As for the stuff money can buy, sure it’s nice, but it’s kind of empty – what are you going to do – pile crap in your closet and stare at it? IPods are nice. I remember when people used to get together on Sunday nights in people’s kitchens and sing – that was nice too. Going from community singing to diddy-bopping around with IPod buds in your ear and a list of crap to buy and hoard is maybe why the West falls.

As for the machine that makes things for free – go for it – I’ll guess I’d dutifully lug the things home, pile it in a corner of my garage and feel warm and secure for 30 seconds. I wouldn’t admit it in public, but materialism turns into frantic greed pretty quick after your basic needs are met. Doesn’t strike me as a good reason for a civilization to survive.

Yes, if we slashed and burned and started abolishing government institutions and removing the sources of the state’s predation on productive people, workers would be wealthier still. I agree with you there.

Incidentally, you leave out the obviously interesting question about what it was about the West that made it industrialize first. Was this just a random event that had no explanation, or might there have been institutional factors that accounted for this?

Also, it was easy for the US to be number one when it was sitting on a sea of oil and the rest of the world was self-destructing with mass war and Communism. Saudi Arabia never matched US peak oil production of 12 million barrels a day. That was like free money under the ground. What is now? 5 million barrels a day? Two billion $ leaves the country every day to pay for oi? (that number has been fluctuating wildly lately)

US workers wages have been going down slowly and steadily in inflation-adjusted terms since 1970, the year US oil production peaked, despite all the rises in productivity. Families may look like they’re richer because of the entry of women into the workforce and stratospheric debt levels.

Workers can be more productive and yet easily get paid less if the competition from low-wage countries is fierce.

Moreover, how did labor ever come to enjoy the standard of living it does? According to you, labor can be ever more productive,a nd yet still receive the same remuneration. Why wasn’t this counter-intuitive proposition operative in the past? In other words, why did Western workers grow so rich? (And no, it wasn’t labor unions.)

And Asian countries have a lot more cash to invest, not having gone off into US-style debt-driven economic fantasy land.

What you’re debating is “Should the drunk have another beer and avoid a hangover for a time by getting drunker, or should have a hangover now so he can go back to drinking tomorrow.”

NO. The problem is the alcoholism, which is the monopoly debt tokens have on the medium of exchange (money). This is the reason for the “business cycle,” we tolerate an unstable economy so debt issuers can have stable profits.

At least that’s what the antisemitists would have you believe. The actual history is quite different.

The actual history looks more like this:
1) Muslims invade Jewish homeland. Turn it into an apartheid state. Some Jews leave and some stay.
2) Muslims persecute Jews for over a thousand years. Muslims being big antisemites. In fact it’s written right into their religion.
3) Jews persecuted all over the world by antisemites.
4) Some Jews see the writing on the wall in Europe decide they need to migrate back to their homeland to try to set up their own state that will protect themselves, as the non-Jewish ones never had.
5) They migrate to what is now Israel, and buy land there. Yes, buy.
6) Local Muslims believe that only Muslims can rule over Jews not vice versa. Had already, for more than a thousand years been running government this way.
7) Some local Muslims hatred for Jews is so great that they start terrorizing Jews who are buying land, and other muslims that are selling them their lands. Furthermore, they get the British to ban the sale of land to Jews.
At that point the Jews who had lived there for at least two thousand years before Muslims, and the newly arrived Jews are not happy. Again they are being treated as subhumans.
9) Some of these Jews decide, enough is enough, and decide to resist the British, since it was now clear that the British were not running the government in the interests of all citizens of the country, as if they all were equal.
10) Some Jewish groups decide to bomb a hotel that housed British troops. They warn of the bombing ahead of time. Then set off the bomb. (Unlike the Muslims who like to give no warning because they want to kill innocents).
11) The Jews manage to drive the British out.
12) Muslims in there antisemetic rage amass troups on their borders, and inform local muslims to evacuate so as to make the genocide easier to accomplish.
13) Some Muslims, and Christians leave.
14) Invaders repelled and destroyed.
15) Invaders take out their anger on their own Jewish populations and millions have to flee to Israel. No compensation made for the land or property they left behind.
16) Israel set up, but will not allow the Muslims who fled back in for fear they will act as a fifth column in future attacks. Jews set up funds to reimburse Muslims for land titles that they lost.
17) Displaced Jews allowed full citizenship. Displaced Muslims put in refugee camps by other Muslims, and not allowed to resettle.
18) Jews set up government where Muslims are allowed to be elected and Muslims have full citizenship.
19) Foreign Muslims doing everything in the power ever since to keep the conflict going. Everything from keeping “Palestinians” in refugee camps, to invading, to suicide bombing, to manufacturing fake videos.

Now I have left out bad things that small factions on both sides of this have done. However, when the Jewish side commits crimes at least they try to reign the criminals in where they can. I see next to no concessions on the Muslim side.

Meanwhile the Muslims are committing atrocities not only against Jews, but against other Muslims who want to make peace, or Christians who get in the way.

Remember this is not a scholarly article. It’s a comment on a blog. The intent was to show that the ignorant one sided sentence I was critiquing was far from the truth. Thus I only included things that would tend to undermine that sentence. The Jews are not completely blameless but the blame runs more 5% Jewish and 95% Muslim. It is not 100% Jewish the way the sentence fragment would have you believe.