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| But chaps, I have cake waiting for me back at the palace! |
Remember when it was possible to live and raise a family on one income? It was true for most of the 20th century, and it was recognized as part of a functioning society.
Then we got the 'greed is good' decade and politicians in collusion with the big end of town, bent over backwards to transfer obscene amounts of wealth to the already wealthy. This was in addition to the enormous gains in worker productivity starting in the seventies, that also 'mysteriously' failed to benefit workers and instead saw them working longer hours for less.
But it's ok though, because the economists, those dismal technocrats, explained that the wealth was going to start 'trickling down'. Remember that shit? And shit it was, because you certainly don't hear that now, now that it's served its purpose. It's also obvious that the uber-wealthy are wearing the financial equivalent of Adult Depends when it comes to trickling down their wealth or even paying their fair share of taxes - another something those esteemed experts in the ways of the economy apparently failed to foresee. Or perhaps they did.
So it's been year after year of austerity for the poor and middle classes, services cut or deliberately underfunded with a view to stealth privatization, and the repeated message that we all need to 'tighten our belts'. Meanwhile the corporates and political elites are celebrating record profits and deploying well-paid mouthpieces in the media to defend and normalize the situation.
To be sure recent crises have had their impact of course, but like receding waters they have served to expose economic and political underpinnings perhaps hard to discern previously. And these foundations look rotten and in need of replacement.
