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?
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.
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.
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
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.
Your post was highly informative and surprisingly apolitical given the topics at hand. High five man.
I’ll read your link later.
Thanks! 42macro is by Darius Dale, he was interviewed by Adam Taggart and on wealthion
Shallow consideration, multiplied by technology and laziness.
Anybody who disrupts capitalism should be punished. We’ve done it before and we gotta do it again.
The whole point of capitalism is self determination. Not to dominate the world, we’re not anarchists. But these criminals are pulling massive amounts of money out of the economy and that’s not acceptable.
The thing is, public corporations by design have the self determination that they want everything they can get. Dominating the world would be the cherry on the top.
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
Have you read Cory Doctorow’s book on enshitification? I think he focuses more on the Internet but might help answer your question.
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Capitalist governments are pro-finance, not pro-people. Totalitarian gvmts (China etc) are pro-system, not pro-people. They’re just different ways of maintaining classes of people who control the power/finances.
There’s always been an uber-rich elite, all the way from the first tribal chieftain or Pharaoh or whatever until now and there’s always been a huge underclass of the rest of us. The first law of any hierarchy is to protect the people at the top.
What we see today (in Westernised countries) is the natural, logical progression of economics driven democracy. Economic theorists say wealthy people create wealth by purposefully distributing it via jobs etc but in reality they do everything possible to minimise the loss of what they see as their money by abusing labour laws, privatising everything, trying to kill unions, creating convoluted laws to protect their fortunes, avoiding taxes and hiking prices up to the point most of us are just about surviving with enough carrot to ignore or pretend we don’t see the stick.
And we’re willing participants in that system. We know this is happening but we’re dazzled by lotteries holding out the chance to join the rich, promises of work making us rich and a media which lionises the elite as some kind of fabulous aspirational status to the point we have people on social media faking a rich lifestyle for internet points.
The uber rich believe they’re better than us and our acquiescence with this system really means we agree with them.
I agree broadly with much of your assessment of history and many of the problems that bely current western society. The rich might be exploiting capitalism to their benefit but a capitalist system with proper regulation will always be better (in terms of Quality of life and freedom) for larger groups of people Than a planned economy.
Planned economies were the means to the end not the end. Basing it around authoritarian, suppressive, dictatorial government is what made it the end. That said, apart from freedom of speech issues. Capitalism struggles in most aspects to truly be better, even at its best. Because capitalism ends up authoritarian and suppressive as well. Those with all the wealthy and resources don’t tolerate those who are against their theft.
We should be moving past both.
Okay, but what does a system look like that moves past both? How do you ensure people get resources if you don’t want capitalism or a planned economy?
By implementing the thing Marxist-leninists were loathe to implement despite giving a lot of lip service. Actual communism. Not the Engles lenin variety. But the kind Marx spoke on. The thing to remember is that the Soviet Communist party was as communist as the national socialist party of Germany was socialist. Which is to say neither of them were.
This of course all starts with actual large scale engagement. We absolutely need to change the voting system etc as a start. For all the flaws and problems of the founding fathers, the fact that they saw us needing to largely rewrite the Constitution every few decades, let alone every few hundred years was not one of their flaws.
Then we need to uncap the House of Representatives. That’s a century overdue. Followed by abolishing the electoral college. Then reforming the house, Senate, judiciary and even the concept of the presidency. Basically take as many steps as necessary to make things as democratic/granular as possible. Dilute power.
One of the other important things we could do is abolishing the concept of private property. Private property is little more than theft. Allowing the wealthy to horde resources to the detriment of everyone else. If you own a home, you should be living in it. It shouldn’t be some sort of an investment that you never spend time in. Used for speculation on markets etc. Replace private property with something much more sane like the more limited concept of personal property. As in property, a person would actually use themselves. Tying legal fines and fees to a person’s income and wealth along with impartial enforcement is another good start.
Your suggestion would only usher in a different kind of tyranny.
Really? What kind of tyranny would increasing democracy while reducing concentration of power cause? Lol I’d really like to know.
There’s a reason the people who wrote the Constitution decided upon federalism as our form of government. It protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority. This concept is especially important as the urban majority seeks to assert its ignorant tyranny on the rural minority these days.
The United States isn’t a single government like most non-federal nations. There is plenty of democracy in our local and state governments, and we have our bicameral Congress which accounts for both the equality of the states, no matter their populations, as well as the inequality of the states, taking into account their populations. Remove that equality and you will be unable to get enough states to ratify your new constitution.
Possibly but I can’t think of a time that’s been attempted, let alone successfully implemented. Capitalism always (it seems to me) ends up morphing into a system to protect wealth and the wealthy. They would never, ever allow ‘proper regulation’ (by which I assume you mean regulation to protect workers as much as the rich) to happen.
Capitalism isn’t a national thing - its global - there’s always going to be places where what country forbids another country allows. All a rich person or company has to do is transfer their base of operations there to circumnavigate most laws and pay lip service to the laws of the countries they operate in. Look at Amazon or Starbucks.
Late stage capitalism is your answer, my friend.
Maybe overpopulation is a factor?
It’s not overpopulation. We are seeing the results of late stage capitalism coming into effect. When you design the economy around an owning class vs a working class, the owning class will use its inherent leverage and capital to beget more leverage and capital. That happens at the expense of the working class. If your income mainly comes from working for money, you are part of the working class.
The obvious solution here is to change the economic structure to not have an owning class at all or at least to keep it in check, but liberalism is not good at keeping it in check and leftism doesn’t have the momentum needed to change the world economic structure. Right now all we can do is make progress where we can, which means passing legislation that taxes and weakens the owning class in favor of supporting and empowering the working class through social programs and better pay and benefits. Unions will help you a TON here and more quickly than legislation, so look into joining/forming a union. Biden has changed the requirements for forming a union to make it really easy now. The other thing we can do is prevent fascists from tearing apart the systems we’ve built to allow that to even happen in the first place. That means not voting for or supporting right-wing politics.
None of this is caused by overpopulation, and the myth that overpopulation is the main source of your problems directly benefits the owning class who is currently winning the zero-sum dynamic of owning vs working class. That dynamic is the reason things are bad and worsening. Join a union and vote for the most progressive viable candidate in both local and federal elections.
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.
Because most people have stopped giving a fuck.
I’m serious. Remember all those memes a couple of years back about not giving any fucks? Their chickens are now coming back to roost.
A lot of people have simply decided that it was no longer worth the effort to try and be a good person, and to just shut themselves off and take care of their own needs. And perhaps it was necessary at the time because they were simply tired of putting in effort while others decided to take and take and give nothing back, but clearly, this isn’t a viable long term solution. The Roots put it quite well in their song How I Got Over:
Out on the streets, where I grew up
First thing they teach you is not to give a fuck
That type of thinking can’t get you nowhere
Someone has to careThe less people care, the colder the world grows. If no one does anything charitable, every interaction becomes a matter of win or lose. Now I’m well aware of just how difficult it is to be kind in a world full of greed where everyone seems to want to take advantage of you the moment you show any sign of weakness, but unfortunately, that is the only way anything will ever change.
For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?
Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?
Do not even the tax collectors do so?
Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.Matthew 5:46-48
Or maybe we need better solutions than expecting people to allow themselves to be abused. 🤷
I find it crazy how basically every Marxist since, well Marx, has pretty much clairvoyance powers. It’s of course not that, it’s just that material analysis really is the best way to understand reality. But when all you have are vibes, ideology and moralism, Marxists do seem like witches.
But basically, just read and watch some Marxists my friend. Even light-Marxists like Yanis Varoufakis are good at “predicting” the future.
We have all been expecting this since the 1800s lmao.
My theory? The Mayans were right. 2012 was the end of the cycle, and so the 12 years before and 12 years after are the transition period.
So we’re in the final lap, we just have to make it to December
(I’m not coping, you’re coping)
Implying the next period won’t be worse
Shareholder value. Companies are cutting everything they can to increase stakeholder value: wages, quality, support, ownership, etc.
The powers that be realised that a non-stop feed of bad news for you to Doom scroll makes people apathetic and apethic people don’t protest, or revolt, or even vote against you. They go through life scrolling on their phone and just accept whatever life gives them.
Late stage capitalism
