Blogorrhoea
riffs further on a subject
D-Squared Digest wrote about yesterday, of what constitutes a decent living:
Compelling, eh? Maybe this is why that rhetorical champion of neo-classical economics, the
US ruling class, has effectively gutted ‘The American Dream’ upon which it so much depends
to legitimate itself. It has produced a society in which upward mobility has become all but
impossible (certainly, that scerotic ol’ Europe they’re always slandering does far better on
this index, as, for the moment, does Australia). And maybe this is why the American ‘consoomer’
(like her Australian counterpart) has been forced into unprecedented levels of debt. In the
‘west’, stuff like internet connection, mobile phones, suits, cars, parking money, fast food,
cosmetics and child-minding are, for many, no longer luxuries – their absence condemns one to
marginalisation, alienation, unemployability, ignorance, loneliness, social and democratic
irrelevance and economic stasis. When the credit bubble gives its last pop, pundits will nervously
monitor their finance-sector equities and berate their societies for their wanton expenditure.
The suddenly huge underclass, effectively and traumatically ejected from society, will be noticed
only in so far as they will be blamed, not only for their own suffering, but also for the inconvenience
of scarlett ledgers on Wall Street. We’ve managed to get away with treating the billions in the
periphery like this for a long time. Wonder how easy it’ll be to ignore once we’ve imported this
social cancer into our own comfy polities …