The status quo is doomed
The world economy is doomed. I'm looking from the American perspective because America is the leader in the coming collapse. We should have seen it coming in the 60s - Japan was rebuilding it's economy by starting with cheap consumer goods and taking the profits and using them to build production of higher quality goods, again and again. This worked until China did the same. The problem is that this required the American consumer to provide the money to fuel it and once America stopped making anything the American consumer ran out of money to continue the system,
Capitalism must exploit rich workers because the rich hoard their wealth. No rich workers no money And no capitalism.
The same applies to the "green revolution". It may be true that land can be made to produce more food, but there is a limit to the increase, and if that isn't obvious enough people need land for more than food and there is no limit to producing humans, More people need more energy and produce more garbage, etc. Something has to give; it's just a matter of when.
Oil is the most obvious example. We've known since about 1970 that burning oil will be catastrophic, but the people who knew first were the oil companies, and they were in the business of making people burn as much oil as they could produce, so they and capitalists like them lied and told us that we can burn all the oil we want, and eat as much as we want, and exploit the poor as much as we cab ad infinitum.
If we'd started earlier we could have minimized the consequences, but now it's just a question of how bad it'll be. What will happen first? Will the Gulf Coast get blown away by hurricanes or NYC, Boston, Miami, sink beneath the waves, or 100 million Central Americans flee the heat to America? It will all happen, and the longer we wait to deal with it the worse it will be.
Comments
Does it make you feel
like the dollars in your pocket are getting thinner?
Sure does mine. Doesn't help being an elder, should
be retired, still working citizen. Each buck is more
precious. And greed-flation knows no bounds.
Thanks for nothing uncle sam.
Inflation is part of the plan
If you work hard and deserve more for your productivity inflation cuts the value of your wage. If you save inflation destroys your savings faster than you can save, That's why I always say it's prices and not wages - they can always raise prices.
Mark Blyth says that if a government sets a goal of full employment it raises labor costs and all you'll do is create a wage/price spiral; That or companies move plants, but this only happens if you don't also control prices and/or profits. High prices also support income inequality while low prices allow equality. If I make $40k and a house costs $80k I can afford to buy (this is what I did in 97) but if I make $70k but the house costs $400k I either won't have the down payment or can't survive unemployment.
On to Biden since 1973
There will be an interim period --
-- in which the collapse of some of the European economies (and the isolation of the American one) is accompanied by the rise of BRICS. No?
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
USUK are fighting the development
of a much saner model of international finance (BRICS)
tooth and nail, much to their detriment
as the western model crumbles
the overlap will be short lived
unless western bankers join
but that won't happen
It all depends
Would you rather be American today and European tomorrow or European today and American tomorrow? It depends - does Europe give up national health or does America get it? Does it all even out in the end? I don't think so, but I really don't know which. The 2020s is completely unpredictable.
On to Biden since 1973
There are some obvious things
-- that America can do.
First and most obviously, America needs a viable alternative party. The Republicans are wingnuts and the Democrats are a monolith. The Green Party appears to be too ingrown to be able to expand. How about a political party free from shadow government influence? That ought to bring people in.
Second, America needs a party which places the well-being of working people front and center. 2016 made it obvious that the Democrats were the party of Beverly Hills, San Marino, Marin County, northern Virginia, and the Hamptons; and so in 2016 the swing states elected Donald Trump, whose administration promptly signed into law a tax cut for the rich.
There's obviously a tangled mess to be sorted out with an America beholden to weapons manufacturers, to be resolved with complex proposals that will make enough people happy that they can over-rule the unhappy ones. And another tangled mess which allowed neoconservatives and neoliberals to attain positions of power within the current system. See Philip Mirowski's Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste for elaboration on that last point.
Sure, health care. Also education and real estate.
It looks as if nearly everyone has stopped caring about the state of the world for so long that solutions die on the vine for insufficient numbers of people to do anything with them. The world has become a problem to dispense with, rather than being a problem to solve.
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati
You're right but it's too late
Our last chance to get rid of the duopoly was 2016, but Bernie chickened out. And don't start me talking about the Greens - whether it's illegal immigration, COVID mandates, Ukraine or Israel, if its wildly unpopular or suicidally stupid the Greens have welded themselves to whatever the neoliberals are saying this week, marched into Castle Irrelevance and blew up the drawbridge.
How's THAT for being pessimistic?
On to Biden since 1973
Where is this coming from?
Bernie Sanders was never interested in an alternative to the Democratic Party. He was also never interested in contesting the Democratic Party's marriage to weapons manufacturers; his campaign was an attempt to wed US empire to his over-promised vision of social democracy as achieved by electing a President while doing little else. 2016 was about betrayal, about voters in several states voting for Sanders only to discover that the "election results" were some garbage invented by Clinton operatives. And he went along with this! "Justice Democrats" (and other such organizations) were also about betrayal, and it appears that a lot of people figured that out this year. You can get universal health care if you live in Ukraine (that might be ending soon) or Israel or if you are a member of Congress; not so much if you are an American. "Bernie" was all smoke and mirrors; there was (and is) nothing there. But, no, "Bernie" did not "chicken out."
Now, as for the Green Party, this is the most recent trend: Building the Movement for Eco-Socialism. That's right -- the Greens are now into socialism. Last I checked, nobody in the Establishment was promising us Eco-socialism. The catch is, of course, that the Green Party can get away with such notions because it is an insular party, designed to reject proposals for its own growth.
You really have to take politics into your own hands if you live in the US or in Europe.
"the Democratic Party is not 'left'." -- Sabrina Salvati