General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I'm Not Sure How To Ask This... But... Is Anybody Else Feeling A Great Nauseous Forboding About... [View all]Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)The current course which our leaders (the 1%) have plotted for the future is unsustainable. The nation will break down under the strain of inequality and tyranny brought about by deregulated capitalism, made even worse by the fact the economy is now based in finance capital rather than in manufacturing capital.
Equality of outcomes was never America's strong suit or even desirable. However, as long as the middle class was doing nicely, there was little about which to complain. That's changed.
There are several reasons for why this has changed with the effect being prosperity transforming into crisis.
First of all, finance capital is unproductive. Today's apologists for the status quo may call themselves "economic fundamentalists," but denoting themselves as such rings hollow as long as they support the primacy of finance capital. Adam Smith, who is the standard of real economic fundamentalism, would tell these morons that money is not wealth. It is nothing more than a convenient medium of exchange. It's funny how the economic gurus touted Adam Smith in the eighties and have forgotten all about him thirty years later. Money is worthless if there is nothing to buy with it.
Wealth is goods and services. Goods are manufactured, mined or grown, not printed on government presses. A society (for the benefit of followers of Ayn Rand, society is a real thing) gets richer when it produces more goods and services, not when it simply produces more money. If the government or the central bank prints more money without a corresponding rise in productivity, nobody gets richer; but, prices will rise accordingly. This means that all of this extra money that the Fed is creating out of thin air and giving interest-free to the banks in order to cover their debts is doing more harm than good. We accuse the bank of sitting on it; the best thing for them to do would be to burn it. When it gets into circulation, it will cause inflation the likes of which hasn't been seen since the days of the Weimar Republic.
Sooner or later later, this structure will collapse. The floor will fall out from underneath the upper classes and -- it always works out this way -- the ceiling will fall on top of the rest of us who reside on the lower stories of the structure. After that, the only way to keep the upper classes on top is a police state. This is simply history repeating itself. The prosperity of the 1920s, which was built on funny money gimmicks, gave way to the Great Depression of the thirties, characterized by police states in Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union and Japan, and finally by World War II and the Cold War.
Does anybody want to live through the twentieth century again? I don't.