Scarcity (I)

In the 1930's An economist named John Keynes Predicted that by the end of the 1900's Americans would be working Fifteen hours a week Keynes was a capitalist Who predicted leaps in innovation That would lead to a world in which People didn't have to work To have what they needed to live Food, water, shelter and clothing For the most part, he was right By mid-century the Green Revolution was in effect And has spared one billion people of starvation The world isn't perfect But global issues of poverty and hunger Are in a far better place than they've ever been What he failed to predict Was the unrelenting side of capitalist innovation Consumerism hit the nation hard in the 1950's And ever since Income inequality has gotten far worse Despite having the essentials for people to live We are working more than we ever have To support this unnecessary overabundance of products Demanded by American consumerism And a false scarcity, created by One-sided distribution of resources We are so far removed from the actual idea Of "earning a living," We use the term to explain Why 90% of us spend our lives making profits For the top 1% that own everything The only thing we're "earning" is more merchandise for A sick, spoiled culture And CEO's that can't profit enough from it We are not an artificial intelligence What part of getting a new phone every year is a fucking living What part of working for Wal-Mart is a fucking living What part of trying to look busy at a desk is a fucking living Who's living are we working to sustain How does it feel to be the latest innovation of a broken fucking system How productive is your self-destruction How free do you feel In a work-culture of burnout Heart disease Anxiety Poverty And depression Capitalism is finished Hypocrisy Scarcity If we're really being honest What'd we trade for fucking objects Hypocrisy Scarcity If we're really being honest What'd we trade for fucking objects Me and my pals all got our degrees We're lucky to work Seventy-hour weeks That eight-hundred bucks is time well spent And life well-traded For this month's rent So don't you try to bullshit 'bout efficient ergonomics Reducing my potential down to pushing little buttons Call it the merit of earning a living Feeding hedonistic Adaptation Fifteen hours Bed by ten Burn both ends And do it again God bless American capitalism For cutting the brakes on commodification The incentive to make is all we got With no incentive to fucking stop Streaming, phones and fashion that's designed for obsolescence Look at all the poverty that's come from our abundance Lemme work for cheap For my whole life To feed a star-spangled appetite