Ed,
Yes, it is indeed becoming very serious. But I can't see how it can be
otherwise, given the present frame of reference of orthodox economists --
and the politicians who rely on them for their ideas.
Apart from the necessary supply of increasingly cheap fossils fuels, the
industrial revolution (that is when the idea of "economic growth" emerged
and GDP has been worshipped) depended foremost on the mass production of
what were originally hand-made luxury items enjoyed by the land-owning rich
of the agricultural era. Despite what Marx and Engles said about the
increasing impoverishment of the factory workers they were, in fact,
prospering all the way through the 19th century and most of the 20th. As
each new consumer product, hitherto expensive (cotton clothing, porcelain
pots, curtains for the windows, bicycles, etc) became cheaper in successive
swathes then, with hard saving at each stage -- the professional
middle-class (see Samuel Pepys diaries), then the middle-class, then the
working class -- became a cornucopia flowing downwards, and a whole
population working hard and aspiring upwards. (The life of the agricultural
peasant was often very grim with occasional years of starvation but he
didn't have to work anywhere near as hard as the industrial worker except
at seed-times and harvesting. In England he had 50 or 60 Saints' Days a
year for jollifications and, during the worst times at the height of the
feudal state he could take two or three months off as a soldier fighting
for his local lord of the manor without affecting the basic economy.)
There have been no new consumer products since about 1980 -- only improved
versions, or make-overs or embellishments. And what "new" products there
are supposed to be come in very very quickly from huge mass production
factories somewhere in the world. The whole economic growth machine has
broken down. It has only been maintained since WWII by increasing inflation
and, since the 1980s, by hugely increasing available credit (allowed by
governments even though the banks were breaking every traditional rule in
the book)..
There are actually two problems to be solved. One is inflation and the
other is a substitution of something else for the status hitherto given by
what consumer goods one is able to buy (at the expense of destroying the
community which is the only true bestower of personal status).
The problem of inflation could be solved easily -- in theory -- but the
status one will require a major re-adjustment of the way we live and work.
A tall order? Maybe, but a major re-adjustment from agriculture to
industry took place relatively recently in man's history, and there's no
reason in principle why another new re-adjustment shouldn't occur. But the
major new (energy) industry that will be required as a preliminary has yet
to emerge and that will be the crux of it as the existing sources of energy
become increasingly expensive.
I'm in little doubt myself that a major biological energy system will
develop in future years and that we will see the re-emergence of smaller,
more satifying communities again. But this will be a long time hence and
this old man has become very philosophical in his declining years -- senile
ones, too, very possibly.
Keith
At 10:07 30/09/2010 -0400, you wrote:
From yesterday's Washington Post.
Ed
----------
As 44 million Americans live in poverty, a crisis grows<?xml:namespace
prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
By
<http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/katrina+vanden+heuvel/>Katrina
vanden Heuvel
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
It's clear that the Great Recession battered those on the bottom most
heavily, adding 6 million people to the ranks of the officially poor,
defined as just $22,000 in annual income for a family of four. Forty-four
million Americans -- one in seven citizens -- are now
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/16/AR2010091602698.html>living
below the poverty line, more than at any time since the Census Bureau
began tracking poverty 51 years ago. Shamefully, that figure includes one
in five children,
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-glover-blackwell/poverty-in-black-white-an_b_721124.html>more
than one in four African Americans or Latinos, and over 51 percent of
female-headed families with children under 6.
These numbers are bad enough. But dig deeper -- as <?xml:namespace prefix
= st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Georgetown
University law professor Peter Edelman has been doing for nearly 50 years
in his battle against poverty -- and the story told by these figures is
even more staggering.
Edelman points out that 19 million people are now living in "extreme
poverty," which is under 50 percent of the poverty line, or $11,000 for a
family of four. "That means over 43 percent of the poor are extremely
poor," said Edelman, who served as an aide to Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.)
and in the Clinton administration before resigning in protest over welfare
reform that shredded the safety net. "That's over 6 percent of the
population, and that figure has just been climbing up and up."
Edelman says that the number of people living at less than two times the
poverty line ($44,000 for a family of four) is equally significant.
"Data shows that's really the line between whether or not you can pay your
bills," said Edelman. "That has reached 100,411,000 people. That's 33
percent of the country. That's the totality of the problem -- whether you
call it poverty or not."
For too long we have accepted the narrative -- promoted by well-funded
conservative think tanks -- that claims people who are struggling are to
blame for their troubles, and at the same time we don't have effective
anti-poverty policies. So tackling the problem is seen as wasteful.
"So many people think it's their own fault," said Edelman. "They don't see
the structural problem in our economy."
But with so many in poverty, that narrative has become harder to sustain
during the Great Recession, and so renewed work is being done to take on
poverty and its structural underpinnings.
[If you want to read more, go to:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/28/AR2010092802356.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/28/AR2010092802356.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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