But then in 2008, 25 years of rising consumer debt based on stagnant real wages reached its predictable limits. As workers' incomes proved insufficient to service bloated debt obligations, their defaults - together with those of financial firms that had speculated in consumers' debts - contributed to the 2008 crash. They also contribute to the subsequent "recovery" that has bypassed most Americans.
Capitalism's recovery now proceeds like another speeding train headed toward contradiction and catastrophe. Capitalists continue to profit from stagnant wages (enabled by the continued excess supplies of labor power relative to demand) coupled with rising labor productivity. Yet they also confront weak and weakening market demands that cannot absorb what capitalist production capacities require for profitability. Mainstream ideology drives the refusal to see capitalism and its contradictions as central to today's economic dilemmas. The major "recovery" strategies reproduce the same capitalism with its contradiction. full: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34095-capitalism-not-china-is-to-blame-for-the-current-global-economic-decline _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
