Reply #18: Pops Reagan made us believe we were entitled to join the upper class [View All]

[dusmcj]

and be "upscale", when the rest of the developed (-ed, not -ing) world has always chosen more modest and more sustainable standards of living. Of course once you're in debt up to your eyeballs, you need that high cash flow. Furthermore, by participating, you're supporting the consumer economy, which is the only thing our putative leaders could come up with in the way of industrial policy once mass-employment heavy industry became a thing of the past. Can't find their ass with both hands and a flashlight under a full moon comes to mind. And of course then there's self-interest; oh, I mispronounced greed. Euphemized by the fig leaf of trying to insist that in a world of finite resources, infinite increases in productivity and also standard of living are possible. Essentially a lower-class dream, with no adult supervision left to mind the store. Good shit.