Going back several decades, the deconstruction of the domestic economy to the benefit of multinational corporations began with "free trade" during the Reagan era. There was nothing free about it - the cost was measured in factories, jobs, industries, and lives. The ascension of China to the WTO in 2000 - which was facilitated by the U.S. - put industrial arbitrage on steroids to the tune of 17 factories per day on average between 2000 and 2012. That collapse in manufacturing coincided with the collapse in labor share of GDP:
Labor share of economy (blue, left scale)
Manufacturing employment (red, right scale)
This annihilation of the economy took place amid the unchallenged belief that to question capitalism is "unAmerican". The fantasy that deconstructing the past could lead to a better future. Today's mental midgets had no idea that most of America's trading past was built upon Mercantilist principles based upon protecting the domestic economy. Which means that all of this economic deconstruction was merely one generation cannibalizing what all prior generations had created, under the belief that they were the heir apparent of success. Having no clue they were merely greedy morons.
As the aggregate corporate revenue curve flattened and rolled over due to the implosion of the middle class, it became necessary to utilize stock buybacks on an ever increasing basis to provide the illusion of profit growth. Shrinking the share count became the only way to "grow" profits. What ensued was human history's largest leveraged buyout.
This continual accumulation of corporate debt in order to increase return on investment has made the economy more and more vulnerable to downside shocks. In 2008 it took 9 months to erase the prior decade of job creation. In this downturn it took a mere two months to rollback TWO decades of job creation:
All of this chicanery has continued year in and year out without question. Sure Bernie Sanders questioned it, but he has been unceremoniously shutdown by his own party TWO elections in a row. He was leading ALL other candidates going into Super Tuesday in March, but then ALL remaining candidates threw their votes to the incontinent Biden to stop Sanders.
Of course since Coronavirus only six weeks later the policies dreamed up by the GOP and Dems alike are FULL Communist compared to what Sanders was suggesting only weeks ago. As we see, this newfound ideology of embracing constant failure is highly malleable. In boom times it's capitalist and in the bust it's pure communism. The best of both worlds for those who are in line for bailouts. And the worst of both worlds for everyone else.
Capitalism exploded spectacularly in 2008 you should have seen it. What followed was a decade of constant monetary bailouts that kept the deflationary policies of economic destruction in place for another decade. The continual swapping out of good jobs for junk jobs. Now an entire decade of junk jobs vanished overnight.
Protecting the economy is what ALL other major economies in the world do - Japan, China, Germany. The U.S. is the exceptional outlier. That will change.
We are in the teeth of a new greater depression, however, because it was kicked off by the Coronavirus, today's Idiocracy is of the well-cultivated belief that depression is temporary. For proof they look to the sky-rocketing stock market which is their ONLY trusted proxy for the economy. The fact that stocks are rising at the expense of the economy gives them no pause to question this mass buffoonery.
Day by day those who buy into this last fraud are getting closer to losing EVERYTHING, merely because they mistook mass insanity for failed ideology. Failure for success. Stocks for an economy. Bullshit for truth. Con men for experts. Greed for morality.
