What makes a nation Third World is extreme wealth inequality combined with an insatiable appetite for rapacious exploitation among the nation's wealthy. Voila. Another feature of Third World nations is authoritarian leadership with little or no regard for the law - megalomaniac despots who hire and fire people at whim. Meanwhile, apologists for extreme greed say that wealth inequality is a "feature" of capitalism. Sure, we get it - we can't all be Bill Gates. However, the type of wealth inequality that exhibits now is the impoverishment of the middle class to benefit an ever-smaller cadre of bailed out paper billionaires. I say paper because while profit margins have never been higher, corporate revenues have been stagnant for the past decade, which is all the more staggering given the more than doubling in U.S. debt, and the increase in the population.
Adjusting for inflation and population, real retail sales are at 2007 levels. What "growth" exists is a function of adding more bodies to the population...
New housing starts divided by U.S. population:
In the old age home if you're not shitting your pants, confidence is soaring:
Meanwhile, the U.S. media, is without question the lowest quality in the developed world. By necessity. The media have the impossible task of simultaneously explaining how the U.S. is going to "fix" the rest of the world while the country itself falls apart. They have to explain away the rising gunfire in the background. Therefore instead of cogent facts and reality, we just get ever-more dystopian fantasy narratives spun by special interest groups, pandering to their own slice of the fractured audience. Which is why sites such as Zerohedge have descended to a National Enquirer level of quality. They need to generate enough conspiracy theories to satisfy the fantasies of alt-right man-boys and 75 year-old curmudgeons. Which apparently is a lot.
Which gets me to my next point. Who gives a fuck what Jim Kunstler thinks? I don't. It used to be that the future belonged to young people. However, now that we're trapped in the old age home, the "future" has been sold for special dividends, while semi-lucid geezers wave their canes around yelling "when did all this happen?". They need to blame young people for all of the problems that started before Millenials were even born. That's the solution. These old men fear that feminists are taking over the vaunted "system" by using sexual assault allegations to push the beloved alpha males out of top spot. Of course that's what is happening. For good reason - a change of management is what is needed. Our self-nominated alpha males have had a good run, but it's all been a fucking disaster. The old age home has narrowed the future down to "now"; they have no skin in the game for what happens when this all blows apart. The Orangeutan-in-chief is ready reminder of the depths to which some people will sink to fake-believe recover long lost glory. No cost - financial, human, nor environmental is too great. Trump has inadvertently salvaged the reputation of George W. Bush from historical ignominy. No one would have believed that possible even a couple of years ago.
In order to restore a semblance of rationality, the money has to come out of politics. Until that happens nothing can improve. The highly political Supreme Court made an historically monumental error with their Citizens United ruling. Only when the political machine is starved of big donor funding can the policies that benefit the general populace take precedence over policies that benefit global multinationals. The political system has been hijacked by big money.
But first comes the revelation. Which will somehow come as a "shock", even though the features of the Third World status are readily evident.
Remember, "global stocks are at record highs":
Because there's a "global synchronized recovery"
And tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy will offset rate hikes imploding the middle class.
Leading to a stronger 'Conomy...
