Friday, September 3, 2010

Food for thought.

The Global Musings of an Educated Man.......vol.134
 
As the weeks have progressed since the economic collapse began falling like dominoes in the late fall of 2007, we have heard over and over again that it is going to be a long, slow and tough road to recovery. I agreed with that philosophy for some time, but have recently begun to wonder, why was it so easy and so fast to bailout the banks that got us into this mess, and yet for companies that have returned to massive profits, have never resumed hiring new workers? Is there no such thing as Research and Development these days? Which brings me to my point today, and that is the fact that we are going through the largest redistribution of wealth since the Industrial Revolution. We live in a Global Economy. The World is Flat and we need to adjust. So, without telling it straight to our faces, our elected officials continue to walk the high wire act of choice vocabulary words in place of the honest truth. For instance, since 1973, the U.S. Economy has tripled in size, yet the average workers' salary has decreased from $32,135 (adjusted for inflation to 2007 dollars) to $31,528, according to the New York Times. For example, "wages amd salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960's." What gives? I implore all of you to read Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine for further education into the matter. We are being dumbed down with awe-inspiring technical skill by psychotic scientific reptile brained mass murderers masquerading as proponents of peace. 
I will leave with an excerpt from Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, who writes for the Web Based News Site, Counterpunch, as some food for thought. Because if you thought the main stream media was going to give it you straight, your further from the truth than I thought.
 
"The kleptocratic rulers in the US, EU, and other debt-burdened countries know exactly what they are doing: to let the recession drag on, to take advantage of the crushing recession in order to extract "enough" concessions from the working people until welfare states are dismantled and labor costs in the more developed capitalist countries are made competitive with those of the less-developed countries. This explains why despite new signs of further global economic contraction, the reigning governments in these countries (whether they are nominally headed by Socialist, Social-Democratic, Labor, Democratic, Conservative or other parties) are maintaining their coordinated abstention from expansive or stimulating fiscal policies while continuing their brutal spending cuts on health, education, wages, pensions, and the like.
This is not to say that these governments do not want to have economic growth or job-creation--they do---but that they want them on their own (Neoliberal) terms, that is, through Neoliberal policies that would create jobs that would pay wages on a par with those of workers in less-developed countries. In other words, they prefer the kind of lopsided economic growth whose fruits would be reaped mostly by the wealthy--the so-called trickle-down or supply-side economic growth. As writer/reporter Patrick O'Connor points out, "In the US, Europe and other advanced capitalist economies, the aim is permanently reducing the living standards of working people."
 
Now cheer up, the stock market was positive today.