we’ve already crashed
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.
A crash? I’d say we’re in a plane from which the pilot decided to press the “eject wings” button.
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.
Grocery value didn’t go up. Real wages went down. We should measure inflation based on cost-of-living.
Groceries don’t really get more expensive, because the methods for producing food don’t really get less efficient over time; if anything, it’s more efficient. So there’s no real reason for them to become more expensive.
Instead, wages declined. I’ve already commented many times that the labor market is a free market, that means it’s regulated by Supply and Demand. I.e., if prices for labor go down, as we can observe, then that can be interpreted such that supply of labor went up (women go to work too, offshoring labor to other countries, immigrants, …) or that demand for labor went down (automation, end of growth, …).
I honestly think that both cases are difficult, where the supply of labor could be a bit reduced by kicking out immigrants and home-shoring labor (and also, to a lesser extent, making it more difficult for women to work), which btw some advisers to trump are seemingly trying to do, but my honest opinion is that it won’t bring wages up to how they were in the 1960s. Demand for labor is shrinking too, due to the end of growth and now AI and other automation techniques. I guess we’ll have to face that.
edit: just to offer an optimistic outlook, i think that consumerism and therefore demand for consumer products could be stimulated by simply giving handouts to people. most people will spend most of the handouts immediately, and that stimulates consumerism. and that in turn stimulates the economy.
This is so absolutely adorable.
I live in country that has plateaued financially for the last 2 decades.
You’ll be fine. Really. In opposite to what you might have heard, free market capitalism in no way requires constant growth. It can adapt to plateaus or degrowth just fine.
America doesn’t do free market capitalism it does late stage capitalism, where profits do in fact need to be record high every quarter, even if that means people are gonna die (like 10m people becoming uninsured, plus us borrowing a bunch of money from China, so we can give more to the billionaires that own us and don’t need it).
Which country would this be?
Yes
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…)
Worse, you will get used to it.
No. Things will just get worse.
Your statement has probably been true since 2008. Maybe longer.
I remember during the big housing bubble in the early 2000s people were telling me “Oh you better buy now” even though down payments were insanely high and I kept thinking “The cost of housing is totally out of whack with incomes. There is no way this can keep going up.” Surprise, surprise the whole thing blew up and lots of people were then left with mortgages that cost more than their homes so they were stuck. On top of that the prices were still out of whack with incomes and I still couldn’t afford a house unless it was a wreck. I eventually just moved out of the state.
I was just reading how the normal “escape cities”, like Miami, for people fleeing high cost areas like San Francisco and Boston/NYC are now almost as expensive. Guess people will have to go to St Louis and Des Moines.
Trump is selling us off to China, he said so today in the cabinet meeting. Everything is expensive because China owns it. Climate change is here, AMOC collapse is ongoing, we’re pretty fucked tbh. So they need land and clean water for their people, we all do. Floods absolutely destroy/contaminate clean water sources like lakes. And there’s been massive floods globally, especially in China.
More of a sticky slide into a chaos. From it our pain and suffering will fuel new metrics for new economic models with new crash indicators. Indicators that when applied to today would appear as an ominous array of flashing red lights.
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. 😬
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?
