Ruminations of A Wage Slave

"Daily existence is increasingly that of despair, depression, and derangement, punctuated by news of the latest serial murder spree or global eco-disaster, consumed as horrible entertainments in the emptiness." - John Zerzan

Friday, March 25, 2011

Observations

Why statistical measures of GDP don't accurately measure real well-being

"Declining standards of well-being are politically destabilizing, and lead naturally enough to sweeping support for regime change. In Egypt and Tunisia the regimes happened to be despotic, and the call for change came as a commitment to democracy, an end to corruption, and demands for civil liberties. But within democracies, declining standards of living can have the opposite effect. Open and institutionalized systems of regime change—voting—will absorb the discontent for a time, but if the decline lasts too long, or  can’t successfully be blamed on a particular party in power, pressure grows for stepping outside established parties for new, radical, revolutionary approaches."

Lenin predicted that fascism (rather than communism) could emerge in industrially developed countries with liberal democratic governments if their economies faltered badly enough. And that's what happened too, first in Italy, then in Spain and finally in Germany and which resulted in a world war.
Posted by Bayoneteer at 10:09 AM
Labels: class analysis, democracy, economics, Neo-Liberal economics
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Bayoneteer
People's Republic of Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
Reporting from the bottom of the smoking crater that is post-industrial Michigan...
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