Now obviously, things are much more complicated that that. Any time you see an "end of" something or other, or a "last" this or that, chances are that the ideas involved are exaggerated, flat-out wrong, or short-shelf-lifed. And generally, I don't like to throw around the "C" word very much (capitalism), because it is not very descriptive of the real world. There are many different styles of capitalism, with differing scales of application in particular countries or regions. European capitalism is different than Asian Tiger capitalism, which is different than American capitalism. And of course, Chinese capitalism is perhaps destined to be the most unusual and powerful variant of all. So talk of 'capitalism' as a specific, discrete entity, a la political economists of the 19th and 20th centuries, is really not very helpful.

Still, I'll use it in this posting as a shorthand for American style capitalism, especially the hyper-consumptive, full-employment, rugged individualist type of economy that is coming apart at the seams. In this limited sense only, might this be the last full-blown capitalist Christmas?

Here are some reasons why we might be looking at a totally new ball game next yuletide season. These factors are sometimes difficult to see, amidst all of the ads, video games, TV shows, blogs, texts, Tweets, and the like. But these algorithmic forces are slowly, surely, and disturbingly grinding away at the moorings of the American way of life.

Jobs, jobs, jobs -- this is the bugaboo of both our political parties right now. It's the #1 priority for every serious person, but those stats just won't budge. The official rate has been at 9.6% or above for the last 14 months (currently at 9.8%). The broader U-6 rate, which includes short-term discouraged workers and part-timers who want full time, has been similarly hovering around 17% for almost two years. If we go beyond the official numbers and throw in long-term discouraged workers and even a conservative portion of our prison population, then we're really looking at close to one in four working-aged adults. That's 25% of our workforce that goes un- or under-utilized.

At some point, this long-term erosion of labor is going to cave in one of the basic tenets of our economy and our society: that gainful employment (or careerism, or the work ethic, or bootstrapperism, or whatever) is a fundamental pillar of an individual's self-worth and social value. Despite the conservative caterwauling that the unemployed are just lazy freeloaders looking for handouts, the sheer numbers indicate that we're looking at a radical restructuring of the ratios of work to overall economic activity. There are millions and millions of talented, eager, and educated people out there, unable to find work. This is not the Spare Change Brigade, extending their scuffed Dunkin' Donuts cups. These are high school grads, college grads, grad-school grads -- many with skills that were cutting edge just a few years ago. And they're still out of work for six, nine, 14 months. Amazingly, 25% of the unemployed have been so for more than a year, and 10% for more than two years.

Many are mystified by this state of affairs, especially as the stock market continues to experience robust growth, indicating that corporate America is doing just fine again. Why aren't these companies hiring? Why aren't the big banks loaning out some of those stockpiled dollars, considering that taxpayer bailouts helped preserve that loot in the first place? Why isn't the government forcing these companies to create jobs, or at least giving more tax incentives to fire up the hiring engine again?

In this light, Democrats and Republicans are frantically trying to fit this mammoth de-laboring trend into their threadbare scripts and narratives. As mentioned in the last series of posts, this is setting up a huge ideological clash, since the underlying partisan explanations are so different. For Dems, we're still in lagging indicator mode, where growth on Wall Street and corporate America must accrue to the job market eventually. It's only a matter of time. The government's role in the meantime is to grease the skids for that expected transfer of corporate success to the job market: improved education to get new workers prepared for new realities, job re-training to get displaced workers ready for emerging industries, and another round of stimulus/tax cuts to get some catalyzing oomph into the fiscal cauldron. Everything is in a kind of holding pattern in the Democratic world, waiting for that takeoff. This is, I think, the key to understanding Obama's capitulations on so many dear liberal causes. He's convinced that economic growth is almost at its tipping point, and the jobs tsunami will be unleashed any day now.

Unfortunately for Obama and the Dems,  blocking the way is the GOP, with a fresh infusion of Tea Party swagger. On that side of the aisle, the momentum is towards stripping down the government to create a John Galtian collapse (see post on Ayn Rand for background). Many liberal and some conservative commentators were flabbergasted at the hypocrisy of the Republicans signing on to the renewal of the Bush tax cuts last week, since it seems to fly in the face of their fiscal austerity shtick by adding a trillion dollars to the deficit. But keep in mind, as Thomas Frank pointed out in "The Wrecking Crew," Republicans don't actually want the federal government to work. A successful centralized government flies in the face of their worldview, so if tax cuts tank the whole thing, so what? It just confirms their stance all the more. The overall goal of shrinking the size of government will have been accomplished, regardless of the socioeconomic wreckage. As I mentioned in the last series, Republicans of the Ayn Randian tilt actually expect and welcome massive pain and dislocation, because that will be an indication of just how dependent and needy America has become. There has to be misery as the addict is weaned from the government money-teat. But once we get past these transition pangs, learning to live within our means and roll up our sleeves again, we'll be that much better off. We will be responsible adults again, finding strength and resolve in ourselves, our families, and our churches, and not from some government bureaucrat or federal check.

Again, a lovely vision from the Tea Party set, if we were still living in a Currier & Ives etching. And considering that I really do think that decentralization is both unavoidable and potentially good, it would be awesome if the purposeful starving of the federal beast also resulted in the downsizing of private corporate power, which is just as dangerous. It would be great if the proposed ransacking of Social Security, Medicare, ObamaCare, and other bleeding-heart 'socialist' programs would then automatically engender a flowering of small business, cooperative enterprise, and lower/middle class wage increases. But of course, this won't happen, as I have detailed many times before. The distinction between 'Big Government' and the 'Business Community' is bogus, and the idea that chopping away at the federal structure will somehow magically restore the public's power vis-a-vis corporate America is a pipe-dream. The entire socioeconomic structure has been crafted by centralized government and private power in concert for decades, for their own advantage, and tugging at the strings of the social safety net will not topple the rest of that edifice.

So that's the backdrop as we bring this decade to a close. I expect that 2011 will not see any return to some kind of 'natural' rate of unemployment. Again, most miss the import of the housing bubble in this regard. The housing collapse wasn't just another asset bubble, like tech stocks or pork bellies. It was the final reckoning on what Jim Kunstler has called "the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world." For decades after WW2, we pushed our chips all-in on a certain way of life: massive sprawl, total suburbanization, maximum individual consumption, and complete car-dependency. Now that the physical (Peak Oil), ecological, economic, and psychological defects of that way of life have proven terminal, the entire labor and housing structures that went along with it are disintegrating. Our sense of what is 'normal' seems very ancient to us, because it is all we have ever known. But really, it's just a couple generations old, and is simply not sustainable (more on Bubble America here).

I suspect that 2011 will be a year of pandemic cognitive dissonance. The glittering world of our stimulant-soaked simulacrum will be more and more out of touch with the cratering of meaningful work and the widening divide between the have-nots and the have-it-alls ("have-it-alls" is a term from the excellent book, "Winner-Take-All Politics," a fantastic new look at inequality by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson -- see here for more info). Mortgages will continue to tank, as we become of nation of renters and waiters, hoping for the Superman of economic growth to open up the fire hydrant of goodies again. In this beleaguered state, all that most people will want is to be left alone to their TV shows, video games, gadgets, and chicken fingers. We will hunger for humor and laid-back good times, but the political landscape will likely reach a fever pitch of discord, and the Unseat Obama agenda in 2012 will be the loudest trope of all. 

In the new year, I hope to turn this blog towards more concrete proposals about what needs to happen, what's actually changing out there already (for the good), and how we could realistically get there from here. It's tough, because generally I think there will be little help from our national leaders on either side of the political spectrum. Change will likely have to come from below. But unfortunately, I'm not a huge believer in bottom-up activism either, as I think that centralized power is too entrenched to allow any meaningful change to happen. And more importantly, I think that true social change in our current situation can only be accomplished through our lifestyle itself: where we live, how we inhabit the landscape, where we work, how we move around, etc. In that respect, the changes we want have to be easy, in that we have to be able to just live them. To me, nothing is more unrealistic than the endless liberal calls for getting involved in this cause, or that campaign, or this march, or that movement. The changes we want have to be embodied in our boring, day-to-day habits, and in our psyches themselves. It's this internal piece that may be the most difficult of all, which is maybe why there is so much sound and fury about external activism. 

So we're in that awkward place where millions and millions of people want the same simple things (dignified work, basic security, self-determination, and good government), and there are thousands of organizations and businesses out there with great solutions. But we still need a national catalyst of some kind, to push through quick but broad systemic and legal changes to allow the desires and deliverers to match up. We absolutely need the power of centralized messaging, with profoundly decentralized application points. But how do we do that, when the centralized engine has been captured by purely corporate interests?

That's our task for next year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!