We are faced with the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression which in turn was the greatest economic crisis since the Great Panic in Lincoln’s time. It seems too easy to blame certain Wall Street, and corporate executives for poor, and irresponsible choices, but these bad practices were only results of the problem we face today.
From WWII until the early Seventies we had seen an exponential growth in industry, per capita production, and in the country’s population as immigrants migrated here for the prospect of jobs with seemingly endless increases in per capita income. The advantage that we had was our being the only nation who emerged from the war with a intact industrial infrastructure.
Several factors were involved in this economic honeymoon to end.
One factor was the reconstruction of the industrial aparatai in Europe. We faced a new and ever growing competition from Europe and Asia, and when they proved able to produce the same products better and more efficiently we were pressed to respond or fail.
We responded in two major ways. One was the incorporation of computers and robotics into industry. The second was the export of manufacturing jobs to third world countries which contained oodles of cheap labor.
In response to the end of per capita income growth, and the rise of the cost of living the American woman entered the workforce in order to increase their household’s income. This only exacerbated the situation as it added more workers in a ever shrinking job market.
As more and more manufacturing jobs left the country, the jobs that remained were mostly retail, and service jobs. Construction became very prevalent in the job market as homes were built en masse.
As we know all too well from our frustrating experiences trying to talk to Pakistani customer service representatives, the service industry followed the example of the manufacturing industries and exported their jobs to foreign countries promising cheaper labor. This was partly due to the advent of twenty-four hour customer service. Many companies have service centers here in America during the day and overseas centers that take care of calls most of us are asleep. No matter what the reason the end result is the same; less jobs for Americans
Another aspect of our economy over the last seventy-five years that has contributed to the current problem is our consumerist disposable society. We consume a large amount of goods, much of which is disposable thus leading to more production and more trash. On a side note we as a race have, in all likelihood, produced more garbage in the last one hundred years than we have in our entire prior history. We are passing on to future generations of humans, as well as the other species with which we live, a planet choked with garbage.
Fueling this cycle of production and consumption have been the banks that have extended credit, often irresponsibly, to the average consumer. The banks encouraged us to spend more and more, and consume more and more so that we pay them more and more interest on the revolving debt for which we are beholden to them.
The aforementioned construction industry did the same to prospective home buyers in conjunction with banks that encouraged people who were not at all able to purchase a house to do so via loans that they could not afford to pay back, and under predatory terms. The banks did this as they also had loans extended to the very construction companies who built the homes who depended on the sales of those homes in order to pay the loans to the banks to which they were beholden.
The end result is an economy with a consumer base whose wherewithal to consume has come to an end, and an industry whose means of production is dwindling. This is compounded by the failure of banks as more and more people are failing to pay the enormous debt they have taken upon themselves. This failure of banks further threatens industry as it is the bank on which industry has depended on for the capital to produce more and more.
The solution to our economic crisis will not be found in pumping money into the economy, or the regulation of banks. We need to reform the very way we do business and live our lives. We have become a society that consumes for the sake of consuming with a crack like addiction rather than consuming for the sake of survival. We need to greatly re-asses our priorities, and re-determine what is valuable to us as individuals and as a society as a whole. We need to unshackle ourselves from our addictive consumerist mentality, and from the debt of our loans.
Jefferson said in 1802, “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
The times are ripe for change. Obama talks about change but he is as out of touch with the reality of the crisis we are dealing with and the change needed as any other politician in Washington. The time is ripe for a start of a Socialist evolution. Yes, an evolution and not a revolution. We must change our way of life from that of a consumerist society centered on private property, and greed to a more communal one that is centered on the welfare of every individual. We have the industrial means to carry this out, and we can do it. The change need be a gradual evolution as rooting out human greed is not something that will happen overnight nor something achievable by the bullet. We saw that failing in all of the Communist revolutions to date. I have faith in the human race and I know we can evolve to something better than we are today.
Are you with me?
