Neoliberalism has indeed fucked with everyone, hollowing out economies and rain forests, and especially fucked over "workers" in the traditional, industrial proletariat sense. But the shift to a global politics and immaterial production has actually strengthened the potential for The Multitude to manifest itself, as Heart and Negri lay out. Someone who's read Badiau as much as your fave books of 2010 indicates should get that right ;). But fuck the dollar store and the profiteers running it--"oh look, we can turn a profit because the American way of life is degrading! EXPAND!" Buy cheep and recycled at Value Village etc.

That's not your post about how much you loved Badiau's second best book of 2010--all you Slog commies look the same to me. WOOPSIES. Still, read Multitude.

Thank you for fueling my vision of a bigger and greater dystopia in America. Where sons and daughters compete for jobs against their fathers and mothers. Where the jobs are retail that compensate in refurbished inventory and scrip. Where job growth is tied to a waiting list of corporate patronage.

We aren't really that far from that company town USA, are we?

I'll buy that for a dollar!

The main problem was that, up until December, Big Banks weren't loaning to anyone other than Big Business.

Big Business doesn't create US jobs - those are almost all from US small business (5-50 employees) and a smaller fraction from mid tier business.

And there was no capital.

They were literally sitting on the capital and loaning it to people who didn't need it (big business had horded capital) or shouldn't get it (overseas investors).

@5 for the dollar win.

One: Most businesses will refuse to hire anybody -- or as few people as possible -- until after the presidential election in 2012, thinking that this is the easiest and cheapest way to ensure that a Republican junta will take over the white house and the remainder of congress, paving the way for an official slave-labor state in place of the United States of America.
First they will roll back the minimum wage to $2.00 an hour -- or get rid of it entirely, then destroy the new health care plan, make unions illegal, and move on to more important things like eliminating income taxes and Social Security contributions. Next, they will eliminate Medicare and Medicaid, followed by a complete dismantling of the Federal Reserve and Social Security. They will also attempt to repeal or legally invalidate many amendments to the constitution, including IV through IX, XI-XVII, XIX and XX, and finally XXII-XXVII.
Next, Republicans will enact legislation that will make Pi equal to 3.00 and require anyone who cannot prove 8 generations of U.S.-born American citizenship to forfeit their citizenship and move out of the U.S. within 90 days. After that, they will allow no immigration into the U.S. for anyone with a net worth less than $5 million... and legislate a few other things that aren't quite as pressing.
If you think I'm exaggerating, just sit back and watch. This debacle is coming as sure as the sun rises in the east.
I forgot to mention that gold will become the official currency of the New Confederate Sovereign Conservative Capitalist Empire of North America and the Western Hemisphere (formerly the United States of America).

One percent of the people in this country control fifty percent of its wealth. Repeat: 1% of the people in the U.S. control 50% of the wealth in this country.
This same 1% received 24% of pre-tax income in 2007, but received only 9% in 1976. From 2002 to 2007, their income increased 10% per year.
These super-rich parasites are definitely in need of more tax breaks financed by the rest of us, right? My question is how long are this nation's criminally gullible voters going to continue to bury their heads in the sand, allowing oligarchs and plutocrats to rub their noses in the fact that they are utterly, completely powerless?
Elections used to offer something of a remedy for plutocracy and oligarchy -- but not any more. Elections in this country were turned into Silent Auctions when the U.S. supreme court declared that corporations are people, and are entitled to the same free-speech protections as human beings -- a completely absurd perversion of "human rights."
I'm mystified that anyone could be as obtuse as the people in the so-called "tea party." They actually believe the 1% are looking out for ordinary peoples' interests. What a joke.
The 1% want the rest of us to die from lack of food, clothing, housing, health care and adequate living conditions. Unfortunately for that 1%, when we are gone, they will have nobody to do their work, lick their boots or pay their taxes for them. They're amoebic parasites that kill their hosts.

And, since I haven't been excommunicated from the Church of Stranger yet, allow me to cordially invite all right-wingers in the peanut gallery to please take a careful look at my profile photo and get seething mad as a result of their insatiable curiosity. I love tweaking the short hairs on right-wingers' assholes -- by remote control, of course.

The thing that people don't often say about the Service Sector model, or the "Information worker" one, whatever you want to call it, is that it only works in a situation where the country in question directs production in other countries, which aren't able to challenge it. The general hollowing out would possibly be offset by high tech jobs created to manage offshore economies. But, besides not being a good idea in general, when the home country experiences problems, it no longer has any of that industry to support itself.

Bigger problems happen when the countries in the third world start to challenge the coordinating country.

The service sector model is one where the U.S. becomes the administrator of a colonial corporate empire.

...oh, and commentor: Multitude sucks. Negri sold out a long, long time ago, and most of the Autonomist 'intellectuals' are frauds. Badiou would have absolutely no credibility as a leftist if Verso stopped pushing him to American audiences.

Someone should start referring to these folks as the "Spawn of Althusser".....with the old French Commie being looked at as a bearer of a zombie like illness, even though his original writings and those of a few close associates aren't too bad when taken individually.

It also bears mentioning that the heavily-unionized, decent-wages-and-benefits manufacturing sector wasn't always like that. Back before the big unionization drives of the 1930s salaries were low, unions were weak, and workers were expendable.

If all sectors of the American economy were composed of tiny firms that competed freely with each other and did not cartelize in any way, unions would be unnecessary and supply and demand would ensure that each worker got what he was worth. But that's not how the real world works; we have big businesses and associations that form de facto cartels. Unions are the only way that workers can extract anything close to their true value from their employers in this situation. Letting card check die was one of the Obama administration's worst long-term strategic blunders, since strong unions are so key to forging an egalitarian society and strengthening the Democratic party.