The economy is screwed up

I read in the paper this morning that the fed was happy that wages rose less than expected. Ok, that just goes to show that the lower class is a target of class war. The head of the Federal Reserve is definitely on the other side. The interesting converse of this is that in order for the economy to be 'successful' people are expected to spend gratuitous amounts of money during the holiday season to line the pockets of Lee Scott and Bob Ulrich. It seems to me that rejoicing over a low growth in income would be counter productive to the goal of conspicuous holiday consumption. To a reasonable and rational person it would be. But we are not talking about reasonable and rational people, we are talking about a class of people out to rape and pillage the working class for all they can get. Less income and more spending equals more to exploit.

Enter the credit card companies. Visa and MasterCard want you to spend more than you have so that they can make their money off interest fees. They are the ones who benefit from the so called consumer confidence index. According to this theory the economy is healthy when people are willing to spend more than they have. That is something that again makes no sense. I would think that other than a house or a car, it would be a sign of a healthy economy that people used financial discipline and spent what they had. Of course I am not an economist, I am but a worker. It comes down to one key thing the worse the economy is for the workers, the better economy it creates for the top class. The less they pay us in wages the more of their profits they can keep in their world view. Its pretty sick if you think about it. Retail companies have gotten in on this exploitation bandwagon by not only issuing their own store cards as they ahve done for years, but offering their own branded Visa and MasterCards. That way they get to make money on both ends.

Of course the great beast Wal*Mart is having a tough time this holiday season, and that is a cause for some optimism. Their same store sales actually fell. (Same store sales are a key indicator of the health of a retail company that measures the sales at stores that have been open at least a year and compares this year to last year.) Yeah, I read the business section of the paper. In the words of Rage Against the Machine it pays to "Know your Enemy."