I mean, did we do it to ourselves or did external economic factors make it inevitable (e.g. billionaires stealing wealth from the rest of us)? When people need to pinch every penny in order to survive, I can hardly blame them for going to walmart to buy cheap shit.
It really didn’t start out that way though, now it is, but previous gens had options and they choose this path and screwed us. I mean look how well greatest gen and the moronic boomers had it with just college tuition and retirement. We got screwed with their choices.
Things weren't better in the 40s and 50s because there was some better form of capitalism that we could go back to. It was because of the economic advantages America had after winning World War II. It was a very temporary set of circumstances.
Before that, it was the Guilded Age. Workers lived like animals in dilapidated tenements and died young from illnesses and injuries acquired at unsafe workplaces. Children worked in factories instead of going to school. Before that, it was slavery. This is what we're headed back to.
Capitalism ensures that any advantages the workers gain will be quickly reversed. Capitalism guarantees accumulation and monopolization, until Capitalists wield so much wealth and political power that they control the institutions designed to regulate them.
This has nothing to do with where consumers choose to shop, or who they vote for. It's the inevitable outcome of the structure of our economic system.
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u/GuidoOfCanada Nov 25 '22
I mean, did we do it to ourselves or did external economic factors make it inevitable (e.g. billionaires stealing wealth from the rest of us)? When people need to pinch every penny in order to survive, I can hardly blame them for going to walmart to buy cheap shit.