GDP has to be the worst way to financially review a country.
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
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In the past 4 years my salary grew at about 3-5% while inflation grew at a much higher rate. I don't even buy eggs anymore.
Because the measures that economists use to measure the economy are not relevant to regular people. GDP tells you nothing about living standards.
Only getting better for the ultra wealthy. That's what the system is for and it's working better than it ever has.
If you think about. When capitalism is less capitalist is when regular people benefit. (Regulation, healthcare, free education)
Socialist American policies were the best.
I'd say even for the wealthy, their living standards aren't getting better. At their level of wealth, getting more either means number in accounts goes up if they are passive with it or power over others goes up if they are active with it.
But yeah, capitalism is for those with capital; it's right in the name.
oh boy, gini is up
Yep. Just reading the title, the "economy" is up, and people are worse for it.
The fact is, despite record breaking profit, nearly none of that "growth" is being provided to the people creating the value for companies to sell, and is instead being handed upwards to people with more money than brains, who have "invested" in the business.
The lines on the stock market graphs go up, and the people working for that company who create all the things that are generating the profit, are robbed, and their would-be wages are handed to the shareholders.
Is anyone shocked by this? Is anyone surprised by this?
Did anyone not know this already?
What a stupid article.
Part of it is that when people say the "economy" is up, they're usually only referring to valuations of public companies which is only part of the picture. The price-to-earnings ratio is so wack right now that many companies are trading at 18x their earnings per share, so while profits may be up, the companies are still wildly overvalued compared to their expected output.
Real wage growth has lagged significantly compared to the historical trend. If the labor market continues to take a beating, consumer spending will tank and bring equities down with it.
I work with people that really struggle to grasp this concept. I work rotations and every hitch I find myself spending the first few days explaining that what they call "the economy" I would call the CPI, whereas what capitalists refer to is corporate profits - and never the twain shall meet. But this is yet another complexity that the right benefits from obscuring, and complexity requires thoughtful consideration for understanding. I realize I'm asking a lot from a bunch of blue collar rubes.
Nah, the economy is fine, just like the planet. The people are fucked! Just like George Carlin used to say.
All economic numbers are bullshit
That "economic growth" is for the benefit of capital owners at the expense of everyone and everything else. I'm so done with capitalism.
I had/have such a hard time convincing people that this isn't traditional inflation as much as it's corporate price gouging. This is being done to us, not a result of Biden's economic policies
My salary increased but now my rent ate it all. And worse, house costs multipled.
As usual they measure the wrong sectors for these pronouncements
It's too uneven. Personally our household is doing better because both kids are working and the company I work for ditched plans to go public, and a couple of other factors. But:
Car insurance increased sharply (probably counted as money coming into the economy)
Homeowners insurance increased
Food prices increased.
Wages don't increase as much as household costs. Until the wages of everyday people are growing faster than their expenses, they aren't doing better. Again, personally we are, but I don't think that can be extrapolated out, most households don't have an opportunity to deploy more people to work.
Fuckers always trot out that wage growth shit. They truly don't understand that most people's wages have not increased. If they have they likely have not even kept up with inflation.
I'm an accountant and the measurements used in economics are kind of backwards, they worry about payroll cost, that's true but what the fuck? They measure economic growth as though companies are people and people are expenses.
We need employee owned businesses all round and then that measure might make sense. But as it stands now, it's literally measuring inequality.
because it doesnt matter how great the economy is, because only the rich and businesses benefit from it.
Meanwhile us peasant folk are still struggling to buy overpriced essentials and afford the worst, most unsuitable, barely qualifying roofs over our heads.
Mmm I love sawdust in my food! /s
Woah there, slow down money bags. Around this economic level we pad our food with high fructose corn syrup, pink slime and sand for flavor.
It is mind boggling the shit that you can pick up off the shelf, read the ingredient list of, and find HFCS.
Fucking bread. Goddamn it.
american bread is legally cake in other countries due to how much sugar is in it.
That's fucking hilarious. A whole country of cake eaters.
It is why Subway will always be the cake bread place in my head, great case with simple reasoning.
I also love how it was not due to food quality laws but tax that caught them, no VAT on simple food stuff but VAT applies to confections like candy and cake. So what is the legal difference between cake and bread? The sugar content, and the fact subway instead of changing their bread fought that in court is just peak ~~subway~~ cake bread to me.
Vitamins is one of my "favorite" finds recently.
Wow what in the actual fuck? I mean Flintstones vitamins for kids have some I'm sure but this is in adult vitamins? Which brand?
The gummy ones from walmart (I like the idea of candy for my health).
Also what is up with the brand "one a day" making vitamins where you have to take 2 a day?
That's so great you bring up one a day. My wife had bought some and said how many of these am I supposed to take. And we laughed because it was such a dumb thing to say. Then we read the bottle and we were like this is ridiculous.
It was why I was looking for a new company of vitamins, and then see high fructose corn syrup on the competitor......
Guess I will be going without those vitamins for a while.
We've known the ownership class was treated differently after the bank bailouts in 2008 which ran entirely contrary to capitalist theory as it was taught: if your company fails, then your company fails, and its detritus will feed growth elsewhere.
But it turns out some companies are special and are too big to fail because when they go, dozens of other propped up companies collapse with them.
I can't help but wonder if we let that catastrophe happen, would it serve as a reminder why capitalism needs to be strictly regulated? Because we undid all the regulations erected thanks to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007, and private equity is still demolishing huge chunks of the economy while investors get rich on bankruptcy shenanigans. This is the same kind of aristocratic bullshit as 1789.
We had a peaceful protest. OWS. Then one night, NYC turned off all the cameras and unpeacefully swept it away. We were told they didn't have specific demands. But they did, and their grievance was legit regardless.
So now, society is stratified. The ownership class has segregated itself from the working class and they won't consider grievances from the third estate. We saw during the Obama administration a _recovering economy _is not felt by the working class. We see now they're glad to install a one-party autocracy to keep it that way.
To be fair this was always the endgame. Our industrialst betters were sore over the New Deal. And later, school integration and interracial marriage.
I think their plan is to literally arm robotic dogs with guns and try to to rule us at gunpoint, kinda like Hebron. See XKCD 1968.
The economy grows, but the benefit is not reaching the proles
You can't eat gdp.
Comment of the year.
Not really mine. I heard a similar quote from somewhere I don't remember.
but you CAN eat the rich
Remember to cook them first. Don't want to get food poisoning.
Don't eat the orange ones. That shit is toxic. Prepare it if you want, but it's definitely best to food waste that shit.
Well, an economy that prices more and more people out of specific markets (like, the average person can't afford the median home any more and the cost of necessities like food, fuel, clothing and housing has gone up much faster than return on labor) might involve a rising stock market but it is objectively worse if you make your money by working.
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