The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power
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Re: The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power
#2Decent basic points, but superficial and often missing the real underlying trends. For better analysis on the same general ideas, I recommend:
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/12/08/acting-dead-trading-up-... http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08/a-brief-history-of-the-...
(ribbonfarm is my favorite blog)
Re: The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power
#3When Karl Marx wrote Capital in 1867, he said capitalism would never be able to get rid of credit bubbles, financial crises, high unemployment etc. He said that over time the problems would get worse and worse with greater and greater financial crises. Here we are about a century and a half later and you just have to look at the housing bubble, the bank crisis, TARP and the government bailout, unemployment in the US and Europe and the Arab countries which helped cause the Arab spring to see how prophetic he was in this respect.
Marx and Engels wrote that the world has seen five economic systems. Each system collapsed due to internal contradictions. The first system was hunting-gathering, then Babylonian/Greek/etc. style slavery, then feudalism, and then capitalism. They saw the Paris Commune as the harbinger for the next economic system which would replace capitalism.
The central contradiction in capitalism Marx spells out clearly in Capital, although its a little too much to explain in a comment. Basically workers create $240 of wealth every eight hour work day, but are only paid $200 a day. The $40 goes to profit, to get more capital, to make more commodities. But what is happening here - the worker is shorted $40 a day, and what happens with that money is commodities are made. Who are going to buy all these commodities when workers are not getting all the wealth they create? Well credit fixes that in the short term but creates a bigger long term problem.
The communist manifesto says "the commercial crises that by their periodic return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on trial, each time more threateningly". I certainly feel this way. So apparently does Stratfor. On this point, the left and right are in agreement.
Re: The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power
#4When Karl Marx wrote Capital in 1867, he said capitalism would never be able to get rid of credit bubbles, financial crises, high unemployment etc. He said that over time the problems would get worse and worse with greater and greater financial crises. Here we are about a century and a half later and you just have to look at the housing bubble, the bank crisis, TARP and the government bailout, unemployment in the US…
Please keep writing more around here. We need people like you and comments like this.
Re: The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power
#5When Karl Marx wrote Capital in 1867, he said capitalism would never be able to get rid of credit bubbles, financial crises, high unemployment etc. He said that over time the problems would get worse and worse with greater and greater financial crises. Here we are about a century and a half later and you just have to look at the housing bubble, the bank crisis, TARP and the government bailout, unemployment in the US…
Much of Marx's critiques of capitalism make some sense. The problem is nobody has come up with a better system for lifting people out of poverty.
Re: The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power
#6When Karl Marx wrote Capital in 1867, he said capitalism would never be able to get rid of credit bubbles, financial crises, high unemployment etc. He said that over time the problems would get worse and worse with greater and greater financial crises. Here we are about a century and a half later and you just have to look at the housing bubble, the bank crisis, TARP and the government bailout, unemployment in the US…
Anyone who thinks that the recent financial crisis is due to a fundamental failing of the free market just has not been paying attention, or has an ideological ax to grind. The latest economic crises are mostly the result of bad government policies and excessive government debt.
Re: The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power
#7When Karl Marx wrote Capital in 1867, he said capitalism would never be able to get rid of credit bubbles, financial crises, high unemployment etc. He said that over time the problems would get worse and worse with greater and greater financial crises. Here we are about a century and a half later and you just have to look at the housing bubble, the bank crisis, TARP and the government bailout, unemployment in the US…
Bit of a sloppy analysis... The $40 that the worker is "shorted" doesn't disappear into some magic portal that leads to another dimension where rich people secret it away from the economy. It goes to the workers at the bank, or to other businesses that get capital to pay their workers, or perhaps the owners of the company so they an buy a few commodities themselves.
Re: The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power
#8When Karl Marx wrote Capital in 1867, he said capitalism would never be able to get rid of credit bubbles, financial crises, high unemployment etc. He said that over time the problems would get worse and worse with greater and greater financial crises. Here we are about a century and a half later and you just have to look at the housing bubble, the bank crisis, TARP and the government bailout, unemployment in the US…
Anyone who thinks that the recent financial crisis is due to a fundamental failing of the free market just has not been paying attention, or has an ideological ax to grind. The latest economic crises are mostly the result of bad government policies and excessive government debt.
Government policies, perhaps, though mostly in the sense that it creates the regulatory environment that finance works in. But government debt? Hardly. It may have been a headwind due to issues in Europe, but the core cause was overleveraged financial firms.
Re: The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power
#9This article is a great explanation of what I've been thinking all along. The rising tide has been in efficiency and technology but every American is realizing these gains through computers, phones, and access to information. The baby boomers were able to get an education, buy a house, a car, have a kid and go on vacation, and all of those things have been squeezed to the breaking point in the past two generations. On the other hand, you can consume all you want on the internet, and with enough experience, cheat the system and download unlimited music, tv shows, movies, ebooks and software. If you want all the luxuries of the baby boomers, you have to be frugal and prioritize. Education: go to community college and transfer to a cheaper state school. Car: buy a cheap 90s honda. House: save for a down payment, but rent is still the same or cheaper than buying and you have flexibility to move. Kids: that may take more time.
Re: The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power
#10When Karl Marx wrote Capital in 1867, he said capitalism would never be able to get rid of credit bubbles, financial crises, high unemployment etc. He said that over time the problems would get worse and worse with greater and greater financial crises. Here we are about a century and a half later and you just have to look at the housing bubble, the bank crisis, TARP and the government bailout, unemployment in the US…
Bit of a sloppy analysis... The $40 that the worker is "shorted" doesn't disappear into some magic portal that leads to another dimension where rich people secret it away from the economy. It goes to the workers at the bank, or to other businesses that get capital to pay their workers, or perhaps the owners of the company so they an buy a few commodities themselves.
In theory, yes. In practice? Well, so far it's tended to accumulate in the coffers of banks and corporations, to moulder and rot.