David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show' - MUST READ

[malaise]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx-two-americas-wire
<snip>

America is a country that is now utterly divided when it comes to its society, its economy, its politics. There are definitely two Americas. I live in one, on one block in Baltimore that is part of the viable America, the America that is connected to its own economy, where there is a plausible future for the people born into it. About 20 blocks away is another America entirely. It's astonishing how little we have to do with each other, and yet we are living in such proximity.

It took a working class that had no discretionary income at the beginning of the century, which was working on subsistence wages. It turned it into a consumer class that not only had money to buy all the stuff that they needed to live but enough to buy a bunch of shit that they wanted but didn't need, and that was the engine that drove us.

From this moment forward unless we reverse course, the average human being is worth less on planet Earth. Unless we take stock of the fact that maybe socialism and the socialist impulse has to be addressed again; it has to be married as it was married in the 1930s, the 1940s and even into the 1950s, to the engine that is capitalism.

Mistaking capitalism for a blueprint as to how to build a society strikes me as a really dangerous idea in a bad way. Capitalism is a remarkable engine again for producing wealth. It's a great tool to have in your toolbox if you're trying to build a society and have that society advance. You wouldn't want to go forward at this point without it. But it's not a blueprint for how to build the just society. There are other metrics besides that quarterly profit report.

The idea that the market will solve such things as environmental concerns, as our racial divides, as our class distinctions, our problems with educating and incorporating one generation of workers into the economy after the other when that economy is changing; the idea that the market is going to heed all of the human concerns and still maximise profit is juvenile. It's a juvenile notion and it's still being argued in my country passionately and we're going down the tubes. And it terrifies me because I'm astonished at how comfortable we are in absolving ourselves of what is basically a moral choice. Are we all in this together or are we all not?
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Long but wprth the read

[russspeakeasy]

1. Thanks for posting this.

[Cha]

2. Kick before I read it.. malaho malaise

[cantbeserious]

3. Who Stole the American Dream?

See Here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017163425

[dougolat]

42. "..promote the general wellfare.."

when the monied buy tweaks to the system faster than the system can adjust, we risk losing the "consent of the governed."
We're there, Eisenhower was correct in his farewell address.

[Ace Acme]

64. What? The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Security-Lobbyist-Media complex?

But that's a conspiracy theory!

[starroute]

4. Capitalism is not part of the solution. Captialism is the problem.

Any system that depends on making people want things they don't need is unsustainable. Any system that depends on the promise of unlimited growth is unsustainable. Any system that believes it's always possible to skim a certain amount of profit of the top of whatever enterprise you're engaged in is unsustainable.

It may prove possible to maintain something like the free market on a smaller scale. But grinding out rewards for shareholders and executives who contribute nothing of value can only be based on exploitation -- whether of workers, of customers, or of the planet. And that has to stop.

[libdude]

5. There is

no better way to state the actual issue than that. Driven by greed, we are approaching the final end to the natural outcome of capitalism. The problem is two headed, one being the government being made a servant of the capitalists instead of the people, and that is all three branches, in my opinion. The second head of the problem are the people that believe some salvation to the issues will come from above as observed by Rudolph Rocker.

[daleanime]

6. +1

[mountain grammy]

7. Yes, worth the read. Thanks for posting.

[RainDog]

8. k&r n/t

[scarletwoman]

9. "Are we all in this together or are we all not?" Obviously, under capitalism, we are NOT.

There are the exploiters and the exploitees. The exploiters control most of the political class. That has been made abundantly clear.

The problem is, too many exploitees side with the exploiters - out of ignorance, out of delusion, out of tribalistic notions of "the other". And the exploiters do everything they can to make sure it stays that way.

[Chrom]

60. +100000

the smart exploitees need to cut the TV reception like the movie "They Live" or take over the tv stations like in "V for Vendetta"

so the other exploitees will be forced to wake up and think, so we can all join together to fight the exploiters

[Blus4u]

10. Capitalism succeeds because...

Labor has been able to balance it.
Capitalism has managed to destroy labor.
Labor no longer has any strength or power.
Capital has become all concentrated in the hands of a few.
And is busy consuming remaining wealth of it's markets (labor).
Once that remaining wealth is consumed they will have to eat their own paper.

At least the fuckers won't have to pay a living wage.

And it isn't just America that has this problem. Globalization only hastens the down fall of unbridled capitalism by consuming the wealth of the markets it depends on to survive.

It will be ugly.


Peace

[JimboBillyBubbaBob]

28. Good observation!

I had a class years ago when working toward my undergraduate degree in social anthropology. The professor gave an assignment to address an outcome from capitalism reaching an end wherein no competition was left. I recall her reciting the highlights from the balance of the papers and it was not a pretty outcome. Her suggestion at salvation was that only the discovery of life away from earth could force folks to look at what they were engaged in. It still resonates today.

[Ace Acme]

65. That's why we used to have antitrust legislation

Last edited Mon Dec 9, 2013, 05:56 PM - Edit history (1)

But the approvals have been coming in for alarming consolidations in news media, publishing, airlines, aircraft manufacturing, automobiles.

[malaise]

32. Yep - additionally racism - slavery, Jim Crow, apartheid

and all the plantation systems in our hemisphere fueled the wealth of capitalism.

Ugly won't describe the death of this system. It either reforms or down it goes.

What I like most about the article is the accuracy re Marx - he really understood the problem - we will have to solve it.

[YOHABLO]

63. They own the militaries that will be used to control any rise in decent .. trust me.

[Ace Acme]

66. And increasingly those are robot militaries that never took any oath to defend the Constitution

University researchers developing autonomous cars have to know that they are building robot suicide bombers and killing machines, but they choose to pretend they don't know.

[mckara]

11. Thank You

[hfojvt]

12. is there a horror meme going around?

I thought this was another post, perhaps, of this article http://www.alternet.org/media/have-our-lives-turned-real-life-horror-movie

Some of what he says here is simply wrong

"It took a working class that had no discretionary income at the beginning of the century, which was working on subsistence wages. It turned it into a consumer class that not only had money to buy all the stuff that they needed to live but enough to buy a bunch of shit that they wanted but didn't need, and that was the engine that drove us."

At the "beginning of the century" a huge portion of the "working class" were farmers. 38% of the labor force in 1900 and 31% in 1910. What capitalism did, to put it simply, was get people off of the farms and into the factories. But also many smaller businesses were consolidated, or pushed out. Think of all the small, local grocers that existed even in the 1950s and 1960s that are no longer around. At the turn of the century many more people were self-employed and a century later, most work for others.

[alfredo]

13. kick and rec for a morning read.

[merrily]

14. I get there are problems. What I don't get is what we are going to about it.

[jtuck004]

17. We can look through history and see where people have tried, yet we are where we are today.

It may be the answer is "there is nothing we can do". We can tilt at the windmill till we turn blue, but this experiment in Americanism may be destined to turn into islands of wealth surrounded by poverty, which is exactly the way we are moving.

And the ONLY thing that has ever motivated our current crop of citizens is being told that their current suffering can be cured by more servitude, and they vote for it in great numbers. As long as their cable tv remains on, things are cool.

I think most people don't want to see that, it's too painful. There are a few with the skills to go after the hard, dirty work of organizing, but I think the task is much larger than they know. They will rot in place, eating hope for breakfast every morning until they die, sure of their moral superiority and the power of positive (but deluded) thinking, while millions of people suffer and die around them to feed their ego. A few will leave the country and eke out something somewhere else.

We will begin to look more like India every day, while the rest of the world tries to play catch-up to some perception of what we used to be.

But I may be too optimistic.

[copperearth]

15. I realize we have problems but...

I don't hink that a marxist society works. If you confiscate all wealth and hand out an equal amount of money to each person, there will be some who want your share and his share and my share. As Orwell said "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." Marxism is not the answer either. It didn't work wll in the Soviet Union and in Cuba and it will not work for us.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

18. I don't think socialism is the same as Marxism

At least I don't see them as the same.

[hedda_foil]

19. Please read the whole article before assuming he's arguing for a Marxist solution.

Because he's not. He states very clearly that he believes Marx correctly analyzed the problem of uncontrolled Capitalism but that his solution/prescription is unworkable and unrealistic. He is arguing for a balance of capitalistic drive with societal controls to prevent the devolution of society we're seeing more and more clearly today. Like FDR' s New Deal approach that made this country the greatest productive force, with more opportunity for everyone than has ever been seen on the face of the Earth.

[Enthusiast]

23. +1 a whole bunch.......nt

[socialist_n_TN]

25. Which is typical of a lot of people who like to think they're...

smarter than Marx. They're not.

Marx's solutions are just as viable as his analyses. You cannot "regulate" capitalism over the long term. It just doesn't work that way because of the nature of the system. It will always throw off any "regulation" because regulation distorts the system itself. I've often said that regulating capitalism is like riding a hungry tiger. It's VERY difficult to do and you're always in danger of being eaten.

In relatively recent history we've seen three times that capitalism has become an inequality monster (Gilded Age, Jazz Age, and the recent run up to the Great Recession) and two of those three times attempts at "regulation" were put into place. And both times capitalism either threw off the regulations or side-stepped them. So to believe that you can ignore Marx's proscriptions as well as his analyses, you have to believe that it's a good thing to have to fight this battle against inequality every three generations or so. And of course the fight is always accompanied by the backdrop of some sort of harsh economic downturn where real people are harmed in real ways by the system of capitalism.

Every system in history has been an advance at the time over what came before. And every system has outlived it's usefulness. Capitalism's time has come and gone. Time for something new.

[BrotherIvan]

43. Excellent post

The definitive answer to the arguments here.

Further, we assume that the making or remaking of a consumer society is what we want or need. If we look at the population over the resources of this planet, it is very clear that this is the way to ruin. Pair that with the emerging countries that have the largest populations, and it has just sped up incrementally.

"The American Dream" was the idea that by a man's labor he could build a life worth having, including a modicum of autonomy and self-sufficiency to take care of himself and his family beyond his working days. He could afford niceties and comforts to offset his work. There were limits put into place as to how much he could be forced to work, with weekends and overtime, and he was paid enough that he felt compensated for his skills. In theory.

It seems now we need another "Dream" of what a good life may be, what people need aspire to. We could take look at our necessities and how we acquire them. As if the joys of growing our own food and making our own items for use is less than our enjoyment of cheap crap. We have no idea what a good life is beyond shopping. We have no idea what an educated person is. We do not know what a successful life looks like beyond a huge bank account. After a trip to Fiji, my perception has been entirely shaken, because here are people who have basically nothing who walk around smiling from ear to ear all day long. They seemed like the happiest bastards on earth and it seemed far more important to study how they do it than trying to luck into all the money in the world and still be a miserable person (see the Romneys).

[Blue_Tires]

69. +1

[malaise]

34. 100% correct

[socialist_n_TN]

27. Those people who want "...your share and his share and my share"...

are called capitalists. Considering that it wasn't Marxism in the USSR or Cuba, but Stalinism, you can't really know whether Marxism will work or not.

In addition, even the gains that Stalinism inherited from the October Revolution (that the Stalinists deformed and distorted) were under constant attack by capitalism from their inception which ALSO distorted the outcomes. And when I say attacked I mean exactly that. Attacks that included every dirty trick in the book and more. The attacks were overt and covert. Military, political, and economic. It was NOT a "We'll have a fair competition between capitalism and socialism and see which system is best for the people". It was "Capitalism will do ANYTHING to destroy socialism". Until you have that fair competition, NO one can know whether Marxism can work or not.

[DireStrike]

37. Yep. "It didn't work" = "Might makes right".

How many centuries did it take Capitalism to overthrow Feudalism as the predominant global economic system? It's an open question, but certainly the answer is at least "more than one". The revolutions continued on through the 19th and perhaps even 20th centuries.

[DireStrike]

36. Are you aware that Orwell was a socialist?

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/03/01/196347/george-orwell-was-a-socialist/

You also have an extremely basic, caricatured grasp of what socialism and marxism are. You do nobody any favors by repeating these sort of platitudes. Saying something that is commonly accepted is of course much easier than actually doing research, but saying nothing is even easier. Please do that in the future.

[Blecht]

46. Somebody didn't read the article

And I think the username starts with a "c".

[Warren Stupidity]

54. Norway is such a Stalinist hell hole.

There are many forms of socialism. Not all of them Marxist. There are many forms of Marxist socialism, not all of them are Marxist Leninist state socialism.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

16. deregulation and re-minted scapegoating (the "welfare queens) during raygun's admin

Set the stage by not only legitimizing selfish excess but also using those who have always been disdained as the scapegoats for people looking to project their fears and angers onto.

Feel uncomfortable? Anomie? Self-loathing?

Start screaming about those gawddammed women. Blacks. Gays. POOR PEOPLE.......
Guaranteed to get your mind off your troubles.

Nothing new in human history, really.



*pondering*..................
The only thing to really do, or it seems to me the best thing to do --individually and with everyone whose path you cross, , is to aim to become more caring....of yourself and others.

Practice doing the best you can. Practice practice.

[Enthusiast]

24. Well said.............nt

[classof56]

30. Blanche, what a thoughtful post with such great words of wisdom.

Thank you! Practice may not always make perfect, but doing the best we can plus truly caring for ourselves and others is more than worth the effort.

Blessings.

[1StrongBlackMan]

20. There has ALWAYS been two Americas ...

only, now, more white folks are realizing(can no longer pretend) that they are part of the "bad America."

[marmar]

21. k/r

[KoKo]

22. (It's not just USA it's GB Also)Watching "Sky News" this a.m. and saw this Report.

Seeing the same issues reported in Great Britain as here said to me that this is the "Globilization Strategy" of our Third Way/Wall Street, IMF Crowd. Along with some participation by the EU.

Sky News was talking about criticism in GB about MP's wanting a raise in their salaries. And, then this report on poverty from the Rowntree Foundation is almost a headline from the USA these days with our own workers struggling.

=======


Poverty Report: Hard Work Is Not Paying Off
Britain's working families have suffered a "sustained and unprecedented" fall in their living standards, new research reveals.
12:12pm UK, Sunday 08 December 2013

For the first time, there are more people in working families living below the poverty line (6.7 million) than in workless and retired families combined (6.3 million), a report has found.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that almost 13 million Britons are now living in poverty, having suffered a "sustained" and "unprecedented" fall in their living standards.

The social policy research charity found people remaining in poverty despite moving in and out of work, with some facing "very severe hardship".

At the same time the study finds that the support on offer to people who fall on hard times is "increasingly threadbare".

The report found that job insecurity is common for millions of people, with one in six of the workforce claiming Jobseekers' Allowance at some point in the last two years.

There have also been big shifts in terms of which groups are experiencing poverty: the largest group in poverty are working age adults without dependent children - 4.7 million people are in this situation, the highest on record. Pensioner poverty is at its lowest level for 30 years.

Not all of the findings are negative. There has been an improvement in the labour market with falling unemployment and underemployment, and, over the longer term, improvements in health and education outcomes.

Young adult unemployment has peaked at 21%, and unemployment among the whole population has begun to fall.

The number of people underemployed - ether unemployed, economically inactive and wanting work or working part time but wanting a full time job - fell by 100,000 over the last year.

One of the author's of the report, Dr Peter Kenway, told Sky News: "People are hard hit everywhere. It remains the case that young adults are on low incomes, but more than half of people who are low paid are above the age of 30.

"This is not a phenomenon of people who are at the start of their working lives. We've got people who are really hard-pressed and unable to progress."

Julia Unwin, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's chief executive, added: "This research shows millions of people are moving in and out of work but rarely out of poverty.

"Hard work is not working. We have a labour market that lacks pay and protection, with jobs offering precious little security and paltry wages that are insufficient to make ends meet."

http://news.sky.com/story/1179344/poverty-report-hard-work-is-not-paying-off

[malaise]

35. Useful post

Thanks

[BrotherIvan]

47. I think that is the lynch pin for labor

Hopefully we will see another strong labor movement soon. If working does not keep one above the poverty line, it's time to get angry about it. Downsizing in the 80s got everyone so scared of losing their jobs, they were literally willing to take any amount of abuse and poor wages.

Forcing blood-suckers like McDonalds to pay a higher minimum wage is just a band aid in truth. Workers must find a way to unite and pool their own capital, skill and labor to create companies and jobs. Consumers must refuse to buy from bad companies and support those that pay a living wage (there are many organizations all over the country that will certify your business). We have the power in our hands to change RIGHT NOW. I wish we would stop begging to our masters.

[KoKo]

58. Maybe the fight has to be for Global Equality for all Workers....

Since the Global Banking Interests seem to have done very well colluding to impose austerity on so many countries, including our own, to cover up their own greed, misdeeds and criminality by imposing Austerity measures and only paying fines instead of going to jail. Their Global Unity has allowed them to prosper on the backs of the innocents who had nothing to do with the deregulation and speculation which caused the Housing Bubble Crash. A Global Solidarity Movement may be only way to push back by getting more attention to our common interests.

[BrotherIvan]

59. I agree

But we need to have some sort of map, a philosopher if you, to define what that looks like. People have become so distrustful of each other, capitalism's worldview of the haves and have nots leading to the I've Got Mine Fuck You insanity we see rampant in our country. The sickness pervades every part of American society with a price tag on everything. It wasn't until the writings of the natural rights of man that those seeking to make a new country realized that the rights of the individual should be included in the Constitution. We must have this discussion today.

We are still begging the masters to part with a few more pennies so we can keep going in this diseased system. We have to get off the wheel to be liberated. Learning new values, which are likely old values, that put character and community above commodity. So the next generation can yearn for something more than a large salary and loads of stuff. Remaking the society in such a way so that the majority benefit. I don't have the answers, but I haven't seen anything but reactionary criticism yet. Hoping for a paradigm shift somewhere, somehow in my lifetime. If things get so bad, it may come soon.

[Warren Stupidity]

68. That, my friend, is the only answer.

[Enthusiast]

26. The tax structure needs to be reconfigured to make outsourcing less rewarding.

Even if it requires big tariffs on foreign made goods.

[rhett o rick]

67. Saying something like that is really pretty meaningless unless there is a way to accomplish it.

I am not trying to disparage you, but there are a lot of things we "should" do but we dont have a means of doing them.

We need to be working on a strategy to, first, make our election system free and fair. Without that all else is lost. Second would be to only elect those willing to help get big money out of politics. Again, without this step, we are again lost.

We cant reconfigure our tax structure until we re-institute a real representative government.

[Enthusiast]

70. I'm with you on all that.

Sometimes I will often consider a litany of things that we need to correct our current condition. Election reform is top priority.

It is amazing that the Republican Party favors restricting democracy yet the media remains silent about their efforts. The GOP should be cast as anti-American by the media. If the media was fair about it.

Not that the Democratic Party is entirely guiltless. After the sweep in 2006 I was pretty angry with the Democratic Party when they did not see election reform as a priority, considering the Florida debacle in 2,000.

[L0oniX]

29. CEO's work for stock holders ...not employees. That is the problem IMO.

Stock holders are not entrepreneurial capital investors for the most part. CEO's drive down labour costs to show profit to benefit stock holders don't they? So who is the enemy of the workers? I question the value of stock holders.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

53. Workers are considered to be a necessary evil to take the money from the customer.

[raouldukelives]

55. Stock holders are valuable for fiduciary responisbility.

With the ownership of corporations spread out it makes it harder (nigh impossible) to prosecute them for any malfeasance. Luckily for them, many people are more than happy to be that shield as long as they get some of the proceeds. Crimes against nature & humanity be damned. Funding ALEC & climate deniers? More than happy too. Just share some of those ill-gotten gains with me. Oh, and I'll vote D cause you know, I care so deeply about the environment and people. As long as it doesn't affect my bottom line of course.

[allan01]

31. re:There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

there always have been 2 Americas. one for the rich ,military ruleing class and one for the poor . so many shades of grey.

[cheapdate]

33. People everywhere are trying to formulate a better system.

Some people are looking for an exit from consumer capitalism altogether. Others are looking for a more just society. This article is an excellent contribution to the discussion.

[The Blue Flower]

38. Thanks, an excellent read

There will be bricks.

[DeSwiss]

39. It has always been thus.

- They used to fix the tears and the tatters, but not anymore. Austerity cuts......

K&R

[erronis]

40. I've not seen this discussed with such clarity. Capitalism as one tool, not necessarily the best

[Aviation Pro]

41. Capitalism is not the problem....

....greedy fuckheads who want to hoover up all the capital are the problem.

[socialist_n_TN]

50. The ESSENCE of capitalism is.....

greedy fuckheads hovering up all the capital. THAT'S what the competition in capitalism IS. The goal is like a Monopoly game. To be the last one standing with all the money and everyone else bankrupt.

[quaker bill]

71. At which point wealth becomes pointless...

actually a bit earlier than the conclusion of a monopoly game...

At some point you can have massive wealth, but there is nothing to buy with it.

[WillyT]

44. HUGE K & R !!!

[Egalitarian Thug]

45. They broke, and we've completely forgotten, the social contract that allows this fantasy-based,

global Ponzi scheme to work (such as it does). This is the fundamental truth that cannot be wished away and it leaves only two alternative destinies in the next very few decades.

You might be interested in this interview with Hedges on the world in which the parasite class lives.

[malaise]

48. Thanks

[malaise]

49. That was excellent

Sending to some friends

[Egalitarian Thug]

51. I'm happy to oblige. I still believe (in my less cynical moments) that if people really

understood these parasites, the world they live in, the perceptions and attitudes they hold regarding the world and their place in it, and especially how they think of the rest of us (when we even cross their minds), that they might make some changes. F. Scott Fitzgerald was writing a work of fiction when he tossed out that line about the rich being different, they are different and it has little to do with them having more money.

[malaise]

52. I know people who understand them only too well

but have been damaged so badly that they have stopped fighting

[Egalitarian Thug]

56. "And how did we do that? We did that by not giving in to either side.

That was the new deal. That was the great society. That was all of that argument about collective bargaining and union wages and it was an argument that meant neither side gets to win."

A very good read indeed.
More

[bvar22]

57. John Edwards, warts and all, was right.

One of the reasons why "they" had to shut him up for something that everybody else in Washington gets away with a nod & a wink.

Yes..There ARE two Two Americas,
and the divide is getting worse every day.

It is like the RICH are grabbing everything they can from the Working Class & Poor, and Pulling Up the Ladders before it all comes tumbling down.

[malaise]

62. Come on - he shut himself up

Sad but true

[heaven05]

61. appropo!

thanks for some truth.

[woo me with science]

72. kick