The Burning Platform: Fake It Until You Make It

I've written before (see, e.g., here, here and here) about Peter Turchin's research on civil war and the factors that lead to civil war. One of the biggest factors that contributes to social unrest, according to Turchin, is popular immiseration: "a societal condition where the well-being of the general population declines as the rich get richer, leading to increased unhappiness, resentment, and social instability, often characterized by wage stagnation, loss of access to services (health, education), and 'deaths of despair'." 

    I've discussed before how many factors of well being for the average person (particularly white men) plateaued in the 1970s. For instance, although there are some squiggling up and down, the average real wage (i.e., adjusted for inflation) of men has been stagnant since the 1970s even though productivity continued to climb. Turchin, in his article I linked to above on popular immiseration, notes that "average stature of native-born Americans"--a good measure of biological well-being--"grew rapidly until the 1970s, and then stagnated." Increases in life expectancy has stalled across much of the United States, and has actually declined in some regions. The average age of marriage (which tends to drop during good times) has increased in recent decades. "In short," he concludes, "a variety of indicators show that well-being of common American has been declining in the last four decades. The technical term for this in the structural-demographic theory is immiseration."

    The Burning Platform has posted a piece entitled "Fake It Until You Make It" which, although ostensibly about inaccurate and misleading government economic indicators, also reveals aspects of "popular immiseration". For instance, talking about inflation figures, the author writes:

It’s embarrassing living under the rule of a quasi-fascist corporate governmental bureaucracy built on a funeral pyre of lies, growing ever larger by the minute, anticipating a spark igniting a conflagration never before seen in history. The average “forgotten man” knows their cost of living increases are nowhere near 2.7%, as they pay 30% more for utilities, 20% more for a steak, 10% more for chicken, 20% more for car insurance, 10% more for homeowners insurance, 10% more for property taxes, 10% more for rent, 35% more for new and used cars  since 2020, and the list goes on. The CPI is a LIE.

 Also:

    There were a couple charts posted by the Kobeissi Report which I think explain why the average working stiff is mad as hell and getting close to not taking it anymore. The percentage of GDP which goes to workers in the form of compensation just reached an all-time low of 53.8%. It is clear from the chart, this has not been the century of the worker, but the century of bankers and corporations. From 1947 through 2000, workers received approximately 64% of GDP in compensation. It seems that giant sucking sound described by Ross Perot in 1992 was accurate, as millions of good paying jobs were outsourced to 3rd world shitholes, and now robots and AI are completing the task of gutting the middle class to benefit billionaires, bankers and politicians. 

    With current U.S. GDP of $31 trillion, workers would be receiving over $3 trillion more in annual compensation if our overlords had not financialized the world and treated workers as nothing more than replaceable cogs in their finance machine. ...

The author included the following graphic to help show this trend:

Keep in mind that the situation is even worse than it appears, because until the 1970s, most households were only one income (generally the husband/father) but now the majority are two-income. That means that the GDP percentage going to workers is being spread much more thinly among a greater number of workers. 

    In any event, the Burning Platform covers more evidence of worsening popular immiseration. And the author of that piece is very pessimistic about the future. All it would take is a particularly charismatic leader and an organized movement financed by disaffected elites, and we could easily find ourselves in a civil war.