The time needed to get $1 in international dollars is 63 minutes in the US. This is about twice the average in Germany, France and the UK according to an Oxford University researcher. This suggests that average poverty is significantly higher in the US.
This isn’t surprising, given the agenda of the so-called “conservative” right for the last 46 years…
It has nothing to do with the conservative right. Clinton signed the GLBA that was at the forefront of causes for the global financial crisis that resulted in the rise of fascism all over the western world. The problem is the US of A, first past the post and a two party system instead of a representative republic. Barbarians, in other words…
When George Bush Senior (remember him? I do…) was running for President in 1979 against Ronald Reagan it was he who coined the term “voo-doo economics” in response to the “trickle down” policies that Reagan cottoned on to that were promulgated by Arthur Laffer.
What Bush Sr. was saying was correct, in that deregulation wouldn’t see as much capital as possible getting to those at the bottom as needed. He was stopped from this critical angle by Reagan offering him the VP’s seat. so he shut up and took it.
It was the neo-liberal Bill Clinton just kept up the movement that started over a decade earlier.
We forget it was George Bush Sr. who put NAFTA on the table but it was Clinton who got to sign it (and take credit for it) as the trade negotiations it entailed took years to hammer out and were done AFTER Bush got voted out… (this was why the GOP hated “Slick Willie” so much…) Clinton got credit for many of the policies that the Republicans put forth, and was more pro-business than many of them were. (The best they got on Clinton was the Monica Lewinsky affair, which they made into a Movie of the Week drama.)
All of the deregulation that allowed for consolidation of media and stepped up the rightward swing of politics really started however on Reagan’s watch.
I was there, and been watching it happen since I was in high school in 1980.
Trickle down technically works, it just does not work the way people think.
Like water, money trickles down to the ocean of money, that is, people already rich.
Like I said, two faces of the same coin. One has a veneer of accountability the other is gung ho, both are serving the same masters. I was also there, on the receiving end of the effects of the increased deregulation on the working class and delocalisation of industry. Fuck the republicans and the democrats, both are the same shit parasitic class. At least with Trump the civilised world is waking up to the dangers of trusting anything coming out of the US.
Amen brother. This nation’s gone full metal imbecile. It’s going to take decades to come close to even sorting it out, if ever.
My hope is the damn country is going to wake up to the fact 75-90% of people are slaves to the wage and topple the status quo, however unlikely for that to happen. A French revolution of sorts.
If one looks at it coldly, the US is where the elites of the west and the gulf park their assets to exploit the world population without fear of repercussions, even when they commit the most unspeakable acts, like sexually abusing children. Someone somewhere should be able to start a revolutionary movement in there. Just cut the head of the snake, Thiels, Kochs, Musks, etc. Get rid of 'em and the country can start to heal.
I honestly think it’s going to have to be a consumer revolt. I spent 15 years in the Nielsen Homescan Consumer Panel - rebranded in the mid 2000’s as National Consumer Panel - it’s basically the flipside of the Nielsen TV survey and it measures the effectiveness of advertising.
As a long time Adbusters reader (from the mid-90’s) I was keenly aware of advertising setting a mindset of consumerism…
So imagine my delight when I got in on the ground floor of the industry that sold data to the advertisers regarding what worked and what did not.
It HAS to be a consumer strike, that is the leverage point.
Advertisers spend billions a year to get people to buy shit they don’t need, with money they don’t have. And it works, and maintains the entire capitalist mechanism with almost perfect results.
Thing is, as I have pointedly remarked at the occasional focus group I’ve been invited to, (then usually dis-invited out the door quite quickly) the question I ask - which is never answered, is “How many Americans get pushed into abject poverty before the entire economy collapses on itself? How much wage stagnation do we have across the board before the people who hired this focus group start to lose business because fewer and fewer consumers can buy what they’re selling?”
I think we’re coming close to finding that out and it’s why the billionaires are so voraciously hoarding their wealth. I did catch the news item that stated the US has hit insolvency.
Fun times ahead, and at the least we all have to take care of, and watch out for, each other. God knows the government isn’t capable of offering any legitimate help anymore.