{"id":23137,"date":"2017-03-06T14:15:28","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T19:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23137"},"modified":"2017-03-06T14:15:28","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T19:15:28","slug":"its-whats-happening-beneath-the-surface-that-matters-moral-decay-and-rising-inequality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23137","title":{"rendered":"It’s What’s Happening Beneath the Surface That Matters: Moral Decay and Rising Inequality"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s What’s Happening Beneath the Surface That Matters: Moral Decay and Rising Inequality<\/a><\/h3>\n
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These disintegrative forces are easy to see but elusive to pin down. Nobody defines themselves as self-serving, greedy and lacking in virtue. Everyone feels trapped in the system.<\/i><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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With the media’s hyperactive three-ring circus blasting 24\/7, it’s easy to forget that\u00a0everything consequential is happening beneath the surface<\/i><\/b>, out of sight and largely out of mind.<\/div>\n
What’s going on beneath the surface is structural and systemic<\/b>–for example, the 4th Industrial Revolution that is transforming the global economy and social order, regardless of political ideologies or our wishes.<\/div>\n
Centralization–the “solution” to every problem since 1940–is now the problem.<\/b>Centralization generates corruption, privilege, rentier skims, institutionalized rackets and pushes one-size-fits all failure down the chain of command.<\/div>\n
Fragmentation and the De-Optimization of Centralization<\/a>\u00a0(January 2, 2017)<\/div>\n
Another “solution”–issuing more costly credentials–has also failed.<\/b>\u00a0An over-abundance of credentials pushes wages down, even for the highly educated, while the credential mill of higher education has become a bloated, ineffective cartel that charges outrageous fees for increasingly valueless credentials.<\/div>\n
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The structural changes in the economy are visible in these charts:<\/b><\/div>\n
The civilian participation rate is plummeting, despite the “recovery:”<\/div>\n
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The civilian participation rate for men is in a multi-decade decline:<\/div>\n
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As a percentage of GDP, wages have been declining for decades.<\/div>\n
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The rich have managed to gain wealth and income while the bottom 95% have gotten poorer as the cost of living soars and their wages stagnate.<\/div>\n
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There is more going on here than changes wrought by technology.<\/b>\u00a0Consider how many analysts identify central banks as a key cause of rising inequality and debt burdens. Consider how many people identify “money in politics” as a key factor in the corruption of governance.<\/div>\n
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/div>\n
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It’s What’s Happening Beneath the Surface That Matters: Moral Decay and Rising Inequality These disintegrative forces are easy to see but elusive to pin down. Nobody defines themselves as self-serving, greedy and lacking in virtue. Everyone feels trapped in the system. With the media’s hyperactive three-ring circus blasting 24\/7, it’s easy to forget that\u00a0everything consequential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7],"tags":[10189,1670,127,305,379,4924],"class_list":["post-23137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-big-government","tag-centralization","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-federal-reserve","tag-government","tag-oftwominds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23138,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23137\/revisions\/23138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}