It's Christmas Every Day in America
by John Lawrence, December 22, 2019
America invented the mass consumer culture. There are goodies for everyone every day of the year. No wonder no one wants to change the formula. However, it's an empire sitting on massive debt - $21 trillion and counting - and a massive military-industrial complex effectively sworn to protect America's preeminence and predominance around the world. Under Trump the US has sought to sanction not only its allies but also its creditors including the largest of which - China. What's wrong with this picture?
The US Federal Reserve Bank is printing $60 billion a month and putting it into the banking system. With various versions of quantitative easing (QE) this influx of money, which has been going on since 2008 due to the collapse of Wall Street in that year, has kept the system going, but has led to a huge inflation in asset prices including housing and the stock market. This not only keeps the bankers happy, but it also keeps baby boomers happy since their houses bought in the 60s and 70s have increased substantially in value as well as have their 401ks. This wealth has trickled down to children and grandchildren of the boomers, but not to people starting out with nothing such as the millenials with immense sums of student loan debt.
The theory of American society is that, as long as the Christmas tree of mass consumer culture can be perpetuated, all will be well. There will be no rebellion. The inequality gap does not really affect large portions of the middle class because who cares how wealthy Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates gets as long as their assets are increasing in value too. Sure, income has remained relatively constant for the middle class while the income and wealth of the upper.1% has sky rocketed. But property values and 401ks have made up for it for those lucky enough to have bought property 30 or more years ago and invested in a 401k as soon as it became available in 1980. The only people that have been really hurt by this increasing wealth gap of course are the poor. The rise in property values has priced poor renters out of the housing market because of skyrocketing rents and forced a large increase in the homeless population who cannot even afford the cheapest rents.
The American empire protected by a vast military-industrial complex costing $1 trillion a year (the amount the US goes further into debt by each year) will continue as long as it possibly can. The fly in the ointment is that the American empire rests on an empire of oil sealed in a deal with the devil - Saudi Arabia. This oil based empire cannot continue to exist if the earth is to remain a viable place for the habitation of human beings and other large mammals. Some species will inevitably remain even after sea level rises, floods and wildfires take their toll, but insurance rates are already starting to rise. Home insurance rates already increased more than 50 percent from 2005 to 2015, the year with the latest available data. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners attributes the increase to natural disasters, inflation, rising real estate values and construction costs.
Nevertheless, this year has seen record sales during the Christmas season both online and in brick and mortar stores. Record numbers of people are traveling during the holidays both by air and in cars.The mass consumer economy is in no danger of vanishing any time soon. It is onward and upward for the economy still dependent on fossil fuels and not about to give up an iota of record profits even if it means that the planet will suffer disastrous effects from climate change. Nothing can prevent this upward surge of capitalism except another collapse of the Big Banks, but, with the Federal Reserve standing by to inject more money into wealthy peoples' pockets if need be, this is unlikely to happen any time soon.
