"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."

[kentuck]

A quote attributed to Winston Churchill.

Our country has seen a lot in its 240 years. It was not easy to break away from the Crown. It was not easy to fight a Great Civil War and survive. It was not easy to adapt to the Industrial revolution. It was not easy to go thru the Great Depression. And it will not be easy to survive the technological revolution that our country is experiencing at this time.

The very concept of "labor and work" are being re-defined. The 40-hour week is obsolete. A new consensus must be reached between business and labor. Labor can no longer be measured by how much you sweat - it must be measured by the productivity of the field you are in. The wealthy cannot be permitted to reap all the rewards from their "investments" and give barely survivable wages to their workers. This would pertain to fast food workers and customer service people as well as all other employees.

The "global economy" has changed the way businesses operate and the way they are taxed by the governments involved. America, as Churchill noted, will try everything else before they do what needs to be done. Businesses will no longer need as many workers as in the past. Computers and robotic equipment have cut the workload in half. There are too many workers chasing too few jobs. Even with Baby Boomers retiring in record numbers, there are still not enough jobs for people to find.

Sooner or later, the populace will see that they cannot survive in such a "free enterprise" system as we have today. People must work. If the manufacturing base cannot create enough jobs, then it will be left up to the government. However, everything thing else will be tried before that happens.

[cloudbase]

1. I'm not so sure.

There are too many instances of implementing a policy that doesn't work, but doubling down on it in the hopes that it will eventually work out.

Your point is well taken, though. Something has to give.

[ND-Dem]

2. If there's population surplus relative to the power of the few, the surpus will be eliminated;

that's the plan, IMO.

[kentuck]

3. By war?

Many young men have been lost in previous wars, that is true.

[ND-Dem]

4. same way we did in russia. and other places as well.

A comparison dramatizes what is happening in Russia. Between 1976 and 1991, the last sixteen years of Soviet power, the country recorded 36 million births. In the sixteen post-Communist years of 1992–2007, there were just 22.3 million, a drop in childbearing of nearly 40 percent from one era to the next.

On the other side of the life cycle, a total of 24.6 million deaths were recorded between 1976 and 1991, while in the first sixteen years of the post-Communist period the Russian Federation tallied 34.7 million deaths, a rise of just over 40 percent.

The symmetry is striking: in the last sixteen years of the Communist era, births exceeded deaths in Russia by 11.4 million; in the first sixteen years of the post-Soviet era, deaths exceeded births by 12.4 million.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/drunken-nation-russia%E2%80%99s-depopulation-bomb

Cuts to social security, medicare & other social programs plus "helping" old, sick or handicapped people to end their lives...to relieve their families, for one motivation...that's in the US....

Wars will also kill our young people (economic draftees) and people overseas...

"Die quick & relieve the surplus population"

[hifiguy]

7. Nope. By "benign neglect."

Dismantling the tattered remains of the social safety net and letting millions die of disease and starvation. A modern form of feudalism, without the lords' obligations to the peasantry, has been the long game of the plutocrats since the plot against FDR. And nothing short of guillotines is going to stop them now.

Dickens' London is dead ahead.

[kentuck]

8. That is the most likely scenario...

I would agree.

[kentuck]

5. And, in between...

...there is a whole lot of suffering.

[Joe Turner]

6. The "global economy" has changed the way businesses operate

America is the only country that believes in the "global economy". The rest of the world laughs at us and uses our free trade to strip mine our jobs and industries away. Northern Europe is prospering mightily in this global economy because they don't let their corporations control their governments. There is nothing inevitable about the global economy being the economic "decider" unless we are foolish enough to let it. Which evidently we are.