If one our of every four or five people is either unemployed or underemployed, and far more people than ever depend on welfare and food banks to survive, is it possible for the economy to be doing well?  Twenty or thirty years ago, low unemployment and poverty levels indicated economic prosperity.  Today, we mostly hear about the deficit and inflation.  What has changed in the meantime is that economic priorities are now controlled by the "contented" class.  They include not only the wealthy, but also a much enlarged segment of the middle class.  They are generally happy with the way things are, or at least fearful of change.  Government policy in North America reflects their priorities.  Their basic concern is their earnings.  They are opposed to taxes that support social programs, and to inflation that erodes the value of their earnings.  Social programs have been trimmed "to fight the deficit," that is, to reduce the need to tax the contented.  A monetarist policy of high interest rates has discouraged spending, lowering inflation.  The alternative policies of fiscal management of spending and taxation have been rejected.  The choice was a political one.  Economic theory itself has been manipulated through the ages to serve controlling interests, which calls for sensitivity to the political essence of economics.

Even "liberal" observers of the scene have deep roots in the culture of contentment.  They know it from first-hand experience.  At the same time, their own contentment makes it impossible for them to recognize its deeper nature, and the actual cure for it.  After all, a physician contented with a disease is not the best person to diagnose or prescribe for it.

As even various disaster scenarios are unlikely to jolt the contented our of their complacency, faith in the workings of the "modern industrial economy" is not justified.  It is a myth that with just the right kind of government intervention, and by the grace of the contented giving up many of their privileges, we will be save by the flexibility of the modern industrial economy.  The same groups who are blind to portents of disaster will not suddenly agree to the implementation of progressive policies.

It is necessary not only to acknowledge the existence of class struggle, as far example in discussions of the "underclass," but also to admit class struggle as an actor in the drama.  Contentment is a tranquilized state brought about by fear of change.  Contentment is a negative reaction to class struggle.  A symptom of this is the contented's need to feel morally justified in their desire for wealth and their denial of responsibility for the poor.

It is not enough to utter platitudes about the need for economic aspiration, with the usual lessons-to-be-learned-from-the-Japanese-and-the-Germans.  The true opposite and remedy for contentment is the desire for radical social change.  This is the underlying issue that is avoided at everyone's peril.

It is fine to try to understand the economic and political forces and actors that have created the economic mess in North America.  Yet the very obsession with forces and actors precludes attention to systemic causes and remedies.