I am aware that the West’s best time was essentially at the expense of the rest of the world - but where can one find opportunity and prosperity of those times today? Was this a great anomaly of history? Is it time to hedge your bets on living out the Chinese dream?
Is it time for the West to accept that what our parents experienced will never exist again?
Will the world overall need to accept that the western living standard of that time will never be reached again? (It’s too unsustainable - for the planet, and because superprofits won’t flow as they once did)
What has actually happened that’s caused it to collapse?
It’s not going to happen unless we guillotine all the bourgeoisie who are responsible for taking more and more and more from us every year
Yeah I HIGHLY doubt we’re going back. If the bourgeoise can’t even bear a socdem like Bernie they ain’t letting the poor catch any more breaks.
Well yes, but at the same time, in the case of a lot of western Europe, the socdem policies were on the back of imperialist profits. Is that preferable?
Synthesis: Socdem will permanently thrive in Western Europe, but it’s because burgerland volunteers to be the exploited sweatshop.
No but I’m just saying
Oh fun
What would actually happen if we did that? What do you envisage?
While it might mean boosted public services, I don’t think it brings us back to that time. That time was a time of cheap consumerism, which for many was luxurious.
I could afford expensive consumerism if I didn’t have half my paycheck going to rent (now a mortgage). Your idea of “cheap” is skewed when every single economic interaction in our society has some rent seeking fuck skimming value from you in the process. Literally just imagine society without all of that. Every single thing should be cheaper than it is simply by virtue of eliminating the bourgeois and their ability to expropriate value from us.
It’s true, my rent is exorbitant. Almost half my paycheck goes to it, and I just have a smal room in a flat share. The kitchen is tiny. Life would certainly be better without the existence of landlords.
Not even just landlords, every “employer” sustains itself in the same way
You go to work. You make a product. You’re paid a small portion of that product’s value as a wage. They HAVE TO pay you less than the actual value of your labor or else there’s no profit to make up their own income.
And THEN you have to pay rent from that tiny portion that you’re actually paid. And give someone profit buying groceries, seeking healthcare, etc. We are literally being nickel and dimed to death, and that’s AFTER a majority of our labor is straight up stolen
True, although I’ve heard groceries are run on pretty thin profit margins - in the UK at least.
yeah it’s not just us paying rent on our living space. the pizza place pays rent, the grocery store pays rent, the store at the mall pays rent (and the mall itself might pay another layer of rent) etc. the farm that grows your food might be paying rent to bill gates.
ugh yeah that too, there are so many levels of everybody just being fucked to death