Gentrification & Immigration: Market Forces Of Profit & Loss

The return to economic fundamentalism and libertarian anti-socialism has meant great progress for many and enormous regression for most. That is textbook free market unregulated capitalism, though a post war move to government investment in some aspects of life not producing private profit gave a social democratic appearance of change for a minority when there really was substantially none for the majority. But the neo-liberal attack on anything remotely smacking of humanity, common sense or market control has brought this globally dominant system producing humanity’s goods and services to a point of crisis never before experienced. Even a social democratic revival may not be enough to avoid cataclysmic situations that have resulted from the unleashing of private greed as prime motivator for anything and everything that happens in life, or reaches the market, which under the domain of capital is the same thing.

The sharpened divisions among people accepting the lie of an individually competitive system for themselves while their rulers enjoy the most caring, sharing, near communist social welfare services imaginable, has led to situations that bring the contradictions of capital’s privately controlled markets into what should be a clearer perspective. The national immigration surge of the past twenty or so years has been joined by one of increasing gentrification, with both bringing profits to some, losses to most, and dangerous divisions to society that threaten to tear the social fabric to shreds before anyone notices that even with all the past patching there wasn’t much there to begin with.

The economic programs that bring austerity, downscaling and immigration are the same ones that bring luxury, upscaling and gentrification. Gentrimigrant Immification?

Millions of bodies entering the country as cheap labor are extremely profitable for capital and some of its professional servant class but represent loss to those no longer holding the jobs they take and bearing the social expense of working the newcomers into society. Likewise, the high earning people who move into neighborhoods and communities being gentrified are immigrants with a profound affect on these communities, bringing business, wealth, higher real estate values and profits to many while the original dwellers and inhabitants are either pushed out of housing when prices become too high or remain but are forced into second class status and no longer able to afford to shop in their own communities.

Foreign immigration on the one hand, leading to greater profits that also create loss, and internal immigration on the other, leading to greater profits that also create loss. That the economics are the same is slowly dawning on more people, but the divisions and ugliness among groups forced into competition while others enjoy cooperative profit making could cause far more pain and bitterness before it is seen for what it is: capitalist free market private profit seeking which always brings happiness to some, unhappiness to others and misery to more than should be tolerable any longer.