To organize the recovery of the economy, there are thousands of competing theories: for some, we must increase the value of stock exchange securities and real estate assets, in order for their owners to have some capital gains and to go into debt. For others, it is necessary to increase public spending. Still for others, it is necessary to lower interest rates.
When these three methods are used to their limits, as it is the case now, some speak of creating money ad infinitum and even throw banknotes by helicopter. Each one ensures that it has no inflationary impact because of the double pressure of globalization and technological progress.
Strangely, people have dropped a much simpler way to increase demand, which would massively increase salaries. Or at least the lowest incomes. After all, wages per head have not increased since a long time in the U.S. and not a lot in Europe and in any case a lot less than profits. But everyone seems to accept as fact that a massive increase in wages would increase costs, whereas, for the reason said above, it would only reduce the return on capital and executive compensation. And this seems impossible, because a world war is engaged to attract investment and executives, both more and more mobile.
Moreover, in this precarious world, any increase in overall income will instead feed the precautionary savings and not consumption. Without doubt it must be asked whether, in this absurd world, where everyone wants to consume more, without really daring to stop saving, it would not be better to try to understand what lies behind the consumption: it is primarily a relationship to death.
This relationship is obviously for the satisfaction of primary needs: hunger, thirst, shelter, which protect from death. It is also, but quite differently, once these needs are covered, (as is the case for a significant part of the West in crisis): by purchasing an item or service, everyone is reassured, unconsciously, thinking he will not die before using what he recently acquired; even more: watching one’s wardrobe, library, CD rack lead to believe, without even admitting it, that he cannot die before wearing, reading, hearing all his clothes, books, CD. Nothing is more comforting than watching time crystallized one’s future life.
In total, the fear of death is therefore the source of all desire. Desire to save. Desire to consume. Saving is insurance. Consuming is reassurance.
The infinitely complex equation of our societies, who want to maintain their movement is then to sustain the delicate balance between insurance and distraction, between the rational risk coverage and its phantasmagorical conspiracy. The more our societies handle risk, the more they leave more space to distraction.
If they want to maintain their momentum and get out of their languor, our societies must thus sustain the infinitely present reality of death and organize in a credible way the risks coverage that it entails. No wonder they are in crisis: they do exactly the opposite.