06-13-2016, 07:10 PM
(06-13-2016, 02:59 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:(06-10-2016, 09:21 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: What we often think of as prosperity in America is people selling out their dreams cheaply. By doing so people make possible the extreme wealth, power, indulgence, and ostentation of people as exploitative as feudal lords.
Employer, Family, God, and Home... such is what my parents impressed upon me as the objectives of life. In that, there is no room for "I" or "Individuality". Maybe not "Imagination". "Independence", or "Innovation", either.
On another website there is a piece about how economic globalization has proven to be the wrecking ball of the American Dream. Was that over-hyped to begin with? Probably so. We all know now that minorities and gays and anyone whose leanings were toward the Communist side did not share in the so-called dream. But mainstream folks are worried sick that it is now being threatened. (Actually the threatening started some three decades back if not a bit more) In fact in the intro to the T4T book it was mentioned that Boomers by and large were worrying that the American Dream which was there (solidly) for their parents and still there (barely) for them, will not be there for their children. We are now seeing that prophecy come home to roost in a substantial number of the Millennial Generation who are saddled with hefty student loan debt all the while being stuck in primarily low-wage jobs. They can't begin to think about such long-time stepping stones as buying homes and starting families. And besides, many will be unlikely to escape their situations save for an extreme stroke of luck such as a lottery payout. There were labeled Generation Limbo, and from all of this I was able to create the perfect acronym for limbo. Lower Income Mostly Beyond Overhaul.
We got promises of cheap stuff in return for seeing wages slashed. But some things would not get cheap. Cost-loading has become the norm in anything with a monopolistic component.
The irony is that we could be entering the true post-industrial society in which scarcity becomes an irrelevance, and the only poor people are those unwilling to work. Economic rent (easy income for the well-connected Right People) has become a huge part of the American economy. Now people are poor (or will become poor) if they are not connected to the Master Classes.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.