{"id":17334,"date":"2014-06-04T09:20:15","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T13:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=17334"},"modified":"2014-06-04T09:23:24","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T13:23:24","slug":"why-dont-the-unemployed-get-off-their-couches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/06\/04\/why-dont-the-unemployed-get-off-their-couches\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Don\u2019t the Unemployed Get Off Their Couches?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Naked Capitalism<\/em> has the article Why Don\u2019t the Unemployed Get Off Their Couches?<\/a> After you read the answer to this question, you come to the following bottom line:<\/p>\n

The striking trend lines of social and economic disparity that have developed over the last 50 years are clearly no accident; nor have disemboweled unions, a deindustrialized America, wages heading for the basement (with profits still on the rise), and the widest gap between rich and poor since the slavery era been the work of the invisible hand. It seems far more likely that a remarkably small but powerful crew wanted it that way, knowing that a nation of fast food workers isn\u2019t heading for the barricades any time soon. Think of it all as a kind of \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d played out over many years. A super-wealthy few have succeeded in defeating all of their rivals \u2014 unions, regulators, the media, honest politicians, environmentalists \u2014 and now are free to do as they wish.<\/p>\n

What most likely lies ahead is not a series of satisfying American-style solutions to the economic problems of the 99%, but a boiling frog\u2019s journey into a form of twenty-first-century feudalism in which a wealthy and powerful few live well off the labors of a vast mass of the working poor. Once upon a time, the original 99% percent, the serfs, worked for whatever their feudal lords allowed them to have. Now, Walmart \u201cassociates\u201d do the same. Then, a few artisans lived slightly better, an economic step or two up the feudal ladder. Now, a technocratic class of programmers, teachers, and engineers with shrinking possibilities for upward mobility function similarly amid the declining middle class. Absent a change in America beyond my ability to imagine, that\u2019s likely to be my future \u2014 and yours.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the questions answered in the article is:<\/p>\n

6) Shouldn\u2019t we cut public assistance and force people into the job market?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cutting public assistance may actually be a way to change the fact, mentioned above in the bottom line, that “a nation of fast food workers isn\u2019t heading for the barricades any time soon.” Somewhere there must be a limit to what the bottom 99% will peacefully suffer.\u00a0 The oligarchs of this country seem bound and determined to find out what that limit is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Naked Capitalism has the article Why Don\u2019t the Unemployed Get Off Their Couches? After you read the answer to this question, you come to the following bottom line: The striking trend lines of social and economic disparity that have developed over the last 50 years are clearly no accident; nor have disemboweled unions, a deindustrialized […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17334"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17338,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17334\/revisions\/17338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}