Sunday, Mar 23, 2008
Speculation and Monopoly Capitalism have artificially Ramped Asset Prices to Unstable Levels
Independent: Outside View: The end of capitalism as we know it?
Article promulgates that real wages as a per capita percentage of GDP have been falling since 1973 and that the UK's measure of inflation has been massively underestimated since 1970 thus wage earners – rather than asset owners – have faced a 35-year downward pressure on their standard of living.
Posted by enuii @ 10:29 PM (664 views) Add Comment
8 Comments
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1. quiet guy said...
At the end of the article, there is a "guide to the global economy" which defines "Buy-to-let" as:
"Buy-to-let: Get-rich-quick scheme by which people were told that if they borrowed money to purchase homes they could make vast profits renting to the property-less classes – ironically not the case."
For a mainstream paper, that is very bearish!
2. shipbuilder said...
Great to see more and more people writing about this sort of thing. I think people are now starting to realise that we've all been getting poorer since the 70s and the corporates/advertisers/media/politicians have been lying to us all that time. The problem now is that people still think it is a political problem and voting in the other party will make a difference. We may see real change when the average person sees through the sham that is our democratic system. I think we may reach a point soon when the the people will demand a party that has their interests at heart and not big business.
3. stillthinking said...
Very interesting. Good article. He should have just come out and said that the recent cheapness in consumer goods has confused everybody into losing sight of their real worth.
4. Fed Up said...
Agree with the above comments. Very good article. From a British perspective it just shows that New Labour plc has continued where the Tories left off.
5. mrmickey said...
I think the west has been in a permanent recession since the 1970's it's just been masked by various booms & busts. The facts are all around us, most families need two incomes to survive rather than one and they still have to borrow, half the population need some sort of state hand out to survive, debt levels at breaking point, people working longer hours for same salary, no job security anymore and no pension, roads jammed with traffic as more people required to work to create same wealth levels, property prices out of reach for those on average salary, country's industrial base destroyed and finally inflation destroying what little savings there are. I could go on and on but you get the picture.
6. sold 2 rent 1 said...
shipbuilder,
"I think we may reach a point soon when the the people will demand a party that has their interests at heart and not big business."
Agreed. But that point will only arrive from a position of despair. People will always "appease" when they have the nice things in life.
The whole truth involves a change of consciousness as it is a change of reality. Changes of consciousness on this scale always require the old reality model to be destroyed before the new one will take off.
People will deny the change/truth until they are pushed to a breaking limit.
7. enuii said...
Well summed up Mr Mickey; never stuck the pieces of the jigasaw quite as together as you have. I think pensions will be the big one to hit home in the next 20 years. I was stunned when I found out from a colleague that the current annuity rate is ~32.8 i.e. those with a private money purchase pensions scheme will need £32800 in the pot to get £1000 worth of pension per year and as I've said before if you are paying over the odds for housing chances are you are also skimping on a pension!
8. Letthemfall said...
I think the experience of many of us supports the overall truth of this analysis. If the current crisis does indeed lead to a major recession then perhaps we will see dramatic changes along the lines of those brought about incidentally by the world wars. As it is the imbalances in our society are resembling those of pre-war Britain. And perhaps it is revealing that the response of the bankers and those in general who have benefited so much from these imbalances is to attempt to preserve them by demanding rescue from, in the end, taxpayers. That is, we should all bail out the incompetent and comparatively unproductive rich who have got rich by in effect putting their hands in the pockets of others.