Tinder and Brush

I see weakness nearly everywhere. All the tinder and brush waiting for a match.

I see workers who don’t share in their increase in productivity, and so their wages fall behind. And realize (too late for many) that debt to make up the difference is not a workable solution.

Point to a sector of the American economy that is doing well. All you will likely be able to point out are fossil fuels, agribusiness/food/drink, insurance, pharmaceuticals, chronic sick “care,” Wall Street finance, mining, waste “management,” software, computer systems design, accounting and tax preparation, “security,” and companies that have been granted (often generous) government contracts. A few dots in retail and services do well, but they stand out because they are the exceptions. How many of the above are what we can consider bedrock foundations of a sound economy (let alone ecology)? And governments? They are consumers, so they hardly count.

Even as the top corporations sit on mounds of cash, they continue to fire and downsize pay levels. Why do they do the things that are damaging long-term? Because they are owned by speculators and mutual funds and institutional investors from around the world who demand constant high projections of next quarter’s profits so that the stock price will go up. Delusionary, and unsustainable past anything but the short term, as it requires cuts in labor and cuts in the pay to that labor.

There is weakness. America needs to rejuvenate itself, to work on itself. It needs to address the things wrong, it needs to quit enfeebling its voice.

Because we have to really do the hard work. If we don’t, we are at best merely putting off a Depression for a while.

We have to do something about all this tinder and brush. We have made ourselves far too vulnerable to the slightest trigger. Let’s start working on foundations, to take away some of that vulnerability. The very process will start in motion the reversal, which can gain in speed over time as we build on the right things, just as our problems have gained in speed as we built on the wrong things.