Given Dat Sketchim Has trecovered His Health..This is Fuh Googs and Kakabelly

Quote:War Turned Inward

The fever that gripped the U.S. following the attacks of September, 11, 2001 demonstrated that manufacturing a shared enemy did little to create a deeper commonality of interests amongst nominal citizens. Whatever one may think about the specifics of the attacks— the motives of the attackers, their choice of targets or the veracity of official explanations, it would have required a full scale assault by an established military to destroy as many lives and communities as American born and bred bankers did through predatory mortgage lending in the housing boom and bust. And as much as official apologists would like to deny it, this destruction is wholly in keeping with the market outcomes that now constitute the base credo of the market-state.

The paper-thin bravado that sent heavily armored children and young adults to slaughter innocents in Afghanistan and Iraq for the benefit of Bechtel, Northrup Grumman and Exxon Mobil found its domestic truth in the quivering puddles that had supported the wars suddenly wondering how they were going to feed themselves and their children with their jobs outsourced and their homes in foreclosure. A fortunate few saw their fealty to the system of economic and social dispossession rewarded through the spectacle of social dissolution, through their neighbor’s bounty of cheaply-made goods strewn across suburban and ex-urban lawns as sheriffs and their agents made room for fresher members of the tenuous classes.

Quote:Graph (1) above: eight years after the onset of the Great Recession the storyline of recovery is fraying around the edges. Real Median Household Income, the statistic conceived to obfuscate more straightforward wage data through aggregation, continues its downward trajectory. When associated with unforgiven and re-imposed household debt a picture of Great Depression-style debt deflation emerges for the toiling and dispossessed classes. The great public mystery of renewed urban violence is why its conspicuous relation to economic re-immiseration remains so well hidden? Overlaid maps of predatory banking in the early-mid 2000s with social dissolution and urban decay today correlate 1:1. An invading army could hardly have achieved this level of destruction without advanced weaponry and a deep hatred for the peoples being invaded. Data source: Census Bureau. Image source: flickr.com.

After eight years of alleged economic ‘recovery’ the pre-existing lines of social division are once again being clarified as class, race and geography separate the recovered from those left behind. Recent data from the Census Bureau (Graphs (1, 3)) illustrates the ongoing downward trajectory of real (inflation-adjusted) household incomes for all but the richest. This is more than simple ‘income inequality,’ it is evidence that very particular class interests are being served by the political establishment. The incomes and wealth of the richest have been recovered through official policies with little regard for the other 99.97% of the population. Leftish economists repeatedly claim that political dysfunction explains policy paralysis while policies that benefit the rich have met no resistance.

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Graph (2) above: food stamp (SNAP- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) usage and stock prices (Wilshire 5000) have risen together over the last twenty five years putting a lie to ‘trickle-down’ theories of the social benefit of rising financial asset values. Technical quibbles aside (neither series is scaled to relevant bases), of relevance is the catastrophic rise in the need for food assistance since 2007 as stock prices have been supported by government and quasi-government (Federal Reserve) policies. Rising stock prices benefit the rich alone because the rich own most of the stock. Data source: St. Louis Federal Reserve. Image source: alaskapublicemployees.com.