Class War
Peeve: People blaming poor people for the economic meltdown.
"They shouldn't have been buying houses if they couldn't pay the mortgage."
Uh huh. Sure. Blame the poor. This whole mess is the fault of people with no economic power.
The American economy is based on consumption. The American Dream is a commodity. After 9/11 Americans were told to help their country by going shopping.
You can't have it both ways. You can't base an economy on selling people massive amounts of useless shit, on creating irrational anxieties to be alleviated by the latest snakeoil, on instant gratification and conspicuous consumption, and then complain when it works so well that people shop themselves out.
Socialism never took hold in the USA because workers were paid well and given benefits, they were co-opted into the middle class. People blame unions for the death of heavy industry, but they're placing the blame on the wrong shoulders. It's the corperations, pathologically rational as they are, that are at fault. Guided by the hand of the market, they move to where labour is cheapest. Americans lose good jobs. Wages stagnate, and bad jobs proliferate. People can't keep up their mortgage payments and the stupid level of consumption that drives the American economy without incurring massive debt. And the American consumer market, the largest and most coveted in the world, shrivels. Henry Ford had the bright idea that he should pay his employees enough so that they could all afford to buy a car. Wal-Mart pays it's works enough so that they have no option but to shop at Wal-Mart. But they can't afford to buy a whole lot.
Poor people aren't to blame for the economic crisis. The fault lies with those who ensured that there would be so many poor people.
"They shouldn't have been buying houses if they couldn't pay the mortgage."
Uh huh. Sure. Blame the poor. This whole mess is the fault of people with no economic power.
The American economy is based on consumption. The American Dream is a commodity. After 9/11 Americans were told to help their country by going shopping.
You can't have it both ways. You can't base an economy on selling people massive amounts of useless shit, on creating irrational anxieties to be alleviated by the latest snakeoil, on instant gratification and conspicuous consumption, and then complain when it works so well that people shop themselves out.
Socialism never took hold in the USA because workers were paid well and given benefits, they were co-opted into the middle class. People blame unions for the death of heavy industry, but they're placing the blame on the wrong shoulders. It's the corperations, pathologically rational as they are, that are at fault. Guided by the hand of the market, they move to where labour is cheapest. Americans lose good jobs. Wages stagnate, and bad jobs proliferate. People can't keep up their mortgage payments and the stupid level of consumption that drives the American economy without incurring massive debt. And the American consumer market, the largest and most coveted in the world, shrivels. Henry Ford had the bright idea that he should pay his employees enough so that they could all afford to buy a car. Wal-Mart pays it's works enough so that they have no option but to shop at Wal-Mart. But they can't afford to buy a whole lot.
Poor people aren't to blame for the economic crisis. The fault lies with those who ensured that there would be so many poor people.