Monday, December 14, 2020

The looting of the Middle Class

The Pandemic has been particularly useful to the Powers That Be:

This is what the COVID hysteria is all about. Without this, we would all be allowed to know that COVID is a mild respiratory disease that is only dangerous to the very old and the very sick. This is why we are being lied to and locked up:

Amazon: profit up 100%
Walmart: profit up 80%
Target: profit up 80%
Lowe’s: profit up 74%
Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google: stock at record high

Wealth increase in the pandemic for founder/CEOs of
Amazon: $91 billion
Walmart: $38B
Google: $37B
Microsoft: $33B
Facebook: $28B
Nike: $8B
Apple: $8B

Small businesses: collectively lost over $200 billion

We’re witnessing a record wealth transfer

https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1329277596685709315?s=19

(via)

Ten years ago I wrote that the Tea Party is a Marxian response to the looting of the Middle Class:

The deal that Progressives made in the 1930s - the economy would provide a surplus that the government would use to buy social peace - is shattered, as the government finds that it has consumed the entire surplus, and is still hungry for more. The median family is worse off now then they were ten years ago, because they pay more taxes and make about the same. Government at all levels is squeezing the majority of the population at an increasing rate, taking a higher share of National Income, with no end in sight.

Now I'm sure that I could do a better job with the numbers (say, another 15% accuracy), but the trajectory is unmistakable, and is one that Marx clearly understood:

Within the capitalist Progressive State system all methods for raising the social productivity of labour taxes are put into effect at the cost of the individual worker [...] All means for the development of production raising of tax revenue undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become a means of domination and exploitation of the producers; they distort the worker into a fragment of a man, they degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, they destroy the actual content of his labour by turning it into a torment, they alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process [...], they transform his life into working-time, and his wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital The State. [...] It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse.
- Karl Marx, Das Kapital

My changes are highlighted.

The only thing to add is that Donald Trump was a symptom, not a cause.  Accelerating the immiseration of the Proletariat using Covid hysteria will lead to a very clear outcome, historically speaking.  It will come faster with the collapse of legitimacy we are seeing in the Organs of the State.

I would think that a bunch of Marxist Intellectuals would understand this, but maybe they're too busy looting their political opponents to notice.

11 comments:

Old NFO said...

Yep, we're done for...

Borepatch said...

Old NFO, that wasn't the point of my post. Marx laid out a very clear roadmap about what happens in these situations. The Powers That Be all know this because they tool the classes at Harvard, but have forgotten. Maybe they just think it doesn't apply to them. Lord only knows why.

NITZAKHON said...

Between these, and those offshoring for bigger C Suite bonuses even as the workers suffer, I have this to say: "When you are dragged from your oak-paneled offices... we warned you".

MrGarabaldi said...

Hey Borepatch;

The "Powers that be" have to break the middle class, we are the check and balance on the ruling class, the poor derive their sustenance from the government and will do what they are told, but we in the middle class will tell the ruling class to "Stick it". The elitist believe that they know what is best for us by their education and and breeding and if we would only get with the program, we would get to the utopia on the hill, but the middle class is the stick in the wheel, we individually can't do much, but we as a group are quite formable. The elitist want to break us like their hero Stalin did to the Kulaks in the Soviet Union in the 1920's and 1930's.

Divemedic said...

On top of that, FY2020 saw a $4.2 trillion deficit.

Fredrick said...

The Great Reset, brought on by systematic Chinese corruption of our so-called-elites and the most blatant rigged election in our history. This piece lays it out well. Linked within is a short an succinct video from down under, where they, for now, still have some media.
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2020/12/httpswwwskynewscomaudetails_6215927832001.html

Toirdhealbheach Beucail said...

Borepatch, I wrote something similar to this as a thought exercise (coming out tomorrow). Essentially the outline is that I no longer care about politics nearly as much as I care about the economy, because (given where we are) the economy is about to drive all political considerations.

STxAR said...

This is graduate level instruction. I wonder if only auto-didacts are able to understand this. Or older products of the last gasps of education vs. public indoctrination.

I had just finished reading "Eight Bailed Out" when the same place names became news items. Balkanization is upon us. I read a lot about that during the runup to full on war, and our landscape isn't much different now.

Thank you for this, I'll be digging into it.

The Neon Madman said...

I will hesitate though,to call Covid a "mild respiratory disease". A number of people in my family have had it, and my wife is currently in the hospital on oxygen and receiving the plasma antibody treatment for 5 days. It can be quite nasty and dangerous to anyone, with long term aftereffects in some cases, to characterize it as only dangerous to the elderly and infirm is not completely accurate.

Yes, there has been overreaction, panic and hysteria on one side. But there has been an equal amount of blindness, denial and Pollyannism on the other as well. The fallout from this pandemic will be felt for a decade.

jabrwok said...

Madman, have you looked into Ivermectin for your wife? I've heard it's very effective against the WuFlu.

Will said...

More on Ivermectin

https://covid19criticalcare.com/medical-evidence/ivermectin/