Forum Post: Conservative End Game
Posted 1 week ago on Nov. 21, 2024, 6:51 p.m. EST by agkaiser
(2552)
from Fredericksburg, TX
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
see my X post of 11/21/2024:
"The deep historical forces that explain Trump’s win"
"Our research shows that political breakdown, from the Roman Empire to the Russian revolution, follows a clear pattern: workers’ wages stagnate, while elites multiply"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/30/the-deep-historical-forces-that-explain-trumps-win
"To get a better understanding of these concepts and how they are influencing American politics in 2024, we need to travel back in time to the 1930s, when an unwritten social contract came into being in the form of Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal. This contract balanced the interests of workers, businesses and the state in a way similar to the more formal agreements we see in Nordic countries. For two generations, this implicit pact delivered an unprecedented growth in wellbeing across a broad swath of the country. At the same time, a “Great Compression” of incomes and wealth dramatically reduced economic inequality. For roughly 50 years the interests of workers and the interests of owners were kept in balance, and overall income inequality remained remarkably low."
"That social contract began to break down in the late 1970s. The power of unions was undermined, and taxes on the wealthy cut back. Typical workers’ wages, which had previously increased in tandem with overall economic growth, started to lag behind. Inflation-adjusted wages stagnated and at times decreased. The result was a decline in many aspects of quality of life for the majority of Americans. One shocking way this became evident was in changes to the average life expectancy, which stalled and even went into reverse (and this started well before the Covid pandemic). That’s what we term “popular immiseration”.
"With the incomes of workers effectively stuck, the fruits of economic growth were reaped by the elites instead.A perverse “wealth pump” came into being, siphoning money from the poor and channelling it to the rich...."
Every now and then The Guardian has a great, sweeping article that explains our current situation. This is one of them. Worth a read, especially as we watch history repeat itself.
I wish I could remember how to directly post jpegs here on the OWS Forum. I think I remember doing that several years ago but at 78 I can't be certain. Oh well ...