The Mall of America
Washington Post, United States
By Harold Meyerson Thursday, February 21, 2008; Page A15
In the 20th century, American production was the marvel of the world. In the 21st century, American consumption is the marvel of the world. As news goes, this is both big and bad.
It was American production, after all, that won World War II. It was the exports of American manufacturing and agriculture that revitalized postwar Europe and Asia — indeed, one of the Marshall Plan’s goals was to ensure that Europe had enough funds to buy America’s products.
In today’s world economy, however, we have become the consumers of last — and first — resort. No nation with an advanced economy consumes at anywhere near our level. In 2006, our purchases constituted 70 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Britain ranked second among nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, at 61 percent, then came Italy, at 59 percent, with Japan, Germany, France and Canada all hovering around 55 percent.
If 19th-century England was a nation of shopkeepers, the United States today is a nation of shoppers, and our role in the world economy is to buy what other countries — or U.S.-based corporations with factories in other countries — make. It was not ever thus. In the four decades following World War II, our largest employer was General Motors; for the past decade, it’s been Wal-Mart. GM followed in the footsteps of Henry Ford, who by 1913 had concluded that he needed to pay his workers enough that they could afford to buy a new Ford. Wal-Mart, by contrast, pays its workers so little that they are compelled to shop at Wal-Mart. [more]