![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogI’ve been trying to work out how to approach this post – which is mostly the product of half-assed observations from someone who knows dick about economics. And several of you have already made smarter posts about it, so it’s not like I’d be telling you something you don’t know.
But hey, that’s never stopped me before.
Anyway, I was going to skip it. What changed my mind was this piece from Joseph Stiglitz on wealth inequality in the US, which covers a lot of what I was trying to say. And he’s actually an economist. With Nobel Prizes and everything.
Anyway, the gist is this:
What we’ve been seeing in Wisconsin and elsewhere regarding budget deficits and small govt and public employee unions unveils one of the uglier truths about America: the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, employers are shedding jobs that are being replaced by ones that pay a lot less with no benefits, and the Free Hand of Rational Market Forces no longer works in everyone’s interest (assuming they ever did) because too many people have figured out how to game the system. And while everyone wants the govt as a safety net, no one wants to be the one to pay for the net – not even the people who could easily afford it (especially them, because it’s not like they need one – the occasional billion-dollar bailout excepted).
It seems to me that sooner or later, something’s got to give. If we can’t rely on market forces to correct themselves, and we can’t rely on the govt as a back-up plan, yr going to end up with a larger and larger portion of the population being told to get by with less with less return and like it.
Stiglitz’s take: we’ve seen the outcome of that already in Egypt, Tunisia, and other Middle Eastern countries. And sooner or later, yr going to see it in America.
The difference, of course, is that we have democracy …
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!
Sorry …
The difference, of course, is that we have the ability to swap out one party for another as a way to let off steam and create the illusion that we have the power to change the system. Sometimes it even works, to a degree.
The other difference is that while a small percentage of people control most of the wealth, most of the rest of the populace still gets by okay – at least compared to people in, say, North Korea or Sierra Leone – thanks to cheap credit cards, financing and fast food chains. You may be living from paycheck to paycheck, but as long as you’ve got a car, a TV, a place to stay and enough money left over for three drive-thru meals a day and beer, you’ll get by. You won’t be happy about it, but you won’t be angry, hungry or desperate enough to do something rash – like take to the streets and storm the governor’s mansion demanding regime change. Besides, you got to be at work in the morning or you’ll get yr pay docked.
I’m generalizing, obviously. But all up, the reason we haven’t seen a Jasmine Revolution in the US is that not nearly enough people are that desperate, and most of them still think that the election booth is the solution. (It’s civilized, easy, and requires a lot less sacrifice – apart from having to drive all the way to the polling station and stand in line for a whole 30 f***ing minutes.) Hell, until Wisconsin happened, most of the street protests we have seen in the US in the last few years weren’t from desperate poor people, but desperate middle-class people afeared of a Socialist takeover.
But I think Stiglitz has a point. Capitalism works a lot better in the long run when self-interest functions in the interest of society as a whole – put bluntly, you can’t run a profitable, growing business if everyone’s too poor to afford what yr selling. As wealth inequality grows, and the govt becomes less reliable or even responsive to voters in favor of the lobbyists and CEOs who wield far more influence than the schmoes who turn up at town meetings, and as the Free Market becomes more and more irrational at the expense of the lower classes, it’s arguably a matter of when, not if, we reach the point where enough of the population looks at the latest election results and decides it’s got nothing to lose.
Then you’ll see some shit.
Unless Dancing With The Stars is on. Because some things are just too important to give up.
Up against the wall,
This is dF
But hey, that’s never stopped me before.
Anyway, I was going to skip it. What changed my mind was this piece from Joseph Stiglitz on wealth inequality in the US, which covers a lot of what I was trying to say. And he’s actually an economist. With Nobel Prizes and everything.
Anyway, the gist is this:
What we’ve been seeing in Wisconsin and elsewhere regarding budget deficits and small govt and public employee unions unveils one of the uglier truths about America: the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, employers are shedding jobs that are being replaced by ones that pay a lot less with no benefits, and the Free Hand of Rational Market Forces no longer works in everyone’s interest (assuming they ever did) because too many people have figured out how to game the system. And while everyone wants the govt as a safety net, no one wants to be the one to pay for the net – not even the people who could easily afford it (especially them, because it’s not like they need one – the occasional billion-dollar bailout excepted).
It seems to me that sooner or later, something’s got to give. If we can’t rely on market forces to correct themselves, and we can’t rely on the govt as a back-up plan, yr going to end up with a larger and larger portion of the population being told to get by with less with less return and like it.
Stiglitz’s take: we’ve seen the outcome of that already in Egypt, Tunisia, and other Middle Eastern countries. And sooner or later, yr going to see it in America.
The difference, of course, is that we have democracy …
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!
Sorry …
The difference, of course, is that we have the ability to swap out one party for another as a way to let off steam and create the illusion that we have the power to change the system. Sometimes it even works, to a degree.
The other difference is that while a small percentage of people control most of the wealth, most of the rest of the populace still gets by okay – at least compared to people in, say, North Korea or Sierra Leone – thanks to cheap credit cards, financing and fast food chains. You may be living from paycheck to paycheck, but as long as you’ve got a car, a TV, a place to stay and enough money left over for three drive-thru meals a day and beer, you’ll get by. You won’t be happy about it, but you won’t be angry, hungry or desperate enough to do something rash – like take to the streets and storm the governor’s mansion demanding regime change. Besides, you got to be at work in the morning or you’ll get yr pay docked.
I’m generalizing, obviously. But all up, the reason we haven’t seen a Jasmine Revolution in the US is that not nearly enough people are that desperate, and most of them still think that the election booth is the solution. (It’s civilized, easy, and requires a lot less sacrifice – apart from having to drive all the way to the polling station and stand in line for a whole 30 f***ing minutes.) Hell, until Wisconsin happened, most of the street protests we have seen in the US in the last few years weren’t from desperate poor people, but desperate middle-class people afeared of a Socialist takeover.
But I think Stiglitz has a point. Capitalism works a lot better in the long run when self-interest functions in the interest of society as a whole – put bluntly, you can’t run a profitable, growing business if everyone’s too poor to afford what yr selling. As wealth inequality grows, and the govt becomes less reliable or even responsive to voters in favor of the lobbyists and CEOs who wield far more influence than the schmoes who turn up at town meetings, and as the Free Market becomes more and more irrational at the expense of the lower classes, it’s arguably a matter of when, not if, we reach the point where enough of the population looks at the latest election results and decides it’s got nothing to lose.
Then you’ll see some shit.
Unless Dancing With The Stars is on. Because some things are just too important to give up.
Up against the wall,
This is dF
