General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why They Get Away With Cutting Welfare [View all]AdHocSolver
(2,561 posts)The current economic and political patterns mirror, to a large extent, those that existed in the 1930's in the U.S. and Europe, especially in Germany.
An economic war is being waged against the working and middle classes by the bankers and industrialists (Wall Street). Their end game is another Great Depression. It is absurd to believe that a booming stock market signifies a booming economy when a booming stock market preceded the Great Depression. The stock market was (and still is) nothing but a giant Ponzi scheme based on over-priced pieces of paper (or electronic bits of memory).
The stock market is based on trickle-down economics. and only works if "investors" believe in "free markets", "free trade", a "global economy", NAFTA, and Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and Unicorns.
An economy is driven by demand, which requires that a large number of people have money to spend and want to spend it. Money has to circulate within an economy, which means that a population within a local economic system has to produce a majority of the goods and services that it buys.
Outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries in Asia drains money from an economy. Austerity measures by government and reducing taxes for the wealthy, who hide it in offshore bank accounts, drain money from an economy. The hidden and growing inflation ($2.00 and up for a pound of tomatoes, among other examples) reduces the assets and leverage of the middle class
Draining money from an economy reduces demand which leads to economic collapse.
Therefore, a healthy economy requires that an economic system support good paying jobs within its population, who produce a majority of the everyday goods and services purchased by that population.
Providing only a second-rate education, and making college unaffordable for the masses provides a rationale to the industrialists to send technical jobs offshore, "because the corporations can't find qualified people in the U.S."
The economic war is the core element in the goal of subjugating the masses.
This effort has been mainly successful because of a largely gullible, ignorant, and apathetic population, massive and open support of bigotry and racism by the powers-that-be through control of the mass media, and bread-and-circus for a select few, while planned economic and political collapse is expanding for the masses.