means that there is a large superfluous population that has to be controlled and a large number of rich people who have to be protected from them. DB: Is there any economic strategy or planning to create real jobs with decent wages? For U.S. workers? Why should there be? DB: It would seem that elites would want to protect their position. But their position does not rely primarily on U.S. labor. They do want to have a domestic work force for services, but production is a different matter. DB: But if there's major economic dislocation in this country, unrest would surely result and their position of power and strength would be threatened. That depends on whether you can keep the public under control. For example, the Washington Post reported on a study about black males in Washington, D.C. DB: Forty-six percent of all black males between 18 and 35 are incarcerated in the District of Columbia. I think they say at any particular moment about seventy percent of them are somehow within the control of the justice system, on probation, etc. That's a way of keeping people from bothering us: keep them in jail. If they're not useful for wealth production they have to be controlled somehow. But it's not clear that that's a threat to the elites in the Washington area. Or take New York City, which is an absolute disaster. But you can walk around wealthy sectors of downtown Manhattan that look very glitzy and cheery. DB: Prison construction in the U.S. is one of the fastest growing industries. Yes. The U.S. has by far the highest per capita prison population in the world. Even things like the drug epidemic are functional in a way. I'm not claiming that the government starts it for this purpose. Things go on because they have certain functions for elite groups that set policy. One effect of the so-called "drug war," which has very little to do with controlling drugs and a lot to do with controlling people, has been to create a huge explosion in the pr...
