$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergyUnlimited', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Serial_Worrier', '[')
Up until the 20th century, poverty was the condition of the 99%. If it's been reduced to 80% that's a victory.
PeakOil is You
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire Pt. 2
Re: America's Descent into Poverty
by vtsnowedin » Sat 01 Sep 2012, 21:44:03
So 99% of what was built in America between 1776 and 1900 was owned by just one percent of the population. Seems odd that the one percent would build all those houses and barns, churches, town halls, mills , railroads, canals ,dams. etc. I think you figures or your perception of what those figures meant in those times are way off.
1% was paying, 99% was building...
My family was here then and that was not the way it was. They built dams and saw mills and owned them plus farms with houses and barns some with mortgages some paid off in full, Life was hard but many not only paid the bills and raised their children but ended up with substantial estates. The difference between winners and losers was often how much alcohol the losers drank.
Blame the rich for your problems all you want, but it is not their duty to drag you up to their level and if you don't want the product the rich guy is selling you don't buy it, especially on credit.
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Re: America's Descent into Poverty
by Loki » Sun 02 Sep 2012, 11:15:22
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Agent', 'P')owerDown. This is what it looks like in reality, divested from ideology and hippy-think. The 1% prosper, the 20% coalesce as an enclave buffer, and the remaining 80% are priced out of everything significant that takes energy to provide.
We're swimming in a potent stew of problems right now---peak oil, climate change, major structural changes to both the American and the global economic systems, a breakdown in political leadership---so it's really quite difficult to parse these things out. But I'm not convinced the growing wealth inequality in this country is due to “powering down.” The first spasms of peak oil didn't become apparent until 2008, but wealth inequality in the US has been growing for decades.
I think globalization and automation, as well as the cancerous growth of neo-liberal ideologies (and associated anti-unionism, as Pops pointed out), are better explanations for the decline of the American middle class. Wealth, at least paper wealth, has increased dramatically the last couple decades, but almost all of it has been accumulated at the tippy top of the social pyramid. The bottom strata have tried to keep up with these changes by going deeply into debt, one of the primary causes of the current depression. Even sans peak oil, deleveraging of private debt to healthier levels would likely take a decade or so. I think Steve Keen correctly sums up the main economic problem right now:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')merica in particular—but also much of the OECD—has substituted essentially unproductive Ponzi speculation for real productivity growth in the last 4 decades, which the rising debt bubble has obscured as it simultaneously allowed Americans to live the high life by buying goods produced elsewhere using borrowed money. There’s no way to come to terms with that without suffering a substantial fall in actual incomes….
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/steve- ... about-debt
In the past it was possible to grow our way out of such problems. But for the decades to come I think peak oil and climate change will probably be permanent drags on anything approaching recovery, much less real growth. They'll eventually become the deciding influences on our economic activity. But they aren't now, they're still secondary players.
I will agree with you that the economic elite will make opportunistic use of the energy and environmental crises to achieve their goals, one externality of which is a radical polarization of wealth and the destruction of the middle class in the US.
Pops, whether we peasants will break out the torches and pitchforks is an interesting question. I was cynical about this possibility given our deep-seated cultural problems, then I got a glimmer of hope when OWS got active, now after their near total failure I'm cynical again. That said, anything can happen after a couple more episodes like 2008. The US does have a rich history of rather boisterous populist social movements, usually triggered by economic shocks.
A garden will make your rations go further.
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