Back in the day that would be the late 1940’s, there was a strong belief in the US that if the working poor were given any extra money they would run out and spend it getting drunk and not return to work. In order to keep society moving and grease the wheels Capitalism the working poor needed to remain the working poor. Then after the last “Great Depression” they, that would be the Capitalists like Henry Ford, discovered consumerism. Give the working poor more money, convince them that they had to spend that money on countless items they don’t need, and the economy would take off. Whole new classes of companies would explode onto the scene that that wealthy 10% would get wealthier, though never grow beyond the 10%. You would build a middle class willing to hock their pajamas for the next new thing. Cars, televisions, fashions changing with the season, lawn gnomes, Captain Midnight Decoder Rings, and a gazillion other wonderful things that we consumers just got to have put a bullet through the forehead of Capitalism and left all those rich Capitalists with their capital behind. The US embraced Consumerism, and became the first real Consumer society and enjoyed the endless benefits, not to mention the bills, of Consumerism. Somewhere along the line, they introduced unlimited credit making all of us Consumers slaves who, paraphrasing Tennessee Ernie Ford, “…Owe our soul to Master Card.”
By the early 70’s we were a vibrant Consumer nation, though our politicians still lied to our faces and told us we were Capitalists of the Adam Smith Wealth of Nations variety, and damned proud of it, thank you very much, and curse those commie-pinko-Ruskies. Even then, the wheels were threatening to come off the rolling economy of the most vibrant of consumerist nations. Consumerism required relatively high wages, relative in terms of the pre WWII days. Relatively higher wages required relatively lower profits. The enormously wealthy 10% shook there heads and look for an answer to the critical burning question, “How do we take more money out of their pockets (their=consumer) and put it in our pockets (our-capitalist/controllers of capital)?
Japan offered a nice model for that. After WWII, Japan rebuilt their industry and created a plague of cheap, consumer goods with a reputation for shoddy workmanship. (I know most of you don’t remember when made-in-Japan = Crap.) As Japan became successful, they created products that were reputed to be the best in the world, and their own low wage populations demanding to be consumers, were given raises, and the fabled Samurai economy began to service the American consumer. But the idea of taking an item with a perceived high net worth (even it if costs only pennies for the pound) and making it in low wage countries in order to maximize profits was born. They named it globalism.
In all of these countries with extreme low wages, a small middle class like group (call the globalists) emerged as economic prostitutes servicing the Globalist 10%. They have now grown to the point where this globalists out number the US Consumerists, though there may be relatively few of them in any given country. The wealthy 10% controlling capital have switched marketing strategies. Market their just got to have goods and services to globalists and put a bullet through the head of the middle class US cash cow. They are now free to strip the manufacturing industries, the source of the money for the American middle class, and send them to China and other countries with an emerging low wage economy. Continue with an historic trend to destroy unions, whose demands kept wages artificially high (from the capitalist perspective), and add that to the use of bubble economies (dot.com and housing bubbles now burst) used to strip the last of the money/capital from the middle class and you reach today. The US is now well into a trend of wage adjustment as people answer the call of their stomach and work at ever lower and lower wage jobs. In not to long, relatively speaking, the majority of US consumers will become a low wage resource and the cream of consumers will go to work for globalized capital holders (that wealthy 10%) and join the globalist in the new distributed global economy.
In a world where Corporations are international in scope and activities, no single nation, no matter how powerful, can control them. Their economic output dwarfs that of any nation and thereby controls all nations by speaking the language of money. All our closely held freedoms and ideologies become a commodity with no value and zero worth. We have now entered the age of, to quote Janis Joplin, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”
