• peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Part of me wonders now if the Great Depression and 08’ Recession were engineered.

    Banks failed, but the wealthiest Americans stayed the wealthiest.

    • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      With such large cash reserves, a financial recession is just a massive discount buying opportunity for the rich.

      Meanwhile the working class has to sell off what little they have just to survive.

      It’s theft, always has been.

      • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        Just want to add it’s not just tb working class. Governments have been systematically kneecapped since post-WW2 in favour of pro-business and elitist whims. This is why we slowly are seeing our social safety nets stripped away across the world with nothing in return but diminishing returns.

        We sell off public phones, hydro, water, etc. to fund the fact that we are taxing the rich and large corporations less and less. It’s been a spiral for decades and decades at this point and no one cause can be pinpointed because it’s been a series of changes that have brought it on while a small segment of the working class continue to see themselves as embarrassed millionaires and champion on the further stripping of our safety nets.

        It’s going to get far worse before it starts to get better. That’s the only thing I can be sure of.

    • Zombie@feddit.uk
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      3 days ago

      Because it is.

      Capitalism is the system of production for profit, and that is why capitalism always must have unemployed.

      But look further into this system of production for profit and you will see how its basic evil works a hundred other evils.

      Let us follow the shoe manufacturer of your city. He has no way of knowing, as I have already pointed out, who will or will not be able to buy his shoes. He makes a rough guess, he ‘estimates’, and he decides to manufacture, let us say, 50,000 pairs. Then he puts his product on the market. That is, the wholesaler, the jobber, and the storekeeper put them up for sale.

      Suppose only 30,000 pairs were sold; 20,000 pairs remain on hand. Our manufacturer, unable to sell the balance in his own city, will try to dispose of it, in some other part of the country. But the shoe manufacturers there have also had the same experience. They also can’t sell all they have produced. The supply of shoes is greater than the demand for them, they tell you. They have to cut down production. That means the discharge of some of their employees, thus increasing the army of the unemployed.

      ‘Over-production’ this is called. But in truth it is not over-production at all. It is under-consumption, because there are many people who need new shoes, but they can’t afford to buy them.

      The result? The warehouses are stocked with the shoes the people want but cannot buy, shops and factories close because of the ‘oversupply’. The same things happen in other industries. You are told that there is a ‘crisis’ and your wages must be reduced.

      Your wages are cut; you are put on part time or you lose your work altogether. Thousands of men and women are thrown out of employment in that manner. Their wages stop and they cannot buy the food and other things they need. Are those things not to be had? No, on the contrary; the warehouses and stores are filled with them, there is too much of them there’s ‘over-production’.

      So the capitalist system of production for profit results in this crazy situation:

      1. people have to starve — not because there is not enough food but because there is too much of it; they have to do without the things they need, because there is too much of those things on hand;
      1. because there is too much, manufacture is cut down, throwing thousands out of work;
      1. being out of work and therefore not earning, those thousands lose their buying capacity. The grocer, the butcher, the tailor all suffer, as a result. That means increased unemployment all around, the crisis gets worse.

      Under capitalism this happens in every industry.

      Such crises are inevitable in a system of production for profit. They come from time to time; they return periodically, always getting worse. They deprive thousands and hundreds of thousands of employment causing poverty, distress, and untold misery. They result in bankruptcy and bank failures, which swallow up whatever little the worker have saved in time of ‘prosperity’. They cause want and need, drive people to despair and crime, to suicide and insanity.

      Such are the results of production for profit; such the fruits of system of capitalism.

      Yet that is not all. There is another result of this system, are even worse than all the others combined.

      That is War.

      From Now and After by Alexander Berkman. Chapter 5: Unemployment.

      Available to read, or download in multiple formats, for free, here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-berkman-what-is-communist-anarchism#toc7

    • frunch@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      It’s a pattern we see play out over and over. Big crash means the rich buy the dip and make out like bandits while simultaneously reaping government aid because of said crash

      • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I sometimes think “man, it must be nice to be rich.”

        But then I look at these assholes benefitting from it, and I wonder if they can experience joy at all.

    • Hanrahan@slrpnk.net
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      2 days ago

      Banks failed, but the wealthiest Americans stayed the wealthiest.

      Always… unleashed as part of the process the assets of the wealthiest are sized so they can’t be opportunistic assholes and new laws are enacted making >10x median illegal you’ll end up with Animal Farm.

        • Techno-rat@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 days ago

          nooooo OM is cool as fuck dont let the chuds take everything cool, theyre not fascist just because it has vague christian // new agey symbolism and distorted ‌guitars PLEASE dont let the fascists own every metal aesthetic that aint directly political or vaguely references mysticism and or folk mythology.

          its a huge headache having to throw them out of the concerts all the time without people like you spurring them on

        • lost_faith@lemmy.ca
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          3 days ago

          Stop saying everything is cryptofascist, you’re making me sound like a git!

          LOL this is a reference to a TV show called Red Dwarf, as is the one I responded to, for thems who don’t get it

    • Herding Llamas@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Sorry for the Ai overview, but I don’t live there so only care sooo much. And oddly from Europe I can’t access some pages without swapping my VPN to there.

      Here you go:

      Workers’ Share of U.S. Income Hits 43% as Nixon’s 1971 Break Gets Revisited – Idaho Public Press https://share.google/WiCCqpQFXbWjfMGch

      When economic experts and financial outlets look at this metric, they pull from raw data available via the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED database):The Component: “Gross Domestic Income: Compensation of Employees, Paid: Wages and Salaries” (FRED Series A4102C1Q027SBEA).The Context: Gross Domestic Income (GDI) measures everything the economy makes by adding up all the income generated. This includes worker paychecks, corporate profits, and investment returns.The Trend: While the total amount of money in the U.S. economy keeps growing, the percentage slice that goes directly into regular workers’ wages and salaries has shrunk over the long term to roughly 43%, making it one of the lowest proportions since recording began in 1929.

      A Key Economic Distinction: “Wages” vs "Total Labor Share"If you plan to use this stat in a discussion or research paper, be careful not to confuse “Wages and Salaries” with Total Labor Share.Wages and Salaries (43%): This is just the literal money printed on base paychecks.Total Labor Share (~53% to 62%): When the government calculates the total share going to workers, they include wages plus benefits like health insurance, retirement contributions, and social insurance. The New York Fed reports that the total labor share has also hit historic post-war lows, sitting closer to the low 50s.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    I seem to be repeating myself a lot lately.

    Several economists, including Nobel laureates are noting that the only way out of this mess is to redistribute all of the wealth at the top.

    We can try to New Deal it, but much like the original one by FDR it will be a temporary stopgap to keep capitalism going for a bit longer. And it may not work very well since the ultra wealthy are richer than they’ve ever been any time before in history.

    Also we have nuclear weapons, and terribly stupid people in power.

  • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    It’s okay guys, Trump just signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America. Now that the more important business is out of the way I’m sure fixing this is next on his to-do list.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Okay… But it actually has “great” in the title and frankly that seems pretty great to me?

  • Arancello@aussie.zone
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    3 days ago

    there is an excellent youtube video on this by Justin Wolfers from Platypus Economics. A labour economics professor from university of michigan.