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Wages are stagnant and cost of living is ridiculous. Are we headed for a crash? (piefed.blahaj.zone)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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[–] 249 points 1 year ago (66 children)

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'.

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  • [–] 111 points 1 year ago* (33 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 82 points 1 year ago (30 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    ReaGaNoMiCS!!!

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago (25 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Historically, humans don't just suffer in silence for more than a couple of generations.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (5 children)

    There is not a single competent politician with a history of working for the good of the many in an electable position in the US at the moment.

    The closest was Sanders and you saw what the Democrat Establishment did to make sure he was stopped.

    Also, I'm sorry but I was in investment banking at the time of the 2008 and after seeing how he unconditionally saved the worst abusers in that industry, I don't think Obama counts as a good guy, so Bush to Obama wasn't really a pendular move between extremes: by the time of Obama the choice for anybody other than the well-off and the rich had already been reduced to Greater Evil vs Lesser Evil. Obama was a masterful speechmaker, but when it come to actual policies he was just another neoliberal working for the 1% and once in a while making a show of throwing some crumbs to the riff-raff.

    IMHO in terms of working for the many, America hasn't had anybody anywhere close to Eisenhower as President since JFK.

    Expecting that there will be a white knight president elected this time around given the state of Politics in America is pure Hope with almist nothing to back it (the closest is the guy who won the Democrat Primaries for NYC Mayor, and he hasn't even been elected yet and we're talking about a major city filled the people far more educated and worldly than the average American, so it's unlikely that his likely victory will translated to anywhere else in America than maybe one or two other similar cities).

    I think the problem this time around is systemic and "bipartisan" (in that both main parties stopped representing most people and just use different styles Propaganda to herd the sheep or just turn people of from voting altogether) and also linked to the natural end of the period where the US was the dominant nation (basically, in the schedule of the Rise and Fall of Empires, the US has already been long enough in the peak dominance period to have reached the Fall stage) and as I meantioned in my last post, if you look around at other nations that were once great, they tend to fall quite a lot and then stagnate for a couple of centuries before they start recovering and none ever gets back to its peak.

    This isn't really an America-specific problem it's a much broader Human Societies problem, and whilst the details are different the general pattern is the same (corruption, pretty much all of the elites making money of unproductive activities and political connections, people in general having delusions of superiority that vastly exceed the actual present day achievements and so on).

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (4 children)

    the problem this time around is systemic and "bipartisan" (in that both main parties stopped representing most people and just use different styles Propaganda to herd the sheep or just turn people of from voting altogether)

    Definitely. We're well and truly overdue for the Republicans and Democrats to go the way of the Whigs and the Bull Moose.

    if you look around at other nations that were once great, they tend to fall quite a lot and then stagnate for a couple of centuries before they start recovering and none ever gets back to its peak.

    I really don't think we have enough data points to be sure about that. It's basically just Rome and China. (And Egypt, but iirc we don't know enough about their internal politics to know why they fell) The US hasn't reached that kind of peak. But either way, I'm fine with the US never reaching the same heights it once had. If it were to become a regional superpower instead of an international one, but treat its people better, I'd be totally okay with that.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    On that last point, Rome, Greece, China, Egypt, Spain & Portugal (from the Discoveries time), several Middle Eastern nations several times (from the Babylonians to the Persians and even the Arabs - back in the 12th Century the most advanced people in the World were Arabs, then known as Moors) and so on (if I remember it correctly the Mayan civilization fell before the Spanish Conquistadores got there, which would make it yet another one that fell to internal problems rather than external factors).

    It's a pretty common dynamic.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Greece

    Greece was only ever united for a grand total of 15 years. When Alexander died, they returned to being a loose collection of city-states.

    Spain

    Totally forgot about that particular empire, I admit; but their peak was in the 1700s and their "fall" was, like, a few years before I was born in the 1970s, so I don't know if they necessarily support your point about a necessary fall and long recovery as such. In fact, lower-class workers in Spanish colonies in the 1800s were eating better than middle-class citizens in France during that time; and far from taking centuries to return to a functional status, it's basically a world economy again.

    Portugal

    Did Portugal ever fall? They divested of their colonies, and the monarchy fell, but those two events happened more or less independently of one another. You're right that Portugal lasted for a long time; but my understanding of the revolution is that there wasn't a prolonged period of economic pressure on the citizens of Portugal and that the revolution was mostly ideological.

    Babylonians [...] Persians

    Those have about the same trouble as Egypt in figuring out the internal reasons for its fall, in the case of both the Old- and the Neo-Babylonian Empire as well as the Persian empire and Achaemenid empire.

    Arabs

    Each caliphate only lasted for a few decades, maybe a century or two. I don't know enough about them to be able to speak intelligently on their internal politics at the time of their fall.

    Mayan civilization

    That one definitely lasted for about 4,000 years, true, but like Greece they were an interdependent network of city-states rather than a united empire. The Classic Maya civilization declined precipitously due to unknown reasons, and the post-classical civilization was conquered by the Spanish, so there's no real evidence there that would point toward anything here.

    So yeah, common-ish dynamic; but we can't really divine any historical information to inform our current situation from any of them, for one reason or another. At least I don't think we can conclude that long-running or wide-ranging empires are or are not regularly destroyed by internal unrest due to economic disparities.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    I'm Portuguese.

    Portugal fell so far down that in the XX Century until 1974 it was under a Fascist dictatorship and was so poor it got food help from other nations in Europe (but the dictator sure liked to celebrate the "Time of the Discoveries").

    In our divergence of opinion, at least specifically when it comes to the timing of the fall of the US from its peak, time will tell.

    PS: I don't think the destruction due to internal unrest is merely from economic disparities - that's just one of the symptoms. I think it's mainly social, cultural and structural factors that create downstream problems like said economic disparities and keep on doing it because the problem is structural, not merely economical, and those things sustain themselves (for example, corrupt politicians aren't going to put in place structures to fight corruption, quite the contrary). The fall is not merely from economic disparities, it's because the whole society has grown "fat and lazy" - the spirit of people and, maybe more importantly, of the power elites who control how the country operates, is that they are "winners", but all of that is anchored on the successes of their ancestors (in the US case, one example of that is American Exceptionalism), and that kind of posture doesn't self correct and the nation itself is too big and powerful for it to be corrected by external actors. The whole thing is a bigger version of the very commonly story told all over the World in various variants about how Wealth goes in cycles of 3 generations: the first builds it, the second consolidates it and the third blows it away - having been brought up in wealth the third generation doesn't have the same spirit as the people who built the wealth in the first place.

    Anyways, this is just pseudo-Philosophical thinking and, as I said, time will tell.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I'm Portuguese.

    In that case I stand corrected.

    in the XX Century until 1974

    So, about 3-4 generations before people got fed up, then? I think that actually supports my original point: people don't suffer economic injustice for longer than a couple of generations ("couple" in this case used more loosely).

    PS: I don't think the destruction due to internal unrest is merely from economic disparities [...]

    I think we may be in a chicken-and-the-egg problem here, where we disagree about which is the cause and which is the effect, but otherwise we agree.

    Anyways, this is just pseudo-Philosophical thinking and, as I said, time will tell.

    Yeah, and it seems pretty clear that in any case, it's going to kind of suck for the people who live here.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Would pointing out places like North Korea and Turkmenistan be overkill here?

    Guess so…

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [+] -19 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Indeed. Yikes, our history education is in rough shape.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    I mean something tells me that's one topic that wouldn't be appropriately covered in schools, but that's just my guess.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    When I was a high school student, the New Deal was a topic that was covered with great fanfare. It was as a part of the Early 20th-century unit that led up to the second World War. I partially remember because I was a deluded right-winger at the time and thought it was ridiculous that they were making such a big deal out of a government handout program.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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...

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  • [+] 56 points 1 year ago (3 children)
    [removed by mod]
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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 45 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    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.)

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Can you ELI5 why the stock market isn't affected much?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    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

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    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%.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    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.

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  • [+] -7 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    I don't know how to make you engage with reality.

    Slaves arguing for their continued enslavement is just something i will never understand.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    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.

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    • [–] 59 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago*

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    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.

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    • [–] 26 points 1 year ago* (12 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    That's scary. How are you holding up?

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    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.

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    • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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!

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    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.

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    • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You will own nothing, live in the company town, owe your soul to the company store, and be grateful.

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    • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    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!"

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    FAKE NEWS TDS, TRUMP IS OUR LAWD N SAVIOR, HE HAS RISEN AND REPLACED JESUS CHRIST. /s

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    He rose from the dead? I knew something about him seemed zombie like. The dead eyes and awkward hand motions gives it away.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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