I used to believe that at least the consumer market economy would start to correct itself once we reached the point where there were no longer enough gainfully employed people to buy the goods and services being offered. And that would push corporations to start to re-hire the unemployed and not slash to the bone in pursuit of astronomical quarterly gains.

But that was a very myopic, "developed" nation view. I hadn't considered the use of cheap global labor and the rise of the middle and upper classes in developing nations that would provide the necessary demand for goods and services, making the "workers" in developed nations mere surplus to be discarded/ignored. (I'm watching "A Christmas Carol" right now.)