What’s happening in America? We’re creating a society that decreasingly values work and the sahring of the nation’s labor burden, and in which the most successful among us increasingly live off rents and ownership claims on the output generated by others. The success of the capital class in suppressing wage income and extracting capital income from cost-side profits during the recession constitutes their own private countercyclical self-recovery plan. The success of that approach explains why there has not been a notable call from the capital class for a more vigorous, job-producing recovery. And that alternative, capitalist-only formula for rentier recovery is conducive to an economic equilibrium based on risk-averse stagnation, safe asset hoarding, extraction schemes and plutocratic phobia of the public sector.
There are various things we can and should do about this distortion of our economy and our decline toward a decadent system of rent, exploitation, stagnation, and caste solidification.…Dan is much more sanguine than I am about repairing the capitalistic system. My view is that it is beyond repair and the only real solution is a system that reverses current priorities and puts people and the environment ahead of money and machines. But that would take actual democracy instead of oligarchy masquerading as democracy.
Rugged Egalitarianism
Dismantling the Decadence of the Rentier Recovery
Dan Kervick
9 comments:
The current (effective) US retirement system for our senior citizens is in fact a "risk-averse stagnation, safe asset hoarding, extraction scheme"...
rsp,
Really good post, with constructive suggestions. I'll spread the word...
Social security is not a 'risk-averse stagnation, safe asset hoarding, extraction scheme'. More power to it!
Agree with Bill. Social Security has been a big success and keeps a lot of people out of poverty. The SS tax does hit workers hard, but the reward is at least commensurate...
Bill it effectively is because we have the "pay-go" policy of the morons and the system has typically been running in great surplus....
And the SS payments are not enough...
Here is the trend:
65-and-Older Population Soars
http://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/articles/2012/01/09/65-and-older-population-soars
So these people are effectively taking large rent generating assets into retirement and using the dividends, interest, etc as the main source of income and yes SS as supplemental income...
So you have the younger generation working and competing with the ROW USD zombies who will work for the USD equivalent of 3 rations of dog brain soup per day in a race to the bottom... and then the seniors spend their rentier incomes on foreign sourced products rather than US sourced goods/services as the foreign USD zombies are willing to take it down to 2 rations of dog brain soup per day to maintain US market share... so the seniors "save money... live better!" at wal-mart while the younger generation can barely make ends meet...
Of course I am not saying "this is a good idea" but this is the mega-trend that I believe is behind Dan K's data here...
its a moron-fest that we seem only able to perceive and not yet able to do anything about or correct...
rsp,
Bill the guy from GM testified some years back (before the bust!) that they spend more per car on retiree healthcare than steel....
So the young people who need a car to drive to work to compete with the external USD zombies are paying retirees healthcare within their high car payments...
Again, I'm not saying "this is a good idea!".... rsp,
Very fine post, Dan K.
Thanks Peter
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