In the last 5 to 10 years everything seems to suck: product’s and services quality plummeted, everything from homes to cars to food became really expensive, technology stopped to help us to be something designed to f@ck with us and our money, nobody seems to be able to hold a job anymore, everyone is broke. Life seems worse in general.
Why? Did COVID made this happen? How?
Covid made things worse, but the fundamentals were bad.
We are in the middle of a massive tightening of the labor market as boomers retire and there aren’t enough young adults to fill the gap. This is causing major ripples in the market, with a very antagonistic relationship forming between capital trying to keep labor costs down and labor tired of the bullshit.
This is causing some mild inflation, so companies are jacking up prices since they have an excuse to. This increased inflation is making the time value of money cost more. So now you have companies that were losing money having to scramble to finally generate a profit. This is causing the enshittification of the Internet and the loss of jobs in the tech sector.
The worse economy is causing political problems as it is harder for politicians to justify their positions in power. This encourages conflict between nations and the justification to deny some people of social benefits to create an underclass to benefit voters.
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You see, it all started in May, 2016 with this Gorilla being killed. That’s when this timeline split off…
Because corporate greed and the economic elite around the world hoarding more resources than ever before.
And we let them.
We don’t just let them, we cheer them on. Look at the celebrity worship culture we humans have. If you took away the person and left only their actions, most of us would happily throw the rich into a woodchipper. But they use their money to convince us that they’re special and deserve praise, and most of us go along with it because we’re sheep.
Pioneer woman.
She’s got a huge ranch a huge house a specialty made kitchen just for her show… works super hard to look blue collar.
It’s all crafted to separate you from your money…
While I agree her image is at the very least somewhat exaggerated, her net worth probably puts her somewhere in the top 10%. She’s not exactly the powerful elite.
Rae Drummond has a reported net worth of approx $65m as of last year.
The top 1% of United States net worth starts at $12m. She is just inside the top 0.1% of us net worth which starts at $62m.
Hell, her last name alone gives it away.
The Drummond family is one of the wealthiest families in Oklahoma, owning hundreds of thousands of acres of land.
Wealthy enough they have their own Wikipedia page.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drummond_family_(Oklahoma)
She’s married into one of the wealthiest families in Oklahoma.
Completely excluding the tens of millions she herself is worth from her business.
That is such a lazy argument. More people then ever before are out of poverty in the history of mankind. Doesn’t mean there are not problems. In regards to COVID, we took millions of people out of the workforce while printing money and still paying many of them? Of course that will result in massive reduction of inventory levels that we will feel for a decade. That results in inflation as what do people expect when less items available to the same amount of people that want them.
Regards to qualities etc. That varies. We have more access to products then at anytime in history as well. And many of these products have come down significantly in price. But that also means quality products and their prices get compared to shit products at lower prices. What do you think people buy? Secondary, people do far less informal work and that effects your perception of income. Our parents and grandparents maintained their own cars and houses for example and grew far more food. Now every hires that out and buys all their groceries at a store. That leaves you with far less money.
Then there is one industry that has made gains but their costs has gone up ten fold. That is healthcare. You have access to some of the best medical procedures then at anytime in history. But some of those costs can be North of a million dollars. Our parents and grandparents simply did not access that and in some cases died. I am happy I have now options but this is coming at a huge cost of which much of it has to be paid for upfront before you retire.
You could kill off every billionaire tomorrow but that won’t result in much more houses being built or available. Wealth inequality is an issue but if more cogs are not manufactured, our standard of living will not change much.
People in cities have not sustained on growing their own foods for hundreds of years. Refined crops and goods have been machined into the cities ever since the industrial revolution and before that it was farmers that brought their goods to be sold at the markets. The greatest achievement of humanity over other species on the planet is our ability to delegate and cooperate. You grow food, I make tools. Together we thrive.
Yep, you have a rampant problem with housing and healthcare over there in America-land, I agree. But why is that? Because of massive hoarding of resources. Human essentials and needs are commoditized like a “smart” investment for the ruthless opportunists. Hell, your entire societal system is built around it, and it’s spilling into the rest of the world. It’s a dog eat dog economy that is hailed like an ideology by useful idiots bought by the elites by the trickling of pocket change. Then the ideology has been turned into a culture of over consumption, again hailed by other useful idiots to convince the regular people that it will give them purpose, fill the hole, numb the pain of the aimless grind for nothing meaningful ever. And who does all of this benefit? Where do all this wealth and all these resources end up that could transform the entire planet for something that benefits all mankind? To the owners of the owners of the owners, and the money that doesn’t crawl it’s way up is a good investment to keep the system intact.
But no, let’s concentrate on the tools we use and not what they do. Let’s focus on the monetary system. Let’s get stuck in inflation and regression and unfortunate loopholes “but-what-can-you-do” and tax havens and desired unemployment rates and spoiling of food while people are starving - for the economy. Everything can be explained with the economy, and if you disagree you’re clearly uninformed or ignorant don’t have enough the smarts.
People have done the double think and now the economy is no longer the tool, is no longer a representation, but it is the real thing. And more so the current economic system is forever and eternal and unchangeable like the word of God.
It’s funny and sad that people actually believe this is all there is.
People elect Conservatives. Don’t elect Conservatives. They want to make the world shit.
Conservatives such as Joe Biden. It’s all the same scam, stop falling for it
People keep electing conservative fascists like morons
America, in particular, doesn’t exactly have an alternative.
To wit,
“Americans are served by three political groups, but are represented by only two political parties.
“The alt-right have a party all to themselves, while the centre-left share a party with the centre-right such that they cannot effectively function.”
You take a look at any president since the Carter administration, and they have all been right of centre. Obama was solidly centre-right. Biden is on the threshold of being fully right-wing.
About the only people who sit anywhere to the left are people like Bernie Sanders and AOC, and in most other countries they would be considered solid centrists and milquetoast moderates. They are not extreme-left in the least.
America has no left-wing politicians, much less any on the far left.
But on the far right? pretty much the entire GOP is sitting there with their asses hanging off the fascist end of the political horseshoe.
Your view of the political spectrum is heavily skewed to the left if you think Obama was center-right.
Unregulated capitalism…
This is the natural result of that.
COVID factored in because the handful of corporations that own a shit ton of companies figured out 8% inflation could be used as justification to double/triple prices, and if they all did it, consumers had no options.
In regulated capitalism, the government would step in to prevent this type of price fixing.
But when both political parties are “pro business” and take donations from those huge corporations…
Then corporations get away with lots they shouldn’t
In regulated capitalism, the government would step in to prevent this type of price fixing.
like this?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/us/yale-columbia-price-fixing-settlement.html
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/19/rice-university-price-fixing-lawsuit/
I looked at some of those, and it’s private citizens suing corporations…
Even the rent one with the DOJ, it’s just them becoming involved in private lawsuits…
That’s not the same as the government regulating capitalism.
And while that one is sort of related to the topic, not really. It’s because the price fixing is automated by a computer program a bunch of landlords used.
In the future if you only give one link and some kind of explanation other than “like this?” The person you replied to can probably do a better job of helping you understand.
I looked at some of those, and it’s private citizens suing corporations…
That’s not the same as the government regulating capitalism.This is like saying that Texas doesn’t regulate abortion because it’s just private citizens filing lawsuits. That is bullshit.
Without the regulations, there would be no legal basis for filing a lawsuit.
Company makes a billion dollars and then it’s fined 200 million, ten years later because a private citizen sues them…
Is this government regulation?
You’re a meme. And by that I mean, you’re a joke.
Thank you for contributing to the discussion.
The US has this bizarre setup where we “regulate” companies through the courts rather than directly through government agencies (this is not always the case, but it often is). The problem is that even when this “works”, i.e., the court punishes the company, they get a fine. So it becomes a financial decision: if we can get away with this, does that outweigh the risk that we might not? Sometimes it ends up profiting the company regardless.
Related to this is that prosecutors have total discretion in the realm of plea deals. If you do a crime here, it becomes a negotiation with the prosecutor. What can you offer them to get off the hook? Sometimes it makes sense to do a crime, because the advantages you gain become leverage to negotiate your way out of punishment.
The US has this bizarre setup where we “regulate” companies through the courts rather than directly through government agencies (this is not always the case, but it often is).
I’m afraid that I don’t understand what sort of alternative system you have in mind.
Basically do what Europe does. Government regulators actively monitor companies and stop them from misbehaving, rather than waiting for them to misbehave and then sue them. If they don’t follow regulations they get disbanded. It’s not perfect but it’s better than what we have here.
I believe that already happens here in certain fields like nuclear energy and slaughterhouses
One of the major reasons is that Milton Friedman had a thought back in the 70s that fucking everyone in the western world latched onto, and the consequences have been getting worse and worse for the average person for most of the time since then.
Of course, neoliberals don’t actually believe in neoliberalism, they profit off it’s failure.
If you give a rich person even more money and it never trickles down, you just gave a rich person money. If you’re claim companies will regulate themselves and they don’t, you just gave companies the freedom to do exploitative, dangerous things in search of bigger profits.
If neoliberalism actually delivered on any of its promises, neoliberals wouldn’t support it.
It’s nothing more than a book of pre-made lies that sound plausible enough for a press conference and signal to other neoliberals that their feeding trough is being filled.
Religion, tribe mentality, greed.
So, before I say “capitalism” like everyone else id like to argue many of the monetary/economic policy can be used by either authoritarian state capitalists or free capitalists alike.
https://42macro.com/education Edit: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjqe6xtZYTfvA4pHs0HgJsQ
This can be useful^ it’s a brief read. Also I love Adam Taggart, he’s a really good person to follow on YouTube for economics.
Things were getting bad for a while, and we kick the can down the road until an exponentially worse problem arrives, then repeat. Let’s look at COVID for now tho instead of going back decades
COVID happens, society has to adapt, and now there’s growth issues with the economy (growth domestic product or gross domestic income)
First, government gives a shit ton of stimulus checks to the consumer market. A market is a collection of buyers and sellers. The consumer market is a collection of buyers and sellers who spend their money on one thing and don’t retain that value. So most of the stimmy money went from consumers to corporations. To give you an idea, over the last 3 years we’ve seen 35% of inflation that is never going away, it will forever weigh on the consumer market (and that’s the market that needs to be well off for an economy to be anything more than the stock/financial market)
Second, Fed sees an incoming recession so they lower interest rates to make banking loans cheaper to encourage investment to increase growth again. This means people who are not suffering from the economy can easily afford another house since they’re basically not paying any interest on it, then rent it out to Airbnb or whatever.
All these things cause growth in the short term, while making inflation a much worse problem in the long term.
FED starts raising interest rates slowly over the last year or 2. Now they’re about to lower them again which is a sign we’re in for another recession, but let’s look at what raising interest rates did:
Banks operate on a very tight margin and raising interest rates hurts banks in the short term and takes a while for markets to react to (which is part of the reason why we saw so many bank closures like silicon valley bank)
But raising interest rates also makes it more expensive for people to afford mortgage payments.
H.O.P.E: housing , orders, profits, employment
When mortgage payments got more expensive housing got expensive. When housing gets expensive orders go down and/or credit card usage goes up (which is another separate problem / indicator). When orders go down profits go down, and when profits go down employment goes down.
It should be worth noting the one thing J Powell did right was creating slack in job openings to prevent a complete crash in the labor market, but that’s the last thing to crash in a recession so we’re still just kicking the can down the road.
That’s the best analysis I can do with respect to COVID, but some other interesting things:
The average boomer is 2 years into retirement. The labor force is going to continue shrinking for the next 7 years. It won’t be this bad in America, but in south east asian countries, there’s going to reach a point where there are more old people than young people, and when that happens there’s not enough people to care for the elderly and support the rest of the economy, so both tend to suffer. America will feel this pain as well, but our population “pyramid” is more of an hourglass, where south east asian is an upside down pyramid
Also, geopolitical tensions are likely going to get worse over the next few years. China manufactures everything consumers like that don’t have to do with defense, so things like smartphones are going to get much more expensive , and tech stocks are likely to suffer. Edit: not to mention food and gas prices increasing from Ukraine war (which isn’t in the Feds basket of goods for inflation which is HILARIOUSLY STUPID considering that’s their excuse for inflation)
Also, there’s tons of shadow banks with stealth liquidity where there’s no information how much money they have. So however bad inflation was the last few years and will continue to get with the Fed cutting rates, it can get MUCH worse once those banks start releasing their liquidity.
So, things are bad and they’re going to get worse before there’s a chance things get better. I really recommend listening to Adam Taggart and the people he interviews to help form your decision making
Your post was highly informative and surprisingly apolitical given the topics at hand. High five man.
I’ll read your link later.
Gas prices feed through to consumers by raising the cost of energy for everyone except those not using gas. So it seems reasonable to not double count it by adding it to the basket as well.
The only real gas consumers use is for heating and cooking - and that is very low volume compared to the impact on us from costs to producers going up.
Are things demonstrably worse? I’m reading that they are but I’m not seeing that they are. I don’t live in a great area, but people generally seem as they’ve always been. Some struggle. Most are fine. Life goes on.
Healthy food costs more than unhealthy food…
Edit: mb, not really an answer to your question, but it sucks nonetheless…
No it doesn’t. Stop lying.
What doesn’t? Is healthy food cheaper or does it not suck?
Healthy food doesn’t cost more than crap food. The people that say that is because a fast food burger costs five bucks and a pound of ground beef also costs five bucks without the bread or cheese or ketchup. But that pound of meat will give you eight of the fast food burger.
More like 8 meatballs and only a quarter of your daily calorie intake. Ramen will give you all your daily calories for a couple of dollars. Show me a healthy food that’s cheaper than that.
Rice, beans, potatoes. All cheaper per serving and way healthier than Ramen. Up until recently, eggs.
A pack of ramen is like 29 cents where I’m from…a single fucking potato is $1 no shit so, maybe area specific?
I think the enshitification of the Internet was sort of just what happens to everything once it gets monetized. It was already happening before COVID.
On the other hand - when I was growing up, my city was rough. So much violent crime, bands would not come here, it was notorious. Now? No. Violet crime has decreased sharply, my kids grew up in a different world than I did.
Jobs haven’t become less secure, or at least not in my experience, that change happened in the 1980s, and it’s been about the same since.
Everyone is broke because of Ronald Reagan, for lack of a better way to explain it. Deregulation. Workers have gotten ever more productive without getting their cut of that increase in productivity and this is the endgame of that trend.
Greed
like… seriously this.
Normal function of capitalism. It has superseded law. Just “accumulate”.
Greed, wanting stuff, precipitates giving value in return for value. Regardless of motives everybody benefits. This is a free market.
Throw in an institution that can manipulate & distort free market forces - government - then you get parasites that use the violence of that institution for non reciprocated greed. This creates distortions in wealth and power in favour of the scrupulous.
Doesn’t that assume that resources were at one point distributed fairly? If you have all the value, you can devalue everyone else.
I mean, I think it has to do with different kind of value, some have capital, some have services, they would not work without eachother
Automation could replace all services, and only property owners would remain.
- No. Why would it assume that?
- How so? The only way I see to have all the value & devalue others is to be an absolute dictator that has enslaved everyone. This of course is not possible in a free market as it is all about private property rights/self ownership.
- Because if they weren’t distributed equally, some people would unfairly have more capital than others, which means a fair trade where people exchange the precise value of an item leaves some people with inherent setbacks.
- If I don’t own property, then I am forced into wage-slavery, which means I don’t have time to myself to innovate or property to innovate. Even if I manage to buy some property, I can innovate some, but larger players with more capital and resources can out-compete me. The more money you have, the longer you can take to turn a profit, and drive others out of business.
I do not think you understand fairness or value. Life is not fair. You cannot expect it to be. To try to make it fair requires the initiation of force against another. The happenstance of an unfair life is different to the deliberate application of force to create what one thinks should be fair. Precise value??? All value is subjective! Setbacks? Every exchange that occurs happens due to the exchange making both parties life better - otherwise the exchange would not occur. You are viewing the world as a glass half empty rather than half full! Wage-slavery? There is not such thing! You own property - always! You own your body! Other peoples ability to generate wealth is something you have no right to interfere with just as much as they have no right to interfere with your body. You may not like the terms of contract but that is simply because you have no better option and you need to upskill. Innovate? If you are working you are gaining skills. Are you showing your worth or just doing the acceptable minimum to justify your employment? If the game is unfair - it is because the system (govenment) applies the law unfairly - not because others create value.
The question is not “Is life fair?”, but rather “Should we pursue fairness?”
No. We should pursue liberty (the absence of coercion), peace, prosperity and happiness. We should defend self-ownership/private property.
