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| Source: Wall Street Journal |
The war at home is continuing apace as the money lenders and other coupon clippers continue to bleed people dry. Studies reveal that student debt in the US at over $1 trillion exceeds auto and credit card debt. The moneylenders have their claws in to people well in to their old age and while student debt is rising among all age groups, people over forty are beginning to really feel it.
Moneylenders are concerned not because running a society in this way is inherently unstable and and inflicting untold strain and grief on people that actually work for a living and make society function, but because people are so weighed down by the usurers that that it they cannot borrow any more and the lenders can't make their blood money, get their pound of flesh. It's not really any better than those that kill themselves or drink themselves to death inder the strain, the result is the same---the coupon clippers can't find a use of their capital in this market.
The delinquency rate for 40 to 49 year olds in hock to the moneylenders (defined as the percentage of debt that has not had a payment made in 90 days according to the Wall Street Journal) was 11.9% as of March this year exceeding the 8.7% for all age groups. One of the reasons for this is that people in this age group are often home owners and for decades we have been told that the home is our bank. The home will guarantee us health care and security in our old age, will pay for our children's education etc. The collapse of the housing market due to the overprodcution of homes during the rise of the credit bubble, a crisis brought about by the market or the unplanned, for profit madness of the capitalist mode of production, has depleted the savings, of this age group. With mortgages often much greater than the value of their homes and either losing jobs or having major wage cuts, what savings this group had in the banks has also been tapped dry. In some cases, people take out more loans to pay old ones. We know that more and more people are using credit cards to buy food and paying for health care in the sickness industrial complex has been going on for some time.
Buying the necessities of life on credit is described by the coupon clippers and their political representatives in the Democratic and Republican parties as us "living beyond out means". We can't have 1000 bases around the world spreading peace and freedom and not expect to make sacrifices for it.
Since 2005, the number of Americans with student debt has risen to 37 million from 23 million. For those over 50 with student debt, our numbers have doubled and for the over 60's tripled according to the WSJ. As one woman paying $415 a month on her student debt points out, "It's do I feed my kids, do I pay my car, payment, do I pay my car insurance? Some choices. We hear the money lenders comlain about people's inability to pay. But the details of how much has been made over time in interest payments is never detailed. Some people paid of their debts decades ago and are still paying the interest or blood money to these parasitic characters.
As we have explained in the past, capitalism produces too much, more than they can sell at a profit and production is only set in to motion in capitalist society if profits can be made so all sorts over other activity is used for capital that they don't use in the Labor process. Much of this is speculative activity and we have all heard of the term "financial instruments" gimmicks and tricks for shifting wealth from one coupon clipper's pocket to another. Debt allows capitalism to go beyond these limits set by its internal laws, but eventually the system has to be brought back to within its limits and in order to do that we experience what we are now and what will return in the not so distant future with greater force. These crisis will only be eliminated when we eliminate a system of production based on profit and set imn to motion by and for the personal gain of private individuals.
When it doesn't work, when the excesses break out in to the open, the coupon clippers refer to this as "crony capitalism" is the Romney camp is doing so today with an ad aimed at one of Barack Obama's wealthy supporters. They use the term when whole nations collapse due to capitalist crisis, It's not a failure of capitalism, it's "Crony capitalism." Is there a "Crony Socialism" too? It is capitalism that is the problem, it is all cronyism.
In the same WSJ today there is yet another reminder that health spending (caring for us when we're sick) and pensions (caring for us when we're old) are "Squeezing spending on education, infrastructure and other services". We know this is not true, the money is there. I remind readers yet again that 6 Americans, the heirs to the Wal Mart fortune stolen from workers throughout the world, is greater than that of 90 million Americans. The trillions spent on warfare to defend these profits, this theft is also a source of capital that we can put to good humane use. Blaming who they do is simply an attempt to obscure the truth as well as a divide and rule tactic, to set us against each other, young against old, men against women, white against black.
We can stop this theft by taking the finance houses and banks under public ownership and management. This does not mean making the deposits of savers, the savings and security of workers and the middle class, but the storage and allocation of the wealth, the capital, that the collective Labor of society creates. Capital is not a private product.
Abolish all student debt
Free, federally funded education at all levels
Free health care at the point of need
End the Pentagons war's bring the troops home
Jobs for all.
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