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Central Banks Have Pushed The Middle Class Down Into Neofeudal Serfdom
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
The injustice of central-bank enforced neofeudalism cannot be suppressed like interest rates.
In traditional feudal systems, serfs were the landless peasantry who worked the land of their feudal lords in exchange for protection. In our present-day neofeudal system, serfdom has a different definition: present-day serfs own little or no productive capital and have few opportunities to ever acquire any.
The Marxist term wage-slaves describes those who, lacking capital, have only their labor to sell. This describes the vast majority of people in both capitalist and socialist systems, but what makes the present system neofeudal is the central banks: by extending essentially unlimited credit at near-zero interest rates to financiers and corporations, the central banks have given the top .01% the ability to outbid mere savers for income-producing assets (i.e. productive assets).
Just as the feudal-era serf had no choice but to enslave himself and his family to the manor-house lord, the modern-day serf must indenture himself to banks to "own" a car or home or "buy" a college education.
The X22 Report and I discuss this and related topics in the podcast Central Bankers Are Creating A World Where We Are All Serfs (38:10).
As I outlined in The Flaws in Basic Income for Everyone, all the guaranteed basic income schemes being proposed as solutions to automation are merely institutionalized serfdom as they sentence the unemployed to the marginalized political status (equivalent to powerless serfs) of state dependents while stripping them of purposeful work and the opportunity to acquire the means of production and productive capital.
Guaranteed basic income is thus the perfection of neofeudal serfdom.
The central banks are the critical enforcers of this neofeudal system. Without access to unlimited credit at near-zero rates, financiers and corporations would not be able to outbid savers for productive assets.
Here's an example that illustrates how central banks have created a neofeudal system. In an economy not suffering from extremes of central-bank financial repression, home mortgages in recent decades were around 7.5%. This rate of interest (coupled with strict lending standards) was high enough to make credit-fueled bubbles difficult to inflate, so homes cost $100,000.
Those who had saved $50,000 had an advantage over financiers who were borrowing the full $100,000. The base operating costs of buying the home as a rental (investment) property was roughly $4,000 more annually for the financiers than for the savers: the savers' $50,000 mortgage cost around $4,000 a year (not including property taxes and other expenses of ownership) while the financiers' mortgage was around $8,000 annually.
This difference was large enough to make the property unprofitable for the financiers to buy and rent out, and large enough to make it a risky bet to buy the home and hope appreciation exceeded the annual expenses.
If the home rented for (say) $1,200 per month, the financiers' higher mortgage expenses put them at a disadvantage to the saver/owner, who had a significantly lower monthly expense.
Contrast this with the world of today, where financiers can borrow essentially unlimited sums at rates far below what savers can get. As a direct result of ultra-low rates for banks, corporations and financiers, even high-earning wage-slaves cannot outbid the financiers for productive (i.e. income-producing) assets.
If a person is unable to earn enough to save, and is unable to compete with financiers and corporations for productive assets, that person is a modern-day serf, a debt-serf indentured to banks and stripped of opportunities to own the sort of assets the Financial Nobility use to accumulate ever-greater wealth and income.
The injustice of this central-bank enforced neofeudalism cannot be suppressed like interest rates.
Central Bankers Are Creating A World Where We Are All Serfs (38:10) (X22 Report podcast).
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owxtKzJLQQY
Bammy said over the weekend on NPR that if you believe any of that shit it's all racism
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/us/politics/president-obama-accuses-do...
And who, which racial demographic think that blacks are the most racist? Why, even blacks say they're the most racist!!!!!
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifesty...
Well done, Bammy!
"He goan chang yo lif"
-Wookie
I knew you knew how to spell Cloward-Piven
California has been neofeudal since the 70's. There is a class of hereditary land-owners, and a class of people who work and pay exhorbitant rent or way overpay for real estate.
This is EXACTLY what Central Planning (read progressives) wants. The more people unable to make it on their own the more people dependent on government, the more powerful Central Planning becomes. If Central Planning would get out of the way people who wanted to, and worked at it, would prosper.
This is what anti-labor, anti-consumer, pro-corporation, pro-outsourcing, pro-shareholders' rights, anti-regulation want. So basically ALL of the Republicans and 60% of the Democrats (the kind the corporate media pretend are the only ones who exist). Our labor has been priced out of everywhere by our over-inflated dollar, but the investor class benefits from that. Meanwhile they buy our elections.
So if we only had much larger Central Planning with more regulations on people/businesses, enforced by gubmint people with guns... oh, and much higher taxes, of course (pay your "fair share!"), all would be good. Just like Russia, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, et al. Please read up some.
The Bush/O'Bama, "No Banker Left Behind Laws" have been a boon to the financial institutions.
No doubt about that.
Obviously, LowerSlowerbrain, you failed in math terribly in school or were brain damaged at some point and can't do simply arithmetical relationships?
The USA already has Central Planning, between Wall Street --- the Surveillance State --- their Think Tanks, and manufactured news.
Try to pay attention, ADD youth!
I'm sorry that reading comprehension is not a strong point of yours. See if you can get your mother to read the thread to you then get back to me if you still don't understand.
http://www.cheatsheet.com/business/5-states-where-the-middle-class-is-be...
Yeah, and Wisconsin is the worst because the goomint unions cant gut the private sector as easily.
It is the financial sector that has become a massive parasite sucking away our wealth. Whether it be central banks, commercial banks, brokerages, insurers, financial planners or savings and loans; they all exist to feed off that which you have labored for.
Andrew Jackson had some choice words about them some years back. Same filth with different suits.
The financial sector and Central Planning are the same thing. The Fed was created by Central Planning - who now answers to the Fed - who wants to make Central Planning happy - who is thrilled that the Fed is making working people poorer, more dependent on Central Planning.
You described it perfectly, Stainless, just as have Prof. Michael Hudson, Prof. Michael Perelman, Dean Baker, the econ prof who wrote the book on the bondholders' class a few years back, etc.
Nobody has any excuse to be still clueless in the US of A-holes!
It's like eating the duck than her eggs.
Riddle me this batman. If interest rates are at zero then why are credit-card rates so high? Is the average citizen really such a credit risk that all have to suffer?
Who cares? Pay your credit card off each month and take the 2% interest on your spending instead of running up the credit card then complaining about the interest that you agreed to pay when you do so. I choose not to pay interest on my credit cards. I choose to have them pay me 2% on my purchases instead.
I got a thirty plus year no interest hitter going on with my Visa account, hope I didn't just jinx it..
Really at this point I don't want anything except to be left alone, but that is the last thing on a Statist's mind.. Go Gault.
NY- were you can be in the 1 percent and feel poor.
Once you get your down, no problem.
Off to the races!
Speaking of our racist-n-chief:
Old Dixie Highway renamed President Barack Obama Highway in Florida city
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/12/19/old-dixie-...
AKA The Highway to Hell...
For that town, Riviera Beach, it's probably a good choice.
When you hear the name Riviera Beach, it sounds very fancy, much like the one in France. When you drive through it, you may notice a difference. It's a fairly dangerous, run down black slum. Lock your doors as you drive through. All in all, I think the new name was a good choice.
Knucks, this is a line from your 1st link;
"Mr. Obama has struggled to appeal to white voters who do not have a college education, carrying only 36 percent of them when he was re-elected in 2012. Republicans perform particularly well among that group, although it represents a shrinking share of the electorate."
I can't even fathom that 36% they list, but I'll say that the blue collar workers mentioned in the article above, will be very involved in the events discussed at the end of Ret. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson's video.
The proof that he has no legitimate argument is that he's still having to play his worn out Race Card.
This was always the plan!
The agenda is clear......
http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/12/as-events-spiral-ou...
If you are in or were in the middle class you need to read "The Creature from Jekyll Island" and learn the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) and its minions have had a goal to redistribute the proles' U.S. wealth, thereby gutting the middle class...it's working.
A third brother, Max Warburg, was the financial adviser of the Kaiser and became Director of the Reichsbank in Germany. This was, of course, a central bank, and it was one of the cartel models used in the construction of the Federal Reserve System. The Reichsbank, incidentally, a few years later would create the massive hyperinflation that occurred in Germany, wiping out the middle class and the entire German economy as well.
AMERICA IS THE TARGET The New World Order cannot become a functional reality so long as the United States remains able to go it alone. America is viewed as a potential bull in the china shop. Right now, it is safely under control, but the world planners are worried it might break loose in the future. If the American people were to awaken to the realities of world politics and regain control over their government, they still would have the military and economic power to break away. Among the world planners, therefore, it has become the prime directive to weaken the United States both militarily and economically. And this directive has come from American leaders, not those of other countries. CFR members sitting in the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Treasury are now working to finalize that part of the plan. It is yet one more doomsday mechanism that, once it gains sufficient momentum, will pass the critical point of no return.
Until we the people start working again, there will be no middle class.
There are NO JOBS (worth a shit)
.....re: jobs, might be a lot of openings for grave diggers if this silliness keeps going on.
It's a dying business.
There are plenty of jobs and plenty of H1-B visa's to fill'em......
Recommended Reading:
Sold Out, by Michelle Malkin and John Miano
there are plenty of great opportunities with wage and career advancement.
Where are they you ask?
In the most expensive cities in America and the world.
Would you like 50% more pay for 50% increased expenses?
Lets not forget that the expenses will continue to increase year after year. Competetion will be fierce to take your seat. So you have to work harder and harder every year to pay for the SAME FUCKING PLACE.
That's not a bug, it's a feature of Central Banks. 100% intentional. Now watch (poof) as the cash disappears from the system. Then the real fun begins.
"Central Banks Have Pushed The Middle Class Down Into Neofeudal Serfdom"
Where they belong.
- Janet Yellen
And they just keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing...
The interview in this ZH article (if you haven't seen it) may be the best 23 min. you spend today.
"America's Ship Is Sinking" Former Bush Official Exposes The Unfixable Corruption Inside The Establishment | Zero Hedge
If we think Col. Wilkerson is a whistle-blower, then how does one classify one that worked directly with the following: (when all were alive)
Bill Colby
Bill Casey
Vernon Walters
William French Smith
All directly under Ronald Wilson Reagan
Wanta reporting directly to Reagan. Not to Colby. Not to Casey. Not to Walters. Not to Smith. Certainly not to GHWB ..
Now imagine the following (~25 minute teaser) in closer to 2 full hours. Flooding the internet and some major theaters ..
https://youtu.be/tDuQRQj0AzM
Does he have a plan for America? You tell me ..
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/07/30/the-coming-return-of-the-real-us...
http://wantarevelations.com/2014/01/wanta-plan-macro-financial-economic-...
https://app.box.com/s/hfgvcqg7gqh7i27at6sv53ywu87lwarp (Read Me First)
Now get off your ass and spread the word!
If you notice in the Youtube comments to the Wilkerson talk, a fooser77 gives some advice to Abby Martin ..
I say we need more fooser77s giving advice to Abby Martins ..
That will bring some critical mass real quick ..
Or, you may just choose to start burning some tires in your local neighborhood ..
Your choice ..
I'm stopping saying pretty please with whip cream and a cherry on top to We The People ..
Get Off Your Ass and Get to Work!
Spread This Word Far and Wide ..
Your life, and your posterity depend upon it ..
Neofeudal serfdom is a step up for most citizens of the USSA today.
college educated, employed in STEM, top end of "glassdoor" salary for title, renting in expensive city, debt free, low savings.
How would this person escape? Micro homes, log cabin kits = 40-60k debt. What is freedom? Is freedom debt free and renting or is freedom in debt, working towards ownership?
How. to. escape?
"What is freedom? Is freedom debt free and renting or is freedom in debt, working towards ownership?"
Good question. I would say that the only way to be free in this society is to be born into at least a modicum of wealth -- to be able to graduate from college without more debt than you can comfortably pay on your new salary in five years, and to live somewhere that you can purchase a home which you can expect to live to pay off the mortgage on before retirement. But that still means being indentured for most of your life to grasp a few years of freedom at its end, when you will probably be chained to Medicare co-payments.
Is there true freedom for anyone except the top 5%? I doubt it. I tried the "nothin' left to lose" route, and I assure you, there is no freedom to be found homeless and hungry.
move to a cheaper country - for instance Australia (much better in every possible respect than the USSA - actually every country I have been to since I left SF in March is better, freer, safer and much happier and less manic than the founded on savery and early religious child abuse: USSA).
It has cost me 8300 USDto travel over 10 months aroudn the world - Japan, Australia, Serbia, Germany, Canda, France, Greece etc...haven't seen a homeless since I left California (apart from maybe 2 homeless-looking people in Tokyo - world's biggest city of 32m people).
America has been based on slavery - what do you expect?
Every law is designed to further enslave you - you must fear police if you drink outside, you must fear them if you jaywalk...all teh BS 'laws' to make you feel like a slave in your own country that don't seem to exist anywhere else apart from the USSA
Early religious child abuse and BS about tricking kids into fearing the invisible and imaginary master - keep the kleptocrat slavery frameowrk going and everybody else in fear
A return to serfdom also means a return to all the other aspects of feudal life. And although the 1% back in those days lived at the top of the heap, it was a pretty piss-poor heap overall...not sure our current crop of hot-house flowers would do so well in that environment.
What all the population-cutters and serf-creators forget is that if they get their wish, they destroy the whole basis of their current power and wealth.
If you cut the population by just 25%, you lose almost all of your tech...there goes all that data-collection and high finance...and the ones left will be much too busy surviving to help rebuild anything. As your infrastructure deteriorates, it stays deteriorated, and everything gets rapidly smaller and more localized.
So what do TPTB have planned for the future? If those plans include a huge drop in population, and a feudal society, then I wouldn't worry about their plans. Because Game of Thrones is a TV show, and real life can be very hard on would-be 'nobles' too.
Do you want to be the richest guy in a society where no one has anything? Well, that was what the feudal lords and ladies were...the tallest in a room full of dwarfs. Today's wealthy got that way in a society where the middle class lived better than most feudal lords...a feat only possible BECAUSE of all that shared prosperity, and the society it created.
quality of life is the highest ever (long term). We have a lot of comforts and conveniences to be deprived of before population starts to die off in a major way. Baby boomers could get it both ways, amazing growth and economic conditions followed by complete destruction and abandonment at the end of their lives.
Bravo. This is the most critical point in all of this mess.
As go the shopkeepers, so goes the rest of it. In fact, this is just as true in Bogota or Cairo as it is in Cleveland.
Take away the adults' stake in society and the gangs become celebrated, not reviled. That is the indicator for the tipping point.
How fragile society is......how many centuries and generations have given their all so we could possibly open a business, or choose another path.
The elites playing with this toy will never, ever be able to repair it. As they pull chunks of the clockwork out thinking ooooh, how shiny.....
tell that to european oligarch, african dictators or the super rich in latin america such as brazil. There are more than enough examples of super rich "co-existing" relatively easily with the poor masses. Its called private security... problem solved. Plus i doubt technology will collapse with a 25% reduction in population especially when 25% of the population cant even afford said technology. a billion people in the world live off $1 a day what technology are they going to use?? The scientists and their support staff will simply become the merlins of their generation, well and rewarded for their "commitment to the cause". The prosperity of the past half century is a mere blip in the history of human history..things will eventually return to the mean, you can either become valuable to the lords and get your spot in the court or be the peasant who tolls the soil of debt.
Just move to Austin . Everyhting is awesome in Austin, Texas. Lots of startups and Enreprenuer hoping to see the Unicorn.
youre the lizardman arent you?
The traffic on I-35 and MOPAC ain't awesome, although this morning wasn't bad...
If the Neofeudal serfs would put down their iPhones and turn off the NFL they could save at least a little.
“Central Banks have pushed the Middle class into Neofeudal Serfdom”.
Correction: “Actually feudal serfdom” – as in as current law is written; not “neofeudal” serfdom.
And evidence of this legalized serfdom is the Social Security card/number.
You see, there is no law that requires anyone to obtain such a number. The only coercion relative to this number lies on the commissioner of Social Security: he is mandated to issue such a number to any “individual” who requests a number.
The magic word here is, “individual”; it is legally defined as, “a citizen of the US or a resident alien”. Most people born here imagine they are a US citizen.
Not so! Let us look at Title 42 section 1982: “every citizen of the US shall have the same rights… as are enjoyed by white citizens…”
This is constitutional language.
Now, are you a “white citizen” or a “citizen of the US”?
If you are the former, you have all rights and standing relative to every American constitution.
If you are the latter, you have standing only under the 14th Amendment, which, by the way, was never ratified.
You cannot be a serf if you own all your own stuff and can carry on even if the stores and banks all closed forever tomorrow -- therefore, I am no serf.
You can stand around all you like arguing about serfdom, or simply stop being a serf. You decide.
Medieval serfs owned all their own stuff and were almost entirely self-suficient except in times of catastrophic weather or plague. Their problems were related to the excessive power of physical coercion monopolized by their lords, the general poverty of an economy which relied on muscle power for all work and lacked all "free" energy sources, and the claims of rent for their productive assets (land) which could be randomly disproportionate to productive value. Also, they suffered under a religious regime which made it a capital crime to exercise the available methods of birth control, making it hard to stabilize population versus resources without periodic plagues.
Medieval life was physically taxing and lacked the opportunity to sit around doing nothing for any length of time. It was however generally much less psychologically stressful than life today, for any and all social classes.
Keep paying those property tax...
Da-uh. This has been the problem with capitalism since its second century. It allows those with liquid capital -- or access to capital, which is the subject of this article -- to outbid all other supposedly "free competitors" in the "free market" (where nothing whatsoever is actually free).
Meanwhile, once again, the writer displays complete and utter ignorance of the social and economic institutions we call "feudal". "Feudalism" became a buzzword among the first capitalists in the 17th century, an anathema tied to their revolt against the landed nobility. In a world where all education has been directed by said capitalists for three centuries, only specialized academics and devoted amateurs have any idea of what actually constituted feudal society. Everyone else, most ESPECIALLY economics writers, who by their training are all acolytes of Divine Capitalism, believes a myth concocted by its enemies as propaganda.
Capitalism was always composed 50% of greed and 50% of horse manure. Get a new ideology and you might understand the world a little better.
Human survival and progress is driven by what we call 'greed', it is simply the survival of the fittest, albeit twisted by current law and government.
I only ever hear that argument from my jewish frinds in LA. If you go to other countries (even Germany), or observe children - you can see colalboration and sharig makes us happy and more productive than living in fear ond irationally competing against everyone (as only Americans seem to do - and they seem to be the least happy and mst depressed in teh world)
Thomas Jefferson:
“The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.”
Government and the IRS confiscation of a portion of everything you earn does far more harm then any pussy central bank.