Notice that normal family homes are over $1 million now, gasoline $5/gal, food prices way up in smaller packages, and that the dollar has continued to lose its buying power, making everything essential even more expensive?
I threw up when writing this because of how upset I am after watching a video about the History of the Economy of Japan, and it reminds me so much of what has been happening in the USA where I live just east of Seattle, Wa, in an overpriced suburban mountain top community where my wife and I are DINKs or dual income no kids, as in we have a kitty cay named Sweet Pea but not human children and cannot afford to have children, since we are renting the home of someone else's million dollar house basement. On a positive note they are friendly lovely people from India who are so kind and loving it blows my mind every time we interact with them.
On the linked YouTube video https://youtu.be/lmnVP35uZFY?si=6kBX_PpTSgtHK0iX
I commented "
This video made me throw up /sickening because the same thing has happened in the USAMy wife and I are over 40 now and both work but cannot afford to have children Gasoline was $1/gal when I graduated high school, now its $5/gal The same 500% price increase for beef, chicken, seafood, flour, eggs, milk, butter, salad greens, veggies, clothing, vehicles, rent, home prices and more, while the USD or dollar keeps loosing value Homes that my parents generation got to buy for $60K to $200K are now $800K to $2million dollars Many business in the USA were outsourced, while insourcing talent from abroad also happening Something about it also reminds me of the global increase in depression, anxiety, fear, and suicide Add in climate change runaway tipping points and carbon energy pollution, mircorplasltics, the war in the Ukraine, extreme selfishness, individualism to the point of turning a blind eye to the obvious suffering of other people. I feel a deep sadness knowing that what is featured in this video has happened to me and many other people in my generation in the USA born in the 1980's
This other comment by caught my attention
"I remember seeing a comment about modern day America reflecting 1990's Japan. Many young Americans are struggling to hit important life events that were deemed important by American culture. Many young Americans can't afford homes, struggling with the inflated prices, yet the stock market and real estate market remain near all time highs. Birth rates are declining, mental angst has been rising, a sense of hopelessness is filling the air. This channel has really made me understand how important economics is when it comes to shaping people. I always thought it was just business and numbers, but it dictates cultures."Bad for older American's too, many of whom retired in the late 1990's on a fixed incomes, while the price of everything has risen sharply since then, even the property taxes of the homes they have owned outright for years almost uses up their entire retirement income, leaving them with no money to travel to see their children or grandchildren who were forced by gentrification to move far way to where homes are actually affordable, in rural America, where housing prices have remained stable unlike the hyperinflation that affected homes in big popular cities of America like the metropolitan urban and suburban areas or cities near Seattle, like Redmond (Microsoft)(NVIDIA)(Adobe) and Kirkland, or Bellevue or Issaquah, highly gentrified expensive suburban car required neighborhoods as thats the only practical way to work and get around. America is car crazy, with the general public in America driving more the 3.2 trillion miles per year as of 2023 data.
That's with a lot of wasteful gas guzzler vehicles that get under 20 miles per gallon. This issue around American's being dependent on automobiles fueled by gasoline or diesel as the only practical way of getting around was exacerbated at the beginning of the 20th century by then founder of Ford Automotive working with corruption to tear up domestic railways and replacing them with the highway system. At the end of WWII many Americans became home owners, car owners, and the interstate highway system was in full swing construction linking up all the states.
In many US cities the urban sprawl phenomenon means families have to drive until they can afford to buy homes, often resulting in longer commutes, such that many Americans drive more than 50 miles per day to get too and from work, school, or for shopping, often to overpay for groceries that were vastly more affordable just a 10 years ago.
Shopping prices went crazy during COVID19 shortages and supply chain interruptions, such that many Americans feeling a lack of ability to control the closures and layoffs and chaos, start hoarding toilet paper and other essential consumables, stripping store shelves and causing prices to soar to incredible highs. I remember seeing a 2X4 of lumber that normally sells for about $2 selling for $50, and crab meat the normally sells for $20/lb selling for over $100/lb. A 10 US pound bag of flour thats normally about $6 was selling for over $30.
Watch Requiem for the American Dream YouTube Video https://youtu.be/hZnuc-Fv_Tc?si=Dn82wGuhK-fG5mc9
INCOME INEQUALITY
Merger & Acquisition Super Monopolies
Bribery Office For Sale Corruption
Distrust of Government
There are lots of lenses through which to examine these issues, but they all boil down to the same point. Live has become so unaffordable in developed economies that the "Middle Class" no longer actually exists, only a vapor of smoke remnant remains. Now to actually afford homes nearby, the family has to make an income of over $200,000 dollars annually. This means that normal home ownership now in the domain of upper income and wealth people, and largely unaffordable to the working class, even dual income earners without children like my wife & I, sadly. Its a unsustainable speeding race car of an economic disaster going off the cliff of economic collapse, speeding up daily as more people turn a blind eye to what is actually happening in order to space out watching celebrities or other nonsense as their economy crumbles from the inside out in the background. This is actually bad for wealthy people too.
Decaying Democracy
What does democracy mean when privileged and powerful sectors have never like democracies? The concentration of wealth and power means less for everyone so a tiny minority can enjoy opulence. The cost of electrons have skyrocket, meaning huge corporations pay for the campaigns in exchanged for special favors, tantamount to racketeering or corruption because thats exactly what it is, or bribery if you want to call it something else.
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
English owners of society sculpted public policies to take care of their own special interests. Today we have multinationals, the masters of mankind, all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else. They will pursue policies that benefit themselves even if that harms or hurts everyone else. Many polluting industries that are profitable operate with this inhibited ignorant confused mentality. James Madison the USA should be designed so that power exists in the hands of the wealthy, who have sympathy for property owners, to protect the opulent minority from the poor majority. We can't have the poor taking away the wealth from the rich, so America was setup from its founding to benefit the tiny minority at the expense of the majority. So Americas was never a real democracy for free men.
People Have the Civilizing Power
The democratizing tendency comes from the population, from bellow, from the poor and working classes that do all the real work. Unions emerged to protect workers. Activism brought regular people into politics. Minority rights movement in 1960s with the Black Panthers, and Women's Rights before that during the Suffrage movement. Ecological environmentalism emerging on top of the Book Silent Spring. Why are there poor people in America? How have we restructured American society to be so unfair to so many people. Why are there so many billionaires and so many poor people at the same time? A major backpack reaction happened publicly during the Hippy Counter Culture, but in the 1970's during the Nixon years, there were major efforts to wrangle back inequality for to help the business sector regain control of society, to defend itself from outside powers that seek egalitarian resource equity in a resource based economy with science as the basic framework of understanding. Think physics, chemistry and facts.
Elite Challenged By Free Love Movement
The 1960's had a democratizing effect by enabling passive parts of the population into political efforts, while the major powers wanted less freedom for young people. We set up institutions to indoctrinate people into keeping their head down, paying their taxes, not asking questions. The general population has to be subdued. The ideological problem was redesigning the economy. Thus we saw the USD dollar leave the gold standard in 1973 and funny money fiat currency version of it energy as the increasingly less valuable dollar of today.
Newer CEO's Major in Accounting & Finance : Older CEO's were Engineers & Scientists
By 2007 more than 70% of wealth of America was controlled by banks, insurance companies, financial institutions, the Federal Reserve or Real Bank of America, a tiny minority of people who were hedging and slanging CDO with a AAA rating, after a bizarre rule change in 2004 at the SEC that effectively lifted or removed the 1933 Glass Steagall Act, effectively allowing speculative investment in the mortgage market industry, noteworthy because homes in America had increased in value every year since the end of WWII and were considered sunrise sunset stable investment, almost with profit as a foregone conclusion or a "safe bet" if you will, so firms issuing new home loans were partying like it was 1999 with 2400% year over year profit that even makes the stock value increase of NVIDIA shares look meager.
CDO Scam Caused 2008 Global Mortgage Market Collapse & Started in America
That's right, in short order the lesson was, we can make obscene money by selling CDO based on junk loans issued to people with poor credit ratings who could not actually afford to buy the homes, especially as the payment ballooned after the introductory period of the ARM or adjustable rate mortgage, causing their money payment to go from $800/mo to $2,700/mo, causing the 2008 mortgage market collapse as millions of these junk mortgages failed causing a glut of homes for sale that banks were trying to short sale back into the market to get their money. Remember banks do not make money, thats primary energy that creates wealth, banks make money by charging interest and fee's on other peoples work income, other people who mow the lawns, do the plumbing, who pave the streets, who drive the school buses, who work at the farms, who drive the trucks, the working people who do all the work.
International Labor Movement / Relocating Manufacturing to Exploit Cheaper Labor
Globalization was a deliberate effort to put working people in competition with each other, such that it marginalized their income, creating a race to the bottom as banks look for the next N-work of people abroad to exploit. But as Richard Prior said eloquently, eventually "They" will run out of new "n-words" to exploit. South East Asia has become the "bitch of industry" as countries there are the manufacturing hubs that even China outsources work to now. The financialization of economies means that today we have people who majored in financial trickery running corporations that make more money moving money around in cleaver ways than they do doing anything productive. It's unclear if GE for example even does anything to actually produce anything other than making money with their money, like a band. Many large companies in wealthier countries that previously manufactured goods, now operate like banks making money with money, using cleaver finance and accounting manipulation or witchcraft, and are effectively as individuals and collectively, idolators of money, who play money above the public and worship money over God, and who will there be condemned by God to eternal damnation for making money their idol. American Idol you wonder? Flex that money, like you know you want to, but remember you have to pay your bills too.
Global Worker Competition
This means that worker in the USA are competing against exploited people abroad. That's why so many manufacturing businesses left America and set up shop in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, or somewhere far away where labor, land, and permitting are easier, cheaper and faster to setup or develop. The poor local economies where these primary production activities are moved are stunned by the wealth that flows inward to build the factories with tooling imported and experts brought in to train everyone. Over time the costs rise and eventually that factory shuts down and exported to yet another cheaper local with cheaper land, cheaper labor, and liberal easy to development lack of regulations or outright help from the local government looking at gold in their eyes, at yet another faustian bargain like Satan himself way the puppet master of globalization and the exploitations of ever more people abroad.
Elite Coulter
Mansions with servants, supercars, helicopters, personal daily worn jewelry thats costs more than a typical gentrified pricing suburban home, say millions with large gemstones in iridium settings adorned with platinum & gold enhancements. No flaws in the stones, internally perfect gemstones laser inscribed with serial numbers inside for tracking if they are stollen. These people eat Haute culture food like that featured on the Netflix Series Chef's Table at Michelin Star restaurants that cost thousands per plate. Some of the warped sick elite income earners traffic children to sexually abuse like Jeffry Epstein or the friends of his that frequented his island of ill repute as it was known locally. To hob nob with the top you have to make weird satanic oaths and engage in immoral and unethical things that are unspeakable and worse or far darker than anything I have mentioned above. Think on the lines of torturing innocent people with gladness and joy watching the other person experience abject pain. All for one and none for everyone else the maxim or axiom they base their thinking on, the deepest kind of narcissist greedy selfishness possible and they are dangerous even to themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment