U.S. Economic Collapse? - From Michael Lerner
The fear is palpable. And it's likely to get worse. There are predictions that even with the hundreds of billions likely to be spent to ameliorate some aspects of what we face, there might be as many as five million people who will be losing their homes in the mortgage crisis, and millions more losing their jobs as small businesses collapse. Unfortunately, none of the major political candidates has been willing to speak honestly about why all this is happening, if they even know.
But there's a simple and accurate answer: materialism and greed which has become a run-away epidemic in the contemporary capitalist world in general, and in the U.S. in particular, is the root of the problem. The oil crisis may be partly rooted in the desire of China and India to live a standard of material well-being comparable to that in the West, but it's mostly rooted in the speculative trading of oil futures that has artificially jacked up prices wildly. The collapse of the mortgage and banking industries has largely been a product of speculative investments as banks and mortgage companies sought to make super profits on their mortgage loans by turning them into monetary forms that could be traded and against which others could borrow money. It is this speculation, not solely the absence of the commodities, that has been a major source of the problem.
For decades we've watched passively as poor people and people ofcolor have lost jobs, and faced a weakened net of social protection in theU.S. as the conservatives seemed to convince the American majority that themarketplace was fair, and that hence people who were not doing well had no one to blame but themselves. It was wrong to over-tax rich people, we were told, because they had taken the risk of investing in projects that couldfail, so the public had no claim on their huge profits when they succeeded. The bailouts that the marketplace have required in the past, and now once again with the bailout of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, demonstrate the emptiness of this argument.
The reality? When poor people fail to flourish economically, the government shrugs its shoulders and gives a pittance of relief. But when super-giant firms fail, and the wealthy are endangered, the government, with the votes of many erstwhile conservatives, jumps to the rescue. The exception of Lehman Brothers may have something to do with the fact that the Bush Administration, so willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to save their friends, has little concern for an investment firm that was always perceived as "Jewish" and "liberal."
When it's their friends, they intervene to save the capitalist enterprises on the backs of the taxes paid by ordinary working people today, or our children tomorrow. It reminds me of an old saying: "When is it a "recession?" When YOU lose your job. When is it a "depression?" When I lose MY job!" Too many of the people who are suffering today were all too willing to allow others to suffer when it was "just" in a community of "people of color" or people with a "lower class status." Now, they are upset when it is they who the larger society is abandoning.
