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Martin Hutchinson is sanguine about the future of Western civilisation, but every silver lining has a cloud:

Provided Western government spending is kept under control so private sectors have room to flourish, and interest rates are fairly quickly restored to levels that encourage saving, the Western advantages of capital, education, technology and favourable business climate will ensure that growth resumes, so that economic dominance does not pass wholly to the East. Moreover, China and India are not without problems of their own: in China’s case, a banking system with potentially massive bad-loan problems; in India’s case a chronically overspending, corrupt and inefficient government. The chances are that the United States will still be among the most prosperous countries in the world in 2050, as will most of Europe.

It’s the government spending and interest rates problem that’s the key.  I don’t see either party restoring government spending to the levels of federal or state income (NJ’s Chris Christie is an exception) and the Fed is obsessed with quantitative easing, which will keep interest rates artificially low and encourage deflation (unless they totally lose control of the situation and we have hyperinflation.)  And one should add to this litany our government’s propensity to regulate/outlaw large portions of economic activity is, in its own way, as damaging as our lack of fiscal discipline.

Our élites have basically made the decision that they don’t want an economic regime that they can’t control no matter how well it works.  And that’s at the source of many of our political conflicts.

The fun started when the Export-Import bank nixed Bucyrus International’s sale of mining equipment for an Indian power project:

On Thursday, the Export-Import Bank denied financing for Reliance Power Ltd., an Indian power plant company, effectively wiping out about $600 million in coal mining equipment sales for Bucyrus, chief executive Tim Sullivan said.

The fossil fuel project was the first to come before the government-run bank since it adopted a climate-change policy to settle a lawsuit and to meet Obama administration directives.

“President Obama has made clear his administration’s commitment to transition away from high-carbon investments and toward a cleaner-energy future,” Export-Import Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg said in a statement. “After careful deliberation, the Export-Import Bank board voted not to proceed with this project because of the projected adverse environmental impact.”

The bank’s decision is puzzling, Sullivan said, because the power plant will meet international standards and the bank’s environmental criteria.

The plant is under construction in Sasan, central India, and is scheduled to be up and running in 2012. Coal mining will take place for the plant whether it’s done with Bucyrus machines or equipment from China and Belarus, Sullivan said.

But criteria don’t matter to fanatics.  Capitalist roaders such as Bucyrus International are of no account to this administration.

Bucyrus International’s union, however, which does matter to this administration, had another opinion of this altogether:

Under growing pressure from Wisconsin leaders and union workers, the U.S. Export-Import Bank may reconsider its decision to deny loan guarantees for mining equipment that would be made in the Milwaukee area for supplying coal to a power plant in India, a bank official said Monday…

The president of the United Steelworkers of America called for a letter-writing campaign protesting the bank’s refusal to finance mining equipment that would be made by union members.

Union President Leo Gerard said he would ask that his union’s leaders and members write to their congressional delegations and the Export-Import Bank, urging the government-backed lender to reverse its decision.

He also urged Steelworkers to attend the town hall meeting Wednesday.

“At a time when we are losing good-paying jobs, and at a time when President Obama wants to double U.S. exports, how can the Export-Import Bank deny a loan that would create and protect jobs at Bucyrus International? It was a dumb decision,” Gerard told the Journal Sentinel.

It’s also noteworthy that most of Wisconsin’s political leaders, right at the moment, are Democrats.

I hope the union can make the right people in our government see daylight on this issue.  If not, the “Reagan Democrats” will ride again, and will have plenty of time for political activism, because they’ll be on the dole.

Bucyrus, for its part, obviously has a Plan B:

Bucyrus International, Inc., Wisconsin-based company with an annual turnover of around $2 billion, engaged in the design and manufacture of mining equipment, is setting up its India operations headquarters at Kolkata. The company is also actively considering setting up a manufacturing unit in the state. The company is on the lookout for an abandoned facility in West Bengal to set up a $5 million manufacturing unit. Over the next 5 years they plan to scale up the India operations and make it a 500-employee company.

Bucyrus plans to design and source parts and components from Kolkata that are required for the Indian mining industry as well as for their global requirements.  Bucyrus India Ltd, a 100 percent Indian subsidiary of Bucyrus International, Inc. already has a facility at Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh & Bangalore. According to  Timothy W. Sullivan, president and CEO of Bucyrus International, by the end of 2007 the company will have 3 other offices in India in Singareni (Andhra Pradesh), Singrauli (MP) and Southeastern Coalfields (Chhattisgarh).

The blunt truth is that our government has, for the most part, disdained heavy industry for most of my lifetime, which is why much of it has decamped for happier places.

There are some on the left (like Kevin Drum at Mother Jones) who are having second thoughts on the American obsession of racial racial equality over class equalisation:

Class/income-based affirmative action has long struck me as an alternative that ought to get more attention than it does…Class-based program programs might, in the end, provide modestly less help for ethnic minorities than current policies — though well-designed ones might not. But they have some advantages too. For one thing, they help poor people. That’s worthwhile all by itself.

I commented a little over a week ago that class equalisation is something that, for a number of reasons, the left’s elitist leadership isn’t well positioned to deal with.  But at least there’s some “out of the box” thinking going on about this problem.  Americans have traditionally let their civil rights struggles be driven by just about anything else than class–race, gender, sexual orientation, you name it.  (The LGBT’s struggle for “equality” would take a serious hit in a class-based equalisation effort, but that’s another post.)

But, in a parenthesis to Drum’s article, James Joyner shows that the left’s new thinking about this has his limits:

But, surely, we don’t want to create new categories, such as “Scotch-Irish Sons of Confederate Veterans,” for special treatment.

Ah, now we’re getting to where the rubber meets the road: the Scots-Irish are at the very core as to why this country has struggled with class-based equalisation.  Their sociological system poses some unique challenges because a class-struggle paradigm is based on workers being exploited, and if there’s one thing that Scots-Irish are masters at getting around, it’s work, which is why exploiting them is a real trick.

P.S. I did read Sen. Webb’s piece that Drum refers to.  It’s an interesting piece with some good observations, but his idea that Southern upper classes set the whites and blacks against each other is absurd.  The War Between the States effectively decapitated Southern society and ruined its upper classes, which put the poor Scots-Irish in the driver’s seat for a century.  In many ways postbellum Southern society was one of the most “bottom-up” driven societies in history, but the blacks bore the brunt of that “egalitarian” result.

There will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over this one:

Conceding they can’t find enough votes for the measure, Senate Democrats on Thursday abandoned efforts to put together a comprehensive energy bill that would seek to limit greenhouse gas emissions, delivering a potentially fatal blow to a proposal Democrats have long touted and President Obama campaigned on.

Instead, Democrats will push for a more limited bill that would seek to increase liability costs that oil companies would pay following spills such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico and would create additional incentives for the development of natural gas vehicles and provide rebates to people who buy products that reduce home energy use. They did not release details of the proposal, but Senate Democrats said they expected to find GOP support and pass it in the next two weeks.

They shouldn’t bother with any of it.

The simple truth is that the key to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is to reduce Americans’ standard of living (smaller housing, smaller cars, fewer kilometres driven, less consumption, etc.)  It’s that simple.  It’s disingenuous for liberals to tell you otherwise.

Fortunately for them (if not for us,) all of this is being achieved with the current regime’s tax and economic policies: the ineffectual stimulus, the sluggish economy, rising taxes, health care reform, and the new proliferation of regulatory restrictions on business (including but not limited to the EPA’s classification of carbon monoxide as a regulatable pollutant) guarantee that meaningful economic growth is a mirage and will be for some time to come.  That will cut down on energy consumption.

A simpler strategy for Barack Obama would have been to trash the economy and let the rest take care of itself, instead of putting his Democrat majority in harm’s way with another controversial legislative package.  It will also solve the immigration impasse too, as a country which can’t meaningfully create jobs won’t be a magnet for people sneaking across the border (barring complete collapse in Mexico.)

It’s just amazing how simple things become when we look at them objectively.  Now if Obama could get past national insolvency and the loss of Congress, he would be in great shape.