The abandoned factory of the Packard Motor Car in Detroit, part of the Middle West of United States "rust belt". Photography: Eric Thayer/ReutersA Word is missing in the American debate about the debt crisis: austerity. It is a telling absence. Despite the huge deficit and despite United States being the home of individualism, are not offered to persons make a difference by changing their lifestyles.
In United Kingdom, we have become familiar with talk of the "new era of austerity". Politicians from left and right use the expression to frame the narrative about the tax cuts that we are facing now. While both sides "alert" on this next time, austerity is not negative in the British psyche. Here, the associations with war soften it. Austerity is associated with personal changes that benefited society and sense to people who have learned to deal with waste, for "to make and mend". Long before the current cuts, austerity was making a comeback here, associated with environmental issues of recycling, cut consumption and reduce our carbon footprint. In fact, the New Economics Foundation recently launched the new front of the House, and arguing that the styles of life during the war are positive role models to reduce our environmental impact. When we think of growing our own veg, now instead of holidays, cycling instead of driving, has an appeal of fashion.
Not so in the United States. In the five months he spent there this year, I never heard the austerity of the word in political debate. The Republican discourse is about how the Government is spending too much. The Government should tighten the belt. There was nothing about individuals who live beyond their means and any suggestion that people have a role to play in the solution.
Yet the shortage of United States is founded overconsumption, made possible by too much credit to the consumer and less recognised, too much environmental credit. In the current war of words in the Congress, there are no references to immoral loans that encourages persons who could not afford to invest in the American dream. This is what led to the fall of the property and the financial crisis. It has disappeared completely from political debate.
Individuals not heard anything about the necessity of prosperous people to change their ways. There are, of course, many worthy "green shoots", such as the "locavore" movement or the "greening of the campus," initiative at the University who was visiting, where an official newly appointed sustainability heroically tries to reduce the use of energy. But people like him have his work cut out. Throughout the East Coast and oxidation belt are enormous, stunning landscapes that many Americans appear to be unrelated. This is a society that has not only lived beyond their means, but beyond its environmental more also abandoned as the hundreds of thousands of abandoned buildings, cars and endless roads attest.
The American dream still survives. You are in him or her. Being outside is misery. Individual life styles are boom or bust. United Kingdom I know that many people that they reject consumerism, engage in badly paid work, environmental or political. We consider them as honorable. In United States, if you do not have money there.
None of this should be to indicate that we have here. Far from it. David Cameron, the politician most often heard that it refers to the austerity, has not linked to a vision for a green economy. And the relaxation of controls of planning with the potential to trash the environment would be an example of this. But unless words like savings, simplicity and sustainability does not have such negative connotations. They suggest that you have at least a place to work. In United States, the ideological mindset makes these negative terms, which in turn makes the future looks bleak. Your problem is not only fixing Government spending, but in the end, telling the real costs of the American way of life.
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