The Economy's Not Booming. Predatory Capitalism's Eating Itself
What Happens When Capitalism Eats Itself? Fascism.
Quick — what’s the one thing that, funnily enough, Trump and his fiercest critics unwittingly agree on? “The economy’s booming!!” You hear it a dozen times a day. But is it? Why, then, do those very critics sometimes wonder, frowning and stroking their chins: “Wait, why aren’t wages rising? Why aren’t people’s savings and incomes and lives improving?” Now, a sensible person would at this point conclude that their theories were wrong. A reasonable one might even ask — “how can the economy really be ‘growing’ when life expectancy is falling? Isn’t that, well…absurd?” But wise men are not usually sensible people — they usually conclude that reality, not their theories, is what must be wrong. Therefore: “the economy’s booming!! High-five me, Larry!!”
Here’s a secret.
The economy’s not booming. Capitalism’s eating itself. What happens when capitalism eats itself? Fascism does. With a heaping side order of authoritarianism, kleptocracy, theocracy, and all the other ills known to humankind.
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.
https://eand.co/the-economys-not-booming-predatory-capitalism-s-eating-itself-a1663d94498e
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