In this episode, we continue covering history’s biggest lessons.
We now find ourselves in 1975, when the United States experienced its biggest population boom ever. This boom led to an increase in people looking for jobs—and a massive deficit in the government’s capacity to provide.
From 1975 until now, the people on the ground faced two problems: first, wages stopped increasing; and second, the value of money was decreasing. This means that we are working twice as hard to earn only half as much.
The advent of the internet connected people like never before. But at the same time, they’re getting left behind. The American Dream is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve, and people are still exposed to the same imagery of a Great America.
How do you influence the favor of the masses? Thatcher’s answer was to give free housing to low-income individuals in the United Kingdom. After that, she decides to introduce mortgages. This effectively turns people into debtors.
What started as something good turned into a new form of slavery.
“You're paying with money that is continually worth less where you have to work more to buy yourself out of something you never even own,” Alexander explained.
In the United States, Reagan decides to deregulate credit. This gave way for Wall Street to begin financing extensively. In turn, everything starts to become more expensive. Everything is just artificial building stimulated by artificial growth.
At the end of the day, your wages aren’t going up. As an ordinary person, you’re still in the rat race all day long. It’s a vicious cycle of having to borrow more money to finance a standard of living that you are expected to maintain.
All this is happening against the backdrop of world events like the rise of the Berlin Wall, the fall of communism, the Silicon boom, offshore manufacturing, and the rise of nations.
Politics is downstream of economics. Throughout history, the system has been twisted to favor the welfare of the one percent.
When we look toward the future, we have to start being proactive. This entails creating the tools and platforms that the people on the ground need to claim personal responsibility and free themselves from a vicious cycle of earning less, incurring debt, and working more.
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