The huge problem with capitalism is unbridled greed. The capitalists run the show and have skewed it completely to their own interests. The top 1% get all the cash. It has been getting worse and worse. As the economy grows a larger and larger amount has been siphoned off into the pockets of these superwealthy, all the increased growth, while everyone else’s income stagnates.
Inequality has gotten out of control.
This is likely to get much worse as AI kicks in. It will enable the wealthy to become even wealthier and everyone else much poorer.
They have done a real job on everyone in telling them that there is no alternative, anything that smacks of fairness is leftist socialism that would lead to tyranny, and that austerity is due to other factors.
While most people are suffering austerity and stagnation the wealthy have never had it so good. But still the schmucks support the wealthy being superrich. It’s like sheep advocating slaughter houses.
The social unrest that has resulted from this long stagnation and austerity, with its low wages, loss of benefits and loss of jobs, has manifested itself in the election of Trump and the advent of Brexit. Somehow the people suffering from the effects of runaway capitalism are putting their faith in a multibillionaire, fully paid up member of the capitalist club or blaming Europe for their problems.
Trump serves his own interests and those of his cronies. He uses division and hate of minorities to deflect from what he is really doing. It’s a con.
Europe is not to blame for the austerity. That is the result of the superwealthy and the Tory Party who represent them.
The superrich have successfully deflected blame away from where it really belongs – unbridled capitalism and the superwealthy, the politicians and media who support them. Instead they have placed it on the EU and immigrants and world recession. The truth is that the richest nation in the world and the fifth richest nation in the world have more than enough cash. It is a question of where that cash is going – most of it is going straight to the top!
The irony is that the people who are most strident, and suffering most, still support the extreme capitalism that is busy screwing them into the ground.
Such is the power of propaganda.
Well said, Opher. I am dismayed by the number of folks in the middle and working classes who buy into the biggest corporate hoax of them all: the trickle-down economy! There are lots of things that trickle down, but none of it is money!
Thanks John. Yes it always amazes me too.