Really Authentic Authenticity Package (TM) now 50% Off

What renders everything phony, BS, inauthentic, is that everything important is cloaked to hide the deeply artificial nature of the entire setup.

You know it's all phony, all artifice, all BS, and so we're delighted to offer our really authentic Authenticity Package (TM) to special people like you for a one-time 50% discount. Sure, you could book a flight to the temples and walk the same pathways as the spiritual masters of old, but you wouldn't be getting the full authentic experience because our guides are truly authentic and so our packaged, commoditized tour is the Real Deal (TM). Anything else is, well, unworthy of your social media feeds.

I've often noted here that it's impossible to parody Everyday Life (TM) now because everything is already a parody of itself. The Black Friday frenzy is a parody of a dark comedy of people jostling to get the hot deal on a TV they don't need "but it's so cheap, how can I resist?"

The Authentic Tour of the Place Ruined by Tourism (TM) is a self-parody, as there's nothing remotely authentic left in places that depend on tourist spending for their livelihoods, including jobs as "cultural guides" to a golden past before tourism ruined the place.

My commish on the Authentic Spiritual Adventure Walking Tour (TM) is my livelihood, and the "value proposition" of the tour is its claim to authenticity via my authentic interest in Authentic Spiritual Adventures.

Can we experience a fabulously authentic visit to a romanticized, heavily promoted high-status destination and keep it entirely private? You're joking--what would be the point? The black holes of insecurity are bottomless, and a private life offers no grist for the status-seeking frenzy to establish a self and identity worthy of public approval, admiration and envy, and so there is literally no point in having an experience that can't be shared online to score "I am worthy of notice" points.

Insecurity demands consumption to validate our existence. Without ownership of assets, products, services and experiences, we cease to exist other than as a shadow of a shadow. We desire to save money so we can consume more with our limited means. If our means are essentially unlimited, we quickly become self-parodies of status-seeking wealth.

Hey, buddy, I see adverts on your website. Yes, you do, and so let's start with the artifice that the Internet is "free." There's nothing "free" about the Internet; it costs billions of dollars to operate and maintain. We all have to pay to access it, and those who post content "for free" are paying for the server space, either upfront in cash (as I do), or by sharing the revenues platforms generate from our "free content" by selling data collected from those "engaging" our content or by selling adverts.

So yes, I sell my writing here, and sell space to an advert enterprise to offset the costs of offering "content for free." Recall that if there's no price tag, we're the product being sold behind the facade of "free."

The inauthenticity arises from the claims being implicitly added to whatever is actually being sold. The brand that is cashing in on its reputation for quality by selling products of inferior quality is adding an implicit "value proposition" of quality that isn't real: the product is rubbish, designed and destined to fail or be obsoleted by software upgrade cycles.

To present a commoditized package as "authentic" is itself a parody of actual authenticity, which is by its very nature unique, personal, private and therefore opaque to exploitation. The same can be said of the frenzy to present status signifiers as the means of sustaining a fragile sense of selfhood that withers away without a constant flow of validation from the outside world.

Hiding where the money is coming from and what's actually being transacted renders the whole thing phony, artificial and inauthentic. So where is the ostentatiously ascetic guru living without a mobile phone getting his money from? Oh, he's a tenured professor at a local public university, drawing a handsome salary and benefits package, and a lifetime guarantee of income courtesy of the taxpayers. No wonder he can market his high-status asceticism so freely.

What's phony is getting paid by shadowy state entities to post high-minded "think-tank" content under the guise of "public service" while pimping propaganda. Grubbing for money in the open is an honest portrayal of what's being transacted. I once passed a beggar on the sidewalk holding a cardboard sign about a "Jedi Mind Trick." The transaction was a bit of humor, a smile in the urban dreariness. I gave him some green in payment for the humor. It was a fair and open transaction, everything was transparent.

I am sitting right next to that beggar. Here is my writing and my begging bowl. If I add something to your life, and you feel like tossing in some green, thank you very much. If not, that's OK, too. Everything here on the sidewalk is offered for "free," with the understanding that everything offered for "free" takes time and effort.

What renders everything phony, BS, inauthentic, is that everything important is cloaked to hide the deeply artificial nature of the entire setup: what's actually being sold and transacted is purposefully opaque, along with the "value proposition," i.e. what's completely phony that's being sold as authentic.

We might also ask: when did the economy become dependent on selling phony claims of value rather than transparent value?

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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Slashing $2 Trillion from "The Swamp"--Three Things

There is no way to cut federal spending without reconfiguring the economy from the ground up, starting with healthcare.

The words "government" and "efficiency" are rarely found in each other's company, because efficiency isn't integral to the function of government the way it is in private enterprise.

Efficiency is an oft-stated goal, of course, and given ample lip-service in PR, but the coin of the realm in government isn't efficiency, it's influence, as the squeakiest wheels get the grease, and those funding elected officials' campaigns and greasing lobbyists' palms are very squeaky indeed.

Which brings us to the second thing: who does "The Swamp" work for? The naive answer is "The Swamp works for itself, feathering the bed of millions of bureaucrats." This answer reflects the importance of serving self-interest, always a good starting point, but it doesn't really do the heavy lifting, which requires following the money and asking who gets to distribute the money.

Who distributes the federal government's trillions? The elected officials in Congress. Yes, "The Swamp" works for Congress. And since members of Congress each need millions of dollars every election cycle to win re-election, "The Swamp" also works for lobbyists and those who hire them: corporations, banks, financiers, interest groups, think tanks, and the rest of the sprawling ecosystem that extends far from federal bureaucrats into every nook and cranny of the American economy.

If we follow the money, we find the vast majority of the $6.75 trillion that flows through federal coffers goes to private sector businesses, institutions such as universities and individual Americans. A small slice funds the federal bureaucracy which is "The Swamp" in the popular imagination.

Here is my chart of the ecosystem nurtured by federal spending. Please note the vast reach of many key parts of this ecosystem, and ask yourself if any one of these many parts has a presence in your county. The answer will be "yes."

Is there a college or university in your county? It's partially funded by "The Swamp." Is there a highway in your county? It's funded by "The Swamp." Is there a military base, or company with a defense or Department of Energy or NASA contract somewhere in its revenue stream? It's funded by "The Swamp," too.

It's a useful exercise to actually read the emails sent by your congressional representative, touting all the federal funding being funneled to your congressional district. Much of this funding is for infrastructure that probably doesn't have as much fat in it as we'd like to believe, since the work is put out to bid, just like a private-sector contract: bridge repairs, sewage treatment upgrades, environmental projects, new gym for the school, and so on.



A good place to start exploring federal spending and revenue is FiscalData -- Treasury.gov, which helpfully reminds us that:

According to the Constitution's Preamble, the purpose of the federal government is "...to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." These goals are achieved through government spending.

Here is a snapshot of federal spending. Note that 44% is consumed by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Most of the $1.2 trillion distributed to Social Security recipients flows directly into the economy as those monthly payments are spent. As for Medicare and Medicaid, most of the money flows to private-sector healthcare, a vast industry with an infinite appetite for more funding.



These two sectors--retiree pensions and disability (Social Security) and healthcare (Medicare and Medicaid), along with interest on the ballooning federal debt, account for 80% of projected increases in spending.



Going back to the chart of federal spending, note that tasty looking morsel labeled "non-defense discretionary spending." Yowza, now that sounds like the perfect place to slash a trillion bucks of fat. But not so fast, big fella--that "fat" is what elected members of Congress count on to reward their campaign contributors and their constituents to ensure their re-election. You will cut that "fat" over the dead bodies of every member of Congress, which we must recall, control the distribution of the federal funding.

So where do we start? I've often observed that if we don't completely reconfigure healthcare in the U.S., Medicare and Medicaid will bankrupt the nation all by themselves.

We might also note the infinitesimal percentage of the budget devoted to various popular bugaboos such as "foreign aid," much of which is actually grants or loans to buy American-made goods and services. Yes, this is an annoying waste of money, but eliminating this funding of U.S. made goods and services won't really move the needle. And let's be realistic: every global power spreads money around the world in one form or another.

In other words, the empire won't run itself, pal, it takes loot, so touche pas au grisbi.

You can explore the foreign aid "swamp" here:

ForeignAssistance.gov

How Much Does the Government Spend on International Affairs?



What every American should know about US foreign aid:

Myth #1: America spends too much on foreign aid: Opinion polls consistently report that Americans believe foreign aid is in the range of 25 percent of the federal budget. When asked how much it should be, they say about 10 percent. In fact, at $39.2 billion for fiscal year 2019, foreign assistance is less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

Then there's the $700 hammers in the defense budget. That fat is just waiting to be slashed. Alas, things are more complicated than we would like. Thanks to decades of relentless consolidation / centralization of industrial production, banking, etc.--the entire core of the U.S. economy--there are only a few corporations that can fulfill Pentagon orders. Yes, there are hopeful signs of startups competing for drones and other small-scale military weaponry, but when it comes to aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and renovating the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, there are not many private-sector options--in many cases, there's only one.

So dig into the defense budget, and the handful of corporations getting most of the dough. Seek out the black budget of the Intel "Community" (yes, a tightly knit bunch of folks), and find a couple hundred billion to slash. You won't find much to slash in the name of efficiency, because the Intel Community isn't about efficiency.

By all means, go over the entire $6.75 trillion federal budget line by line, draw all the lines from members of Congress to various centers of influence, locate all those who you're about to cut off at the knees, and then slash away. And while we're slogging through the slashing and burning of other folks' livelihoods, let's spend a moment pondering this chart of the federal debt--the government spending more than it collects in revenues--and the net worth of the top 1% and the net worth of the bottom 50%.

Is it mere coincidence that the top 1%'s net worth has risen in lockstep with federal debt, or are these two statistics correlated, that is, federal spending increases the wealth of the top 1% far more than it benefits the bottom 50%. Recall that most of the federal spending flows through to individuals and private-sector companies, the majority of which are owned by the top 1%, who constitute a very influential center of influence.



Cut off the gravy train of the top 1% and they'll respond in kind. Hell hath no fury like a billionaire scorned.

Let's recap our exploration of slashing $2 trillion from "The Swamp."

1. The Swamp itself consumes a small percentage of the federal budget. The majority of the money goes to individuals and private-sector entities.

2. The Swamp works for the elected members of Congress, who distribute federal monies, and all those who influence members of Congress, i.e. lobbyists working for private-sector interests.

3. There is no way to cut federal spending without reconfiguring the economy from the ground up, starting with healthcare, the relentless consolidation of companies and the distortions created by the immense concentration of wealth and influence in the hands of the top 0.1%.

Slashing any spending will take every ounce of political capital any administration can bring to bear. The "debate" will very quickly lead to images of folks in unemployment lines and retirees eating Friskies cat food because they can no longer afford the value meal at MickeyDs. Those actually reaping the handsome gains of federal spending will be nowhere in sight.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Shane H. ($70), for your monstrously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Howard S. ($70), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Robust Estimator ($70), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

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"Superheroes" Reflect Our Powerlessness

And so we end up back in MovieLand, where we vicariously experience having powers we do not possess in real life.

Films reflect the collective unconscious in ironic ways. During the Great Depression, films didn't dwell on the miseries of real life; they were carefree concoctions making light of the idle rich (The Thin Man, 1934, My Man Godfrey, 1936), with the realistic (but still ending on a positive note) The Grapes of Wrath arriving a decade into the Depression in 1940.

In contrast, the boom years of the 1950s were the heyday of dark-themed Noir films that explored (and exploited) the underbelly of human nature and American life.

Cast in this light, what do we make of our multi-decade cultural embrace of Superhero films? We can try to write it all off as Hollywood's happy discovery of an entire realm of "tentpole" franchises that can be milked for billions of dollars in reliable revenues, but this misses the undertow of cultural significances.

Is it coincidence that the decades of Superhero worship track the rise of our collective powerlessness over the shape of our future? I sense the outrage and indignation this ignites--how dare you say we're powerless, we have more power over our lives than ever before.

For a contrarian view, let's tap the 1964 classic by Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (this link is to a free PDF of the book, with gratitude to correspondent Bruce M. for bringing this book to my attention). It is impossible to summarize a 500-page book dense with important ideas, but let's start with Ellul's insight into our collective powerlessness over the future course of the economy and our own daily lives.

In essence, Ellul explains how technology and the ever-expanding need for profitable investments control our collective future. Once the basic human needs have been met--shelter, food, water, education, medical care, etc.--then investment opportunities aren't driven by human need, but by technology's continuous advance.

Did humanity really "need" every appliance to have WiFi? No. Technology generated WiFi and the need for investment opportunities then generated The Internet of Things (IOT) which spawned vast new product lines--appliances with WiFi. Coupled with the the collapse of quality and durability, this technology led to water heaters having WiFi, just in case your phone doesn't have enough apps, alarms, chirps and notifications.

That water heaters once cost $160 and now cost $500 is the financial payoff of advancing technology creating new opportunities to invest capital. For if capital can't find new opportunities to invest and grow profits, the economy slides into Depression, and that ghastly prospect looms in the collective unconscious as the nightmare to be avoided at all costs.

And so microwave ovens now have a second "child safety button" that must be pushed first to open the door. Safety is a ready-made excuse for adding whatever technology has come up with, and as we scan the horizon, it's already abundantly clear that the tens of billions of dollars gushing into AI will be followed by trillions of dollars seeking higher profits from putting some simulacrum of AI into every device, every appliance, every app and indeed every technology, not because it improves our well-being but because it's the investment opportunity that we desperately need to avoid the cataclysm of Depression.

We are powerless to question this process, much less resist it, and so we revel in fantasies of super-powers that enable the defeat of powerful forces that threaten us. That AI will automate away entire sectors of human livelihoods--we're powerless to resist that, just as we're powerless to stop the collapse of durability and the Anti-Progress of useless complexity and the ever-greater demands on us to perform unpaid shadow work to keep all the complexity duct-taped together so we can maintain all the technologies that we are now dependent on, not by choice but because there is no choice.

The cavalcade of superheroes reflect our powerlessness and our yearning for actual control of our lives rather then the simulacrum of consumer choice of products and services that don't serve our well-being, they serve the one true need, to expand opportunities to invest.



Ellul's insights from 60 years ago also illuminate our desire for real-world political-financial Superheroes who will set the world right again. But political solutions are another form of fantasy, as I explained in Why Political "Solutions" Don't Fix Crises, They Make Them Worse (10/2/24). Hoping that giving other mortals power will restore our own power over our own lives is akin to hoping that technology will magically transform itself from humanity's Monster Id into a machine that oversees us with loving kindness, or as poet Richard Brautigan put it, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.

Sci-Fi movie fans know that the Monster Id is from the classic film Forbidden Planet: the limitless power of the planet's immense technological machinery is guided by thoughts, and since there are no filters on what thoughts guide the technology, all the dark drives of the Id are amplified by technological powers, such that the Monster Id melts solid steel doors like butter in its quest to destroy the mind that created it.

And so we end up back in MovieLand, where we vicariously experience having powers we do not possess in real life. The power we still have is not a superpower; it is a merely human power to opt out, to choose not to participate, to limit our exposure to a world guided by investment opportunities and the moral vacuum of technology that is blind to all but its own advancement.

That all technological advancement is good is, well, a lie. Much of what's presented as Progress is actually Anti-Progress, a theme of my new book The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century.

If all we believe boils down to "technology good, investment opportunities good," then we've relinquished the ability to distinguish between truth and lies, and as Hannah Arendt observed, the difference between right and wrong. This too is powerlessness, a black hole from which there is no technological escape.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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Anti-Progress, Breakdown, Reset

The indicators of breakdown and collapse are all around us, but we don't dare name them because then they'd become a problem we can't bury.

A reality doesn't exist in the human experience until it has a name. If it doesn't have a name, we don't recognize it, and can't discuss it. We may think we've already named everything under the sun but new things arise and need to be named to be fully experienced / grasped / understood.

I have a name for The Collapse of Quality: Anti-Progress, which is the subject of my new book The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century. Anti-Progress is the opposite of progress, the reversal of progress, yet it's presented as "progress" to mask its true nature.

So we're told the new appliance is "progress" because it now has WiFi, but the decay of quality and durability hidden behind the facade of "progress" is Anti-Progress in its most virulent form. We're told ours is the finest and most prosperous system ever, yet 75% of the adult populace is now at risk of metabolic disorders--an unprecedented collapse of public health that can only be described as Anti-Progress.

Three-Quarters of U.S. Adults Are Now Overweight or Obese, with the inevitable result being over half the adult populace is diabetic or pre-diabetic, with catastrophic consequences for health and well-being:



Is the collapse of the birthrate a positive indicator of social-economic health? No, it's an indicator of Anti-Progress. When young people can no longer afford to have children, it's an indicator of collapse, not prosperity.



Are soaring disability rates a positive indicator of social-economic health? No.



Are health insurance costs quadrupling in one generation a positive indicator of social-economic health? No.



Anti-Progress generates breakdown. Consider this though experiment. Let's say the landfills are all shut down, and we each have to store all our trash in our backyard or in multi-family buildings, piled in the parking lot, not for a day or two, but indefinitely. How long before the entire complex of civilization breaks down not from a natural disaster but from choking to death on overconsumption / "waste is growth"?

Breakdowns erode buffers and our ability to kludge a fix. Duct tape works for a while, but the next breakdown moots the duct-tape fix, and the entire machine grinds to a halt.

Anti-Progress generates breakdowns which cascade into collapse. This process is greased by optimization, which strips out redundancies, buffers, spare parts availability and in-depth repair capabilities as needless expenses that reduce profits. So when the breakdowns occur, they quickly snowball into collapse because the system was optimized to function as if nothing truly untoward could possibly happen.

The apparent robustness of "normalcy" fosters a detached-from-reality faith that the system is unbreakable, and we brush aside all the indicators of Anti-Progress and breakdown with magical thinking: AI will fix that. This faith and breezy confidence it will all work out without us having to do anything other than what we're doing today is the dynamic driving collapse:



After breakdown comes the opportunity to reset the system. There's never any need for a reset until the system breaks down completely, i.e. collapse. Only after the failure of the status quo optimization is complete will we accept the reality that things have to change in some fundamental fashion.

All the "solutions" have consequences which must be literally buried or pushed out of sight, lest the Anti-Progress become undeniable. Quick, fire up the diesel-fueled dozers and bury the non-recyclable wind turbine blades. Oh yeah, AI is gonna fix this, so no worries--silly us!



AI is gonna clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre the size of Texas, too. This isn't the only floating mat of plastic garbage in the seas, of course; it's just one of several.



The indicators of breakdown and collapse are all around us, but we don't dare name them because then they'd become a problem we can't bury. We could do something different, of course. We could recognize Anti-Progress and start discussing what kind of reset might be possible and what kind of reset might be sustainably serve human well-being rather than "growth for growth's sake."

Or we can keep burying all the evidence of Anti-Progress and shout, but look at the stock market--it's going up! It's hitting new highs! Everything's great! Excuse me, but the banquet of consequences has been served. Best not to let it get cold.

The Slow Death of the Single Family Home (30:57 min).

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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How Do We Fix the Collapse of Quality?

Every product now has an "extended warranty" admission of the collapse of quality and durability.

There's a great uplifting hope swirling around the potential to fix what's broken, and so here's my question: how do we fix the collapse of quality and durability that we now take for granted? What do I mean by the collapse of quality and durability? Here are a few examples of many.

1. Appliances that were once built to last 70 years now fail in 7 years (or less). A reader recently shared the story of a GE chest freezer his parents bought 70 years ago--not a fancy freezer, or a top of the line unit, just the standard model everyone bought. That freezer is still running great, 70 years later.

Compare that to the anecdotal accounts we hear all the time of costly new refrigerators failing after a few years. The repairperson is called in, they check it out, and inform the owner it's not worth repairing. So the three-year old fridge is hauled off to the landfill.

Let's say the fridge lasts a grand total of 7 years. That's a 90% decline of durability. Under what sort of bewitchment do we declare this something other than a complete collapse of quality and durability? Think about it: we now have to buy 10 appliances over three generations, where we once could buy one appliance that would last three generations.

2. Off-the-shelf shoes from Costco that now literally fall apart long before they wear out. For the past 30 years, I've bought whatever shoes Costco is stocking as work shoes--for yard work, light construction repairs, etc. Now the Costco shoes literally fall apart before I can even put much wear on them. Please examine the following photos.

First, the soles detached from the toe of the shoes. I re-attached the soles with epoxy glue.



Then the rest of the soles detached.



Note the paucity of adhesive. The manufacturer scrimped on perhaps 25 cents of adhesive and 75 cents of extra labor (if that--how much time does it take to apply more adhesive?), in effect guaranteeing obsolescence / failure. Meanwhile, Costco profits are soaring.



How much would it have cost Costco to demand some actual quality control and pay an extra dollar for a product that wasn't designed and manufactured to fail? Would I have paid an extra dollar for a product that was assembled to last long enough to wear out? Yes. After all, what's the difference between $29 and $30? Not enough to matter, but the difference in quality does matter.

I often mention shadow work, the work we consumers have to do to keep the crapified products and services Corporate America sells us functioning. So Costco profits from selling products designed to fail because I'm supposed to throw these rubbish shoes in the landfill and dutifully go to Costco to buy a replacement pair of planned obsolescence.

But being irksomely frugal, I did the job that Costco's manufacturer was supposed to do, which was apply sufficient adhesive so the sole of the shoe would actually stay attached to the rest of the shoe. In other words, I had to perform this shadow work at my own expense, enabling Costco's profits to swell because I did their work for them.

Like the slowly boiled frog, we've habituated to the collapse of quality and durability, as the cartels and monopolies only sell a dizzying array of planned obsolescence.

3. The app is crap. It takes an endless amount of shadow work to keep all the digital devices and systems we now depend on running, as the devices and software are KPO kludgy planned obsolescence. I laid all this out in recent posts: Is Anyone Else's Life as Stupidly Complicated by Digital "Shadow Work" as Mine Is? (5/22/24)

Digital Service Dumpster Fires and Shadow Work (2/14/24)

If AI Is So Great, Why Is Managing the Digital Realm Eating Us Alive? (3/1/24)

4. The extended warranty admission of the collapse of quality and durability. A friend recounted a telling experience when he and his wife bought a new car, the Japanese brand always listed first in quality and durability. My friend passed on the costly extended warranty and the salesperson guffawed. "So you want to roll the dice?" In other words, buying the highest rated vehicles is now a gamble that nothing breaks down after a year, and so you better pay extra for an extended warranty as you'll probably roll snake-eyes and be handed a repair bill for thousands of dollars.

Every product now has an extended warranty admission of the collapse of quality and durability, a profitable admission that look, we both know this product/service is designed to fail, so pay us more now or pay us more later, but this extended warranty is cheaper than the outrageous repair bill or replacement cost.

How is this not another example of Addiction Capitalism, in which the consumer has a monkey on their back? We can either get the nickel bag of smack (extended warranty) or the dime bag (Limited Edition, Premium, Elite, paying more for the quality that was once standard).

Move Over, Disaster Capitalism--Make Room for Addiction Capitalism (7/1/24)

So how do we fix the collapse of quality and durability? I'm all ears.

The Slow Death of the Single Family Home (30:57 min).

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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Subscribe to my Substack for free

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The Cure for What Ails Us: Market Crash and Mass Defaults

The system has reached extremes that can no longer be rebalanced by policy tweaks, borrowing another couple trillion dollars or inflating asset bubbles.

There are many possible answers to the question "what ails us?" but they all boil down to one reality: the socio-political-economic system has slowly transmogrified into one that benefits the few at the expense of the many by its very structure. There are many moving parts in this transmogrification, hence the multiplicity of answers to "what ails us?"

The net result is extreme asymmetry in wealth and income, a reality I've often explored, most recently in The Seeds of Social Revolution: Extreme Wealth Inequality. As documented in the data-rich history The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century, extreme asymmetries of wealth / income get rebalanced one way or the other, either by policy changes or social upheaval.

Correspondent John recently proposed a third rebalancing mechanism: a crash of The Everything Bubble markets and a mass default by the bottom 90% that erases a major chunk of debt, which as often noted here, is somebody else's asset: default on the debt and the asset is wiped out.

Here are John's comments on this third rebalancing mechanism:

The wealth divide has been my (very) hot button issue for years, overriding all others. I agree with your two options, but you left out door #3.

As for policy change, I think that is fanciful thinking. The top 10% (who think everything is wonderful) will never vote for substantial change, as they'll never vote for anything other than feel-good minor change ...with loopholes, of course.

I think Door #3 will be taken ... which the Deep State will have to allow as they see civil unrest coming ever clearer on the horizon if not. What is Door #3? A Crash of assets, which will flatten the divide. In a credit-based economy, it will be easy to let it all fall. Assets fall everywhere ... including debt (an asset for top 10%) as the bottom 90% just walk away (as there are no debtor prisons). A crash of assets requires no vote ... just The Powers That Be standing back. (Of course, half measures will be taken to show the top 10% we're DOING SOMETHING ... but in reality this only stretches out the collapse).

Thank you, John, for an insightful description of a third option that rebalances extreme wealth inequality by reducing the assets of the top 10% and the liabilities of the bottom 90%. As John noted, this process is easy in a debt-based economy: just reduce the expansion of debt and the asset bubble pops, the economy craters and debtors default en masse, reducing the liabilities side of the ledger.

As John so presciently described, The Powers That Be will oversee this reduction while wringing their hands and promoting their ineffective efforts to stem the collapse as "we're giving it all we got, Captain!"

The asset bubble and debt load are so enormous, tens of trillions of dollars will need to be shaved off both ledgers to rebalance the system. All bubbles pop under their own weight at some point, and bubbles often deflate in a symmetrical fashion, dropping at the same rate as the bubble inflated. This chart of NASDAQ illustrates how bubble symmetry might play out going forward.



Since the top 1% own 50% of all stocks, guess who this drop will hurt the most? The top 90% to 99% own close to 40% of the remaining equities, so the top 10% will absorb roughly 90% of the losses as the stock market bubble pops.



Here is total systemic debt. The federal government debt isn't going away, short of a complete systemic collapse, and the legal pathway of local governments defaulting on their debts is murky, but there are no obstructions to private-sector defaults of all lender-generated debt: commercial real estate mortgages, housing mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, etc. As for student loans, the old phrase you can't get blood from a turnip may describe the futility of trying to collect blood (student loan payments) from turnips (debtors without assets or income.)



We can play the game Japan has played for 35 years, keeping non-performing loans on the books at full (i.e. phantom) value, but look where that artifice got Japan: 35 years of stagnation as everyone knows the "assets" are phantom and so the value can't be discovered by the market. Since accurate valuation is impossible, trust dissipates and the system rots away from within.

As a thought experiment, let's project writing off $50 trillion of debt based on phantom collateral that's evaporated. That is of course a writedown of assets by $50 trillion, too, which would reduce household assets to around $100 trillion--still substantial, just no longer a bubble.



The system has reached extremes that can no longer be rebalanced by policy tweaks, borrowing another couple trillion dollars or inflating asset bubbles. What ails us can be rectified by adjusting (ahem) assets (collateral) and debt to rebalance the extremes that are destabilizing the system from within.

The Slow Death of the Single Family Home (30:57 min).

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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The Seeds of Social Revolution: Extreme Wealth Inequality

The seeds of social revolution have been sown and sprouted. What we harvest is up to us.

If there is any potential catalyst for social upheaval that attracts less attention than extreme wealth inequality, it's mighty obscure. As I noted yesterday, the present extreme of wealth inequality draws an occasional bit of lip service or handwringing, but very little serious focus, despite ample historical foundations for its role in sowing the seeds of social revolutions.

As I tried to explain in yesterday's post, extreme wealth inequality might not be the spark that ignites a revolution, but it is a tectonic shift that destabilizes the social order. For extreme wealth inequality isn't a consequence of fate or sorcery; it is the consequence of policies that favor the few at the expense of the many, a reality that is exceedingly uncomfortable for those benefiting from the asymmetry.

For a rundown of the policies that have exacerbated wealth inequality, consider the following excerpts from Time magazine, September 2020: The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% -- And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure.

"There are some who blame the current plight of working Americans on structural changes in the underlying economy--on automation, and especially on globalization. According to this popular narrative, the lower wages of the past 40 years were the unfortunate but necessary price of keeping American businesses competitive in an increasingly cutthroat global market. But in fact, the $50 trillion transfer of wealth the RAND report documents has occurred entirely within the American economy, not between it and its trading partners. No, this upward redistribution of income, wealth, and power wasn't inevitable; it was a choice--a direct result of the trickle-down policies we chose to implement since 1975.

We chose to cut taxes on billionaires and to deregulate the financial industry. We chose to allow CEOs to manipulate share prices through stock buybacks, and to lavishly reward themselves with the proceeds. We chose to permit giant corporations, through mergers and acquisitions, to accumulate the vast monopoly power necessary to dictate both prices charged and wages paid. We chose to erode the minimum wage and the overtime threshold and the bargaining power of labor. For four decades, we chose to elect political leaders who put the material interests of the rich and powerful above those of the American people."

In other words, extreme wealth inequality is not the result of economic forces outside our control; it's the result of our policy responses to changing social, political and economic conditions. While those benefiting from the policies attribute the asymmetric distribution of the economy's gains to "forces outside our control" such as globalization and automation, those losing ground sense that this is an excuse for taking advantage of the situation, to the detriment of the national interest.

We can best understand extreme wealth inequality as the destabilizing result of one set of competing economic interests gaining dominance over other economic interests: broadly speaking, the balance between labor and capital has collapsed in favor of capital. To take one example, consider the minimum wage, which did not kept up with inflation for decades as a policy decision.

The different interests within each sector can also destabilize into asymmetric distributions. For example, within the broad category of capital, there are many competing interests: industrial capital, financial capital, land-based capital, domestic and global interests, and so on. Within labor, there are blue-collar and white collar interests, and gradations of skills, regional interests, and so on.

Broadly speaking, globalization and financialization greatly increased the share of some interests at the expense of others.

The social boundaries of what's acceptable and unacceptable change, enabling or restricting financial policies. For example, in the postwar boom of the 1950s, corporate CEOs earned multiples of their average employee that by today's standards were ludicrously low, as present-day CEOs routinely take home compensation (including stock options) that are in the tens of millions of dollars annually.

In the broad sweep of history, extreme asymmetries in the distribution of the economy's output are rebalanced one way or the other, if not with policy changes than by the overthrow of the status quo. The book The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century breaks down the various pieces of this complex puzzle.

The history and data are too varied to be easily summarized, but we can start with humanity's innate sense of fairness in social organizations: we sense when our contributions are getting short shrift while others are grabbing shares that are not commensurate with their contributions--despite their claims to "earning" their outsized shares.

Some write this off as envy, and to be sure envy is an innate human response, but fairness and envy are two different things. If someone strips us of power that we once held to benefit their own accumulation of wealth, our sense that this is unfair is not envy.

We seem to be approaching the point where a rebalancing of extreme asymmetries is at hand, and so we have to choose between policy changes and social upheaval. Those benefiting from the current asymmetrical distribution naturally feel that all is right with the world, while those whose purchasing power and political power have been stripmined feel that regaining what was taken from them is only fair.

Here's the data on our asymmetric distribution of wealth again. You can skip this if you've already seen the charts.

The RAND study Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018 concluded that capital siphoned $50 trillion from labor from 1975 to 2018.

Using data from the Federal Reserve's FRED database (series A4102E1A156NBEA), correspondent Alain M. calculated the actual sum for the period 1970 to 2022 (2022 being the most recent data available) was a staggering $149 trillion: his spreadsheet is available here as a PDF: Employees Share of Gross Domestic Income 1970-2022.

If wage earners' share of Gross Domestic Income had remained at 51% instead of declining to 43%, wage earners would have received an additional $149 trillion over those 52 years.



As GDP and household wealth have soared, he bottom 50% of American households' share of the nation's financial wealth has declined.



The top 0.01%'s wealth soared far above inflation.



The ownership of stocks in concentrated in the top 10% households, who own 90% of this asset class.



Housing prices have risen sharply, becoming unaffordable for the majority of households. Those who bought homes long ago in desirable areas have reaped enormous gains, a generational / class / regional asymmetry.



The seeds of social revolution have been sown and sprouted. What we harvest is up to us.

The Slow Death of the Single Family Home (30:57 min).

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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The Elephant in the Room--No, the Other Elephant

No one is going to finger extreme wealth inequality as the proximate cause of what's going down in the next decade, but that doesn't mean it isn't the tectonic cause.

Ah, yes, the elephant in the room, a problem that's 1) big and obvious and 2) can't be solved with the usual painless policy tweaks, so we act as if it's not there. Denial and delusion are the preferred "solution" because they work just fine until the elephant starts rampaging, at which point we blubber "no one could see it coming."

Yes, the elephant in the room, what everyone should be focusing on instead of ignoring it. In the current zeitgeist, the room is so jam-packed with elephants, there's hardly any room left for those ignoring the elephantine crush.

For the elephant in the room is also shorthand for YICBIC (pronounced Yick-Bik): yes it's clickbait, but it's important clickbait, so click here and I'll enlighten you about the really really big problem no one else dares address, the problem that's going to disrupt all our nice little plans to continue getting richer everyday, in every way.

So shift your gaze from the herd of elephants in the room to the other elephant, the one that's truly ignored: extreme wealth inequality. This elephant gets an occasional pat on the rear end, more or less equal to the heartbreak of psoriasis or the odds of a Carrington Event frying every digital device on the planet.

So what if wealth inequality now exceeds the peak of 1928-29, just before that decade-long spot of bother, The Great Depression?. That was mere coincidence. The cause wasn't extreme wealth inequality, it was a Fed policy error, blah blah blah.

The reason why it's so easy to ignore extreme wealth inequality (EWI) is that we don't experience EWI as a thing, we experience a decline in our standard of living as wealth is siphoned up into the top 10%. We sense we're falling behind, that our situation is increasingly precarious, and the source of this decline seems to be inflation--a decline in the purchasing power of our earnings as prices soar--and global competition from low-cost labor.

Yes, these are factors, but the real driver of extreme wealth inequality is hard to pin down because it works its magic behind the difficult-to-understand convolutions of finance: financialization, which has morphed in the past 15 years into a supercharged hyper-financialization in which capital has risen to dominate the entire economy and the cultural zeitgeist. Everything is now subservient to capital increasing its dominance.

We all understand inflation, soaring prices and rising asset valuations, but understanding the financial plumbing that generates these consequences is difficult, and it's made more difficult by purposefully misleading fictions designed to obscure, mis-direct or explain away the actual mechanisms of financialization.

For example, the Social Security Trust Fund, a fictitious facade designed to obscure the reality that Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are pay-as-you-go programs, funded by tax revenues and borrowed money (i.e. federal deficit spending).

If we ask cui bono, to whose benefit?, the answer is obvious: the top 10% who have experienced an unprecedented expansion of their private wealth as financialization bled earnings and diverted the economy's gains into the incomes and assets concentrated in the top 10%.

Yes, the very same 10% which sits atop every sector in the entire economy, from finance to the media. If we strip away the cultural / political differences in the top 10%--all the hot-button elephants in the room they're noisily pointing out to the rest of us--we find a foundation of unanimity / consensus that crosses all cultural-political divides: our wealth should continue increasing because we're so smart / valuable / worthy, and there is no reason for us to sacrifice our wealth to rebalance extreme wealth inequality.

The top 10% is united by their belief that their rocket-launched wealth is earned and deserved, and the "solution" to extreme wealth inequality is to toss a few crumbs at the 90% who have been bled dry / left behind: a handful of subsidized "affordable housing" units, a tax cut of which 95% of the gains goes to the top 10%, and so on: feel-good virtue-signaling that changes nothing in the financial system that generates extreme wealth inequality.

So the "solution" is to leave the engine of extreme wealth inequality running, and pat the rear end of the elephant in the room: you can extricate yourself from the quicksand of precarity and a declining standard of living by becoming an influencer, or day-trader of zero-day-expiration options--the sky's the limit, baby.

In other words: America is a classless society, anyone can get rich if they work really hard and they play to win in the financialization casino. This illusion of classlessness neatly obscures the reality that virtually all the wealth generated by the economy has flowed to those who bought assets before the Everything Bubble sent asset valuations and finance-related earnings into low Earth orbit.

The employee making $13 an hour in 2010 might make $17 or $18 an hour now, maybe just enough to keep up with the 46% inflation since 2010, or maybe not. Meanwhile, stocks have gone up ten-fold, and housing has risen 2.5-fold. So who fell behind and who got ahead, the wage-earner or the owner of assets?

(I maintain a spreadsheet of my earnings adjusted for official inflation and purchasing power--what an hour's wage could buy in the real world--going back to 1970--and by this measure, I have never earned more in terms of purchasing power than I did in 1976 at the age of 23. Please see the chart below of how wages peaked in the 1970s.)

The ceaselessly repeated cliche is that the system doesn't generate winners and losers, while the reality is the system generates winners and losers by its very design. Free admission to the casino isn't actually the same as taking advantage of the games being rigged.

Longtime readers are probably tired of these charts, because they dismantle all the self-serving rah-rah and distractions spewed by the top 10%. The RAND study Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018 concluded that capital skimmed $50 trillion from labor from 1975 to 2018.

Using data from the Federal Reserve's FRED database (series A4102E1A156NBEA), correspondent Alain M. calculated the actual sum for the period 1970 to 2022 (2022 being the most recent data available) was a staggering $149 trillion: his spreadsheet is available here as a PDF: Employees Share of Gross Domestic Income 1970-2022.

If wage earners' share of Gross Domestic Income had remained at 51% instead of declining to 43%, wage earners would have received an additional $149 trillion over those 52 years. That's roughly $3 trillion a year, which works out to an additional $22,000 annually for America's 134 million full-time workers or an additional $18,000 annually for the nation's entire work force (full-time, part-time, self-employed, gig workers) of 163 million.

No wonder wage-earners sense their standard of living has been falling for decades: it has been falling doe decades, despite all the cheerleading about what a great economy we have. Yes, but great for who?



The bottom 50% of American households didn't get a 10-bagger; their share of the nation's financial wealth actually fell. We got your great economy right here, big fella:



The top 0.01% have had a considerably different experience as their wealth soared far above inflation. These are the folks flustered by the agony of choosing which foreign enclave they're going to retire to; oh heck, just buy a villa in each one:



It's a classless society, at least looking down from the top. Those looking up have a different perspective:



What bubble? We don't see any bubble. No elephants, no bubbles, just blue sky ahead:



Look, I've gained ground along with everyone else who bought assets long ago, for the same reason: asset appreciation scooped up all the gains. It wasn't my smarts, or my education (come on, a degree in philosophy?) or all my hard work (oh, please--all the truly hard work is paid poorly) or anything other than dumb luck.

In my view, there should be zero taxes on all earnings up to the median wage of $60,000 annually--no Social Security taxes, nothing--and progressively steeper taxes on all income / capital gains from capital/finance above some modest amount, say half of the median wage ($30,000 annually), along with a transaction tax for every financial trade submitted, whether it executes or not. Shifting the tax burden from labor to capital/finance would at least start the overdue rebalancing.

So here we are, smugly ignoring the the extreme wealth inequality elephant in the room, hurrying to explain it away with a pat on its rear end. Yes, the economy changed, and by golly, we're the winners, but it's not the result of the game being rigged to our favor; it's globalization, better education, we worked hard. Yes, now it all makes sense: we're the winners as the natural order of things.

No one is going to finger extreme wealth inequality as the proximate cause of what's going down in the next decade, but that doesn't mean it isn't the tectonic cause. While we're glorying in the wonders exposed by the sea strangely receding from the beach, we're blind to the tsunami racing toward us. We don't call extreme wealth inequality the cause, but that's the temblor that set the tsunami in motion.

One last thought to those patting the rear end of the extreme wealth inequality elephant on the way out the door to collect their winnings: making the rich even richer with more tax breaks, more financialization, more rigged-casino winnings and continuing to inflate the Everything Bubble (AI!) isn't going to fix what's broken; it's going to hasten the breakdown of the entire status quo, which has put all its chips on capital / finance.

It's a pretty simple choice: either radically rebalance the economy now or hang on to your beach chair when the wave washes it all away.

The Slow Death of the Single Family Home (30:57 min).

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

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