'Recovery hype: American capitalism's weapon of mass distraction'

[Popular Front of Judea]

Richard Wolff is taking a dark turn here although he is saying what many of us have long intuited.

Hyping recovery is also supported from darker, more cynical motives. Leaders of large corporations who have already moved many of their operations out of the US call the current situation a "mature" economy. This euphemism reflects their sense that rapid growth now happens more outside the US than inside and, therefore, higher profits beckon overseas where wages and taxes are lower. They want to keep freely relocating over the coming years with minimal opposition as they depart.

The leaders of these companies especially prefer to be less heavily invested here when the American working class is realizing that the capitalism that raised their wages across earlier decades of growth is fast departing for more profitable opportunities abroad. That departure abandons the American working class to steady decline – as countless indicators show: falling real wages, reduced public services, high unemployment, etc.

Business leaders and their elected friends fear workers' rage and resentment, should they be able to identify who and what did them in. Hyping recovery provides "delaying cover" as businesses executives relocate their facilities abroad, their homes and offices inside "gated communities", and their workplaces into "heavily secured enterprise zones".

Recovery hype: American capitalism's weapon of mass distraction | Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/27/recovery-hype-capitalism-weapon/print)

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think this really gets at it in the way I see it:


Here is the "recovery" that they see. The top 1% of income-earners in the US took 19% of the national income in 2012, the largest share since 1928. That 1% also saw their average income rise by 31.4% from the current crisis's low point in 2009, through 2012. The top 1% certainly enjoyed a recovery.

It is a recovery in a narrow sense for sectors of the economy and their recovery requires lowering wages, restructuring, and austerity in general. It's "whose recovery?"

I don't know if I see it as a distraction though - I mean they always try and put a positive (and populist in the sense that their recovery means good things for us) spin on the economy. While saying only positive things about the short-term, they also tend to stress the "new normal" which is their term for austerity and how the economic shifts are not just a dip, but a more permanent state. The politicians might fear for their jobs because of increased dissatisfaction and anger in the population, but I think US capitalism thinks it has gotten off pretty easy and sees the weakness and acommodativeness of business-unionism and disoranization of grassroots class forces as much as we do. So I don't know if they feel the need to try and "distract us". But that's just my guess.

[Thirsty Crow]

I agree to a large extent with Wolff on the ideological nature of the writing and reporting on the so called recovery. Especially with the bit on infotainment, which can easily be seen here where I live. Namely, a privately owned TV station has aired a special news section called "Positive piece of news of the day" which covered innovative individuals who managed to escape from the drudgery of the labor and unemployment office by opening their own enterprise (usually with a bit of innovation - e.g. a bicycle which has stuff installed so that you might put your laptop or umbrella there). The ideological spin was obvious, and even more so because no single worker was ever interviewed (the hypothetical "How did you manage to avoid layoffs, you must be very valuable - teach us how to do that!!").

I'd object, though, to the underlying assumptions and data selection which flows from this framework of the 1% against the 99%.