Here is the chart that shows the policy that has set the parameters of your professional life. If this chart were converted to a sound then it would be the sound of inevitability. The picture shows basically rising interest rates until Reagan took office and basically falling rates since.
Government policy controls this number and the experiment of this number controls your life. Yet no politician has ever explained to you his view on the prime rate, you never studied its meaning in school and you are unaware of the American definition of progress for the last 30 years:
easy credit + inexpensive energy (see note) and food + (relatively) high wage
= financial casino + technological revolution
Note: Cheap energy in terms of dollar amount paid, directly, by American consumers - not referring to the war or environmental costs.
There is nothing new about the chaos that unregulated easy credit unleashes and Americans have certainly paid the financial price necessary for recent technological progress. This price was the deliberate and known culmination of 30 years of neoliberal policy. As the government funded RAND Corporation said in 2001 while predicting wildly improbably technologies by 2015
Class disparities. As technology brings benefits and prosperity to its users, it may leave others behind and create new class disparities. Although technology will help alleviate some severe hardships (e.g., food shortages and nutritional problems in the developing world), it will create real economic disparities both between and within the developed and developing worlds. Those not willing or able to retrain and adapt to new business opportunities may fall further behind. Moreover, given the market weakness of poor populations in developing countries, economic incentives often will be insufficient to drive the acquisition of new technology artifacts or skills.
In the quote above "business opportunities" is code for the casino money
0.1% literally walking away with the bank while some high end workers manage to keep the tattered middle class from completely disappearing.
Well okay we have paid the bubble burst price that typically comes with the easy credit that causes investment in technological revolution. But what did that buy us and where does the experiment end?
Not all technological revolutions are equal. The recent technological revolution is frequently claimed as on par with past periods of advancement in manufacturing, steel, electricity and transportation. But with the nation still dependent on cheap foreign oil and labor this claim seems exaggerated. Sufficient electric transportation to replace oil and robotics to replace manual labor have not materialized.
Easy credit cannot do research and development that takes longer than the time expected for return on capital, say five years. The serious R&D was accomplished during the credit tightening period that ended with severe recession in 1980. Then as shock and awe style investment became possible the waiting five year investment technology overhang, personal computers, internet, cloud computing, mobile communications, computing small devices and electric cars, all achieved markets. At the same time the easy credit, moving outward from probable investing, created tech and real estate bubbles and to some extent war - inequality increases volatility and foreign investment the need for cheap oil.
In order to really be a revolution the technology the casino makes available must reduce some basic shortage. The best, maybe only, way for humans to progress is to close markets in slave like labor and blood stained oil. Were America not an empire this technological revolution might have made some of these achievements. Without cheap labor and oil from other countries the flood of investment money might have been spent solving labor and energy shortages. The rising population of and reliance on other countries and their resources is the old American capitalism weakness.
Whether it was slavery and civil war or native Americans and the War of 1812, America has always been torn between technology led progress and wealth of exploitation. The casino is not going to generate the innovation we need. Our choices are now government led technological development, closing the casino and waiting another few decades before opening it again, or doubling down on world domination.