[lbo-talk] mass dementia

[Carrol Cox]

The disruption of life caused by the economic gyrations of the last few
years go well beyond the 'lower' income levels, reaching quite high in
the population. Anecdotal: My daughter and her husband have a neighbor
who can't carry his two million dollar mortgages because he was laid off
as a Vice President of a large corporation, his duties taken over by his
executive assistant (read high-level secretary). He's living in one of
his houses because the bank lets him in order to protect the house from
going to ruin, since they can't find a buyer for it. Probably not very
many such cases; not enough to show up in social stats probably, but
enough to disturb those who know about them. So those who see troubles
but can't understand their actual sources are also _stultified_ by the
mysteries of a capitalist economy and driven to search for nonsense
explanations.

I think it is a dead end to explain social dementia in terms of
collective individual "stupidity."

Carrol