After the “end” of the Great Recession (many would disagree
with the idea that it has ended for anyone except the EXTREMELY well off),
people have noticed the stock market climbing ever higher.
Large
corporations, especially those in the financial sector, have become better-off,
bigger, and ultimately – in the words of Attorney General Eric Holder – that
banks are not only Too-Big-To-Fail, but also Too-Big-To-Jail. Quarterly earnings are up, the housing market
is supposedly rebounding, and the middle class is regaining its…strength?
Not so
much. In fact, looking at the
unemployment rate – no, looking at the labor force participation rate which has
of February 2013 is 63.5% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (read:
36.5% unemployment including those who’ve dropped out of the workforce), it’s
kind of difficult to imagine that the middle class is still doing well. Especially considering that, according to NBC
News, roughly 15% of Americans are on Food Stamps and need supplemental aid to
even feed themselves, it’s absurd to believe that this “recovery” has
accomplished anything besides restoring the financial sector to their former
“glory” just before the beginning of the Great Recession. For everyone else, recessionary conditions
drag on.
And
that’s what worries me. The U.S. economy
is dependent more than ever on a growing financial sector, one whose
fundamental flaws have not changed since before the financial collapse. There is still little to no real regulation
in place, rating agencies have yet to regain their credibility, and commercial
and investment banks are accounting for more and more of U.S. GDP.
To put
it briefly, the same system – with the same incentives for corruption and poor
decision making for short-term profits – remains.
Except
it got bigger.
So now
we have all of our metaphorical eggs in the same severely damaged basket. Social mobility – the foundation of the
American dream – has been virtually wiped out and income inequality in the U.S.
has soared. Furthermore, the majority of
Americans no longer trust their own government, as the single digit approval
ratings of congress very blatantly show.
This
raises a very disturbing, very necessary question. When the majority of American citizens no
longer see the government as a legitimate political body of the U.S. state,
what happens?
There
was the Occupy movement.
There
was the Tea Party movement (before they got hijacked), but there hasn’t been a
widespread, unified stand by the American people as a whole.
Is it
because they’re too busy bickering about which of the two corrupted political
parties is less absurd while Rome burns?
Is it
because there hasn’t been enough of a
shock to the average American to spur the public to action?
Is it
out of complacency? Is it out of fear?
When a
person goes bankrupt and they can no longer pay their mortgage, their house is
repossessed by the bank who owns the mortgage.
When a
corporation goes bankrupt, it is often placed into conservatorship, where the
government temporarily takes control of the business and corporate bondholders
become the new shareholders.
Now.
When a
small portion of the U.S. population and economy accounts for a wide majority
of concentrated political and financial power, and the U.S. government has
sanctioned this through policy (deregulation of the riskiest and biggest
portion of the economy), constitutional interpretation (read: Citizens United),
and through testimony (as Eric Holder obviously shows), what will the American
people, the source of legitimacy of the U.S. government, do when its government
has become derelict and corrupt?
Will we
protest and participate in Civil Disobedience?
Will we riot? Will we hold
national conventions?
Or will we
cower? Will we wait for change to
produce itself without our effort? Will
we sip our chai tea lattes and watch quietly as our country destroys itself?
These are
questions that must be asked.
Gandhi once said
we must “be the change we wish to see in the world,” …but I do love a good chai latte. (>^_^)>#
Sources:
Eric Holder: “Banks too big to prosecute”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3zwhp5-jXA
Labor Force Participation Rate (Bureau of Labor Statistics) http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
Wealth Inequality in America
(Sorry, I couldn’t find the sources for the video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTj9AcwkaKM
