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A staggering 80% of American households are financially worse off than they were before COVID-19
(finance.yahoo.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Is this surprising given stagnant wages and drastic inflation for the last few years straight?
Don't forget about the absolutely massive wealth transfer that happened: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/16/richest-1percent-amassed-almost-two-thirds-of-new-wealth-created-since-2020-oxfam.html
That's so strange. So you're saying the entire capitalist system, that funnels value and wealth ever upward, where consolidation has been rampant, oligopolies are the order of the day and some of our "most successful" companies face charges of but then nothing is done about their monopolies, where at these same titans of industry, an even narrower funnel shovels obscene wealth to those with access to the company's equity grants and options, while those who actually provide the work in the company get 2.3% wage increases because wage stagnation must increase until beatings improve, where these same few companies set and increase prices to enrich their own quarterly stock grants while their employees can't get an increase that even matches inflation let alone provides value...
You're saying that this system somehow allows for wealth concentration? /s
I was thinking about it today as I went by a Les Schwab where behind the front desk they proudly offer payment plans for those with good credit in an enormous banner. Why can't Americans afford to buy car tires? Why would they need to exist in a system where interest would need to be paid to be able to fix their common mode of transportation? Why are tire companies opening finance arms to loan usuriously? Why does a mobile telephone take 2 months of salary to afford? Ask GE finance I suppose and Jack Welch.
This isn't inflation. This is greed. Record profits with soul crushing wages. Governments that allow this are complicit. We need heavy windfall taxes
Windfall taxes are reactive and bad policy in general.
What we need is a return to pre-Reagan tax policy. Higher upper tax brackets, corporate taxes, and the closing of loopholes that allow the rich to hide their wealth offshore.
This is the only way
saying "greed" in the context of capitalism makes no sense. the word doesn't have meaning because the system is morally agnostic.
edit: its a headless system optimized for profit accumulation as its sole parameter. there's no systemic incentive for anyone to behave otherwise.
What word do you prefer to use to describe people who hoard more wealth than they or their children can spend in a lifetime while the vast majority of workers are on the edge of financial ruin? Why can't they be satisfied with just having one mega yacht? One giant mansion? If not "greed" what do you call it?
neo-feudalism?
Oh neo-feudalism! Absolutely charming. No greed involved.
Are you being sarcastic? I’ve seen a lot of sarcasm in my days, and this looks a lot like that. Nah, who’d be sarcastic on the internet without a “/s“? Everyone would just assume you’re not being sarcastic, and then the whole conversation would devolve.
Anyways, I’m not sure how neo-feudalism is charming. Could you expand on that a bit?
The system isn’t morally agnostic dumbass, it literally is greed. It was created for the purpose of greed and it continues funnel all the wealth to the greedy. Loopholes are found around all the rate limiters and speed governors that get designed into the law and federal agencies. They’re trying “company store” tactics again. Fucking child labor is back.
“The system is morally agnostic” imagine the fucking Stockholm Syndrome (yes I’ve heard it’s not actually real stfu)
The people at the top of it swimming in their Scrooge McDuck piles of money while the rest of us struggle seem pretty fucking greedy to me.
there is no such thing as a morally agnostic system, you either agree with or disagree with the outcome of the economic system, it is moral or immoral.
True, a system whose only imperative is personal upside maximization with no consideration for anybody else is morally agnostic if you put aside the moral dimensions of having no consideration for anybody else whilst acting for personal upside maximization.
Same as murder being morally agnostic if you put aside the moral dimensions of killing another human being.
Consider the possibility that you're confusing familiarity, common use in your environment and even normalization of something with it actually being devoid of a moral component: just because people around you got used to act in some way without questioning such way of acting doesn't mean it's morally agnostic: after all, slavery too used to be normal.
So many people seem to have mistaken what you said for a defense of capitalism.
I think a better way to say it is that greed isn't a useful way to explain any particular thing that happens in a capitalist system, because everything that happens in capitalism is driven by greed. Saying one particular problem is caused by greed is like a doctor saying someone's illness is a symptom of being alive; it's true, but it explains nothing.
Those are here for the same reason...
People act like inflation is the invisible hand of the market, this is capitalism, companies will charge whatever they want to maximize profits, and that rarely results in a lower price.
Like, if you made thingamajigs, and if you made as many as you could (10 million) and sold as much as you could to saturate the market and end up making 10 million, that's less profit than if you charged $5 a piece and only sold 2 million. Same income, much lower overhead.
So you cut staffing and make 1/5th of what you can because that maximizes profit.
Which is fine until your thingamajig is something that people need like food, water, or shelter. If you're putting profit over production, then people who can't afford it have to go without.
It's literally what's going on with insulin. This is t a hypothetical, this is what's been happening for a long time.
It's just with the same few giant corporations making everything, if just one does, the other 2-4 giant corporations crunch the same numbers and come up with the same plan.
Something that used to be called price fixing is suddenly just "internal analytics"
So... The Chinese real estate model? Overbuild, saturate the market, and suddenly housing is no longer an issue.
wait, all we have to do is make more than what the optimal profit supply/demand curve dictates, and we can get rid of homelessness? maybe do the same with food so no one has to starve?
Yeah, that's been an option for a long time, we're just a shit species.
I could have bought a decent house alone, albeit uncomfortably. But I was happy enough in my condo. Now I have a wife and dual income, and we'd have to really stretch for a shitty house on the outskirts. And neither of our wages have changed much.
Wages are not stagnant.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
You can see rising median wages for several decades. The covid stimuluses caused a bump but cant expect that level of government spending forever.
It went from 335 in 1979 to 365. That's less than a 9% increase. In 34 years. How do you not see this as stagnant?
This is Real Income. It's clearly not stagnant. It is clearly increasing.
that may be true, if you live in the magic no change in cost of living world
This is real earnings, which takes that into account