40 years of austerity politics have hollowed out the heartland, as financial wizards of Wall Street gobbled up ever more of the nation's resources.
"Debtpocalypse" looms.
Depending on who wins out in Washington, we're told , we will either free fall over the fiscal cliff or take a terrifying slide to the pit at the bottom. Grim as these scenarios might seem, there is something confected about the mise-en-scene, like an un-fun Playland. After all, there is no fiscal cliff, or at least there was none -- until the two parties built it.
And yet the pit exists. It goes by the name of "austerity." However, it didn't just appear in time for the last election season or the lame-duck session of Congress to follow. It was dug more than a generation ago, and has been getting wider and deeper ever since. Millions of people have long made it their home. "Debtpocalypse" is merely the latest installment in a tragic, 40-year-old story of the dispossession of American working people.
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