The Suppressed Truth About Economics and Burien: Part I

In a post-industrial consumer society, wages are generated from service employment, and Burien is feeling the resulting financial pinch of this global shift.

Part Five in a Series on Burien.

by Paul Glumaz

At the macrolevel, the problems of Burien and cities across the nation have their origin in the last four and a half decades of the disastrous shift of the U. S. economy from being an agro-industrial manufacturing, and infrastructural super-power, to a post-industrial outsourcing nation to the cheapest cost labor in the world. This financially created a class of the super-rich that profited from the reduction of labor costs and created a consumer society, not a producer society.

Over time, these financial profits, not backed by production, became investments in the global speculative offshore, current $37 trillion London financial casino. This process of shifting from a producer society to a consumer society is the reason that over these decades, the wages of a single worker can no longer buy a home and/or support a family. Because of the massive debts created by this, the financial system must further sacrifice infrastructure investments and build new homes to keep the existing debts rolled over.

The whole global system officially went bankrupt in 2008 and is being held together by all the world's central banks, creating more debts until recently seen at almost zero interest rates. The debts keep increasing, but these debts are not tied to production. This is inflationary and this is why, in Burien, the prices of homes and apartments are becoming more unaffordable. (This is because central bank servicing of real estate speculation is necessary to create one of the many financial means to keep the system going.)

In a manufacturing super-power, wages are generated based on things produced which improve the overall future productive potential of a society, and the wages so generated are used to consume those goods. In a post-industrial consumer society, wages are generated from service employment and are used to purchase foreign goods to the detriment of the future productive potential of the nation.

The suppressed truth is that debt and monetary creation must be connected to real, actual production. Changing this on a national level will be discussed in future guest posts.

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Mr. Glumaz is former US Congressional candidate, who has been analyzing governmental systems for over four decades. As a former Marxist and former committed atheist, he brings a unique perspective to societal and governmental structures. His primary concern is Washington State and King County, and he has recently become acutely aware of the unique oppression that Burien, a small business centered community, has been experiencing. The recent lawsuits by the KC Sheriff, homeless and homeless advocates, King County's sanctioned homeless encampment, and the "Raise the Wage Burien" initiative, have caused him to question, "Why Burien?"

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‍(image Restaurant - 123rf.com)