I'm just playing devil's advocate because I don't know economics. But why can't workers afford the products they are producing? In other words, what factors are keeping the cost of those products too high? Given the fact that the purchasing power of a persons wages is what determines their standard of living, not just the wage itself.
Also are people's standards of living really that bad when compared to history? What level of entitlement do people have when it comes to their standard of living? When does the line get drawn?
These are all just questions people should consider before concluding that capitalism is a failed model.
The purchasing power of money is going down because we are in a deflationary spiral
Rather than me trying inadequatly to explain that perhaps you can look into it yourself?
Also wages have stagnated and more people are being driven out of work or into part time work because the money has been sucked out of the system to pay the global creditors
We all live in the realeconomy of production and consumption but the bankers don't produce anything they simply extract interest from the real economy. When the banks failed, instead of our governments saying 'look guys you've fucked up here you are just going to have to say to your creditors (the global investors....and i'm talking here about billionaire and trillionaire people and families) that you can't pay them and they will simply have to right off the debt (like they have been doing since ancient sumeria)
This would have allowed the real economy to keep going; but the governments didn't do this. Instead they chose to take money from the real economy (taxpayer money) in the form of 'bank bailouts' and they gave it to the bankers to give to the global creditors
This has meant that there is less money for us and that the debt between the bankers and creditors has been passed onto us and our children and our childrens children etc
The central banks have printed more and more money (quantitative easing) and as every school boy/girl knows if you print more money then it has an inflationary effect of devaluing the money in circulation
Combined with this they have kept interest rates low because they argue that if rates are low then people who are trying to save money will realise that their wealth in the bank is simply beinf eaten up by inflation and is actually decreasing NOT increasing and will start to spend money again and boost the economy.
Low interest rates are however good for the global speculators.
So think about what all this means
What it means is that despite the vast majority of people working everyday and paying their bills and taxes and if they're doing very well managing to put some money aside as savings a small number of bankers have been taking peoples money and gambling with it until it all dissapeared
But money doesn't just dissapear it simply changes hands
So what we have seen is a transferral of money from hardworking taxpayers who were just playing by the rules into the hands of bankers and global speculators who have been getting upto all sorts of fraudulent behaviours
The honest tax payer can't keep money safe in the bank, their pension funds are raided by the bankers, their house values are dropping, and they are now being made to pay for the bankers behaviour in cuts to public spending (austerity) which causes a lowering of the quality of life
Think about that for a minute.
The politicians have chosen to give vast amounts of money to a small number of people leaving life much tougher for millions.....now why would they do that? Two reasons....one is that they are bought and paid for by the super rich few and two because they have a grand plan
The grand plan is to create a new economic system and they see the hardhsip of the people as simply some eggs that must be cracked in order to make a big new omellete
The people understandably are not happy about losing public services, their savings, their homes, their jobs, the purchasing power of their money, their civil liberties (due to changes in the law) especially while they are watching the bankers who have created this situation getting massive bonuses and the global creditors getting payed billions in bailouts and then using that money to buy up 'privatised' national assets which governments are selling at reduced rates in 'firesales'
It is not a case of 'entitlement'....it is a case of law abiding, hard working people wanting their governemnts not to sell the rug out from underneath them to a small bunch of greedy, power hungry global sheisters
So how do they get away with this? Its simple they keep the public working hard and they keep them missinformed
Bankers have been put into positions of power in European governments to replace democratically elected politicians. they have called these people 'technocrats' but that is short hand for 'bankers'. Techionocrats have been put in charge of countries to manage a transition to a new world....a brave new world....where the global creditors will own everything and you will be their fuedal vassal
It was all put pretty eloquently in the 1976 film 'network':
[video=youtube;jxiT30N6ti4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxiT30N6ti4[/video]
That is why there is so much protest, because some people don't want to roll the clock back to fuedalism
