So by all means, concentrate on the inexorable rise of stocks, cryptos and housing as “proof” of America’s soaring “wealth” while the social order unwinds below our feet.
It is a supremely terrible irony that while the business media ceaselessly promotes America’s skyrocketing financial “wealth,” the nation’s true wealth– its social order— is fast unraveling. While we’re motivated to cheer billionaires blowing a small sliver of their wealth on space tourist and $500 million luxury yachts as proof of “success,” our media and leadership (ahem) proclaims to being mystified by The Fantastic Resignation, understood here on Of Two Minds as The ‘Take This Task and Shove It’ Economic crisis, and other unmistakable indications of unraveling.
(This era’s anthem should be Johnny Paycheck’s ageless classic, Take This Task And Shove It 2:31).
In my analysis, the social order is consisted of all the intangible social aspects which serve to bind a nation’s people beyond their legal rights. The social order includes (however is not restricted to) social (upward) mobility– the ladder to advancing one’s agency (control of one’s life) and chances for enhanced security and well-being.
The social order likewise includes civic virtue, the willingness to share the sacrifices of one’s fellow citizens for the typical excellent in proportion to one’s wealth and power, and equivalent treatment before the law, not simply as an abstraction however in the real world of the judicial system.
The social order likewise includes the moral authenticity of the governance system: does the state (government) serve the citizenry, or is it the other way around?
Last but not least, the social order manifests social cohesion, which is the capacity for shared worths and function and common ground, all of which produce a concern for the well-being of other residents and a willingness to concentrate on shared interests.
America has actually lost all of these aspects, as self-interest is the only worth, purpose and objective that guides behavior, beginning at the top: how do political leaders get fortunes in excess of $100 million (cough, Pelosi, cough)? Through public service!.?.!?(Do not bust a gut laughing …) How do billionaires acquire additional wealth so easily (cough, Federal Reserve, cough)?
The rot begins at the top and then seeps down into every fiber of the country’s financial, social and political orders. As noted here previously, America is now an ethical cesspool, and “democracy” is merely the public-relations cover for a neofeudal autocracy.
Behind every PR narrative lies the corruption of self-interest. How is it that day-traders now rabidly follow Pelosi’s stock portfolio, and super-wealthy Federal Reserve “leaders” front-run the Fed’s policies to additional improve themselves while claiming the mantle of “public service”?
How does a child molester like Jeffrey Epstein wind up amusing Costs Clinton, Bill Gates, the Harvard elite, and a genuine who’s who of America’s rich and effective gamers?
The proof of irreversible social decay is all over: road rage is now common in aircraft and other social settings, common ground has disappeared, and the willingness or even the capability to identify common interests has actually been crushed by the supremacy of self-interest.
“Reform” is another expert joke. Real reform might strike the wealth and power of our self-interested elites, so what we have rather is simulacra of reform which just include extra friction to a system choking on administrative sand in the gears.
Homeless encampments are now just another accepted reflection of “soaring wealth and success” in America, along with the decreasing prospects and wealth of the bottom 80%. If you fail to repeat the celebration line with enough interest, Big Tech will send you to the Digital Gulag.
The more that political leaders, Fed governors, experts and billionaires bleat that they truly, actually appreciate commoners, the greater the gulf between the truth of their self-interest and their laughably transparent PR. As the apologists, toadies, lackeys, factotums and apparatchiks frantically gush rah-rah PR about the “recovery” (you mean we’re all addicts and are now “recuperating”?), the workforce is lastly awakening to the vacuum of the PR and the decay of America’s social order: the benefits of the economy have streamed to two classes, the Financial Aristocracy, the leading 0.1% who now own more wealth than the bottom 80% of American homes, and speculators, from the front-running fraudsters on Wall Street to the daytraders betting their Pelosi portfolios.
So by all means, focus on the inexorable rise of stocks, cryptos and real estate as “evidence” of America’s skyrocketing “wealth” while the social order deciphers beneath our feet. Self-interest never ever had it so great.
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