by What the political class and the Financial Nobility don’t yet grasp is that ALICE will never go back to her insecure, low-wage job, ever. Meet ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, at least she was employed until the pandemic presented impossible choices between taking care of her children and their education, and her aging parents, and keeping her demanding, low-wage job. Though it doesn’t fit in with the cute mythology of “capitalism” that apologists love to promote, ALICE wasn’t working to get ahead–she was working to barely survive in an economy where wages have stagnated for decades and recently lost ground at an alarming rate as costs for everything from rent to childcare to utilities have soared while her hours have been cut. This is the
Topics:
Charles Hugh Smith considers the following as important: 5) Global Macro, 5.) Charles Hugh Smith, Featured, newsletter
This could be interesting, too:
Michael Njoku writes Totalitarianism Begins With A Denial of Economics
Nachrichten Ticker - www.finanzen.ch writes US-Wahl treibt Bitcoin über 90’000 US-Dollar – wie Anleger vom neuen Krypto-Hype profitieren können
Jim Fedako writes Subjectivity and Demonstrated Preference: A Possible Paradox
Connor O'Keeffe writes The Context Behind Donald Trump’s “Takeover” of the American Right
|
What the political class and the Financial Nobility don’t yet grasp is that ALICE will never go back to her insecure, low-wage job, ever. Meet ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, at least she was employed until the pandemic presented impossible choices between taking care of her children and their education, and her aging parents, and keeping her demanding, low-wage job. Though it doesn’t fit in with the cute mythology of “capitalism” that apologists love to promote, ALICE wasn’t working to get ahead–she was working to barely survive in an economy where wages have stagnated for decades and recently lost ground at an alarming rate as costs for everything from rent to childcare to utilities have soared while her hours have been cut. This is the neofeudalism I’ve often described here: the modern-day equivalent |
Wages share income,1960-2020 - Click to enlarge |
| Lacking capital and any realistic means of acquiring any, the debt-serf has only labor to sell, and in a globalized world in which everyone selling their labor is competing globally for work producing tradable goods and services, ordinary labor has lost purchasing power for the past 45 years (see charts below).
The dominance of Big Tech monopoly platforms has created new fields for the exploitation of ordinary labor in the low-paid gig economy and fulfillment centers. Meanwhile, the owners of the Financial Nobility’s fiefdoms and Big Tech monopolies have enjoyed unprecedented gains in income and wealth (see charts below) as wages’ share of the economy has declined for decades, in effect transferring trillions from labor to the Financial Nobility. This neofeudal arrangement is about to change as Universal Basic Income (UBI) |
Cumulative percent change in real annual earnings, by earnings group, 1979-2017 - Click to enlarge |
| What the political class and the Financial Nobility don’t yet grasp (due to their complete disconnect from neofeudal daily life) is that ALICE will never go back to her insecure, low-wage job, ever. No matter how meager the UBI, permanent unemployment, stimulus or whatever the political class calls the distribution of “Fed free money,” ALICE will find a way to escape the bonds of neofeudal serfdom. As I’ve noted here many times, the cash / informal economy beckons. All sorts of labor arrangements can be made on ALICE’s terms, not the Big Tech monopolies’ terms. No wonder the Financial Nobility is so desperate to eliminate cash. But other currencies may fill the need if the Neofeudal Overlords try to eliminate cash dollars. Liberty and freedom are not just lofty academic abstractions; what matters is being freed of the neofeudal chains of Big Tech monopoly platforms and the Financial Nobility’s other fiefdoms. Of related interest: Why the Pandemic Is Forcing Women Out of the Workforce (via A.P.) |
Distribution of Taxable Income for 1975 to 2018 - Click to enlarge |
You Might Also Like
An Interesting Juncture in History
Just as the rewards of central-bank bubbles have not been evenly distributed, the pain created by the collapse of the bubbles won’t be evenly distributed, either. We’ve reached an interesting juncture in history, and I don’t mean the pandemic. I’m referring to the normalization of extremes in the economy, in social decay and in political dysfunction and polarization.
The American Economy in Four Words: Neofeudal Extortion, Decline, Collapse
Our society has a legal structure of self-rule and ownership of capital, but in reality it is a Neofeudal Oligarchy. Now that the pandemic is over and the economy is roaring again–so the stock market says–we’re heading straight back up into the good old days of 2019. Nothing to worry about, we’ve recovered the trajectory of higher and higher, better every day in every way.
How Do We Change the Leadership of our Quasi-Sovereign Big Tech Neofeudal Nobility?
You better bow low and pay up, peasant, or your voice in the digital world will disappear just as quickly as your democracy’s control over Big Tech. Who’s the junior partner in global hegemony, Big Tech or the U.S. government?
This Is a Financial Extinction Event
The lower reaches of the financial food chain are already dying, and every entity that depended on that layer is doomed. Though under pressure from climate change, the dinosaurs were still dominant 65 million year ago–until the meteor struck, creating a global "nuclear winter" that darkened the atmosphere for months, killing off most of the food chain that the dinosaurs depended on.
A Vaccine May Not Be the “Magical Cure” Everyone Anticipates
Few appear willing to follow the probabilities of a future in which a vaccine cannot possibly be the "magic cure" everyone wants. Let’s attempt the impossible and set aside all preconceptions we might have about a vaccine for Covid-19, and think it through somewhat dispassionately.
If the “Market” Never Goes Down, The System Is Doomed
“Markets” that never go down aren’t markets, they’re signaling mechanisms of the Powers That Be. Markets are fundamentally clearing houses of information on price, demand, sentiment, expectations and so on–factual data on supply and demand, shipping costs, cost of credit, etc.–and reflections of trader and consumer emotions and psychology.
The Economy Is Mortally Wounded
A fully financialized, totally debt and speculation-dependent economy is terminal once leverage and debt stop expanding exponentially. We all know the movie scene in which the character is wounded but dismisses it as no big deal, and then lurches into the closing sequence where we discover the wound was not inconsequential, it was mortal, and the character expires.
Intolerance and Authoritarianism Accelerate Disunity and Collapse
Scapegoating dissenters only hastens the disunity and disarray that accelerates the final collapse. Authoritarianism is imposed on us, but its sibling intolerance is our own doing. Intolerance and authoritarianism are two sides of the same coin: as intolerance becomes the norm, the intolerant start demanding that the state enforce their intolerance by suppressing their enemies via increasingly heavy-handed authoritarian measures.
Tags: Featured,newsletter