One of the many things I see on TV news material that makes me shout at the screen is economic commentators raving about America’s booming economy……. nothing of the sort is happening. Economies are measured in dollars, and as debt grows exponentially, so does the money supply, and the throughput of money increases, and stupid moronic ‘economists’ whose only job is to make you all believe everything’s doing just fine will make you believe the increasing GDP is both good and a sign of growth…… Here’s an article that debunks all this fake news.
Let’s start at the beginning. The reason that crackpot American theories of economics are wrong is that they presume capitalism is the answer to everything. More jobs? Wages must rise! Hey presto! The economy fixes itself. Supply and demand, my dude — go capitalism!! But wait — what happens if those jobs are, well, not very good ones, because corporations don’t really have to compete, because its made of gigantic monopolies now, not mom-and-pop soda shoppes? If instead of being something more like stable middle class careers, with upward mobility, benefits, retirements, security, stability, meaning, belonging, and so forth, they are something more like jobs only in name — in reality, hollowed out? What happens if all that’s left in a “job” is the chance to work harder and harder every year, for shrinking income, opportunity, savings, a declining quality of life?
That’s exactly what’s happened in America. The “jobs” that are being created are not high quality ones. Like more or less everything else predatory capitalism creates, they are of astonishingly low quality. Not only are they concentrated in low-growth sectors, they’re composed of menial tasks, and they offer dead ends, not paths upwards, outwards, or forwards.
The result is the dismal litany of statistics that, by now, you should know all too well. It’s as alarming as it is astonishing. 80% of American live paycheck to paycheck. 70% have less than $1000 in savings. A third struggle to afford even healthcare, education, and shelter. As a result, America’s seeing what Angus Deaton calls “deaths of despair.” The suicide rate is skyrocketing, and longevity is falling, as people who can’t cope with the trauma appear to be simply giving up on life. It is no mistake to say that capitalism is killing Americans — and yet, Americans are tragically wedded to capitalism.
Yet at the same time, things have never been better for the ultra rich. They’ve captured more than 100% of gains over the last decade. The stock market is booming — but just 10% of Americans really own stocks, and maybe 1% earn a living from capital income. So, enjoying inequality that now puts classical Rome to shame, the mega rich quite literally have piled up fortunes so incredibly vast, there is literally nowhere left to put all the money — all the yachts, mansions, and lofts have been bought. That is why interest rates are permanently at zero: there is so much money piled up at the top of the economy, there is nowhere left to put it, except the one place it should go, which is right back to the people who need it: the middle class and poor, or if you like, the proletariat and the petite bourgeoisie in Marxist terms.
The result is an economy with an imploded middle class. That might sound trivial, but is crucial. A middle class is one of the defining creations of modernity — and what happens when a society loses its middle class is another defining creation of modernity — fascism. But we’ll get to that in a moment.
Remember Steve St Angelo describing the fracking industry cannibalising itself? Well this guy seems to think the entire US economy is doing this too…..
“Growth” has turned predatory. American economics supposes — because it assumes capitalism is the best solution to everything — that growth is always good. But growth is not always good. Not just because it eats the planet (though it does) — but in this case, for a more immediate reason. Capitalism isn’t just eating the planet. It’s eating democracy, civilization, truth, reality, the future, and you.
Read it all here.
Damn the Matrix 