by tresdecu 47 Replies latest jw friends
All world powers have come to an end. Roman empire got so big that they could no more control it, it got to be too expensive to hold on to it.
US will also stop being a world power but it does not mean it will collapse and be destroyed.
It needs to learn not to get involved in everybody's business and stop giving free money to more than 160 nations.
One of the advantages of hanging around long past my "sell by" date - - There used to be a guy who posted here who was ALWAYS talking about how the global financial system was going to collapse in the fall - EACH fall. If I recall correctly, this guy was also a watchtower "true believer" and - I thought his was excellent wackiness on his part -- he was also a vigorous supporter of Lyndon LaRouche.
But I can't recall this poster's name!!!
Yes. The plutocrats will ruin it be design and with purpose. Before Occupy Wall street ever formed, I've been saying that we are in a new Gilded Age and there is a plutocracy that has been forming since Reagen was in office. Before I knew there was a name for it, like a lot of people including JWN members, I have noticed it forming.
It wasn't lost on me, even as a JW, that under Reagen, the air traffic controller union was busted. I also noticed that he kicked a lot of mentally ill, disabled people off Social Security Disability. People died. Mentally ill were sent into the streets to live. The numbers of homeless people were greatly increased. But I didn't see this as anything other than one administration acting in cold hearted cruelty towards the weakest and defenseless members of society.
About the plutocracy, my eyes opened because I have worked in retail and various kinds of sales and customer service positions since 2002. I've lived in Michigan since early 2002. I saw, immediately, what the breaking of the unions did to the Michigan economy. Then it became very clear that the Iraq War was waged to jack up oil prices through the roof. I watched the prices of everything rise quickly; quick, big inflation as the cost of shipping goods went through the roof. You have to buy fuel to ship goods. Who pays for the fuel costs? The consumer. The consumer spends less when goods suddenly cost a lot more. Businesses close. People lose their jobs. I live in a small, bedroom community. We have one shopping center that became vacant due to businesses closing or moving, save a hair salon. Good Will store has opened in the shopping center.
Now that fuel prices have skyrocketed, the entire country is affected as Michigan has been. Then add the predator lenders and housing bubble that burst. Look at the breaking of our unions (I am aware that unions do have some corruption, but they have been responsible for things like 40 hour work weeks and weekends and laws that protect workers safety, well being and quality of life. The right to form unions should be inalienable.)
When I went to work, after years as a stay at home mom, there was a sticker, at eye level, on the entry way door about the health insurance benefits, 401 K, profit sharing, paid vacation, etc that the company offered employees. One day we noticed the sticker was gone. Then we noticed that employees who had insurance, hardworking, faithful employees, began to be leaned on. They received falsified, poor evaluations. Their hours began to be cut. The treatment we all got from management changed from warm to intimidating and very unappreciative. And one by one people began to lose their insurance benefits and even their jobs. The company began this change with ceasing to give out stocks as incentives. This is happening in many, many companies: the change in attitude, and treatment by CEO's and management towards workers. It is becoming more of "be grateful you have a job, slave."
Companies expect people to work for low wages, for inadequate hours, be available on all days for any shift. People cannot depend on established days off, which keeps workers in a kind of chronic chaos.
People are also restricted in their ability to travel far from home by oil and fuel prices. It's easier to make it too expensive for people to drive or fly anywhere, than it is to make laws that restrict their travel. It's a subtle way to immobilize people. Unless you're highly paid and not in debt and own a car that gets super high MPG, you're not traveling like you used to. This is a spirit breaker. It works subtly to tire and subdue people.
There is a lot more to this. Look up plutocracy. Learn about it. Investigate it. It's not a conspiracy theory. The USA has already been through one gilded age where workers had few rights and working conditions were deplorable, even scandalous in too many places. Remember child labor?
The world has always seemed to want to have a wealthy, elite few and the rest living as peasants. We may have been lulled into thinking progress as a human race was going to stop that. Is there any recourse against the plutocrats? We all better look into it. Food for thought. Don't you think?
Addendum: we also have NAFTA to thank for companies and jobs leaving the US. It's much more complex, the plutocracy, than I can explain. Plutocrats accomplish a lot by using propaganda to convince naive people that it is the workers and the poor who are to blame for the way things are going. They lull people into complacency while they devour the middle class and walk on the backs of the poor. They fool people into welcoming this and standing by and letting it develop unprotested.
For many, we have already reached it. And not just in the U.S.
Hey, this article was written November 6, 2012, either just before or just after the recent presidental election. Since then the Dow has risen to 15,000+. Not to say that with Bernackie's money printing there will not be any consequences. There will be.
The Dow helps only people who invest in good stocks--anymore.
I think the money system needs to be replaced. The only real benefactors now are the super rich, everyone else is just struggling now and falling behind. Something is going to give.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oBo8CJxatQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8
- The Economist -
Hyperinflation in America, a possibility, Yes, America occasionally budgets recklessly. But it has a very deep, very broad, and very strong civil society, buttressed by levels upon levels of private and public, formal and informal institutions. These institutions, and many like them across rich economies, are generally very good at preventing governments from doing disastrous things. To extrapolate from the admittedly ugly scene on Capitol Hill to hyperinflation is to misunderstand what it is, fundamentally, that makes American democracy work: a strong system of civil, social, and political norms that defines acceptable political behaviour and which reacts strongly to deviations from that behaviour.
To put things a different way: Paul Ryan is wrong that bad budgeting will lead to hyperinflation. It won't. Bad budgeting will eventually lead to circumstances, most likely higher interest rates, that convince legislators to end bad budgeting (or to budget badly in a different way). The fact that Mr Ryan is left warning about hyperinflation rather than leading the charge for the new, better bad budget simply suggests that his approach is less consistent with the norms American civil society holds dear than available alternatives.
This is a lot bigger than Paul Ryan and budgets.
