One of my favorite lines about the current oligarch theft continuing to occur throughout the world is courtesy of the “Artist Taxi Driver,” who likes to state:
“This is not a recession its a robbery.”
Truer words were never said, but this theft goes back a lot further than the latest economic catastrophe. As we all know by now, real median wages haven’t increased in the U.S. for the past 45 years, while at the same time, so-called economic growth according to traditional metrics has exploded higher. As yesterday’s article from the Guardian below demonstrates, this is not just an American problem. It is pervasive throughout the Western world.
So what happened? I think it’s best to put things in terms of Middle Age feudalism, since the majority of the Western world has indeed entered a modern type neo-serfdom. Essentially, think about this in terms of a king in 1085 who just doubled the land under his control. At the same time, his serfs are likely still tilling the same plots, and in order to consolidate his holdings, the king might demand increased tribute from his peasants. So the economy of the kingdom has doubled, but the serf is worse off than before. This is more or less what has happened to the West over the past several decades.
So what has allowed this tragedy to happen in modern times. My answer is clear: Financialization. It’s no coincidence that median real wages stopped increasing at the exact same time as Richard Nixon defaulted on the gold standard in 1971. This is not to say I think the “gold standard” is the answer. I don’t. Yet, it is important to understand that rampant fiat money manipulation by the Fed and its owners on Wall Street is at the very core of everything that has gone wrong.
Now, from the Guardian:
The number of British households falling below minimum living standards has more than doubled in the past 30 years, despite the size of the economy increasing twofold, a study on poverty and deprivation in the UK claims .
According to the study, 33% of households endure below-par living standards – defined as going without three or more “basic necessities of life”, such as being able to adequately feed and clothe themselves and their children, and to heat and insure their homes. In the early 1980s, the comparable figure was 14%.
The research, billed as the most detailed study ever of poverty in the UK, claims that almost 18 million Britons live in inadequate housing conditions and that 12 million are too poor to take part in all the basic social activities – such as entertaining friends or attending all the family occasions they would wish to. It suggests that one in three people cannot afford to heat their homes properly, while 4 million adults and children are not able to eat healthily.
Their findings will be seized on by opponents of the coalition, who argue that good news about the economy does not mean living standards are improving for most people. This will be a key Labour message in the run-up to next year’s election.
Oh right, the Labour Party. The folks who brought you war criminal, banker puppet and man-child Tony Blair. Why no mention of the UKIP I wonder…
Other figures being published include the claims that 5.5 million adults go without essential clothing; that 2.5 million children live in damp homes; that 1.5 million children live in households that cannot afford to heat them; that one in four adults have incomes below what they themselves consider is needed to avoid poverty, and that more than one in five adults have to borrow to pay for day-to-day needs.
Led by the University of Bristol and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the PSE project’s research will be presented to the conference and published in full this week. Gordon said he had been shocked by some of the findings. “In the early 1980s we assumed life was going to get better. For many it has, for many it hasn’t.”
Serfs up!
Full article here.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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The economy is based on fiat money, whether it’s pounds, dollars, euros, liras, or yen…. so it doesn’t matter. The economy is fraud too.
Money doesn’t have to be based on IOUs, but until we stop, the situation won’t get better.
Read the original version of Michael’s point:
http://www.luminist.org/archives/grunch.pdf
“This is not a recession its a robbery.”
This is not a recession its an intentional herd thinning.
Profit seekers are no longer in control and the deceptions are not limited to just finance…
Excerpt;
“Abstract: The less than 1% of the population who control the greater population are afflicted with an aberrant disease of the mind with many readily identifiable characteristics that negatively affects their morality. It is known as Evilism. In the post WW II years the disease has mutated. The old fashioned form of Evilism, which had developed over the past two to three hundred years, was relatively stable and came to be identified as “Vanilla Greed for Extraction”. It has been overtaken by a newer more virulent form of Evilism called Xtrēvilism, which is now identified as, “Pernicious Greed for Destruction”.
Evilism , the original disease, (the old fashioned Vanilla Greed for Extraction), expresses itself as a parasitic form of cannibalization that sustains its host victim for future cannibalization. It is a milder form of the disease.
Xtrēvilism , the new mutation (Pernicious Greed for Destruction), expresses itself as a parasitic extreme form of cannibalization that minimally sustains or eliminates its host victim with no concern for future cannibalization. It is an extreme form of the disease.
Xtrēvilism relies on; the Noble Lie, the corporate structure, scam finance, ownership of media, and the trusting gullibility and complicity of its victims for its propaganda based divisive control. The effects of Xtrēvilism have caused governments around the world, once marginally responsive to the will of the people, to now be totally NON responsive to the will of the people. The goal of Xtrēvilism is a two tier ruler and ruled world with the ruled engaged in a spirit exhausting perpetual conflict of controlled elimination. Ironically the goal of Xtrēvilism includes stripping the assets of the once powerful old fashioned Vanilla Greed For Extraction class and subsuming it into the ruled class of perpetual conflict.
The disease can be eradicated with Fairism.”
http://www.boxthefox.com/articles/premiere%20article.html
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Your abstract BS still fails; if you can’t explain what you mean in Plain English, then what you think is wrong.
If you expect your audience to learn a new language in order to turn your metaphoric rambling analogies into something valid, then I’ll treat your notions with the same level of respect.
… and so will everyone else.
Got it THIS time?
OK I will never understand why some of us do not get where inequality comes from. The example of the king and the land is not very clear, but on the right track about financial transactions.
In modern days money is a system that supports transactions, it is not wealth (or it shouldn’t be) and is created to support transactions. Unfortunately money is also the only way with which we allocate real wealth and this is a problem. Now simplifying things a lot. Imagine an economic system in which the only wealth is a house. A house that in the past was paid 100, now is paid 140. The transaction requires an increase in money supply of 40 that the system will accommodate because it is made to cover transactions. After the transaction you have a money supply of 140 and the same house. The transaction didn’t create any increase in the real value of the system… one house before, and one house now.
That’s how it works in its basis.
Now let’s open up that system.
After that you have different options:
• If the excess liquidity is used by the seller to buy land and to build a second house… that surplus is the seed for the growth of real value of the system, now you have one house and a second one being built, so the system is really growing, the money available and the real value of the system tend to sync (perfect allocation).
• if the excess is used to buy consumers goods, system might still grow, the difference between value created and money available is the origin of inflation. The real value of the system lags a little bit behind the growth of money supply.
• what happens however if the the buyer and the seller keeps buying and selling the same property? You and me. I buy your house for 140, then I resell it to you for 160, then I buy it back at 180. I am afraid that the money supply accommodates the need for those transactions, thing is… the system real value is always the same. In a similar system where money seems easily made we are not creating value, monetary income is created by a bubble, and inflationary transactions on specific assets.
These are oversimplified versions of what might happen of course, in our real system all of these occur at different degrees simultaneously.
Now we are in a situation in which money supply is controlled by the same organizations and people that benefit the most in creating monetary income. Creating monetary income in a system that is not growing… is basically a transfer of wealth from the actors that operate in the real part of the economic system (mostly fixed income) to the actors that work with monetary income because the same real value of the system is spread proportionally to the money available that is supporting its transaction system.
It is a little bit of a scam… but it is perfectly legal… 100% immoral but totally legal
😉