So now that Very Important People are showing how aware they are of this inequality thing, alarums have been raised, and remedies proposed. Here OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria throws some ideas into the ring for consideration:
The implicit promise of the "jobs 'n' college" evangelists is that those things work hand-in-hand to improve the lives of individuals. And that's how it should work, certainly.
But the reality of it is that rather than a promise, it's more of a threat -- that if you don't go to college, and set yourself up for 10-15 years of indentured servitude in order to pay off the costs of said college, after which maybe you can start making real money, if there's enough jobs in your area, etc., etc., you're screwed.
These rackets serve not only to enrich the coffers of those who run them and profit from them, but they serve an ancillary purpose -- the masses of people who are herded into these rackets, and get on the financial hook, are instantly rendered compliant, complicit in the racket. They now have a vested interest to not be disruptive, to not ask too many questions -- or the wrong questions, such as why wages stagnated while productivity doubled, why the only people to profit during the so-called Great Recession were the already wealthy, why the "practical" thing to do with the one life you've been given is to be some indentured wage slave to some bastard who will fuck you over at the first opportunity, if it will make his stock portfolio go up a quarter of a point.
They don't want you asking questions, or protesting your ration of crumbs -- not that it matters; should you find the sack to get on your hind legs and say something out loud they'll just send Erin Burnett or some other water-carrier down to make fun of you, marginalize you before your plaint even gets a fair hearing.
They would prefer that you either go along to get along, or just say "fuck it" and give up your eternal tilt at an indifferent windmill. I don't think it can be overstated, how little the elites give a red-hot monkey-fuck about you, your families, your communities, your country. Make no mistake, as far as they're concerned, you're either a tool for them to use, or an impediment to their efforts. That is the extent of what you are to the people who actually run this country, run the world.
Serious People jabber about this condition of persistent, escalating inequality, make modest proposals, hem and haw as if this is some trick of the tail, a logistical impossibility to correct. Folks, it is almost heartbreakingly simple, and it does not have to involve tumbrels and guillotines (though you'll get no argument from me should it go in that direction).
The mechanics of a capitalist society, to the extent that we still live in a truly capitalist society, are premised on carrots and sticks, incentives and disincentives. Ideally (heh), the carrots and sticks should be applied as needed, regardless of the situation. From a purely systems analysis perspective, it's not supposed to be a question of who applies those carrots and sticks, so much as what applies them. In systems dynamics, they are applied to optimize the overall efficiency of the system.
In the post-World War 2 era, it worked that way for a few decades. Americans of that time realized that an empowered working class spent its money on goods and services, thus enriching the companies who produced those things. Rich people paid taxes, and paid their workers a wage they could live on and spend money on. It was tacitly understood by all that incentives and disincentives would be applied by the system to keep the machine humming.
But as you may have noticed, it no longer works that way. Rich people and corporations get carrots, everyone else gets sticks. There is nothing resembling even application. This is because the system is no longer run and maintained by systems people, relatively non- or bi-partisan people who understand the utilitarian notion of the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
In deregulating the finance and lobbying industries, Saint Reagan essentially sold the system to the elite money class, who of course simply run it for their own benefit -- and everyone else's detriment. It is not enough for them to gain, everyone else must lose in the process. Saint Clinton continued this new dynamic and globalized it, put the final nail in the coffin with the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Bush the Lesser drove the cock home with the jackhammer fury of a thousand Ron Jeremys, Obama has done jack shit to remove said cock, and if you think either Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush will ever consider not doing whatever Wall Street tells them to, you should really stop huffing industrial solvents.
On and on it goes. It will continue, probably worsen for most. It will not change, no matter how much you wish, no matter how fervently you participate in the useless voting ritual. It is true that only one party wants to get rid of the EPA, Department of Education, the minimum wage, a woman's right to choose, and so on. But it is also true that neither party will ever stand up to the people who have perpetrated this economic monstrosity that pervades everything else, not even a little bit.
I feel like a broken record most times anymore, bringing up this topic. Not because I'm bored with it -- far from it. I'm utterly fascinated by this tiny claque of transnational merchant princes, who actively -- deliberately, mind you -- are on an open mission to fuck this country over, and everyone in it. I'm fascinated by people who have more money than they could ever spend, and yet it's still not enough for them. I'm amazed by people who look at the millions of lives they adversely affect as some big fucking game.
I'm fascinated by the poor people that these soulless fuckers rook into voting against themselves, an enormous swath of chickens who can't wait to enthusiastically show their support for good ol' Colonel Sanders. How could you not find these people interesting. how could anyone not watch this dynamic and be compelled by its narrative, by its inevitable outcomes?
And people like Angel Gurria fascinate me perhaps most of all, because Gurria probably thinks he means well. These dogsbodies of the merchant princes, they should know better -- I mean, they do know how to read fucking spreadsheets and charts, right? But they seem sincere in their convictions that if "we" just made "opportunities" available for "them" to bootstrap themselves, the problem would solve itself. No matter how much evidence over the last generation is available and observable, they faithfully hew to their standard "remedies" -- go through the "higher education" racket, get balls-deep in debt so you can get a better job (doing what?), spend most of your working life trying to repay that debt and not get your job shipped to Asia. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
So I mentioned that this situation is simpler to resolve than the Serious People make it out to be, and it is. But there has to be willingness to use carrots and sticks on everyone, not just carrots for the owners and sticks for the peons. Incentivize keeping companies stateside and not exporting labor. Incentivize paying a living wage. Disincentivize screwing your workers, the way shitheel companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald's have become accustomed to doing. Make corporations pay their fucking taxes. Disincentivize offshoring profits. Disincentivize overcharging for college education. Start a massive infrastructure work project, like Eisenhower did with the interstate highways. Enact a 1-2% redistributive tax on the "high net worth" assholes, say, anyone with over $10M in wealth. Spread it around. Institute a one-time debt jubilee, paying down either a certain percentage or amount of interest-bearing debt on people's homes and educations (which are usury and overcharging in the first place). The Masters might be surprised at how quickly the economy surges from such measures, and everyone, including the owners, would actually profit from these measures. After all, if the peons have more money, they will buy more stuff. Shocking, I know.
Obviously none of this will ever happen, but what's really pathetic and disheartening is that no one with access to the corporate media would even consider mentioning such things. If there's a system that's incredibly self-regulating, it is the system that manufactures "official" opinion and consent. And the pillaging of the rentier class will persist for exactly as long as the peons are willing to put up with it.
Main remedies are activation policies, meaning get services in the governments that will get the people who are unemployed or seeking for employment with the job opportunities.Ah, the fabled "ladder of opportunities," esteemed tool of the privileged class who long ago pulled it up after using it. Look, Angel, chanting "jobs" and "education" like some oligarchist mantra means nothing at all when there are few jobs worth having anymore, far too many individuals chasing all of those jobs, and higher education is a fucking racket.
This is not being done enough. The United States spends one-fourth of what the rest of the OECD countries spend on this particular service, getting the unemployed or seeking employment with the employment opportunities.
Second, skills, education and skills. There’s a big mismatch between the skills and what the market is demanding. Therefore, your — you have people have diplomas, but they can’t do very much with it. Third, use a tax structure and use a budget in order to support companies that may be providing jobs or better opportunities.
And last but not least, remember, this is a problem that is affecting the capacity of the United States to get the people at the lowest revenue levels and at the lowest education levels to get up in the ladder, in the social ladder, in the ladder of opportunities.
The implicit promise of the "jobs 'n' college" evangelists is that those things work hand-in-hand to improve the lives of individuals. And that's how it should work, certainly.
But the reality of it is that rather than a promise, it's more of a threat -- that if you don't go to college, and set yourself up for 10-15 years of indentured servitude in order to pay off the costs of said college, after which maybe you can start making real money, if there's enough jobs in your area, etc., etc., you're screwed.
These rackets serve not only to enrich the coffers of those who run them and profit from them, but they serve an ancillary purpose -- the masses of people who are herded into these rackets, and get on the financial hook, are instantly rendered compliant, complicit in the racket. They now have a vested interest to not be disruptive, to not ask too many questions -- or the wrong questions, such as why wages stagnated while productivity doubled, why the only people to profit during the so-called Great Recession were the already wealthy, why the "practical" thing to do with the one life you've been given is to be some indentured wage slave to some bastard who will fuck you over at the first opportunity, if it will make his stock portfolio go up a quarter of a point.
They don't want you asking questions, or protesting your ration of crumbs -- not that it matters; should you find the sack to get on your hind legs and say something out loud they'll just send Erin Burnett or some other water-carrier down to make fun of you, marginalize you before your plaint even gets a fair hearing.
They would prefer that you either go along to get along, or just say "fuck it" and give up your eternal tilt at an indifferent windmill. I don't think it can be overstated, how little the elites give a red-hot monkey-fuck about you, your families, your communities, your country. Make no mistake, as far as they're concerned, you're either a tool for them to use, or an impediment to their efforts. That is the extent of what you are to the people who actually run this country, run the world.
Serious People jabber about this condition of persistent, escalating inequality, make modest proposals, hem and haw as if this is some trick of the tail, a logistical impossibility to correct. Folks, it is almost heartbreakingly simple, and it does not have to involve tumbrels and guillotines (though you'll get no argument from me should it go in that direction).
The mechanics of a capitalist society, to the extent that we still live in a truly capitalist society, are premised on carrots and sticks, incentives and disincentives. Ideally (heh), the carrots and sticks should be applied as needed, regardless of the situation. From a purely systems analysis perspective, it's not supposed to be a question of who applies those carrots and sticks, so much as what applies them. In systems dynamics, they are applied to optimize the overall efficiency of the system.
In the post-World War 2 era, it worked that way for a few decades. Americans of that time realized that an empowered working class spent its money on goods and services, thus enriching the companies who produced those things. Rich people paid taxes, and paid their workers a wage they could live on and spend money on. It was tacitly understood by all that incentives and disincentives would be applied by the system to keep the machine humming.
But as you may have noticed, it no longer works that way. Rich people and corporations get carrots, everyone else gets sticks. There is nothing resembling even application. This is because the system is no longer run and maintained by systems people, relatively non- or bi-partisan people who understand the utilitarian notion of the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
In deregulating the finance and lobbying industries, Saint Reagan essentially sold the system to the elite money class, who of course simply run it for their own benefit -- and everyone else's detriment. It is not enough for them to gain, everyone else must lose in the process. Saint Clinton continued this new dynamic and globalized it, put the final nail in the coffin with the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Bush the Lesser drove the cock home with the jackhammer fury of a thousand Ron Jeremys, Obama has done jack shit to remove said cock, and if you think either Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush will ever consider not doing whatever Wall Street tells them to, you should really stop huffing industrial solvents.
On and on it goes. It will continue, probably worsen for most. It will not change, no matter how much you wish, no matter how fervently you participate in the useless voting ritual. It is true that only one party wants to get rid of the EPA, Department of Education, the minimum wage, a woman's right to choose, and so on. But it is also true that neither party will ever stand up to the people who have perpetrated this economic monstrosity that pervades everything else, not even a little bit.
I feel like a broken record most times anymore, bringing up this topic. Not because I'm bored with it -- far from it. I'm utterly fascinated by this tiny claque of transnational merchant princes, who actively -- deliberately, mind you -- are on an open mission to fuck this country over, and everyone in it. I'm fascinated by people who have more money than they could ever spend, and yet it's still not enough for them. I'm amazed by people who look at the millions of lives they adversely affect as some big fucking game.
I'm fascinated by the poor people that these soulless fuckers rook into voting against themselves, an enormous swath of chickens who can't wait to enthusiastically show their support for good ol' Colonel Sanders. How could you not find these people interesting. how could anyone not watch this dynamic and be compelled by its narrative, by its inevitable outcomes?
And people like Angel Gurria fascinate me perhaps most of all, because Gurria probably thinks he means well. These dogsbodies of the merchant princes, they should know better -- I mean, they do know how to read fucking spreadsheets and charts, right? But they seem sincere in their convictions that if "we" just made "opportunities" available for "them" to bootstrap themselves, the problem would solve itself. No matter how much evidence over the last generation is available and observable, they faithfully hew to their standard "remedies" -- go through the "higher education" racket, get balls-deep in debt so you can get a better job (doing what?), spend most of your working life trying to repay that debt and not get your job shipped to Asia. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
So I mentioned that this situation is simpler to resolve than the Serious People make it out to be, and it is. But there has to be willingness to use carrots and sticks on everyone, not just carrots for the owners and sticks for the peons. Incentivize keeping companies stateside and not exporting labor. Incentivize paying a living wage. Disincentivize screwing your workers, the way shitheel companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald's have become accustomed to doing. Make corporations pay their fucking taxes. Disincentivize offshoring profits. Disincentivize overcharging for college education. Start a massive infrastructure work project, like Eisenhower did with the interstate highways. Enact a 1-2% redistributive tax on the "high net worth" assholes, say, anyone with over $10M in wealth. Spread it around. Institute a one-time debt jubilee, paying down either a certain percentage or amount of interest-bearing debt on people's homes and educations (which are usury and overcharging in the first place). The Masters might be surprised at how quickly the economy surges from such measures, and everyone, including the owners, would actually profit from these measures. After all, if the peons have more money, they will buy more stuff. Shocking, I know.
Obviously none of this will ever happen, but what's really pathetic and disheartening is that no one with access to the corporate media would even consider mentioning such things. If there's a system that's incredibly self-regulating, it is the system that manufactures "official" opinion and consent. And the pillaging of the rentier class will persist for exactly as long as the peons are willing to put up with it.
Awesome rant, Heywood. reminds me of the famous "Education" rant by my comic hero, George Carlin.
ReplyDelete