{"id":54978,"date":"2020-09-11T10:21:26","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T15:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54978"},"modified":"2020-09-11T10:21:26","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T15:21:26","slug":"this-is-how-it-ends-all-that-is-solid-melts-into-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54978","title":{"rendered":"This Is How It Ends: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"post-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/charleshughsmith.blogspot.com\/2020\/09\/this-is-how-it-ends-all-that-is-solid.html\">This Is How It Ends: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air<\/a><\/h3>\n<div id=\"post-8021772642896805621\" class=\"post-body\">\n<div><i>While the Federal Reserve and the Billionaire Class push the stock market to new highs to promote a false facade of prosperity, everyday life will fall apart.<\/i><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><b>How will the status quo collapse?<\/b>\u00a0An open conflict&#8211;a civil war, an insurrection, a coup&#8211;appeals to our affection for drama, but the more likely reality is a decidedly undramatic\u00a0<i>dissolution<\/i>\u00a0in which all the elements of our way of life we reckoned were solid and permanent simply\u00a0<i>melt into air<\/i>, to borrow Marx&#8217;s trenchant phrase.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><b>In other words, Rome won&#8217;t be sacked by Barbarians, or ignite in an insurrectionary conflagration&#8211;everything will simply stop working<\/b>\u00a0as those burdened with the impossible task of keeping a failed system glued together simply walk away.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><b>If we examine the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Western Roman Empire, we can trace the eventual collapse<\/b>\u00a0to the sudden psychological shift from an assumption of permanence that found expression in denial (Rome can&#8217;t fall, it&#8217;s eternal&#8230;) or in the universal belief that life was unchanging and so\u00a0<i>everything was forever<\/i>.<\/div>\n<div><b>This psychological state was replaced by a shocked awareness that what was unimaginable, &#8220;impossible&#8221;&#8211;systemic collapse&#8211;was not only entirely possible, it was happening in real time.<\/b>\u00a0This change in consciousness arose in individuals in differing ways and velocities, but eventually everyone accepted that some adaptation was now necessary.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><b>Correspondent R.J. and I have been discussing the consequences of the sharp decline in the value of labor<\/b>\u00a0which is painfully obvious in the chart below and the many other charts depicting the declining purchasing power of wages and the skimming of the majority of the economic gains by the top 0.1%.<\/div>\n<div><b>In effect, it no longer pays to work beyond the bare minimum needed to survive<\/b>\u00a0as all the value generated by labor above this minimum is either skimmed by the Bezos, Buffetts, Gates, Zuckerbergs et al. or it&#8217;s paid in higher taxes to the government.<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This Is How It Ends: All That Is Solid Melts Into Air While the Federal Reserve and the Billionaire Class push the stock market to new highs to promote a false facade of prosperity, everyday life will fall apart. How will the status quo collapse?\u00a0An open conflict&#8211;a civil war, an insurrection, a coup&#8211;appeals to our [&hellip;]<\/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],"tags":[24078,150,303,10956,587,5923,1302,6856,3650],"class_list":["post-54978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-charles-hugh-smith-2","tag-collapse","tag-fed","tag-imperial-collapse","tag-of-two-minds","tag-roman-empire","tag-status-quo","tag-systemic-collapse","tag-us-federal-reserve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54978","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=54978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54979,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54978\/revisions\/54979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}