12.12.11
United States of No Possibilities
The United States of Awesome Possibilities ad campaign was dead on arrival. After a flurry of minor publicity it sank like a rock.
And why should it have succeeded?
Systemic features of the US American economic model have destroyed any concept of “awesome possibilities” for most of even the most wishful thinkers not in the 1 percent.
This week’s issue of the Financial Times focuses on the American employment picture. It’s unremittingly grim.
It touches on issues that have been discussed before on the blog.
1. Big corporate America’s dislike of American labor. The result, except for taxpayer-funded weapons production, was the shipping of everything to Chinese plants. The destruction of jobs became paramount and remains that way.
2. The work that cannot be outsourced is not enough to sustain a country as large as the United States. This means a gradual slide into the irrelevance of a banana republic with the world’s largest military. (Like a patient just diagnosed with incurable cancer, the slope of decline is gradual but inexorable and sure. However, it is expected in all cases that at some point the cancer load, in this case US economic dysfunction, becomes too great and the rate of decline accelerates into fatal catastrophe.)
3. Primary non-military/security growth jobs are all in parts of the economy which produce nothing and, except for moving money and creating money products, pay very little. They’re either in finance, food service preparation, sales of retail goods (all made in China) or the old DD blog pejorative — bedpan technicianry — workers who will be needed in the warehouse industry for the elderly and sick.
Some excerpts from the FT (subscription):
America used to be exceptional. Postwar, it maintained lower unemployment than the Europeans and a higher rate of jobs turnover … No longer. Today, somewhat remarkably, US joblessness is higher than in much of Europe.
[In decades past jobs] might be lost rapidly in a downturn but were swiftly reallocated to more productive sectors when economic growth resumed. That is not now the case.
“I know companies that employ senior engineers whose only job is to find ways to reduce the headcount,??? says Carl Camden, chief executive of Kelly Services, a booming staffing agency based in Michigan. “The name of the game everywhere is to reduce permanent headcount and we are still only at the early stages of this trend.???
This is hardly a novel observation. — DD
… America is employing a decreasing proportion of its people.
Manufacturing is nowhere in the top 20, and such jobs cannot replace the pay and conditions once typical of that sector. “The food preparation industry cannot sustain a middle class …???
Some have moved from claiming unemployment benefits to disability benefits, and have thus permanently dropped out of the labour force. Others have fallen back on the charity of relatives. Others still have ended up in prison. In 1982 there were just over 500,000 in jail; today there are 2.5m.
There are no solutions in sight. Great inequality is intertwined with the inability of the country to mobilize its human capital. And the lack of interest and ability to maximize is human resources, historically, leads to decline and the inability to rise to any and all future challenges.
This is very much about class war, one conducted, since the Eighties, by a corporate monarchy imposed on the rest of the population, for the sole benefit of itself. There is no social compact.
The FT acknowledges this has made the 2012 election one about class warfare.
“This should be both welcomed and feared,” writes one columnist. “Welcomed because America needs an election focused on the economy.”
Finally, more of the obvious. Still, it is worth repeating:
Mr. Obama is not a class warrior. But he has not yet found a compelling way to address what lies behind America’s deepening inequities. The Republicans are even further from a solution. Let us hope class warfare marks only the starting point for a conversation.
The only thing missing is a detailed discussion of another big factor which accelerated the dysfunction of the American economy since 2000: The hardening of the state’s condition into one justifying a permanent war footing.
The permanent war footing separates one entire class of American workers — those who work for arms manufacturing and in the large homeland/natsecurity support role of finding and identifying enemies to use them on — from the ills affecting all other portions of the 99 percent.
The best song DD wrote in 2011. It should be on your critic’s list.
Welcome to the US of Penitentiary; we all get there,
eventually.
We lock up the poor for all the rich; and we do it right, without no hitch.
Welcome to the United States of Greed; it’s the only country you’ll ever need.
If you’re into frauds and useless devices — Uncle Sam, the best of choices!
Christoph Hechl said,
December 12, 2011 at 11:14 pm
Well, i think they have found someone to use those weapons on:
http://www.businessinsider.com/program-1033-military-equipment-police-2011-12
Like many other people i expect the occupy protests to reappear after winter. One really wonders what event it might take to turn this into a full scale civil war.
On the other hand there has alrady been more than enough reason for that to happen, but it didn’t. If it would, then i wonder if you could call it a religious war – between people who believe in capitalism and those who don’t.
DD said,
December 13, 2011 at 8:05 am
There were linked protests yesterday, general strikes aimed at closing ports
from Hueneme here to Oakland. In LA, not enough people showed up. But in Oakland they were again successful at getting people sent home for the day and forcing the closure of a couple terminals. There was a similar result in Portland, I think. There were some arrests, no violence, and it again became rather obvious the police, port officials and homeland security were coordinating on intelligence.