WWII industrialized America's manufacturing to ramp us out of the malaise of the depression... and transformed America into the world's economic and political powerhouse. Some small minds think, "War... that's the solution again". No way, Jose! Not going to "rinse and repeat" that one. The next World War, should there be one... likely to kill EVERY LIVING THING ON THE PLANET... except for cockroaches and Keith Richards!
that's the thing though - "greedy and destructive" on the macro level doesn't always mean people are going to refuse it on the individual level eg. i bet after this whole thing, the concept of Universal Basic Income is going to draw a lot more support. certainly if they're actually given $1k/$2k checks a month for life, i think 99.99%+ of people are not going to turn it down regardless of what the textbooks say about debt sustainability, etc - it doesnt matter, bc when the check actually arrives no one acting rationally is going to refuse it because their individual action of 'refusing' the check does absolutely nothing to help address the debt sustainability when everybody else/ the entire population is accepting their free cash same thing with toilet paper. it's like even if you know with pure analysis, education, etc that the stampede for TP isn't optimal at the macro level, you're still nonetheless going to join the TP line at Costco as a rational decision at the individual level, bc even if you hold out, other people are still going to clear the stores anyways, so why bother making an individual statement while not having TP
Just because you "can" do something, doesn't mean you should. Just because you want something doesn't mean it should be given to you. (Alcoholics want booze.... druggies want the next fix... and young people want "free everything".) People are greedy, gullible, and stupid... easily manipulated. (If you could only ask Joseph Goebbels...)
Germany can do that because they can test. The U.S. can't test so it can't do that. To be able to put people back to work you have to be able to test everyone going to work. That means testing asymptomatic people which have high infection rates in some instances. The U.S. only tests people that are already sick, and does an extremely poor job at that. Sometimes it takes up to a week to get the results back. China tests while you wait for the results. Other countries twenty four hours or less turn around time. Usually same day. The U.S. has totally incompetent leadership at the top in its President and Vice President and they in turn have surrounded themselves with incompetence. Pence's chief of staff for example. That's why the U.S. is down to shutting down everything and "sheltering in place." we don't have the capability to do anything else right now, and we aren't doing much of anything to aggressively attack the virus. But we will make people temporarily feel better by sending them money. The military, i.e., the Federal government, bought most of the masks and protective clothing available leaving too little for the private sector, then we told the Governors to go out and find their own respirators, masks and protective clothing. This is a grim assessment, but it is the truth. In competence kills, and arrogance kills.
i meant it as unofficial, de-facto terms with US being most economically and politically powerful country in the G7, it stands to reason that the pres of US is de-facto head of G7 just like how even though all the central banks are supposed to act independently, they are de-facto influenced to some extent by their respective ruling political parties, etc
The U.S. on a par with the Western Europe, Canada and Scandinavian Countries in that regard. You can't compare nominal numbers without regard for population. The U.S. for example is 36th in the world in terms of access and outcomes in medical care. That's just one area where the U.S. lags. But it is a major one. The U.S. lacks influence among the G7 at the moment because of the low regard in which Trump is held among the other G7 leaders. The other leaders tolerate Trump when they have to, but in truth he is ostracized by the other leaders at these G7 meetings. They view him in the same light as Erdogon of Turkey, Orban of Hungary, and Bolsonaro of Brazil, all authoritarian leaders with a my-way-or-the-highway attitude, and all have packed the judicial systems of their respective countries with judges favorable to their machinations.