American Exceptionalism And Decay

Richard D. Wolff provides a shorthand summary of the economic trajectory of the US economy since the 70s. With an excess of labor, a loss of jobs through corporate migration to other countries, the computer revolution, an all consuming elite upper class, and more such changes in the US landscape, the middle class has lost its momentum, reversed its direction, and is steadily dissolving while the country's managers set the population on each other. (That last part is my contribution.)

ZNET: The Myth of 'American Exceptionalism' Implodes

Nevertheless, most US workers postponed facing up to what capitalism had come to mean for them. They sent more family members to do more hours of paid labor and they borrowed huge amounts. By exhausting themselves, stressing family life to the breaking point in many households, and taking on unsustainable levels of debt, the US working class delayed the end of American exceptionalism until the global crisis hit in 2007. Now, their buying power could no longer grow: rising unemployment kept wages flat, while no more hours of work or borrowing was possible. Reckoning time had arrived. A US capitalism built on expanding mass consumption lost its foundation.