We Are Headed Into A Depression......

I agree with the conclusion that we are at least highly likely looking down the barrel of the "long wave", or Kondratieff cycle, which means a major economic depression. If so, we are still very early into it, but the indicator, coming on for awhile now, of a collapse of working class consumer purchasing/credit power is the indicator. And what says that is destined to deteriorate even further is, all solutions to date, arising out of ruling class hatred of any assistance to the lower class stratas, are going entirely into corporate ruling class coffers. (The wan hope being, of course, simply continuing the right wing nutter/neo-liberal policies of "trickle down", that over the years since the late 70s have already been demonstrated such an abyssmal failure, and are responsible for bringing us to here in the first place.)

The fix that's actually needed, if the goal is to attempt to breathe some semblance of new life into capitalism's dying corpse, assumedly to allow it to continue with enriching the already rich as it kills the conditions for life on the planet with its insatiable need for never ending growth, is to in fact go to the opposite end of the system's class spectrum and fill the pockets of the poor and the working class with assistance cash, so that they can continue to spend capitalism into renewed greed vitality. For what really motivates capitalism is, consumers in the marketplace with money to spend, inspiring their creative genius for separating the masses from the contents of their wallets.

Which even then would not really work ere long, of course, because it would also lead to inflation/through price gouging in the newly created market bubble, as is the normal cycle of capitalism in any case, bringing us again over time back to here and another consumer purchasing power collapse leading to economic depression. Which still says nothing of the endless growth, obesity consumption, greed driven continuation of the destruction of the planet that is the flip side of the so-called free market. (For the planet to live, in the end, capitalism is going to have to die, of course. There is yet to emerge a sufficient understanding of this, but it will, already slowly is, of course.)

So, you see, there is a need, as will, like I said, arrive to people's consciousness eventually, hopefully not too late, given this tipping point at which capitalism is finally arriving, to understand that there is very little future left to capitalism and its class based economic system in any case. The need is not really to even try to breathe new life into this moribund arrangement of society, but to excise it from the body like the cancer it is, and to create a whole new economic and social model, based on enhanced "stability" and "sustainability" through scaled back human population levels and a smaller planetary consumption footprint, and the squeezing out of class privilege-, indeed the division of society into classes in the first place.

Now that economic and social arrangement may bore to death the "get rich" and "disdain for the lower classes" movers and shakers of capitalism, posing the problem of what to do with these problematic sociopath assholes, but to "nearly" every problem, there is "nearly" always a solution. At least so long as human timidity, lack of imagination and intellect, and fear of acting doesn't delay over long, until it really is too late.

This new Great Depression, if the deterioration continues, is a problem brought to us over the long history of capitalism, by this new generation of neo-conservative wingnuts. But as they would themselves recognize, one man's misfortune can be another's opportunity, so they keep reminding us. Well, this is such a time. It is our collective misfortune, including theirs, but it is also a lower class strata opportunity.

Thanks you wingnut dipshits.

(Blatantly stolen from Scape)

Wall Street.jpg

Absolutely great! My laugh for the day.

On the other hand, it is one possible solution to the problem of what to do with these socio-pathic dips. Encourage them all to JUMP!

Coyote

Or, coyoteman, to put it in a nutshell, we gots to gets rid of the consumer society, and become a tad more "self-sufficient".
(like, you know, FIX something instead of throwing it out and buying another)
(or maybe grow carrots in the backyard, instead of grass)

Or, coyoteman, to put it in a nutshell, we gots to gets rid of the consumer society, and become a tad more "self-sufficient".

Certainly part of the solution, no doubt.

Even in my lifetime, the changes that have gone on to INCREASE folks dependency on "the market" have been incredible. Even in my parents time, when I was very young, and the automobile was still relatively new, my old man thought nothing of running his old Model T into the home garage to install new rings and cam bearings, and then hand grind and seat the valves. Ma, who later became as crazy as a J bird, would render down fat and make our own soap. Which demonstrates what those old folks were capable of doing that has all been lost.

Mind you, if we are going to go back and try and re-pick up even some of that lifestyle, and I think we should, folks are gonna need more time away from working for "The Man". It was a labour intensive way of living, for sure.

Mind you, for sure, you didn't see near so many fat people around.

But yes, as a country we need to become more self-sufficient and less reliant on foreign trade, and so do we as individuals and communities. But we really have to think through where we want to go with all this, 'cause we don't want to throw no babies out with the dirty wash either. And if we are all going to have that greater time away from working for "the market", to do more for ourselves, we are going to still need "labour saving" technologies to produce sufficient quantities of those things we will still need. So science, research and development are going to remain ongoing needs as well.

And we're going to still have to spend a great deal of time and investment, as individuals and community levels, cleaning up the goddamn environmental mess you know that the excesses of the capitalist system is going to leave us. ('Cause they will never really get to it, preoccupied with speedy, never ending growth and cash/profit flow as they are. They'll only dance around it, except where they see opportunities for cost recovery plus private profit accumulation.)

I grew up in the depression in a country already devastated by WW1, plus the loss of 2/3 of its territory, etc.

Never trusted any politician, or political system since WW2 and my wife and I have spent our lives to become self sufficient to the greatest degree, which is now paying off big, in our old age.

Yes, this new depression will be far worse, because the technologies forced on humanity have not only devastated the Earth with their huge energy demands, but forced billions into hopeless mega city slums, where they have to rely totally on the system and whatever the controllers of the system decide to throw at them.

The long term plan of these rulers , empowered by silly and criminal economic theories, has been the creation and expansion of incompetence, to enslave and at the same time jack up the fraudulent accounting systems of the GDP, etc.

Just wrote on the Tyee, that I just started re-reading one of my old books, EF Schumacher's 1973 "Small is Beautiful", where he predicted the present mess already 35 years ago, but was ignored. Now we're paying the price. Worth reading and I'm glad I've read it first many years ago and used its conclusions to our benefit.

At the same time, as I wrote about it many times, I can't help wondering whether all this isn't part of the plan to force a desperate humanity into begging for a worldwide corporate dictatorship.

The rulers have used the deregulated money creation powers of the banks to take control of the world's resources and distributions systems and are now in position to crash the imaginary monetary system, because they don't need it any more and can do what they want.

Sincerely hope that I'm wrong................

Ed Deak.

I hope you're wrong too, Ed. Though I fear not.

For that matter, I hope I'm wrong, and can live out the rest of my days playing.

Coyote

Ed, at the end of the day, I don't think there is any 'plan' at all.

There may be a plan in the minds of some, whether they be 'Bilderbergers', 'Masons', 'Zionists' or what have you but, to quote Mike "Everybody's got plans... until they get hit."

We've certainly seen the botch-ups from the "best and the brightest" of every generation, so I really have some difficulty believing there is some group 'out there' with an all-encompassing plan which will subjugate the majority of humanity until God knows when...not to mention that subjugating any portion of humanity for any length of time has historically been proven difficult to do.

While not wanting to come across as insane (maybe too late for that) I tend to think that we're in a reverse-Neo situation where instead of waking up and finding our lives have been asn illusion to mask a nightmare, we're waking up tp find our lives have been a nightmare illusion to mask what the reality should be.

Maybe this will take another couple of hundred years but, hopefully we'll get there and whatever little bits of wisdom we pass along to others will find some fertile ground.

I've certainly appreciated the wisdom you've shared...and have passed it along to others.

Cal.....Having lived under every known system, and having heard and experienced all the "new world orders", I would say the plans are there alright, but the idiots who make them haven't yet figured it out that "The best laid plans of mice and men....." always end up on the same manure heap as all the empires of history. And always through self destruction, never knocked down by "barbarians".

Have you heard of the Mayan Calendar? According to people who interpreted and wrote books about it, its theory is that the world will either end through a pole shift, or the "Age of Enlightenment" will start in Dec. 2012. ??????????????

I'm not a believer, or a disbeliever in anything, but as I have seen and experienced a few miracles, and being a perennial optimist, I hope for the Enlightenment.

The big question that remains is: Would the world's professors and intellectuals have the brains to advise politicians to permit its happening?

No to mention the panic it would cause on the world's stock and money markets !

Ed Deak.

Coyoteman:


That was the promise of the '50's -- the "leisure society". Of course, that's what we THOUGHT the promise was, and not what it has come to mean by it's other name -- unemployment and underemployment.

I have this link to an article in Harper's, and I've tried to copy it, but having some difficulty. Anyway, here is the link:
http://www.care2.com/news/member/321758002/951896
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/12/0082287
You have to be a subscriber. Maybe someone more clever than I can figure it out.......

Though some in that time may have thought or hoped so, it was/is not within the character of capitalism to allow more leisure, whatever the promise of technology, to the working class, other than is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of health, or as the working class is able to wring from it through successful class struggle. Whatever "free labour time" technology might make possible, it will quickly squeeze to death with its own escalated "greed driven demands" for new and higher production levels and "bottom line" returns.

Remember, the built-in dynamic of the system is for "never ending growth", or die in the competition between the capitalists themselves. Production, consumption, and standard of living stability, along with leisure for the working class, to allow it to enhance its own self-sufficiency and family life, are anathema to it, against its natural law.

The working class is there to be sucked dry of labour energy, and to ONLY.

Any workable future model, mindful of the needs of the planet and of people, animals, and plants, which includes the resources all these depend on for life, means we must as quickly as possible reduce human population levels to real sustainable levels, as will allow for our own well being and the rest of nature.

Insane, out of control, never ending growth capitalism is the fundamental problem of our time.

One of the complaints of previous "socialist models" was that without capitalism, there was no "incentive" to provide the same plethora of goods as it, capitalism provided. Now, we might be wondering if that was not, in fact, maybe a good thing to some level. (Which is not an argument precisely in favour of those authoritarian regimes, but that within that "state owned/directed" model there was not a kernel of truth, or a hint of the solution that it is now clear that we need.)

The crying need in human society is, first, a reduced footprint, in our population numbers AND exploitation rate of the planets living, material and all, finite resources. And along with that, in my view, "stability" at reasonable expectation levels of standard of living and quality of life for our human populations. Which is, of necessity, also going to require curbing the activity and demands of those with excess appetites, and expectations of MORE than the mass of their fellow citizens. (And that doesn't mean, especially in the early going, until a new social morality takes root and flourishes, that we may not have to for awhile, for incentive purposes, some levels of differences. On that, we shall have to see how things develop as the new model begins to be put in place. Which some depends on the determination and willingness to fight of the working class as well.)

What is entirely clear, however, is that what is, is no longer suitable or useful to humankind. It has been running us up a delusional and self-destruct alley as a species.

Personally, I like Gene Roddenbury's notion of "salvation" in the Star Trek series.......if you remove the necessity of spending most of your life avoiding hunger, your mind will naturally gravitate to the "higher" levels of curiosity, learning, speculation, et al.

I thiknk this is called giving the benefit of the doubt to human endeavours.......

Works for me too.

Coyote

"Computer! Earl Grey tea -- hot!"

So they are trying to explain , and how it's oh so bad for the economy, and how is good.
What they are NOT saying though, is that inflation is what generates conspicuous consumption (the consumer society) - which is unsustainable, and is the single leading cause of environmental degradation. Yet they are whining that some stopgap must be put into place, to keep things the way they are.

The only thing that will "cure" this idiocy IS deflation, as it will lead to a post-consumer, more self-reliant, society. Of course, that means all kinds of jobs will be shed, such as runway models, Survivor participants, CEO's of trans national corporations, etc. (and quite likely my job as a tile setter as well).