service and in most cases, at a cheaper price. This enormous division of labor enhances our capacity a thousand fold, for it enables us to benefit from other men’s skills as well as, our own. Along with the abundance of material existence as we know it duwells a hidden vulnerability that our abundance is assured only as the organized cooperation of huge armies of people is to be counted upon. Indeed, our continuing existence as a rich nation hinges on the tacit precondition that the mechanism of social organization will continue to function effectively. We are rich, not as individuals, but as members of a rich society; and therefore, our easy assumption of material sufficiency is actually only as reliable as, the bonds which forge us into a social whole.


The problem of how societies forge and maintain the bonds; which guarantee their material survival is the basic problem of economics and more importantly, what our nation is currently facing in today’s need of a economic recovery. My conclusion of this economic chaos is that man and not nature, is the source of most of our economic problems. The economic problem itself as the need to struggle for existence derives ultimately from the scarcity of nature. If there were no scarcity, goods would be as free as air, and economics, at least in one sense of the word, would cease to exist as a social preoccupation. For scarcity, as a felt condition isn’t solely the fault of nature. If Americans in today’s society were content to live at the level of Mexican peasants, all our material wants could be fully satisfied with but an hour or two of daily labor. We would experience little or no scarcity and our economic problems would virtually disappear. Instead in America, we find as the ability to increase natures yield has risen, so has the reach of human wants. In fact, in a society like America, where relative social status is importantly connected with the possession of material goods, we often find that scarcity as a psychological experience and goal becomes more pronounced, as we grow wealthier. Meaning, our desires to possess the fruits of nature race out ahead of our mounting ability to produce goods. Scarcity is therefore, not attributable to nature alone but to human nature as well, and for the purpose of rebuilding the American economy; man’s nature.

Economics is ultimately concerned not merely with the stinginess of the physical environment, but equally with the appetite of the human temperament of our wants and desires. Therefore, I pose the question to you, how do you base your economic success? Is it by your possessions? Look inside yourself and your lifestyle, it may be the very reason why there is an economical struggle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxrGJGK8apM