by Revolutions have a funny characteristic: they’re unpredictable. The general assumption is that revolutions are political. The revolution some foresee in the U.S. is the classic armed insurrection, or a coup or the fragmentation of the nation as states or regions declare their independence from the federal government. By focusing on the compelling drama of political upheaval we’re missing the real revolution, which is social and economic: the Great Resignation, a global movement which in the U.S. has largely unrecognized American characteristics. The Great Resignation is the real revolution which few if any recognize. The status quo is going to great lengths to dismiss it, for example, The Great Resignation: Historical Data and a Deeper Analysis Show It’s Not as
Topics:
Charles Hugh Smith considers the following as important: 5) Global Macro, 5.) Charles Hugh Smith, Featured, newsletter
This could be interesting, too:
Eamonn Sheridan writes CHF traders note – Two Swiss National Bank speakers due Thursday, November 21
Charles Hugh Smith writes How Do We Fix the Collapse of Quality?
Marc Chandler writes Sterling and Gilts Pressed Lower by Firmer CPI
Michael Lebowitz writes Trump Tariffs Are Inflationary Claim The Experts
|
Revolutions have a funny characteristic: they’re unpredictable. The general assumption is that revolutions are political. The revolution some foresee in the U.S. is the classic armed insurrection, or a coup or the fragmentation of the nation as states or regions declare their independence from the federal government. By focusing on the compelling drama of political upheaval we’re missing the real revolution, which is social and economic: the Great Resignation, a global movement which in the U.S. has largely unrecognized American characteristics. The Great Resignation is the real revolution which few if any recognize. The status quo is going to great lengths to dismiss it, for example, The Great Resignation: Historical Data and a Deeper Analysis Show It’s Not as Great as Screaming Headlines Suggest, because this revolution is not controllable with force and is therefore unstoppable. The sources of the revolution are in plain sight: you rig the economy to enrich the already-rich top 10% and super-size the already bloated wealth of the top 0.1%, and then you wonder why the bottom 90% are indebted, broke, burned out and disgruntled? |
 . |
| The hubris of the ruling elites and their lackeys is off the scale, as this structural exploitation is presumed to be not just acceptable but delightful to the bottom 90%.
Alternatively, the more cynical view of those at the top looking down is: they have to work at the wages we pay in inhuman conditions because they have to: all the debt-serfs and tax donkeys must accept our pay and conditions or starve. This is neoliberal neofeudalism with the kid gloves of PR removed. Secondly, it’s rather obvious what happens to public protests against systemic exploitation and disempowerment of the bottom 90%: they go nowhere. Anyone remember Occupy Wall Street? This is the fate of any quasi-political movement: co-option, suppression, etc., and then benign neglect as the full-court press eventually wears out the peasants. So the real revolution takes place out of the spotlight, as one person at a time opts out. They opt out of the unwinnable rat-race, of burnout, of debt-serfdom, of powerlessness, of accepting exploitive work conditions and all the tiresome trappings of neofeudalism. After 45 years of losing power, the workforce finally has a bit of leverage. Some of the leverage results from demographics–the Baby Boom generation is retiring en masse and so the workforce is shrinking–and from the revolution of opting out, as millions of individuals quit, creating a labor shortage unlike any in living memory. |
 . |
| As millions of workers opt out of conventional employment / exploitation, individuals have leverage due to the labor shortage to reverse the game employers have been winning for 45 years. Corporate America dropped the pretense of rewarding loyalty long ago, and nobody believes the corporate PR about “we’re a family”–unless Corporate America is referring to an abusive, dysfunctional “family.”
Here’s a depiction of the typical corporate workplace: a “torture room” where the overlords are obsessed with bogus feedback from employees and customers. |
 . |
| American workers are awakening to the reality that they only way to get ahead is to get out. Stop playing the rigged game and start playing the players.
Workers are now in a position to quit and demand better pay and conditions, and then quit again to gain more, and then quit again. The employers are gnashing their teeth at this loss of power, but that’s what happens in revolutions: the pendulum swings from one extreme to the opposite extreme. |
 . |
| Workers are realizing that they are powerless to change a rigged system at the ballot box or by conventional means. The only freedom that’s still available is to quit amd game the system to the hilt, or drop out into the informal economy, try one’s hand at the rigged casino of rampant speculation or give up the whole unattainable dream of the McMansion on the golf course and build yourself a micro-home on a cheap rural parcel and work your own micro-enterprise. |
 . |
| A great many workers are done dealing with the abusive American public who seem to feel they have a right to abuse employees. The government has the monopoly on force but it doesn’t have the power to force individuals to tolerate abuse from employers, co-workers or customers.
Those quitting give conventional reasons, obfuscating the revolution. The structural dynamics driving the Great Resignation are not entirely conscious; the awareness that the ground has shifted beneath our feet is not easily discernable or described, but we sense it and act on it nonetheless. |
 . |
| American ingenuity is increasingly turned to playing the players via individual initiative. While the financial elite focuses on stripmining the next rigged game, the workers are focusing on bailing out in one form or another.
Revolutions have a funny characteristic: they’re unpredictable. The global revolution is being written off as “transitory” because it’s terribly inconvenient for the rigged-against-the-bottom-90% status quo. But it isn’t transitory, it’s gathering momentum. |
 . |
You Might Also Like
Why Don’t We Cut Out the Middleman and Just Elect Pfizer and Merck?
2022-01-10
If we no longer have the capacity to distinguish between moral legitimacy and self-serving corruption, then we might as well eliminate the Middleman and vote directly for Pfizer or Merck. There’s a fancy word for cutting out the Middleman: disintermediation. Removing intermediaries who take a cut but neither produce nor add value makes perfect sense, reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
Xi’s Gambit: China at the Crossroads
2021-12-10
If Xi’s gambit succeeds, China could become a magnet for global capital. If success is only partial or temporary, China may well struggle with the structural excesses that are piling up not just in China but in the entire global economy.
Top 1% Gains More Wealth Than the Combined GDPs of Japan, Germany, UK, France, India and Italy, Bottom 50%–You Get Nothing
2021-11-18
Given that political power in America is a pay-to-play auction in which the highest bidder wins, how this incomprehensibly lopsided ownership of wealth plays out is an open question.
Software Ate the World and Now Has Indigestion
2021-10-19
As for all those automated systems we have to navigate–do any of them work so well that those profiting from them actually use them? Of course not.
What’s Really Going On in China
2021-09-24
Losses will be taken and sacrifices enforced on those who don’t understand the Chinese state will no longer absorb the losses of speculative excess. Let’s start by stipulating that no one outside President Xi’s inner circle really knows what’s going on in China, and so my comments here are systemic observations, not claims of insider knowledge.
America 2021: Inequality is Now Baked In
2021-09-23
This complete capture of all avenues of regulation and governance can only end one way, a kind of hyper-stagflation. Zeus Y. and I go way back, and he has always had a knack for summarizing just how insane,
disconnected from reality, manipulative and exploitive the status quo narrative has become.
The Smart Money Has Already Sold
2021-08-19
Generations of punters have learned the hard way that their unwary greed is the tool the ‘Smart Money’ uses to separate them from their cash and capital.
The Moment Wall Street Has Been Waiting For: Retail Is All In
2021-07-29
The ideal bagholder is one who
adds more on every downturn (buy the dip) and who refuses to sell (diamond hands), holding
on for the inevitable Fed-fueled rally to new highs.
Old hands on Wall Street have been wary of being bearish for one reason, and no, it’s not
the Federal Reserve: the old hands have been waiting for retail–the individual investor–
to go all-in stocks. After 13 long years, this moment has finally arrived:
retail is all in.
If you doubt this, just look at record highs in investor sentiment, margin debt and the
Buffett Indicator (see chart below). Current valuations are so extreme that the previous
extreme in the 2000 dot-com bubble now looks modest in comparison.
I have my own sure-fire indicators for when retail is all-in. One is my Mom’s financial
advisor
Tags: Featured,newsletter