SCORAI member Maurie Cohen has recently written a new article piece titled “Preparing for the End of Consumer Society” which is published on truth-out.org. Give it a read!
Excerpt
By famously implementing the $5 per day wage in 1914, Henry Ford was the first industrialist to recognize that a consumer society can only function when workers have access to ample income to finance discretionary purchases. During the 1930s, under the tutelage of John Maynard Keynes, this understanding became a key tenet of macroeconomic policy in many parts of the world. However, by the 1970s, high inflation, obstinate unemployment and other sources of economic instability called this strategy into question and unleashed during the following decades a wave of neoliberal reforms.