Prelude: I grew up right after the complete collapse of USSR in a heavily Soviet dominated former communist (in name only) country. I watched the wrath of neoliberalism engulf my country. Absolutely everything (EVERYTHING) was commodified. People were naive to the harsh market discipline. Most who were the most successful were the best scammers. Politicians were buying votes, restaurants were diluting meat with rat meat, milk was mixed with water, and you had to bribe the government official if you want them to get anything done. It felt as though everyone was against each other. Most people blamed the drying out of Soviet subsidies. I hear about how great communism was from everybody, contrasting the situation we were in now. I was raised in this society until my family moved to the USA, around 2007. There was a brief couple of months where I did enjoy the American dream, life was amazing. Until the economy crashed. I thought, what the fuck happened? Did a meteor hit the earth and kill all the cows? Did a tsunami wipe out a big city? How come when everything was just fine, suddenly go shit? Especially when it seemed it was completely man made. My 12 year old mind didn't really comprehend the situation, I hear about it in the news, but the city I'm from didn't really feel the full brunt of the economic crash. So everything just eluded my mind, I was more concerned about school and facebook. Being in both of these world's brought a new perspective for me, the failures and contradictions of these two economies, especially neoliberalism and the free market.
Fast forward 4 years. A lot happened during these years, that's for later time. Now I'm in high school, being part of this generation, I got most of my news from the Internet. I read about how China was stealing people's jobs, and most importantly that there was no wage increase in the USA anymore since 1970. One day, I was debating with an upperclassmen(right before class began), my argument was that there need to be a wage increase, his rebuttle was that creates inflation. I didn't have a solid answer to that, I told him I will get back on it. That led me to an extensive research on the subject, nothing really answered my questions, until I came across Marxism and Richard Wolff (on YouTube).
The End?