Mike Whitney — Work Until You’re Dead?

A sizable chunk of the adult population is going to punch a clock until they keel-over in the office parking lot and get hauled off in the company dumpster. And those are the lucky ones, the so called baby boomers. By the time we get to the millennials it’ll be even worse because the economy will have been ravaged by 25 or 30 years of austerity leaving the proles to scrape by on hardtack and gruel. Pensions are already being looted, Social Security is under fire, and any small stipend that supports the poor, the unemployed, or the infirm is going to be terminated. That’s why everyone is so down-in-the-mouth, because their expectations of the future are so bleak….

Go figure. And there’s a larger point here too, which is that Americans have always believed that their children would enjoy a higher standard of living than their own. Until now, that is. Now most people think things are going to get worse, much worse. You see it in all the surveys. Expectations have changed, the future looks darker than ever before, and people are scared.

Truthdig
Work Until You’re Dead?
Mike Whitney | Counterpunch

This is clearly unsustainable politically. Look for a growing populist backlash on both left and right.

Gary Null — The Global Money Matrix: The Forces behind America’s Economic Destruction

Gary Null usually writes about alternative health although not exclusively. His article about the state of political economy and there reasons contributing to this. It's out of paradigm and somewhat naive economically, but it is a good statement of how a lot of people view the current situation.  Increasingly, this is being called economic populism.

It's hardly a "leftist" screed since he cites Tyler Cowen of the the Mercatus Institute and John Williams Shadow Statistics, indicating that he is  influenced by the economic populism of the right as well as that of the left. On the other hand, he also cites sources that would be considered left and doesn't see government as the source of the problem. On balance, his views lean definitely more toward the left than the right. But it is balanced enough it seems to be a statement of economic populism with broad appeal that targets the bad actors rather than the type of system.

Null attributes the sorry state of affairs to sociopathy, adverse selection of executives and leaders, and the supporting cronyism and army of minions, resulting in widespread perverse behavior.

Global Research
The Global Money Matrix: The Forces behind America’s Economic Destruction
Dr. Gary Null

How Big Finance Won the American Revolution – David V. Johnson Interviews William Hogeland

In his latest book, Founding Finance: How Debt, Speculation, Foreclosures, Protests, and Crackdowns Made Us a Nation, William Hogeland argues that America was born less from the fight between founding fathers and the British Crown, which we’ve all heard about, than from the fight between the founding fathers and American economic populists, which we haven’t heard enough about. The much-ballyhooed conflicts among John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton over the federalist project belie their unity against pro-democratic financial and economic measures that would benefit the indebted masses at the expense of financial elites allied with the founders. That we still fight today over similar issues shows how central they are to our national identity. BR Web Editor David Johnson asked Hogeland about who Herman Husband was, why Robert Morris would feel at home working for Citigroup, and how George Washington would greet the Occupy and Tea Party movements.

Boston Review
How Big Finance Won the American Revolution
An Interview with William Hogeland
David V. Johnson