Capitalism Run Amok: Hungry Kids, Falling Wages and Empty Houses
September 18, 2015
Capitalism Run Amok: Hungry Kids, Falling Wages and Empty Houses
by Rob Urie
War Turned Inward
The fever that gripped the U.S. following the attacks of September, 11, 2001 demonstrated that manufacturing a shared enemy did little to create a deeper commonality of interests amongst nominal citizens. Whatever one may think about the specifics of the attacks— the motives of the attackers, their choice of targets or the veracity of official explanations, it would have required a full scale assault by an established military to destroy as many lives and communities as American born and bred bankers did through predatory mortgage lending in the housing boom and bust. And as much as official apologists would like to deny it, this destruction is wholly in keeping with the market outcomes that now constitute the base credo of the market-state.
The paper-thin bravado that sent heavily armored children and young adults to slaughter innocents in Afghanistan and Iraq for the benefit of Bechtel, Northrup Grumman and Exxon Mobil found its domestic truth in the quivering puddles that had supported the wars suddenly wondering how they were going to feed themselves and their children with their jobs outsourced and their homes in foreclosure. A fortunate few saw their fealty to the system of economic and social dispossession rewarded through the spectacle of social dissolution, through their neighbor’s bounty of cheaply-made goods strewn across suburban and ex-urban lawns as sheriffs and their agents made room for fresher members of the tenuous classes.
After eight years of alleged economic ‘recovery’ the pre-existing lines of social division are once again being clarified as class, race and geography separate the recovered from those left behind. Recent data from the Census Bureau (Graphs (1, 3)) illustrates the ongoing downward trajectory of real (inflation-adjusted) household incomes for all but the richest. This is more than simple ‘income inequality,’ it is evidence that very particular class interests are being served by the political establishment. The incomes and wealth of the richest have been recovered through official policies with little regard for the other 99.97% of the population. Leftish economists repeatedly claim that political dysfunction explains policy paralysis while policies that benefit the rich have met no resistance.
The Great Irrelevance
The great irrelevance of the moment, recently answered in the negative, of whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates ignores the obvious: it would if it could, but it can’t. The attendant spectacle of dedicated servants of Wall Street in contrived conniptions over ‘the plight of the poor’ would be laughable were it not for the ongoing social dissolution so in evidence. The trajectory of falling interest rates since 1982 ties directly to the increasing hold that financial operators have over capitalist economies. The falling price of credit (interest rates) led to its deep instantiation into every aspect of contemporary economic relations. The political victory for the existing order finds various and sundry advocates for the poor and toiling classes arguing that bank-friendly policies benefit the rest of us with little evidence on their side.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/18/capitalism-run-amok-hungry-kids-falling-wages-and-empty-houses/
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