Social Inequality in America, debt as deliberate tool of power

[Hannah Bell]

The mid-twentieth century "deal" between the "opulent minority," the government and the people left the "opulent minority" with the lion's share of the country's wealth, but a little bit more of that wealth was shared with the workers who created it. The government was the referee who enforced the rules, and the years between the end of the Second World War and 1970 were America's most prosperous overall, producing the largest, wealthiest middle class in history.

Americans assumed that this was the new normal...Now the country is returning to its natural state...as squalor once again stands side by side with splendor. "According to the UN...the US had the highest level of inequality of the highly industrialized countries, based on the data available in 2008. It was ranked slightly more unequal than Sri Lanka, and on a par with Ghana and Turkmenistan. (1)

In the 70s, US economic global supremacy was waning... This made the "opulent minority" rethink the New Deal-bone they'd tossed to the majority of Americans, and they brought in Ronald Reagan to put in force a Raw Deal that began a cascade of deregulation, privatization and consolidation... Today...the middle class holds on by its fingernails and the rest of us go over an economic Niagara Falls without a barrel into "Third" World-style poverty. Government is no longer the referee that promotes the general welfare. Government is the facilitator for the "opulent minority"...

Since 1980, the richest Americans have seen their incomes quadruple, while for the "lowest" 90% of us, incomes fell. The average wage is lower today than it was in the 1970s, while productivity has risen almost 50%. In 1983 middle class debt held at 67% of income. In 2007, middle class debt had gone over the falls to 157% of income... This is the result of a deliberate strategy, one Washington has executed many, many times, though usually in "Third" World nations, by using "Free" Trade Agreements (FTAs) and its front groups, the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO. Purchased politicians plunge their countries into unsustainable debt. Under Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), national industries are sold to transnational corporations and privatized. Social programs are cut to the bone or eliminated altogether. Interest rates are ratcheted up and the economy collapses on itself like the World Trade Center while banks and corporate buzzards fight each other to pick the carcass clean...

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article18162.html

[inna]

1. Excellent post. Marking for further reading.

[Hannah Bell]

2. k

[dkf]

3. I recommend the movie "the international" just for a

Sliver of enlightenment on how this works.

Being in debt to someone gives them power over you. That is why our deficits are very very very bad.

[Hannah Bell]

4. Our deficits are not "very very bad" unless you accept the logic that they give financiers the right

to dictate policy, i.e. void democracy.

But as it is the finance sector itself who is manipulating the game to that end, your conclusion doesn't follow.

[dkf]

5. China insisted we put further guarantees on Freddie and Fannie.

They ARE starting to dictate our policy.

You and I both know that this democracy doesn't work very well. I think its pretty much illusion anyway. Anyone who truly wants to fix the system will be portrayed as an unacceptable quack.

We are subject to the marketing ploys of the people with money. That is how the people in this country vote.

[Hannah Bell]

6. china owns less than 1/4 of us foreign debt, which is itself a small portion of total us debt.

US debt = 11.4 trillion
chinese portion = 889 billion = 7.8%


It's not "china" dictating anything. It's finance capital, most of it US-based.

And some of those "chinese" lenders are actually US corps & banksters too.

China is an offshore production location for foreign capital. Half of US imports from China are wholly foreign-owned.

If the government were actually concerned about china's power over us finances it would take counter actions such as

- tax changes to stop privileging offshoring & start privileging domestic production
- weaker dollar policy
- tariffs
- increased taxation of the superrich & crackdown on tax offshoring
- reduction in defense/security spending, the biggest item in the income-tax-funded budget

http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

[dkf]

7. We are like most debtors.

More happy to find funding than to be subject to someone else's dictates. Besides you know the republicans want to drown the beast. They are willing to play footsie With china to achieve that. Obama is simply stuck with old repub policy.

[Hannah Bell]

8. "We" aren't making policy. The finance sector is. They are making it to benefit themselves

at the expense of 90% of the polity, whom they have already mugged and raped.

The solution is not to balance the budget at the expense of that 90%, but to take back what was stolen & incarcerate the thieves & rapists.

[izquierdista]

9. Rethink? What do you mean "rethink"?

They were trying to sucker Americans with their Raw Deal the whole time. They opposed Social Security and Medicare, with St. Ronnie the Senile making propaganda LPs about "socialized medicine". The opulent minority thanked FDR for saving them from the torches and pitchforks by digging in their heels every inch of the way.

[marmar]

10. "Debt is the weapon used to conquer and enslave societies and interest is its prime ammunition."

..... that was a quote from a bonus dvd that was included in my "End of Suburbia" DVD order. Vérité!!!

[Libertyfirst]

11. Aren't credit card companies just a new version of the company store? nt

[Odin2005]

12. Read up on socioeconomic relationships in the late Roman Republic.

Debt is a form of social control. The more things change the more things stay the same.