One of the issues that has become very prominent in this last year (2020) is the situation of women. Many people are aware that women’s situation have become much more difficult. There are even those who say that the progress, in terms of equality, that has been made over the past 25 years, has in many nations been nullified in one year by the pandemic because women are the ones who have often been the first ones to lose their jobs, they have been the ones who have had to take care of the family, have to take care of those who were ill, had to take care of other people who could not necessarily go out as they normally did, whether it was the elderly or sick family members.
In many ways, women’s situation has become much worse during this last year. Higher awareness is concerned that this is a trend that will be reversed as quickly as possible and that we can as quickly as possible, get back to a point where women’s situation can start improving around the world. There are truly many, many issues that have been made worse by the pandemic but it is clear that the major one is the economy. Let us therefore consider women and the economy.
It has been traditionally said – by men of course – that women do not have the mental ability to understand the economy. Well, clearly a male chauvinist statement, clearly a sexist remark. But if you look at it neutrally, there is actually some truth to it. Of course, this is said to provoke but nevertheless why say it?
Well, there is some truth to the idea that women cannot understand the economy, because nobody can understand the economy. Not even the men who have created the current economy can understand the current economy and all effects of the economy. This is one reason why women cannot understand the economy. Of course, not the way these men meant it but nevertheless, there is some truth to this. Who can understand the economy? Nobody fully understands it and that is one reason why it is going the way it is going.
Now, another aspect of this is that women cannot understand men’s economy, the male-created male-dominated economy. They cannot understand it, not because they do not have the ability to understand it, but because they cannot understand how men could create such an unbalanced economy. There are two ways to understand the word “understand.” You cannot understand something because you do not have the ability or the intelligence to understand it, or you cannot understand it because you are wondering how people could be so stupid. How could men be so stupid and create an economy like what you see in the world? This is what many women cannot understand about the economy.
What higher awareness looks for in the coming years, and of course, in the rest of the decade, is that women will begin to engage themselves more and more in the economy. They will begin to speak out and ask these questions based on the fact that women are the ones who understand the basic humanity that you should not do certain things to other people.
They could look at the economy, they can say: “There are certain things that should not be done to people by the economy. We should not have an economy that condemns a majority of the population in the world to being poor and only makes a small elite so rich that they do not even know what to do with the money. Because no individual could possibly need to have so much money in order to spend it on something.”
Women are then the ones who can look at this phenomenon and say: “There is something seriously wrong here. There is something seriously wrong in having an economy that is entirely geared towards allowing a few people to continue to amass more and more so-called ‘wealth’ when they absolutely do not need that wealth for any practical purpose.”
So why do they continue to amass this kind of wealth? Because of a psychological mechanism in these people’s minds, and that psychological mechanism means that nothing is ever enough for these people. This means that there is a large number of women who are ready to shift their awareness and suddenly realize: “We have a world economy that is entirely designed to allow a small elite of people – the vast majority of them men – to amass wealth, but it is really not about the wealth. It is about a psychological mechanism in their minds that means that nothing is ever enough for them. Why are we allowing the entire economy on the planet to be controlled by this inordinate, unfulfillable desire”?
Many women can even see that if we take this towards the logical extreme, what will happen? The economy will be more and more centered on these few people having more and more wealth. But their concern is to have the wealth, to amass the wealth, not spending it. What does that mean? It means they are taking wealth out of what we might call the “real” economy, the natural economy. That wealth then cannot be spent by anybody and can therefore not make the wheels of the economy turn.
What does that mean? It means that gradually the wheels will come to a halt; the economy will start sinking to a lower level and you will actually, within the foreseeable future, start reverting back to the kind of economies you had in the Middle Ages, in the feudal societies. This was where the vast majority of the population, over 95% of the population was poor and a small elite was rich. But the elite of the Middle Ages did not have anywhere near the wealth that the elite has today. And why not? Because the economy was at a lower level.
Why has the economy grown to a higher level than it was in the Middle Ages—why is there more wealth today? Because the wealth has been spread out over a bigger part of the population and, at least in some nations, people have a much higher standard of living than people had in the Middle Ages. That is why the economy has grown. That is why wealth has been increased in the real economy.
Many women are ready to look at this. Some men are, of course ready to look at it as well. But it is truly an idea that is easier to grasp for women, when they connect to their basic humanity and say: “What kind of an economy should we really have? Why do we have the kind of economy we have right now that is clearly elitist, instead of what is best for the people? What if we had an economy that was doing what is best for the majority of the people—raising their standard of living?”
Well that economy would continue to grow and grow and grow, more and more wealth would be created. It would be spread much more evenly, and therefore, the economy would be in a self-sustaining, upward spiral, instead of having the economy that goes in ups and downs, goes from crisis to crisis because the economy itself creates one crisis after another. And why is this? Because the elite wants an economy that goes from crisis to crisis. Why? They concentrate wealth in their hands through the interplay of an upswing and a downswing.
In an evenly growing economy, it would be more difficult for them to concentrate wealth in their own hands, but when there is the upswing and the downswing, crisis-to-boom, then they can make money either way. It is proven by the fact that the elite have made more money during 2020 than they would have done if there had not been a pandemic. Who is it that lose money in a crisis? The broad population. Who gains? The elite, always the elite. They concentrate wealth, they concentrate property in their hands and therefore you will, by continuing this economy of boom and bust, move towards a feudal economy where the majority of the population will be slaves of the elite.
You will see, as you have already seen in the United States, that the standard of living of the majority of the population will gradually be eroded. This is of course, a situation that many people, men and women, are ready to look at and say: “This cannot be right, this cannot continue.” But again, especially women are the ones who can do this, because they can look at the human costs: how this affects people, how this affects communities, how this affects entire nations and even the world. They can look at this, and they can be the ones who cry out that this has to stop. This is what you can hold the vision for and do higher awareness work for, namely that women will start engaging in the economy, will start questioning this male-created economy, and ask the questions that need to be asked.
Now, one of the questions that need to be asked here, or one of the things that need to be considered is, of course, neoliberalism.
What created this gradual eroding of the standard of living of the middle class and the concentration of wealth in the hands of the elite? Well, it was the neoliberalist principles that said that the government should stay out of the economy; they should deregulate the financial industry and other industries, because “the market would take care of itself.” This is what has led to a four decades decline in the standard of living of the middle class, a four decades growth in the wealth of the elite and it is also what led to the financial crisis of 2008.
Now, there are, of course, people who have started questioning neoliberalism after 2008 but not enough people have done it. Why? Because the area of the economy is still too dominated by men and they are not willing to question it. Why not? Because the male psyche is more prone to accept ideas, mental images, ideologies. It wants to believe that the world functions according to a mental image and if we just keep projecting the mental image long enough, then the world will conform to the mental image. This is what men are more prone to believe.
Whereas women are more open to saying: “Ok, we have had this mental image for some time. What are the actual effects? What are the consequences? Has what the mental image promises, has it been fulfilled? And if it has not, then we need to question the image.”
Seriously, neoliberalism should have died in 2008 but it has not and now you have another economic crisis, and if you are going to get out of it in the best possible way, then you will have to go beyond the neoliberal principles. What happened in 2008? The unregulated financial industry brought the world economy to the brink of collapse. What was the response from those who had espoused neoliberal principles, to in their greed bring the economy to the brink of collapse? “The government must step in!”
Well, there is a very old saying that you cannot have your cake and eat it too because the simple fact on planet earth is that you cannot do two mutually exclusive things at the same time. You cannot be a neoliberalist and cry for the government to step in. It cannot be done. You must choose: Do you want a neoliberalist economy? Then the institutions of that economy, the banks and investment banks, must be allowed to fail if they go against the principles that make the economy function.
Or do you want an economy where the government has a role to play? Then you must abandon neoliberalism because you cannot have a neoliberalist economy where the government is playing an active role—it cannot be done. You need to then realize one very simple fact. Who is it that wants a neoliberalist economy? The elite. Why? Because it gives them complete freedom to exploit the population. An unregulated capitalist economy is a free pass for an elite who already has accumulated wealth to exploit the population. That is simply a fact and women are more open to seeing this than men, especially those men who are still in love with the neoliberalist mental image.
The only way to secure an economy where the average person increases their standard of living is that the government steps in and regulates the economy. First of all, the financial industry that is, always has been, always will be dominated by the elite. In an ideal, natural economy, you do not allow people to make money off of money because money is just a tool. An unregulated financial industry is an open license for the elite to exploit the people and that cannot increase the standard of living of the population. It cannot be done. These are incompatible ideas.
You need to choose which economy you want. “Choose ye this day, whom you will serve” the elite or the people. There are still too many men who are in love with the neoliberalist idea that they will not see that it is serving the elite, and that is why women are the ones who can step up and step in and say: “We must choose, and we want an economy that is of the people, by the people and for the people, not of the elite by the elite and for the elite. We want an economy that functions according to democratic principles, not according to anti-democratic principles, as it does right now.”
You take one of these fancy ideas that have been put out there by the neoliberalists: “The rising tide lifts all boats”. But what is the “rising tide”? Well, it is supposedly money, or wealth, the amount of wealth. If you increase the total amount of wealth in the world, it is like the tide that comes up and lifts all boats. But just take that image. What has the elite been doing now since the financial industry has been de-regulated? They have created wealth. But it is not wealth that is tied to anything in the real economy. It is not tied to producing a product or providing a service—it is artificially-created wealth. So just imagine, as you can easily imagine based on the images that are put out there about global warming and the melting of the ice caps, just imagine that the rising tide keeps rising.
What is going to happen, if the tide keeps rising? Well, you know that many boats are in a marina, where they are tied to some posts that are put into the ground. What will happen if the tide keeps rising? Well, the lines that the boats are tied with, will become taut. That means, now the boat cannot rise anymore. So what will happen? Well, eventually, the tide will rise so high that it will start to run into the boat, and the boat will sink. Now which boats are the ones who are going to sink first in this scenario? Well, of course, the smallest boats, those are the ones where the water will flow in first. Whereas the big yachts of the elite, it will take longer before they are overflowed. But they will eventually also be filled with water, if the tide keeps rising.
The lie of this idea is that if you keep creating artificial wealth, it is like allowing the ice caps to melt to the point where the tide rises beyond what has been the natural level and now starts to cause damage that will inundate cities that are on the coast and sink all the boats. It is a flawed idea from the very beginning. When you take it to its ultimate extreme, you see how flawed it is—it will not lift all boats because the rising tide will eventually sink all boats, even the boats of the elite will eventually sink.
You need to get back to a point where you say: “There is a natural water level on this planet, there is a natural level of wealth, and if we let it grow gradually we can adjust to it, we can deal with it but if it grows too much, by creating artificial wealth or an artificial melting of the ice caps, then we have a problem. Then it will become a destructive force that will not lift the boats but will have far-reaching destructive consequences.”
This is what you have seen in previous crises situations. It is what you will see in the future if neoliberalism is not buried and an anti-elitist and non-elitist economy is created. You have already seen it because the elite wants to have an economy that goes from crisis, to boom and back to crisis but they want to be in control of it. They think in their greed that whatever they come up with that increases wealth is good. They are so blind that they cannot see that it will eventually get out of control. You may have many of these boom and bust cycles, where the elite can maintain control but sooner or later, they take it too far and as happened in 1929 and in 2008. Suddenly it goes beyond their control and a crisis now runs rampant, becomes unstoppable by them and that is when they suddenly cry out that they are “too big to fail.”
Well, in a neoliberalist economy, nobody and nothing is too big to fail. That is just the economy that works itself out, so the market takes care of itself and those who cannot follow the market, they go bust, they are not too big to fail. Nothing is too big to fail if you are a neoliberalist. If you are a human being, then you might say that something is too big to fail, namely, society, the government, the order where people have a decent standard of living—where all people have a decent standard of living. That is too big to fail and therefore we must allow the elite to fail, if they are the ones who are threatening the entire system.
It is very important that women will start to awaken to their rightful role in the economy. Because why has the economy been unbalanced? It is because the unbalanced masculine drive for expansion has not been balanced by the feminine drive for balanced growth.
Truly men cannot fix the economy. If we do not have a greater influence of women on the economy, then the economy will not be fixed—it will keep going towards the next crisis. Those will be even worse than the previous one until someone wakes up and realizes that we need to shift our awareness about the economy. This is the shift that can start to happen and really escalate in coming years and this is where the work and vision of the more aware people can have a major positive impact.