T. Shepherd
January 22, 2002
"Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another."
Plato, The Republic
The economic boom on the nineties is officially dead and buried and it is high time we stop searching for roses to grow from its grave. For 2002 will bring nothing but thorns in the hands of the working class. If we accept the often overly optimistic view of America's economists, the boom, having begun in March of 1991, lasted a whole ten years, until March of 2001. And what a boom it was! The last decade witnessed some of the highest peaks in international capitalist history, with America at the forefront, pushing ahead in the name of "progress" - and profit. Indeed, according to the World Wealth report, the number of millionaires in the U.S. alone rose from 1,800,000 in 1997, to 2,540,000 in 2000. Day in and day out, stocks rose and Clinton was glorified for "stabilizing the economy." And yet, unemployment is at its highest in the last 6 years, currently at 5.8 and steadily rising. (It is important to remember that anyone who pushes a lawn mower is considered "employed".)
Since last year, over two million workers have lost their jobs faster than you can shout "patriotism."Federal bankruptcy has skyrocketed to an all time high in 2001, up an entire 14 percent in a single year alone, with an estimated 1.4 million individuals, in unison with 38,000 businesses pleading bankruptcy. So what is going on? Simple. The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. And all the flag buying in the world won't save us now.
American media is pointing its fingers towards September 11th, and the tragic events that occurred in New York that day as a scapegoat for this recession. It doesn't take a degree in economics to understand that that claim is simply untenable. No two buildings can ever stand as the focal point of world economics. The problem is deeper and inherent in the system.
The problem is the capitalist system itself. Our system thrives off of booms and slumps. It needs to constantly re-invent itself, and revolutionize the means of its production, to keep thrusting forward. The industrial revolution, for example, propelled the economy. In the nineties it was the sudden upsurge in computers and the Internet that boosted it forward. The NEP (new economic paradigm), as our recent boom was called, was supposed to last indefinitely, for those crafty capitalists had allegedly found the way around of the fatal flaw which are part and parcel of the system - the Internet had solved everything. Wrong!
The fact of the matter is, as long as this decaying system of profit-driven global trade exists, so will the peaks and downfalls of the global economy. The fact of the matter is, as long as capitalism continues internationally, so will poverty, starvation and homelessness. And as the polarization of wealth deepens, it is the hardworking people of America that feel the affects. For it is our jobs that we're losing. It's our hours that are becoming longer, and our paychecks that are becoming smaller. The question that remains is how long will this recession last, and how deep will it plunge? As always, the Wall Street Journal types are hopeful, and all but lie to the masses with phrases like "level out." Leveling out, translates to those living from paycheck to paycheck, as a very serious catastrophe. Leveling out, in essence, means leveling out the working class - down to the poverty line.