Even if it is so (and we can talk for hours on the validity of this or that data) how do you find the fact that there are enough damned means of production to feed everyone and it's been so for decades now? Also how do you like the fact that there are now about 50-60 MILLION people in US that get food stamps. Or the fact that the wages for most of the western world are falling for 30 years now?
...
Whatever.
Yes it is golden age as long as you disregard percentages and trend.
"Some 805 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That's about one in nine people on earth."
http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
Economy seems like a boiler ready to explode, rich-poor chasm is widening like hell.
Global peace doesn't look very rosy either.
Not to mention what's happening on the environmental front.
All in all, sorry but I cannot feel the joy of "us humans doing well". We don't. Some technical sectors are doing well - that's all. Socially, ethically, politically we're still at middle ages and speeding backwards.
My 2 cents (which is most than millions of people can spare ;-) )
If you want to get a negative one just try to fight for something that goes against the status quo. I.e. try to exersise your civil rights for what you might consider an edge-cause (which constitutes the majority of the causes civil rights are supposed to be about).
”The poor are collectively unseizable. They are not only the majority on the planet, they are everywhere and the smallest event speaks of them. This is why the essential activity of the rich today is the building of walls — walls of concrete, of electronic surveillance, of missile barrages, minefields, frontier controls, and opaque media screens.“
— John Berger “Ten Dispatches About Endurance in the Face of Walls” (October 2004)
A bit into the article I had the strangest feeling I was reading a dark Orwellian story.
OMG - is _that_ how Japanese employees spent their lives?! I wonder what the suicide rates are over there.
I admit that I didn't know about the Bild connection (and yes it does speak volumes). Btw, Bild editors can be accused of anything but leftism and you said that there was significant controversy with Spiegel. Maybe there is still hope for the medium.
Still this particular piece is well written and (seems) quite well researched.
Interesting point of view.
Just some notes on the rich spending: (I don't have time to find refs but that should be pretty easy) numbers show that rich spend a tiny proportion of their money compared to other classes. So they are effectively hoarding. Also they invest mostly at the only place that can give them returns over 3%(?) nowadays which is stock markets, etc (1). Real investments in industry/services that would translate to jobs are sparse in Western world. That's also part of the problem for Westerners debt problem which could be seen as a way to mitigate the effect of industry and services (real production that is) going to Asia (mainly).
So, I'm afraid that if you expect things to change via rich themselves changing their ways (e.g. see the light and start redistributing their own wealth) you're gonna wait for long. After all just imagine being one of them. Why invest in the declining west with worker wages say 50% more expensive than in China? Never mind that competition will inevitably do the same thing to undercut you and this will end only when both of you are out of customers. In some ways, as a rich man, you can see the customers/labor as a dwindling common source where the tragedy of the commons apply under the rules of the capitalism.
(1) That's not to put a distinction between good industrialists that create jobs and bad bankers that create hot air. For one thing they largely are the same people and even if they were not they still have to play the game to stay ahead of competition.
"The Spiegel has turned into yellow press lately" that's your very own personal opinion but the way you serve it (as absolute truth) is yellow.
Not to add in various other mishaps in your argument (eg "kind of "left"", thanks for unveiling ...). In short that's nice propaganda (albeit not very effective here).
There are a lot of going on but the point is to single out symptoms from root causes. Otherwise we will wallow trying to deal with symptoms forever.
Dunno if anyone has yet mentioned one of the basic contradictions inherent in capitalism which could very well be at the root of what we experience. Means of production are private (factories, etc) and the owners as almost all players in capitalism take care to maximize _their_ profit and not society's well being. That maximization involves dumping down workers wages (another commodity in capitalism). Interestingly enough, workers are also consumers so dumping their wages erodes their purchasing power. And that's just one of the contradictions that stem from having a social mode of production driven by private interest.
The name of the most prominent economist that pointed out this and other contradictions some decades ago is Marx (which interestingly enough is never mentioned when capitalism crisis are on the table).
...and then it was Enterprise, Atlantis etc.
No matter how tough and competent the organization is, failures cannot be eliminated when we are talking about so complex systems/operations.