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Expendable Consumers

Now the middle class itself has become a resource to be harvested to extinction by modern predatory capitalism. The shift from production to investment, and the accompanying decline in real living standard of most people since about 1970, helps to explain the global widening poverty gap, not only between rich and poor nations but also within the overdeveloped nations themselves. It gives the lie to the promise of universal abundance through technology and trickle-down. Contrary to the prevailing doctrine that free markets will cure all social ills and “naturally” distribute wealth, in truth globalism represents a concerted scramble to grab existing assets in a situation of declining production of real goods. Its very purpose is to redistribute wealth upwardly rather than to actually create it. Because of the false doctrines of modern economic theory, not to mention payoffs to corrupt politicians, governments everywhere are dismantling themselves in a frenzy to give away public assets to private business, only adding to public impoverishment. The emerging global feudalism is not interested in sustainable ventures nor in the general human welfare, though it uses both these as rhetoric. Nor has it any commitment to maintain the middle class it once needed. Already the limited production necessary to supply the upper classes is guaranteed at very little cost through a slave labor class offshore. In the near future, when managerial and clerical tasks as well as production can be assigned to intelligent machines, those who control the means of production will require neither a human labor force nor a consumer force to maintain their wealth. What they will need is a very large police force!

RELATED TAGS: [global/predatory capitalism, declining standard of living, shrinking middle class, widening poverty gap, real living standard, promise of (universal) abundance/trickle-down, investment economy, rising unemployment, neo-/global feudalism, police state, economic propaganda, public giveaway of assets, public impoverishment, offshore labor, automated management, expendable consumer]