Actually, I don't think there's anything quaint about the "running argument". It still seems to matter a lot to the US/UK side who keep their think-tanks, pundits, and media at work on it... When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
It seems to me that facing reality is always a good place to begin.
I don't quite see how your point holds: if the think tanks are funded by corporate interests that make hay out of the world labour glut, (and I agree they are), then I don't think they focus on the "Anglo-Saxon v Eurozone" issue out of sheer bewilderment, as in "they have no idea what to do". Either they are simply using the "Anglo-Saxon model" issue as a smoke screen (that would be your second interpretation), or the issue has substance. This particular drum has been banged for so long and with such insistence that I have difficulty with either the bewilderment or the smoke screen view.
Unless you're separating "spinmeisters" from "think tanks"? When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
I think that it is inevitable that the economic power balance of the world has to be rearranged by the abilities and energy of a couple of billion people in Asia. They simply will not be shut out from a world economy that has been run almost entirely by Americans and Europeans. I think it might be possible to manage the transition in a way that reduces the inevitable disruption to the lives of ordinary people. By not discussing the reality we are missing any possible oportunities to do this. Instead we are rehashing the arguments that might have had some relevance 50 years ago.
And, you know, your dismissal of a very considerable propaganda machine as the work of a bunch of defeated generals re-fighting the war before last, and of arguments concerning American (would-be) hegemony and the EU as 50-year-gone maybe relevant, seem to me to take airy wing above reality.
But, as you see no interest in the topic presented above, we'd better just agree to differ. When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind
