Neoliberal capitalism has accelerated final stage capitalism where growth necessarily means cutting labor costs. Under the constraints of today, the way to do that is really through automation because paying workers less is becoming untenable. There are still lower wage populations to exploit but it's becoming politically difficult to maintain a system in which jobs are exported but the consumers are domestic. The consumers need capital to buy the products to keep the system moving.
So then workers have to be paid more and the workers domestically are relegated to service industry, restaurants, fulfillment centers, etc. Not everybody can be in middle management or higher on the corporate ladder. Credit was always one way around that, but even then, credit's getting tapped out.
So we have a lot of disposable people who do not fit into the labor market but yet we still need people to buy things. So we raise wages, we stimulate the economy with aid packages, we build more weapon systems, but all of that causes things like inflation. So now you have people who can afford things like housing and those who can'[t (thus the growing homeless problem--these are systemic problems--ten years ago, there weren't huge homeless camps living under bridges in my home town).
So we have a contradiction between the need for capital to grow and the need to have a domestic market in which people can afford costly products. And that problem just continues to accelerate. Overseas labor is getting tapped as their conditions improve and their costs go up (China can control that better being a totalitarian country).
All of that runs smack into democracy. People want more health care (Trump even promised a beautiful health care program paid for by the government), they want the government to do something about jobs (but isn't the economic sector supposed to be in private hands?), raise minimum wage, etc, etc. All of which affects capital's ability to grow. So to thwart those demands, our attention is turned to hoaxes: liberals eating kids and drinking their blood, teaching critical race theory (do you mean the history of slavery--we shouldn't teach that?), abortion (I am old enough to remember when conservatives didn't care about abortion and it was the Catholic Democrats who did).
So the response from capital will always be authoritarianism. And if you think siding with capital will be good for you, think again. This Trump movement is all about "freedom" and "liberty," but it will be all of our freedoms that will be taken away. Look at the models they want to emulate, like Tucker Carlson going to Hungary. People have far fewer freedoms in Hungary than we do, yet Carlson hailed it as a great system, better than ours. Why would he do that? Look at Russia where the opposition parties are outlawed and the main leaders imprisoned (even poisoned and assassinated.
What are our options in the face of this? It isn't backing Trump, he is on the side of capital. He is dividing and conquering us--we, the people. All of them are (except maybe Bernie). Republican and Democrat. They are all taking money and following the desires of corporate elites. So what are your solutions to all this?
Here's the problem:
The jig is up.
Neoliberal capitalism has accelerated final stage capitalism where growth necessarily means cutting labor costs. Under the constraints of today, the way to do that is really through automation because paying workers less is becoming untenable. There are still lower wage populations to exploit but it's becoming politically difficult to maintain a system in which jobs are exported but the consumers are domestic. The consumers need capital to buy the products to keep the system moving.
So then workers have to be paid more and the workers domestically are relegated to service industry, restaurants, fulfillment centers, etc. Not everybody can be in middle management or higher on the corporate ladder. Credit was always one way around that, but even then, credit's getting tapped out.
So we have a lot of disposable people who do not fit into the labor market but yet we still need people to buy things. So we raise wages, we stimulate the economy with aid packages, we build more weapon systems, but all of that causes things like inflation. So now you have people who can afford things like housing and those who can'[t (thus the growing homeless problem--these are systemic problems--ten years ago, there weren't huge homeless camps living under bridges in my home town).
So we have a contradiction between the need for capital to grow and the need to have a domestic market in which people can afford costly products. And that problem just continues to accelerate. Overseas labor is getting tapped as their conditions improve and their costs go up (China can control that better being a totalitarian country).
All of that runs smack into democracy. People want more health care (Trump even promised a beautiful health care program paid for by the government), they want the government to do something about jobs (but isn't the economic sector supposed to be in private hands?), raise minimum wage, etc, etc. All of which affects capital's ability to grow. So to thwart those demands, our attention is turned to hoaxes: liberals eating kids and drinking their blood, teaching critical race theory (do you mean the history of slavery--we shouldn't teach that?), abortion (I am old enough to remember when conservatives didn't care about abortion and it was the Catholic Democrats who did).
So the response from capital will always be authoritarianism. And if you think siding with capital will be good for you, think again. This Trump movement is all about "freedom" and "liberty," but it will be all of our freedoms that will be taken away. Look at the models they want to emulate, like Tucker Carlson going to Hungary. People have far fewer freedoms in Hungary than we do, yet Carlson hailed it as a great system, better than ours. Why would he do that? Look at Russia where the opposition parties are outlawed and the main leaders imprisoned (even poisoned and assassinated.
What are our options in the face of this? It isn't backing Trump, he is on the side of capital. He is dividing and conquering us--we, the people. All of them are (except maybe Bernie). Republican and Democrat. They are all taking money and following the desires of corporate elites. So what are your solutions to all this?
Spotted the Catholic