Neurotic Is The New 'Normal'

I do things contarary to my best interests sometimes. And, as I'm doing them, I usually know this. This is my definition of 'neurotic'.

Since the '70s, our country has been in a downward spiral in regards to the greatness of our dreams. We have a lower expectation of the American Dream, and many more of us have no dream whatsoever.

The '70s were pretty much the end of the period of unending expansion of overall wealth in America. Robots were invented that could weld or paint better and faster than any worker. Large quantities of high paying (union) jobs would inevitably and inexorably be lost. This was unavoidable.

At the same time, CEOs figured out that the economics of production and distribution had changed. Given a narrow enough focus, each CEO was able to make the case that his company would be more profitable by closing US facilities, and sending the work elsewhere. Concurrent with this, thanks to Jack Welch of GE, the shareholder became the only 'stakeholder' of concern. Workers become (more) fungible, and sub-contracting could eliminate a CEO's concern need for workers entirely. And the workers they retained have seen a major diminishing of their retirement benefits. Very few large corporations offer traditional employer-paid pensions any more, having insidiously replaced them with worker-paid 401(k) plans and the like.

But, obviously, the overall result was fewer high paying jobs and workers in the US.

So, here we are 30 or so years later. Monied organizations have, over time, created a very tilted playing field. Regulatory issues have been gutted, taxes have been dramatically lowered for the wealthiest (Warren Buffet, again this week, commented on the foolishness of this), and political influence is in the hands of the corporate lobbyists.

With all the money in the hands of a wealthy few, there is very little remaining of the traditional middle class. It's just math. So now, all the people who had been middle class, and no longer are, are finding things not so much to their liking.

So, how do they react? They blame the guy that came in to clean up the shit. They're being told by the very people who sold them this bill of goods that the efforts to fix things will hurt them. And their children. And, for some reason, they choose not to investigate any further. I will stereotype, and say most of the good people who went to DC yesterday are on Social Security and Medicare, or will be soon. Hey, my parents received SS and Medicare, as well as Tri-Care medical from the military, and they LOVED it. My parents also had pensions from various government employers that they had earned during their working careers. My parents retired in the late '70s, when the gravy train was still running full bore. And after 'retiring', they were able to find some sort of white collar jobs. Today's job market is so tight that bread-winners are now 'happy' to get the type of jobs my parents got after they retired.

So, the problem, not enough good jobs, has been perpetrated over 30 years. The rich got (massively) richer, and now there's not enough middle class to keep things going.

And the people who are most affected have been convinced they should resist all efforts to improve things either in the short term or long term.

And that is the classic definition of 'neurotic'.