We are heading into a feudal system of a sort. The wealth gap is absolutly massive and the only way to end up in the upper class is to inherit. As per usual the population feels that the system is unfair, but is unable to see the real problem. Media is really pushing far right talking points, as the upper class realizes that the system is broken and a real revolution is a problem. Thats how the US ended up with a de facto monarchy. The UK is moving towards that pretty quickly too.
The good news is that Labour might make some really usefull changes. Mainly end first past the post to prevent Reform from taking over. That might very well allow left wing parties like the LibDems and Greens to win more seats and change the narrative.
What makes you think Labour are looking to change that?
Labour had a bit more then a third of the votes, which is pretty close to were Reform is polling today. However Labour won a massive majority with those votes. If Labour wants to prevent a Reform victory they need to change the election system. It is even worse for the Tories. So long term Tory supporters will cheer them on.
I know that makes sense to do, but that’s different from them making plans to do it
The first change doesn’t seem to be related, but that second link is promising.
It depends on who “we” are.
If you’re in the US, then bad news buttercup - you’re already under the thumb of a ruthless insane dictator, and the economy is the last of your worries.
We’re headed for a revolution, of the French variety.
Bonjour
It’s in the making since 1971
We are always headed for a crash. That’s the cycle of capitalism without strong regulatory mechanisms to mitigate it. I believe it is every 4-7 years that a crash has happened in the last 300 years.
Headed? I would say that we are a looney toon several meters in the air beyond the cliff border after traverse a mountaing through a tunnel painted in the wall with an ACME parachute… and I think that I fell short in the hyperbole
Don’t worry. Trump is making sure you can get a job picking crops. You’ll be living in a tent. No rent, not utilities. You’re welcome!
Brave of you to assume he won’t make people who live/work there pay rent and utilities, and that “the haves” won’t say he’s a great guy for providing this.
Sarcastic humor aside, migratory agricultural work is a thing in the US. Some of my friends did it back in the 80’s. Live in a tent on site, earn by how much you pick, save money because no rent and no place to spend. No federal taxes. Blueberries here, apples there, travel to where the crops need picking. Clean fish in Alaska or work on the boats.
Slapping on tariffs at a time with inflation, high consumer anxiety, and wage stagnation is going to be looked on as one of the worst moves a president has made.
He is, without a doubt, the worst and second worst president in the country’s entire history.
Trump: “Ah, but you have heard of me!”
FAKE NEWS TDS, TRUMP IS OUR LAWD N SAVIOR, HE HAS RISEN AND REPLACED JESUS CHRIST. /s
He rose from the dead? I knew something about him seemed zombie like. The dead eyes and awkward hand motions gives it away.
Um, dude we’re not just talking about any normal man, we’re talking about Our Lawd N Savior Convicted Felon Donald J Trump. He didn’t just rise from the dead, he made his own bible.
Praise be his hypocritical name. In the name of the racism, the grift, and the holy crime, amen.
Amen in the name of the bigT
We can only hope! (That this is considered one of the worst ones…)
We’re already there. The only reason we aren’t calling this a depression is that the stock market hasn’t been affected much.
But when 25% of Americans are functionally unemployed, it’s hard to argue we aren’t already largely ‘crashed’.
The biggest issue is the need for families to have two incomes to support a houshold. Unemployment would plummet if single incomes for the working class were feasible again,since unemployment is based on looking for employment.
Basically if jobs had living wages and we had universal healthcare we wouldn’t be in this mess.
That ship sailed under Reagan, and it’s never getting back to port, sadly. Thanks to him, families now needed two incomes.
Then, Bush and Clinton came along, and you needed not only two incomes, but two college degrees. Now, with Dubya, Obama, and Trump, not even that’s enough, and they’re capping student loans instead of regulating student loan interest, so your only real shot at being a doctor now is being born in the right zip code.
America, baby. Dig it.
now even degrees arnt guaranteed in jobs, alot of these need grad degrees/graduate level certification to have even a chance.
it’s never getting back to port
In the event of an actual crash, a lot of these “nevers” will get re-evaluated. The New Deal consisted of a lot of “nevers” that all got passed because people didn’t want a repeat of the first Great Depression; I’d expect a similar snap-back after the second Gilded Age finally burns itself out.
I mean that’s hopeful, but remember that the New Deal also came against the backdrop of the height of socialism in the West and the labor rights movement. Modern Americans don’t have the organizational strength to make such a compromise attractive in the eye of the ruling class, and they don’t seem intent on ever having it.
Historically, humans don’t just suffer in silence for more than a couple of generations.
People in big wealthy countries underestimate how far those nations can fall.
Argentina was the 5th richest country in the World at one point, and look at them now.
The higher you are, the more you can fall before hitting a new stable state: just look at those places which were once great imperial nations like Greece, Iran, Turkey or Egypt. I mean, most of the Middle East was once the seat of some great nation or other and look at them now.
The US going all the way down to the level of wealth per capita of, say, Russia, is a distinct possibility, if the structural elements which supported its high economic output start breaking (so, things like Education, the productivity of its companies and the belief of outsiders that investing in America is safe and has a good ROI, all things getting worse) and the higher a nation is in that scale the more such structural supports are required to keep it there (for example, not other developed nations don’t relly on their currency being the World’s Reserve Currency to prop-up its public finances), so the harder it is to stay there.
You’re not wrong, though the US has gone through this sort of thing before in the past. Once the Great Depression wiped away the excesses that came from the post-WWI economic boom, it led directly to Roosevelt’s New Deal; “perhaps the greatest achievement [of which] was to restore faith in American democracy at a time when many people believed that the only choice left was between communism and fascism.”
Sound familiar?
That’s the most visible example of our previous experience with this, but it’s far from the only one: Rapidly increasing economic inequalities, coupled with the fight over slavery, led to the election of Lincoln; he of course issued the Emancipation Proclamation, but he also signed into law social programs such as the Homestead Act and a land grant program which resulted in the establishment of many lower-income colleges and universities around the country, including several HBCUs. When the extreme disparities of the Gilded Age reached a tipping point in the late 1800s, the Progressive Era began, bringing things like women’s suffrage, environmental protections, and “muckraking” journalism that rooted out corruption. The attempts at state-level fascism in the midst of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s led to the election of Kennedy and to Johnson’s “Great Society,” which brought with it food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid, and consumer protections, among many other things.
Buchanan led to Lincoln. Hoover led to Roosevelt. Nixon led to Carter. Bush led to Obama. It’s a pendulum of extremes: rapid progressive change is birthed from times of economic inequality, there’s a steady-state era in which progressive policies lead to rapid growth, but then the rich start to get frustrated with regulation and taxation, and corruption begins to increase once more, leading to increasing inequality; the people get mad, control of the government is wrested back, and the cycle begins anew. The pendulum has been swinging since before the Magna Carta even.
Still, you are right about the big question here: whether or not the country will survive the next swing of the pendulum in its current form, or if a different society will have to be birthed from its ashes.
Would pointing out places like North Korea and Turkmenistan be overkill here?
Guess so…
Turkmenistan has barely been totalitarian for a single generation; the Soviet Union broke up in my lifetime. And yes, North Korea has persisted through a little over two generations of Kim family control that seems to show no signs of stopping anytime soon from the outside, but that’s not too far outside of “a couple” of generations. I’d say that the jury is still out on them, too, but even if the DPRK lasts for a century or more, they become an extreme outlier in the face of every other fascist regime in the history of the world.
Lot of assumptions there.
I hope you’re right.
Well, it’s either that or American Revolution II: Electric Boogaloo, so I hope so too.
The new deal though is not a good deal lmao. It will literally make the rich gen richer and poor get poorer. Like I’m middle class American but still rely on summer and after school programs for my kids. What am I supposed to do when that goes away? Magically afford a daycare? Or is my 10yr or 6yr old supposed to get a job?
They’re not talking about a new deal as in a new status quo after this whole mess; they’re talking about the New Deal and are hoping for more of that.
TL;DR for the article: Pretty much all federal social welfare programs and worker rights in America were established as part of the New Deal. Think if Bernie became president with a cooperative Congress.
Indeed. Yikes, our history education is in rough shape.
I mean something tells me that’s one topic that wouldn’t be appropriately covered in schools, but that’s just my guess.
You misunderstand me, as the other comment notes. I’m talking about actual change: “The New Deal,” capitalized: the relief, reform, and recovery of the 1930s, not “the new deal,” lowercase, that they just passed.
Why would a new deal get rid of after school programs? If would expand on them.
Or is my 10yr or 6yr old supposed to get a job?
Yeah man they have started rolling back those regulations for child labor.
Trump just passed a huge cut it he 21s CCLC down to $0… This stops all funding to after school and summer learning programs. I just got an email from. The center my kids go to saying they might have to close because they didn’t get their July 1st budget payments…
… You don’t know what the New Deal was, do you?
ReaGaNoMiCS!!!
You can blame Reagan for a lot of things but not this and frankly even if it somehow was all his fault the Clinton Administration could have undone it.
The economy was already in trouble by the end of Lyndon Johnson’s final term in 1969. The Nixon Administration implemented some large changes trying to fix it but was unsuccessful. The Carter Administration also tried with very limited success. It wasn’t until the 1st Rise of Tech in the 80s during the Reagan Administration that things managed to get moving again. The Clinton Administration caught a lucky break with the 2nd Rise of Tech in the 90s so the streak got extended to right about 2001.
The amusing part is that Johnson, Nixon, and Carter bear no blame for the economic woes while Reagan and Clinton deserve no credit for the economic successes. They just happened to be the guy in the Oval when things happened.
Its a good chunk of the reason that everyone from Wall Street to the US Federal Government is trying so damn hard to make AI happen. They want a 3rd Rise of Tech, or something like it, in order to re-float the economy.
Bla-bla-blame? I don’t think this is about blaming the right or the left wing of politics. It’s about what the State is supposed to do for (as in favor of) the people. They renounced to the idea of working for the people and leave them in the hands of the oligarchy. It worked as long as the illusion and promises lasted.
This is part of my problem. My wife has medical issues and can’t work which is exaserbated by our higher than typical medical costs. It sucked before but we managed and now it seems like the end.
if jobs had living wages
But but billionaires would be slightly less obscenely rich then, oh no!
I stopped working a year ago. Burnt out, broken down, and various physical ailments just broke and depressed me. Moved back in with family to help support my useless ass. Shit sucks and it ain’t going to get any better. But I’ll turn up to every local protest I can cuz this GOP shit is bullshit.
Yeah, I don’t know if OP is in the USA, but having someone like Donald Trump elected to high office is 100% part of a crash already in progress. Inequality got so bad that democracy is not functioning. In a healthy society, Trump would be an unelectable laughing stock.
24/7 propaganda, plus MSM helping all along the well, plus adding a little culture war(racisms, sexism, anti-immigration,evangelicalism) helped alot.
Yeah. I consider Trump the “blow everything up” candidate, he got a lot of support from people who were just so generically desperate that they wanted to vote for whoever seemed like they were going to majorly change something, somehow. It almost didn’t matter what Trump did as long as he smashed the existing order while doing it.
he is doing it, smashing everything to smithereens. the republicans voters hope its phoenix rising out of the ashes type of situation.
Agreed. People were angry - many with good cause. Unfortunately, people often make bad decisions when they are angry.
Also, not so fun fact, but this got me curious so I looked up the unemployment rate during The Great Depression: apparently then it was around 20% to 25% as well, so I feel like that reinforces the point I’m making a bit.
apparently then it was around 20% to 25% as well
No, the unemployment rate was around 20-25% under the traditional definition. It’s currently 4.2% under that definition.
If you want to use this LISEP definition, fine, but recognize that it’s been above 30% for most of its existence, and has only been under 25% since COVID. Basically, if you go by the LISEP definition then you’re saying that the job market after COVID has been better than it has ever been before.
The 1% own even more stock than they own outright money. You could replace “the economy” in every article with “rich people’s yacht money”. The stock market is 100% dissociated from reality and shouldn’t be used as a measure of general wealth by any means.
most of billionaires money is in investment schemes, not actual cash as people think.
From your own source on “true” unemployment, it’s the lowest it has been since they started calculating it. It peaked in 09 at 35% and again in COVID, but all through the early 00s it was between 28% and 30%.
You can’t use that number as evidence we “already crashed”, because as we’ve seen in other actual crashes it spikes up to 35%.
When the definition of unemployed is changed to exclude the majority of working age people without jobs then it is no longer a helpful statistic.
That’s why we see people calculating real unemployment with other variables.
When the definition of unemployed is changed to exclude the majority of working age people without jobs then it is no longer a helpful statistic.
U-3 has used the same definition of unemployed since 1940.
Whatever metric you want to use, you should look at that number and how it changes over time, to get a sense of trend lines. LISEP says the “true” unemployment rate is currently 24.3% in May 2025, which is basically the lowest it’s ever been.
Since the metric was created in 1994, the first time that it dipped below 25% was briefly in the late 2010’s, right before COVID, and then has been under 25% since September 2021.
Under this alternative metric of unemployment, the unemployment rate is currently one of the lowest in history.
I don’t know how to make you engage with reality.
Slaves arguing for their continued enslavement is just something i will never understand.
You can’t understand because you can’t even read the numbers in your own sources haha
I didn’t post any numbers.
“Indignant slave mocks another slave to make themselves feel better.”
Haha
The comments you’re responding to are not making that kind of general argument though, they are only talking about whether a specific claim makes sense. If it doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t necessarily mean our economic system is working for us, maybe it means that whatever problems exist would be better quantified in a different way.
Unemployment statistics do not show an accurate picture of the people who are unemployed based on the definition of unemployed that is used by regular human beings.
I understand the stat looks good, because the definition of the stat excludes growing groups of people who we would consider unemployed.
Well what I’m seeing in this thread is two metrics, BLS and LISEP, with the argument being that the distinction between them doesn’t matter because unemployment is right now historically low by both measures (I don’t really know the difference between them myself, or whether these are the only meaningful ways to measure it). And you’re reiterating that there exists some measure where it is high, but I think for that to be a convincing counterargument you would need to say more about what that measure is, show that unemployment is high by that measure, and make an argument why that specific way of measuring things is more relevant than the other ones.
You’re the one saying we shouldn’t be cross comparing different numbers with different meanings… While literally comparing different numbers with different meanings to support your point
Hello friend.
This point has been discussed elsewhere in the thread. I hope you have a nice afternoon.
And the stock market is just another way for the top percent to continue to siphon wealth.
Meh, please don’t quote unusual statistics without giving any context for how to interpet them.
For this value, it is calculated by:
Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes.
24.3% is not that out of the ordinary - you can see historical data back to like, 1995 here.
Not saying this stat is useless, but the way you’ve chosen to use it is intentionally and inaccurately inflammatory.
I dunno, H.
I may be wrong in saying it’s indicative of a crash, and I’m okay with being corrected.
As to inaccurate or inflammatory, maybe it feels that way if you’re on the winning side of the equation.
I think we should be inflamed about this. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that thirty years of high functional unemployment being ordinary is an objectively bad thing, but when you couple it with the increasingly supercharged price gouging and inflation the US has experienced over the last several decades, things that seemed improbable before suddenly become feasible. (Like making fascists electable.)
The fact that it’s pegged to 25k means that the number is much much higher. It’s not 24.3%. its 24.3% plus everyone who can’t afford to live at today’s prices.
That’s terrifying.
Maybe in 1995 you could actually afford things while functionally unemployed? I mean, while the relative number is stable, the absolute numbers keep growing, and their situation keeps worsening. Here lies the inflammatory part.
If the economy doesn’t need 25% of the populace to keep functioning…what happens?
Im at 42 weeks. My life plane is heading straight down and the rudder is not responding.
Best way to recover from a spin is push the yoke to straight down and rudder opposite the spin.
The stock market is not the same thing as it was at the start, different players, different motives, and lots of failsafes. That time it was a signal that things were bad, this time we could continue to get worse and you’d never know it looking at the DOW.
Can you ELI5 why the stock market isn’t affected much?
If we look at historic crashes, they had major catalysts causing mass sell orders. Right now markets have had time to adjust because the speed of decline has been very slow.
Markets are also largely speculative, many stocks are traded way above their fundamental value (think Microsoft, tesla, or coca-cola). These will probably be hit the hard, algorithms will default to what a stock should be and drop hard. But these companies might have the strongest chance to bounce back as well.
Companies with the strongest books will be safer, but many more risk taking companies won’t be as lucky. This is part of what due diligence of a stock will tell you, but also probably one of the hardest parts of investing.
As long as decline is slow, stability can be found. But when uncertainty rises fast, so does the unstability of the stock market. Catalysts such as the public losing confidence in banks causing a bank run, companies downsizing at unseen scales to cut costs, or global political instability are possible.
TLDR: it needs to get way worse, very quickly for the market to crash
So many jobs 🫲🍊🫱
Really weird reading an article that interviews someone you’ve worked for (who is a billionaire themselves).
You will own nothing, live in the company town, owe your soul to the company store, and be grateful.
And that’s different from now, how exactly?
What I am saying is that IS now. Next up, rats and maggots on the menu.
And I just found out I need a new job as we are being ordered into the office after they moved it 50 miles away.
Things are not looking good. I think they will hit us with another round of redundancies after some people leave too.
its called constructive dismissal learn that when they were doing the very first round of layoffs in '23, from reddit.
I’ve been WFH since Covid forced it, but then a year ago the promised us WFH full time was here to stay and only those that needed or wanted to be in the office could. They downsized buildings and everything. Nice!
They just told us we all had to be back in the office in a month. There isn’t enough offices, not enough parking, we’ve blown away all the productivity metrics at home, half the company is out of state. But, uh, REASONS! We must have butts in THIS specific chair or work doesn’t count.
There is literally no valid reason to force it. I think it’s all about control and power. They really don’t care about productivity or employee satisfaction at all, they just want to force everyone to comply. If they wanted either of those other things we’ve proved what works.
I hate it. It feels like the dumb “open office” fad all over again. Let’s cram 200 people into a single giant open noisy room. Employees HATED it. Managers all gloated how innovative they were. Then it faded away again as they all slowly accepted that no one gets anything done in that chaotic environment.
So too with office vs home. We live in a digital age. The computer age. The internet age. Long gone is the age of work being done by shaking hands and looking at a binder of papers. It’s an email, zoom call and a pdf now. Accept it.
In a weird way I’m actually looking forward to my company all going back with 0 coherent plan and not enough parking or desks and then I’ll giggle as productivity and morale absolutely tanks.
It’s also very likely they know a certain % will quit over it and do it on purpose to lay off without having to. The only problem is that all the most experienced and qualified people leave first.
Companies have had 5 years to accept reality, sell off the MASSIVELY expensive offices and stay fully remote where possible, but no, I think they want control over profits. They want to FEEL like they are managing instead of actually managing.
constructive dismissial, create a situation where it becomes untenable to stay at your job, eg far away location limit office space, so people resign. seems like it has been ogoing since '23. one of my bros was in tech, they just got impatient and straight up laid people off at the mid size tech company, gotta gid rid of people who are earning 200-400k/year to record profits. he hasnt found another job yet, and i detect a distinct hint of a late 30s life crisis too.
Oh I absolutely expect morale to tank. We barely have parking at all, the office is large enough for about 25% of the company, the parking is enough for 5% of the seats in the office.
I am hoping I can get it down to once a month, at that point its no worse than commuting into town for retail every day as far as total commuting time each month. The pay I get is barely over minimum wage so that is hardly a benefit compared to retail. Full WFH is pretty much the only benefit that is worth anything.
Then at once a month hopefully avoid coming in for a few of them. Plan holiday for the days we were going to be in, that kind of thing.
Yeah, honestly once a month isn’t that bad. Annoying because you MUST do it, but like you said, not so bad. I’ve done once a week and it feels ok ish. Like, I can’t get ANYTHING done in the office anymore. It’s too distracting, too many meetings, and as opposed to being at home, I now have to commute, get lunch, etc. And when in meetings in person you can’t really keep working, but a zoom call, yeah I can get half my work done while sitting through all the meetings all day, but not now and I’m not about to go into unpaid overtime to make up their awful decision. And I’m not going to log on early or stay late either. Done with all that. You get your 8 hours, no more now. So I’m sorta looking forward to sitting around in meetings all day discussing all the things we could be working on.
That would be hilarious if you took PTO that 1 day every month. Amazing. Come in like, one time per year just to make a point that you didn’t skip them ALL. Hahaha.
Honestly though, if your pay isn’t that great keep looking and bail asap.
That’s scary. How are you holding up?
Scrolling through indeed right now, its not great. Maybe just give up trying to find anything I have skills for and find something unskilled?
But I think my contract states once a month in the office so if I can argue that its probably worth staying and just going through a shit commute once a month. Still not great but probably slightly better than taking a local retail job.
other jobs weve been hearing 3-5 days mandatory a week.
3-5 days and I would look to quit without even working my notice period.
All we gotta do is
trickconvince some company to hire us as CEO. Get paid millions more than the employees and do nothing! Sounds like my kind of gig.Yes it’s rough mate, I hope it picks up soon
If they force your hand, file for UI.
The US could poke along forever, North Korea style because our entire country is full of cowards who will just take oppression without any fight.
…the climate, tho. 😬
[“Create one’s own money as a IOU/ Promissory note, put your thumb print on it’s value and signature to it and get others to do the same. Trust it as you would have done so if it were debt based fiat currency. Get your villages and towns to start using it and bingo a new private lawful currency has come to life. :-) .”]
Yes. We are heading towards a crash. We are very much already in one, and have absolutley no way out.
Trump killed all US international commerce with his TACO tariffs and is currently propping up a failing stock market by converting medicaid dollars into ICE / TECH BRO MILITARY funding. The stock market keeps doing great because our tax dollars are propping up companies like Google, Plantir, and Amazon through government grants instead of providing us a safety net. That money will run out eventually, but likely not before more CEOs are killed over it.
Literally we are living through the gilded 1920’s again but with an American Hitler.
We now have years of uncontrolled inflation well above target rates, a corrupt government, wealth inequality worse than the French revolution, and rampant unintelligent Tariffs hurting all international trade at the cost of every small business in America. These are the same factors that caused the great depression, and if you think it’s not going to happen again, you are wrong.
We are a country being lead into disaster by the least competent people imaginable.
We are heading towards a crash. We are very much already in one, and have absolutley no way out.
I think this is what folks lose track of when they talk about “the crash”. We’re all waiting with baited breath for the financial system to topple over. But the financial system is increasingly just a dozen private equity firms bidding up one another’s baseball cards. They can’t “crash” in the traditional sense until a sufficient number of them refuse to contribute more to the pot, and so long as everyone has easy credit there’s no real reason to do that.
Incidentally, JPow and Trump (and every Fed Chair/President going back to Bernenke/Obama) have both been militant in keeping Fed Interest Rates at historic lows going on nearly two decades.
Literally we are living through the gilded 1920’s again but with an American Hitler.
I mean, the parallels between Trump and Coolidge Eras are in abundance. War on Immigration. A finance/tech sector that’s eating the industrial economy. Massive spike in white nationalism paired with a full blown Red Scare. Deficit hawkery that never touches the national security state. Global ecological crises compounding into massive famines and agricultural failures.
We are a country being lead into disaster by the least competent people imaginable.
Part of the problem is that we’ve lost track of a consensus on what “competent” looks like. I see plenty of people (rightly) insist guys like Trump and Speaker Johnson and governors like DeSantis and Abbott are criminally incompetent. But then these same people get fully behind Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris, seemingly without recognizing that they’re pushing the backside of the same privatization / national security state coin.
What do you do when blue state bastions like California and New Mexico are turning out Crypto Shills as quickly as any captured conservative enclave like Wyoming or South Carolina? What does competency look like in the wake of Biden’s squandered four years or Obama’s or Clinton’s corporately compromised time in office, for that matter?
How do you talk about climate change or even scratch the surface of our US-backed genocides in Gaza and Yemen and Afghanistan or talk about housing policy or college debts or union organization when half the elected liberal contingent is just a commodity that’s traded on the stock market?
We’re all waiting for the dream to end in a sudden shocking economic turn. I don’t know if that’s necessarily what will happen. What if we’ve just pivoted our economy towards a monetization of human suffering? What if this system is stable and enduring? There is no crash because there’s nothing left to be broken into and fleeced.
Competency implies having some qualification other than loyalty, listening to subject matter experts, considering consequences. The result of competency could easily be just a matter of degree and awareness.
For example, tariffs can be a powerful tool for addressing specific trade inequities or supporting local production, especially in conjunction with other tools. Many US administrations have successfully used them. Only an incompetent buffoon would just throw them down everywhere all at once as the only tool, or as a bullying tactic.
wealth inequality worse than the French revolution
When the creator of the Revolutions podcast was asked about the one theme that follows every revolution, he said that it was wealth inequality.
If I remember correctly, the French revolution had three major elements that kicked it off the way it did: huge wealth inequality, a major event that hits the lower classes (in this case a drought that destroyed lots of crops and therefore caused a wheat shortage), and incompetent leadership that is unable to deal with said event. Looks like the US is getting there, step by step.
