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So let me see if I got this right . . .
Corporations and businesses seem to be trying to create a world where they can do business . . . without the need of additional business.
Corporations and businesses want demand, they just don’t want to pay the price necessary for that demand.
Corporations and businesses want us to consume until the sun goes down; they just don’t want us to work for them.
Problem is, one cannot exactly consume if they don’t have any spare income to consume with. If all of a worker’s money is overflowing into necessities, as it’s been doing for the past 30 or so years since wages have not been keeping up with the cost of living during that time, then excess consumption is either put on hold or on credit (often times debt is needed to keep up primary (necessity) consumption. And that’s a tragedy all its own).
Despite what conservatives (and conservatives who call themselves “Democrats”) assert, the American worker does NOT “make too much money” and in most of our lifetimes, they never have. If a worker’s wages kept up with inflation, productivity and cost of living these past three decades, their average pay should be around 60,000 dollars a year. With that kind of consistent green multiplied by millions, consumption should be no problem. American workers, on average, do not make anywhere NEAR that. In an average entry-level position, sons and daughters are now making ½ to 1/3 the wage their fathers and mothers used to, and work longer hours on top of it.
When the worker has a stagnant wage and cannot consume, naturally, demand is reduced. Just like the collective wealthy and their ever-increasing surplus of saved/invested/offshored monies, a worker’s void in spare cash represents money which does not flow into the American economy, causing a bottleneck in supply and layoffs/shuttering due to lack of demand.
You would think now that American companies can get mom AND dad for the same wage they used to be able to get mom OR dad with, we should be keeping up with the mass consumption vs. mass production cycle successfully. You would think that with 10 straight years of the Bush II tax cuts in full effect, there would be no reason for corporate “uncertainty”. You would think that since not a single thing has been enacted or taken away to make the “job creators” (snicker) lives one atom-speck more miserable, they would be wont to expand or hire, if trickle-on theory holds true.
You would think.
Except Mom and Dad, as it is, are now not just victims of one layoff, but multiple layoffs due to outsourcing, position elimination, cost cutting, poor management, etc. Each round of job cuts, each resulting recession becomes ever worse than the recession preceding it. This trend makes it far more difficult for us not only to drum up ever-needed demand, but also as a nation makes it harder to recover and destroys individual morale and trust in our supposedly benevolent economic system of Capitalism.
What’s more phenomenally galling is that either no one wants to admit there are more than a few grave problems with this system we blindly trusted for so many years, or that those who run, control and engineer its future refuse steadfastly to blame themselves and their monstrous greed FOR those problems.
More conservative pundits blather that the new realities of our economy demand that working adults get better skills; get on a fast track to “never-ending education”, as it were. In other words, they’re blaming the victim, something they do so well it’s practically second nature.
Never mind that we don’t have 4 to 6 extra hours in the day nor do we have money trees in our backyard to facilitate these supposed multiple trips to college over our working lifetime. Never mind that the burden of figuring out what particular skills we need to train for, which remains a complete unknown at this point, falls on the worker rather than the Corporate community. Never mind that higher education is more expensive and less accessible than any time in our history. We’d better just find a way to make it work and forget about that “family” or “social” thing because consumption and profit doesn’t stop for such crap and if you’re lucky enough to be allowed to work for us, you NEED this money and this job!
If the last decade of job numbers tell us anything, it’s evident that we’re all unwilling participants in what could be a very sobering turning point in the foundation of this nation’s prosperity. Just as there are a vocal few that insist we have hit “peak oil” . . . we may have already reached “Peak Capitalism”.
How is it that the supposed “most powerful nation and largest economy on Earth” has been so vastly incapable (or unwilling) of providing even below-average jobs for citizens that need them for a decade straight? Why is it that employers refuse to even consider the unemployed for hiring? Why is it that all bargaining power today belongs to the upper class and the working/middle/poor are now completely at their mercy? Why do we still abide by a system that crashes like clockwork every seven years and not even remotely consider instituting anything else?
Is the weak recovery merely due to intentional sabotage or are we simply dealing with the popping of a linear system that requires perpetual expansion, resources, wealth, and education and upgrades on the part of the workers to keep it working in a world where none of that exists?
I think the number one cause for all of this, and I’ll keep saying it, is simply our refusal to implement universal health care. This is why people aren’t in the streets – we’re too tethered to our jobs and the benefits (if we’re lucky to even get them) that come with it. This is why people worry – we’re forced to pay for our insurance out of pocket, which not only prevents us from saving, but also takes away our leverage. Entrepreneurship is discouraged due to health care costs. Striking out on your own becomes an unwise idea due to health care costs, which subsequently means you’ll remain at that lousy job and take whatever garbage your employer dishes out because you need those bennies. Corporations commit mass ageism . . . because of health care costs.
It’s because of this (well, and the fact that they’re just plain greedy and they don’t care) that companies are going cheaper and cheaper with each passing year – either by offshoring to other countries, inshoring from other countries or undercutting American workers and their wages.
It’s as if Big Business pretty much decided that, blue OR white collar, they don’t need us any more, but they still want us to buy.
How does business reconcile the fantasy of cost-friendly expansion with the reality of having to give up their exorbitant pay or economy-destroying tax breaks to make it happen?
Either way, we as a nation need to figure out real goddamned soon if we want to continue on with this system or start learning from our own mistakes and putting some more social-friendly safety nets in place.
I’m just saying the lower 98%, from the family sleeping in their car to the student/patient stressing how they’re going to pay the six-figure anvil around their necks to the couple struggling to make ends meet despite making good incomes doesn’t have all the time on the planet to know what to do. There’s only NOW and the bills in front of them.
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