wind in the sales

I think this video is absolutely the best microcosm of America, and indeed late consumer capitalism, that I've seen since good ol' W landed on a aircraft carrier to announce that he had successfully conquered Iraq. Now, to most people this video is probably just embarrassing or depressing, which are completely understandable emotions. For me however, it is the punchline for a rather long historical joke.
You see back in the 70's the capitalist class in America decided that they had had just about enough of this unionized middle class labor bullshit and got working on ways to pay less money to workers. This was done through a variety of means that are by no means novel or even unusual. In the 80's it was moving manufacturing whenever possible from the staunchly unionized Mid-West and North-East to the less organized South and West. This did a lot for wage repression, as did labor saving advances in technology, but some thought it hadn't done enough. So it was that in the 90's globalization was utilized to use labor in foreign countries with no real regulations, and then import back into America under the guise of 'free trade' and thus essentially break the back of the blue collar middle-class in America.
There was one glaring problem with this strategy however, their simply wasn't a market for the goods if you didn't have people making enough money to buy them. Middle-class America was the cash cow of the century for Capitalists, but by repressing wages the milk had gone sour. Luckily the financial sector came up with a rather cunning solution- extend credit to the consumer class so they can buy and then commodify that debt so as to be able to trade it. Doing this also gave the financial sector the sort of leverage they needed to start doing some truly daring speculative trading in futures that essentially allowed them to invent profit through creative use of economics.
Where did all this lead? It lead to the video you see here. The once mighty American working class is reduced to fighting over ritualized sales on shitty products made by horribly paid workers half way around the world. All purchased with credit cards or the equally unsubstantial American dollar, that as another form of wage repression is worth less every year. So strange how the dreams we dream become reality and then that reality becomes a nightmare.
"All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as
from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." -John Adams in a letter to Jefferson (1787)

Crises in Capitalism

"For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer." -John Maynard Keynes (1931)

Today I would like to talk about economics and how it is affecting the world in which we all live. The financial meltdown of 2008 can now be seen in hindsight as merely the beginning of the drama that is still being played out today. As a direct result of this crises we have seen the collapse of several regimes in North Africa and South-West Asia as the economic pressures eventually erupted and flowed like lava onto the streets. It has also led to serious disruptions in the EU which could very well cause the dismantling, in part or in whole, of this economic union. Even in the most die-hard epicenter of Capitalism, America, there was an anti-capitalist movement that although utterly ineffectual did at least raise the issue of economic injustice.
For a world order that has been specifically oriented around the concept that capital needs to flow freely, it is fascinating to see the public's response to the reality of our economic system. People get angry when they don't know what to do, and this is why so many people are so upset about this crises. They seem to have some vague understanding that someone somewhere is profiting from all this, yet they are still powerless to challenge these shadowy figures, or to even understand how it is all happening. Just to be clear, I don't think I have the answer, but I do think I understand the question- Does anyone have a better idea?
Before that question can be posed, I think there needs to be a serious attempt at reality studies. By this I mean that deciding what are the most irrefutable desires of humans (ie liking being alive and disliking suffering) and if these can be met better by another economic order. Given the insatiable nature of human desire at present it seems probable that this system is best at mass producing consumables and distributing them. It is profoundly naive to assume that we can change our current order without taking the incredibly difficult task of inventing a new system which will be more appealing to the majority of earths humans. As a historian it is amusing to me that people are willing to organize for perceived political issues but are unwilling to organize themselves in order to engage in alternate economic activity. We are creatures of habit I suppose, but as a wise man once noted, the world is a "system in perpetual search for novelty".