Someone said, "The government is even more impressive. The secret to economic revitalization is to declare war on some unfortunate bastard, or at least posture as if you're about to declare war. Once the military-industrial complex gets moving, the domestic economy will soar as if someone stepped on the accelerator.
"The military-industrial sector takes the lion's share of the profits, and its employees can more or less pick up some crumbs along the way. Then those people spend money on necessities and luxury goods, stimulating other industries in turn. It's one link after another."
"Hey, speaking of that, I bet you guys don't know where the money the government uses to purchase military equipment actually comes from."
A young man said, "Taxes, obviously."
"Wrong. The real answer is debt."
"But when the national debt is repaid later, doesn't that still come from government tax revenue?"
"You're still young. You don't understand how the game works. In reality, the Federal Reserve—with banks and financial conglomerates as its shareholders—"
The organization wasn't a government agency. That was why, years later, when Trump wanted to replace the chairman of the Federal Reserve, all he could do was "recommend" it rather than order it. In the end, it amounted to simply not renewing the chairman's term, allowing him to retire with dignity.
"—has established a system that's difficult for ordinary people to understand. The way this system handles the national debt involves too many complicated operations to explain in detail. To put it simply, it's printing money!"
"But doesn't printing money risk triggering inflation?"
"That's why we have to offset it with huge amounts of cheap resources from overseas. In other words, the oil we're about to seize from Iraq, along with other dividends from the war, will make up for the debt incurred to finance it."
Someone said solemnly, "It's not just that. Another source of revenue that very few people pay attention to is the trend toward globalization that began after World War II.
"By the rise of the Internet in the 1990s, huge amounts of capital had poured into the information industry, while manufacturing moved overseas to regions with cheaper labor.
"This created a model in which American companies took the orders, overseas factories handled production, and corporate profits soared. Naturally, capitalists flocked to it. As price competition intensified, those who hadn't adopted the same approach were eventually forced to do so just to remain competitive.
"But no one realized—or, more accurately, those who did realize it simply didn't care—that this method of making profits came at the cost of destroying the domestic middle class. Foreign wars are also one of the government's methods of easing domestic contradictions, aren't they?"
Another person said heavily, "There wasn't much choice, either. The bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000 made the financial markets, already suffering losses, desperately seek funds to fill the holes.
"That's why capitalists were willing to squeeze the goose that laid the golden eggs for short-term profits, package debt as financial products and dump them onto the market, and even use war to openly seize resources outside the United States.
"Greed certainly played a part, but more than that, if they didn't do it, they might not even be able to survive. Pulled from one side and pushed from the other, they made the most insane choice possible."
Henry summed it up.
"In short, America's current prosperity is like a car that's almost out of gasoline while traveling downhill. To save fuel, the driver puts the car in neutral and lets it coast. At the same time, to maintain its speed, he refuses to hit the brakes.
"Under the acceleration of gravity, this car called America is racing at an unimaginable speed. The people sitting in the back are cheering wildly because they can't see where the person in the driver's seat is actually taking them. All they can feel is the thrill of speed."
Someone asked, "So what's ahead? A bottomless abyss, or a slope that rises again after reaching the bottom?"
"No one knows what lies ahead unless we actually plunge down there, right?"
"Still, Henry, given the current social environment—especially with a war approaching—you should feel a little more relaxed, shouldn't you? A few years ago, society's attitude toward mutants was pretty terrible."
Henry gave a derisive snort.
"You think it's because a clear enemy has appeared, and because the X-Men among the mutants contributed during that disaster two years ago, society suddenly became kind-hearted, put away its discriminatory face, and started treating us as fellow citizens?"
"Isn't that the case?"
Henry sneered.
"Not at all. A considerable number of mutants have simply been persuaded to enlist in the military. If you don't want your own children sent to the battlefield to die, then don't drive mutants into opposition against the government and society.
"There's going to be a war anyway. Someone has to fill the front lines. Whether you fill them with a pig, a mutant, or your own child is a matter of weighing the costs and benefits for yourself."
Someone summarized, "So ultimately, what truly affects a person's attitude is their own interests. If there's clearly nothing in it for them, only then do they start talking about ideals and principles."
Henry actually understood perfectly well that there were also people whose interests lay in weakening the social status of mutants, with the ultimate goal of carrying out things they couldn't openly admit to.
For example, putting mutants on laboratory tables for experimentation.
Or eliminating all mutants.
The current change in society's atmosphere clearly went against the interests of such people.
Moreover, these people had been secretly fanning the flames for years, and had even played a leading role in shifting American society's discriminatory gaze from people of color toward mutants.
After all, Black people could only pick cotton, while the useful abilities possessed by mutants were what truly made people drool.
If mutants weren't beaten down to rock bottom and stripped of their human rights, how could anyone research ways to extract their mutant abilities and transfer them to people deemed more worthy of using them?
A slightly less extreme objective was to turn mutants into mindless tools that knew nothing but obedience.
Whether thrown onto battlefields as soldiers or placed on factory production lines to work twenty-four hours a day, the goal was always to extract the greatest possible value from them at the lowest possible cost.
An even more moderate goal was to find a way to develop a cure that could reverse mutations, turning people with extraordinary abilities back into ordinary humans and reducing the threat they posed.
Although some fringe individuals among the mutants could always be captured and taken to secret laboratories for study, the uncertainty of mutant abilities was simply too high. There was no guarantee that laboratories could obtain the particularly desirable abilities they coveted.
Other research could certainly be conducted as well, but the people willing to carry out such things weren't exactly running respectable laboratories with proper oversight and regulations.
Everyone knew perfectly well what the primary objective was. The other research projects were merely things they could pursue on the side.
If they couldn't accomplish the primary objective, what was the point of the laboratory even existing?
Therefore, from their perspective, the best solution was to expand the pool of available specimens.
Turn the entire mutant population into laboratory rats.
That way, they would have an inexhaustible supply of resources.
It could only be said that everyone shared the common fear that human society might completely transform in the direction of mutants, resulting in the collapse of social order.
But if they could obtain control over "useful" or powerful mutant abilities—if they could ensure that they would still stand at the top of the pyramid even after the world collapsed—then no one would refuse.
Put simply, everyone was merely opposed to becoming the party whose interests were harmed.
As long as they could become one of the exploiters, who wouldn't be more than willing?
If this had happened in the Internet world before Henry's transmigration, the label of "hypocrite" would have been slapped across their faces.
But for those with ulterior motives, the current social atmosphere was like a pressure cooker that appeared calm on the outside.
All they needed to do was find the latch and release the lid.
They didn't need to overturn the pot or smash it apart and spill the boiling water inside.
The latter could potentially overturn the carefully prepared soup along with everything else, which wouldn't serve their interests.
How to use a scalpel to precisely cut away the festering abscess—that had always been the skill they prided themselves on.
One had to understand that these people weren't keyboard warriors who only dared to shout from behind a screen.
They were people with real power.
They had the ability to act, and more importantly, they had reasons to act.
So what these people would do became Henry's greatest concern.
He sincerely hoped that by distancing himself from the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants, he could also distance himself from all those troubles.
But how could anything in this world go exactly as one wished?
He'd worn the mutant identity for more than a decade and enjoyed himself thoroughly.
Now it was time to pay the price.
Thanks to Jijing Defeng for the reward.
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