The Rapture (And The Left Behind)

Source: Decline of the Empire

American society and its economic “recovery” have entered an important new phase in recent months, a new Heavenly Age in which our problems have magically disappeared. I call it The Rapture. Let me explain.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says we added an astonishing 243,000 non-farm payroll jobs in January, a number well north of what we’re used to. More importantly, the unemployment rate fell to 8.3%, a new post-recession low. The Good News was widely celebrated. It did not matter that after the population adjustment, the annual benchmark adjustment, the seasonal adjustment and the oft-neglected adjustment adjustment that 1,177,000 American citizens were adjusted out of the civilian labor force. This happened before the Chicago Fed attributed half of those who were not in the labor force to retiring baby boomers. Not to worry, though, I’m sure they can also explain away those new million-plus non-workers. Or at least half of them, anyway.

In the new Heavenly Age people will pay the government to keep their money safe just in case Ben Bernanke goes completely off the Deep End and cranks up inflation to a level John Williams of Shadow Stats would approve of. During the new era in which you get a negative 0.46 yield on your T-bills, there will be no incentive for the government to curtail its borrowing, as David Stockman notes. And as you are already aware, government debt need never be paid back, for inflation and economic growth or inflation sans growth will always make it disappear. The remarks of Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, concerning the non-sustainability of Federal spending because of the aging population and rising health care expenditures should therefore be disregarded.

Traditional two-party politics will flourish like never before in this new Heavenly Age. Unceasing coverage of the Republican primaries is only a harbinger of greater things to come. The President can claim credit for the much lower unemployment rate, although nothing he did helped to bring this statistical miracle about. Willard Romney will continue to collect huge amounts of money from Wall Street bankers—$12,042,816 in 2011 alone—on the off chance he will win the election. That outcome looks doubtful because the jobless rate should be well below 7% by the time November rolls around if current trends hold.

In short, we have entered The Rapture here in the United States, a joyous time when those raised up by luck and money (not necessarily in that order) will prosper like never before. In these times the real Main Street economy is smoothly replaced by the Wall Street (“FIRE”) economy. There are no structural problems in the way America does business because problems identified as structural have been magically erased from living memory. Debt of all kinds—household, government, private—no longer matters. No one will remember a time before the Plutonomy, the Brave New World where the rich do all the spending and the invisible poor do all the bending.

The Tribulation has ended and the Rapture has begun. It is unfortunate—surely there is no good reason to mention them—that some Americans have been Left Behind. These beasts of burden include, in no particular order, and with some overlap among the listings—

• savers and those on fixed incomes
• the 147 million people living within 200% of the poverty line
• the 46 million people receiving food stamps
• the 50 million people without any form of health insurance
• the unemployed who are in the labor force
• the unemployed who are not in the labor force (the “discouraged”, the “marginally attached”)
• those who are working part-time but need full-time work (10.1% according to Gallup)
• those who are so far underwater on their mortgages that they have developed gills to breath with
• those who will still be paying off their student debt when the oceans are devoid of fish in 2050

These are the Unascended and no amount of Faith will be sufficient to save them. Among those still occupying the Middle Earth of the Bourgeoisie, there is still a mad scramble to ensure that their children are not Left Behind. That struggle has been going on for decades now.

I only bring up the Left Behind because I have a cantankerous nature, for these unfortunates will soon be forgotten, left for dead and buried with the rest of the garbage. Let the dead bury the dead. It is the task of the living, of the Anointed, to celebrate the Good News and carry on.

The Rapture is here at last.

Read more at Decline of the Empire