Thursday, March 19, 2009

We Did Everything They Asked ...

Remember that people. And grasp the significance of it. They created gigantic debts and caused enormous suffering with their monetarist, anti-inflation recessions. And inflation was under control (on their terms). We signed free trade deal after free trade deal, making it easier for manufacturing to relocate to where labour was cheaper (due to democracy being necessarily weaker), regulations were lighter, taxes were lower. The labour movement (both in Canada and the USA) is a tamed beast. We've surrendered job security, pay increases, all to be more efficient and competitive and flexible. The wealthy, the "wealth creators" according to the fiction, and the corporations (other sources of dynamic job creation) have received enormous tax-cuts over the years. We've privatized many public services, reduced many others, and social programs have been re-tooled to encourage scrambling after any shitty job that comes along.

Look, we did all these things and we were promised economic prosperity. These promises were later downgraded to "relative economic stability."

And what did we get? Come on, really, what did we get? We find ourself in the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s. Not "NOT relative economic stability." Not a bump in the road. But total massive failure.

This is the inevitable result of all those policies that forced the bulk of the population to make sacrifices to deluded greedheads.

These current troubles are the result of economic policies that don't see human beings as important. That see humanity as an "expense" in the production process rather than the whole point of the production process.

3 comments:

Real_PHV_Mentarch said...

As I keep asking: what will it take for us to stop playing this continuing blackmail con game?

What indeed ...

That guy said...

Seriously. It's not just that we sold ourselves out, it's that we sold ourselves cheap.

thwap said...

People believed there was no alternative. A capitalist media system achieved hegemony and social democracy couldn't overcome its own political contradictions.

Perhaps this crisis is the time. This is an evil, inhuman system.

It's failure is exposed.