The Misanthropic Reality Behind Degrowth Ideology – The Bellows
The Washington Post has speculated that this decline in the birth rate portends the waning of the American Dream. Americans are understandably troubled by this news the rise of populist politicians in recent years on both the right and the left can largely be explained as a reaction to an increasing sense of despair about the future, and the mortal effects it is having upon the country.
None of this should be particularly surprising. What might be more troubling, however, is the apparent complicity of most of our political and corporate elites with both economic and demographic decline. In fact, these phenomena can arguably be traced back to the decisions made by those same elites. If that is the case, then our national and even global leaders have criminally shirked their ethical obligations to the communities under their charge.
In the 1980s and 1990s, financial deregulation and the formation of the World Trade Organization allowed major American manufacturers to move production to other countries (most notably China), while domestic companies increasingly underwent a process of financialization. Consequently, the middle and lower classes were robbed of stable employment opportunities and forced en masse into the service sector and gig economy, where their wages stagnated, while the upper-middle class of managers and shareholders were enriched at an accelerated rate. Profits famously soared for the super wealthy.
Hmmm.