Understanding America's Post-Industrial Economy
michael-hudson.com
michael-hudson.com
> The Clinton administration’s objective, and that of the Democratic Party, was basically a class war against labor
I can believe there is an element of that - not uncommon for governments to want to reduce labour costs to reduce inflation (ministers in the current British government have said as much).
On the other hand there was a real belief in a post industrial economy of educated workers, the end of history etc. at the time. Many people still cling to parts of those beliefs.
Later on it loses contact with reality entirely:
> it’s China that is turning out to be the most democratic country
Can I ask what you think about doing it that way as opposed to in reverse, with the quote first and commentary second?
I'm not implying any default or correct standard, I'm wondering if I'm backwards aha
> days long flame wars
- raising the US median standard of living without raising the rest of the world was politically unstable considering the ongoing conflict with communism and anti-colonialism, and
- raising the US median standard of living and also raising the rest of the world would exhaust resources and become rapidly unsustainable.
The solution was:
- cap the US median standard of living, but allow the assets of the 1% to increase,
- replace foreign aid with foreign direct investment to raise the standard of living in other countries, to increase the wealth of the American 1%, and to create a wealthy class in other countries with similar interests to preserve political stability and the "rules based order".
This has resulted in fairly similar economic oligarchies around much of the world. However, political, historical and cultural differences result in varying affinities, group identities and renewed competition among them.
It's just greed and a desire for control.
The neoconservatives who began their campaign shortly after the civil rights battles of the 1960s achieved a great deal during the Reagan presidencies.
Many of the problems with the US today can be traced back to or through those years, including the relaxation of financial laws and regulation that led to the 2008 housing crisis, the ongoing consolidation of American businesses through mergers and acquisitions, and the increasing inequality in wealth distribution.
There's no reasoning to it beyond a group of people who want to live in the world they thought they were in back in the 1950s, when god was in the pledge of allegiance and America was perceived as mostly white.
Money and political power are letting them heavily influence the US for now. Unfortunately it will probably only be correctable once they die of old age.
There's no great strategy in play. The Democrats aren't a lot better in their goals, they also want the imagined past in a different way, but they're not the ones causing the issues.
"So if you look at the gross national GDP accounts of the United States and Europe, they count economic rent as if it’s an addition to product, to GDP. Interest charges, late charges are an addition to GDP. The rise in the rents paid by people as the rents go up for their housing is all GDP. They’ve erased the entire thrust of classical economics distinguishing between earned and unearned income. And, of course, that is exactly what China, Russia, and the rest of the world want to distinguish.
They want to have an economy where people are productive, not where fortunes are made by being parasitic rent seekers making money in their sleep, as John Stuart Mill defined landlord rent and landlord capital gains. And as it turns out, the one thing that GDP does not report is capital gains. In other words, the increase in the price of wealth, the increase in the price of assets. Most wealth in the United States and Europe is not made, and certainly in Russia, was not made by producing more goods and services. It was by increasing the value of the property you had, the real estate property, the stocks and the bonds, the rent privileges that let you take the money you make from oil or nickel or diamonds or other products.
What is needed is a set of economic statistics that actually will tell Russia, China, and other countries how much that we’re producing is actual product and how much is overhead. The Western GDP and post-classical theory denies that there’s any such thing as economic overhead. Monopoly pricing is not an overhead. Higher rents is not an overhead. That’s the one thing that in ad hoc practice Russia and China are trying to minimize."
It is very long, but there is so much interesting information in this discussion all the way through.