Summing Up the Last Decade
To steal from Sandwichman’s excellent commentary on 2020 Hindsight and use a quotation from it which does give the magnitude of the last 10 years in financial terms;
“A fourth wave of debt began in 2010 and debt has reached $55 trillion in 2018, making it the largest, broadest and fastest growing of the four” (since 1970). There is a cost to this and one which can be seen in the US as this debt formation is not going to “meet urgent development needs such as basic infrastructure, as much of the current debt wave is taking riskier forms”
akin to what we began to see in 2000 and culminating in 2007/8 with a disastrous economic collapse.
The Atlantic’s Anne Lowry also writes about the last decade. Perhaps, she is the wrong author to pick upon and use to summarize the impact of the economy on the nation’s population. And again others may disagree with my choice; however in this case, I appreciate her summation on what she notes in passing; The Decade in Which Everything Was Great But Felt Terrible.
Picking the best story encapsulating the economy of the last decade she chose CamperForce: depicting elderly nomads living in vans and RVs and spending their twilight years temping at Amazon fulfillment centers, other places, setting up temp businesses, etc. after losing savings, homes, and belongings in the 2008 crash.
If there was a positive spin to this recital it would be of people wanting the structure and community work can provide well into retirement age, the freedom and mobility associated with a RV life, the flexibility of temp gigs, or not being nailed down to place, job, etc. The story is not of a newly realized freedom in retirement; CamperForce consisted of grandparents who had been evicted from their homes during the housing collapse and were struggling to stay out of poverty. It’s a modern-day, AARP twist on The Grapes of Wrath.
To use Anne’s words; perhaps the most representative story is that of the former graduate student who ended up as a warehouse janitor or the thousands of people who have gone online to beg for money to help them stay afloat through a life-threatening illness.
In finality these stories cast a reality in the names and faces depicting today’s economic impact; the real, urgent, and indelible marks of this past decade’s failings. The ten years without a single month of serious recession with the United States growing to its wealthiest point ever and still longevity fell, and it became clear that a whole generation was losing its place in the hierarchy.
The central economic message given to us from the 2010s? No matter how well the market was doing, how long the expansion lasted, and how much the economy grew; families still struggled and lost ground in the economic hierarchy. Because the decade did so little for so many, it strained America’s idea of what economic growth could and should do.
The rest of Anne Lowry’s story can be found here; “The Decade in Which Everything Was Great But Felt Terrible,” The Atlantic, December 31, 2019.
It is a good read.
It may be that the most telling point is that this is the first decade the US has ever had without a recession or depression at all, technically, and yet we see declining life expectancy among portions of the population, something I think we have seen only briefly during the worst of wartimes in US history.
Happy New Year Barkley:
I am happy to find you in answer to a post of mine. We spent a week in AZ looking for new digs away from Michigan. Twenty – five years in a place north of Ann Arbor we never came to appreciate after living 12 years in Madison on the west side amongst profs, an Edgewood college pres, the music librarian we played pinochle with, professionals, etc. We were an eclectic bunch and here in Michigan I am asked to restrain myself by my wife to maintain peace when it would be so easy to set things correctly.
To your point, the decrease noted was due to the opioid epidemic noted in a link I failed to add and have done so now. Scurvious (made-up word) bunch called Purdue Pharma. It still points to an avoidable decline as people did it to escape and then graduated to elicit heroin. A sign of our times.
Our one week to AZ included an unplanned funeral of a brother to my son-in-law at 47 who OD-ed from Xanax on top of OxyContin. Successful man with a pretty wife and two pretty daughters who was a 1-percenter. His wife had threatened divorce if he did not go to rehab. He died instead and his organs were donated. My daughter a nurse did the honorary walk with the family. If it can be called such, this plague brought to us by corporate Pharmaceutical America with Congressional support is certainly a hallmark of these 10 years even if it started in 1986. It will be a battle to reverse the trend.
This is what America’s pivot in 1980 has gotten us. The “free enterprise” propagandists had been pounding on this since FDR took office, and in the late 1970s they had their chance. When Ronald Reagan was elected, my girlfriend – still my girlfriend – said that we’d soon see a return of the late 19th century excesses and the “cloth of gold.” I agreed. She was right, and history has proven her right. Anyone vaguely familiar with New Deal economics would have made the same prediction and been right.
Kale, maybe or debt expansion is all that is left. While you think it was 1980, it is really 1970 then another slowdown after 2000. The post war boom was really a DOD spending boom driven by the cold war and not sustainable either.
I just think this is late stage capitalism. Debt driven recreational leisure consumption. Explains the surge in single mother births.
Run,
Agree seems opiod epidemic crucial in this and sorry it got to your family.
What is striking is that somehow it is in the US that this has gotten so bad we have seen it actually turn the longevity trend around. Why not in any other high income nation? A lot of them have also had a frustrating decade, to put it mildly, not just the US.
Barkley:
We were all angry, angry at him, angry with my son – in – law who knew. I chased people to military prison for less than this and to their court martials. I write on this stuff and I could not stop him because I did not know. I barely knew him and even so I would have said something. I would have been hated in the end but I would have said something to this University of AZ football star.
Defined? “‘Corpocracy’ is why it exists in the US/ A fairly new word. “While by law the U.S. is a republic, the government is actually a Corpocracy – democracy by the corporations. Corporations vote by paying politicians and political parties to put forward their agenda.”
While they may exist in Europe, they are regulated more. Many have moved operations to Asia. I appreciate your comments