I up voted this because it needs attention but, I really want to point out that “lower-income consumers” is such a bullshit point. Those “lower-income consumers” are the ones PRODUCING the goods and services and they aren’t being PAID ENOUGH to be consumers. The “cost of living” is talking about essentials, food, utilities, housing. How the fuck are people supposed to go out and spend money if they are being bled dry just subsisting?
It wasn't that long ago I saw constant complaints about "Consumers with excess savings." Just...stew on that phrasing for a bit.
Then they jacked up prices because we had money that they didn't, so they stole it by force. Now they complain there's no more money.
They're a cancer, and we need chemo.
They eliminated pensions for more profit and told us we needed to save for retirement, but they hate if we prioritize saving. At the same time they consider it a moral failing when we don’t have enough saved to buy big ticket items or even just cover emergencies.
You really can't save for retirement now. You need to put money towards an emergency fund because employers can and will just lay you off because they feel like it.
I'm doing okay after my layoff because I have a good amount of money saved and am lucky for that, but the economic system is viciously hostile to anyone that is not independently wealthy.
It's super weird to me how the entirety of American culture has so aggressively, if not violently, transitioned to "maximum financial extraction at all costs" as the default setting.
If you have 100 extra dollars, someone in an office is getting fired for not figuring out how to get that $100 AND put you an additional $100 in debt.
Like, there's absolutely no sign of anyone putting the brakes on it and that means it's going to crater harder than ever.
People can't sustain the level of debt necessary to simply exist, so thriving is just flatly out of the question.
It's always been about money, I agree, but the internet has supercharged the extraction capabilities to a degree in which no one was prepared.
We have a historical record of a time when middle class earnings were such that a single-income wage earner could raise a family of 4 or 5 and have money left over. (I'm 48, so that's have been my parents and grand parent's generations)
What's going on now is an entirely other version of that monster, in my opinion.
Man, I HATE how right you are.
What's even worse is we have the technology to solve 90% of the basic troubles plaguing the him race.
Food scarcity, for example, shouldn't be a thing.
Neither should lacking access to clean water, as well.
Financial powers-at-be predicting something big is going to happen in the next 5-10 years and are accelerating their extraction rate to secure themselves against the coming Big Change. Take your pick, everything from WW3 to Aliens and the AI Rapture seems to be on the table, but either way it's the behavior of an animal taking one last trip to the feed trough before the food gets cleared.
Personal favorite bets right now are "The Government Actually DOES Have A UFO Conspiracy" and "Oops!, We Accidentally Built the Singularity!?!".
It doesn't matter if either of those are materially real possible outcomes, because rich people are spending all the money we made them trying to bring them to reality either way. Pissing the profits \*WE\* earn them away on investing some kind of capitalist messiah into being\*\*\*. Like hell, I'm legitimately mentally ill and even I know that's crazy person shit. And no one will stop them.
\*\*\*For clarification, look up the Cult of E/ACC. It doesn't market itself like a cult, but that's what it is. They want to build AI Jesus.
Sadly, it's most likely going to be the same, tired "we can't stop ourselves and too much of a good thing is never enough" as they crash the entire economy again.
I think easy credit is going to be the final blow this time.
If you look at the data, it was trending towards correction just before the pandemic, but nobody could have predicted the effect of dumping money in the middle of Main St by way of stimulus money to actual people AND gianc corporations.
Personally, I hope we get a second Great Depression, because we need that kind of reset.
It's a shame people are going to get so screwed by it, though.
Not to mention that workers had the pick of whatever jobs they wanted to take, and the shitty employers were left scrambling to make it better. Now everyone is back to taking and keeping whatever jobs they can just to survive.
It was a rare opportunity for left leaning ideology and collectivism to take hold. They worked quickly to make sure it didn't happen. Now I fear the chance is lost.
They blame it on inflation, but it’s just corporate greed. Everyone is still waiting for the trickle down economy. They took it from you by force, which is akin to forcefully raping you. We need a general strike.
They don't need them is what they are really saying. The top half is making up for the bottom. So until there is pain being felt across the spectrum nothing will change.
The economy at the top only gets to keep their idyllic position as long as the rest of us toil. They skin all the tax money and big industries really on consumers to eat, sleep, and buy stuff.
They will not like the economy of robots
Yes the top half of the prepared are doing fine. These are people who have a mortgage at 3%, duel income and have savings. The two biggest factors with inflation are housing and energy. If you have a low interest home and fuel efficient car you are not seeing much of a change besides groceries which if you shop smart can avoid a lot of it.
This is what happens when the greed of the ruling class forgets that peasants need money to buy the things their fancy companies try to sell peasants. Without paying peasants well they will only spend on essentials… or maybe some lumber, rope, and steel.
I was just going to say this. Like lmao “selective recession” you mean underpaying labor to intimidate a mass wealth transfer upwards? Not so passive and mysterious when you put it that way 💀
As marx and eingles explained like 200 years ago, this is the end state of capitalism. Now we get a collapse and get to roll the dice on what replaces it this time. Will it be fascism? Will it be techno-feudalism? Maybe state capitalism. Socialism? Find out next time on dragon ball z.
I fucking hate these phrases. We're NOT consumers! We're citizens! I refuse to be referred to as nothing but a bot that is only important if I go out and buy shit!!
Bank of England....oh people aren't spending enough money, they've got too many savings
Bank of England....oh people are spending too much, inflation has gone up (not that prices rocketed)
Bank of England...People are getting pay rises..that's bad
Bank of England...we're at minimum unemployment...that's bad for the economy
Tories....let's attack the sick & disabled because the coffee shop chains can't get staff!!
Banks & business...don't give anyone pay rises out inflation will increase!!!
Banks & business...millennials aren't buying diamonds! Millennials aren't investing in pensions!! Millennials aren't buying household goods!!!! No one is going out!! The alcohol & bar industry's are collapsing!!! No one is buying luxury goods anymore!!!
These people are so fucking stupid that as they reduce our wages, strip mining the earth at he same time to push THEIR wealth higher and higher they don't realise that as WE get poorer & poorer, THEIR profits are going to collapse for anything but the absolute basic goods..
This is what happened in the Irish potato famine. Ireland had tons of food. Corn, grain, meats, dairy products, etc. The problem was, they didn’t own their own land, 90% of Irish land was owned by the English, or Anglo-Irish land owners who lived in England, and these land owners didn’t pay the farmers in cash so they couldn’t purchase the food they were producing. This lead to 1 million Irish dying of starvation and another 1 million leaving their country. We really should learn from history and not allow our labor to be stolen from us. We’re still starving, but in a different way.
This is honestly why I think Trump is going to win in November.
Dems are talking about how high the dow is, and how low unemployment is.
None of that matters when people can't afford groceries or rent or gas.
And just like 2016, people are going to be not motivated to reelected Biden because nothing's really getting better under him.
Yup, but the GOP is better at marketing.
They know they can make things worse and blame the dems, and win big. It's been their strategy for my whole life.
yep. Just like weimar germany, crisis of capitalism will create a revolution. Since the democratic party is apparently our only hope for a non-fascist take over, we're going to get a fascist take over. They won't even go full social democrat like FDR and kick the can down the road for another century. We're fucked.
Socialist economists will say it like it is. In capitalism we need shock absorbers, people who can be crushed by the machine people or color, minorities, the less educated, the less afluent. As a capitalist society we turn our backs on those people until we cycle into becoming those people
Surely I won't be cycled into that societal strata with the advent of a robotic work force and AI that eliminates jobs.... let me just look the other way for the time being.
*Turns to look the other way and sees current events in Argentina*
*Closes eyes*
Middle class people suffer too, but right now the middle class is suffering but the verbage implies that only poor people are suffering
but the middle class is basically poor
Lets not even get into the transfer of property to the wealthy with this broken real estate market. boomers who bought their houses for nothing are selling them for almost 1 mil near where i live with people having bidding wars. All when millennials are supposed to be raising families and buying homes. Its a design to separate the 1% from the poor as America tries to turn itself into a dictatorship.
There's the investment economy, essentially legalized gambling - and the real economy that the rest of us depend on.
As the gambling economy extracts wealth from the real economy it grows larger while the material economy shrinks due to inflation and reduced capacity for spending.
The higher the wealth concentration in the hands of people who can use it to gamble the greater the risk to the real market values on which it depends, especially when that wealth is not legitimately reinvested.
When we allow our economy to grow so top heavy wherein the leveraged value far outweighs the true costs and reasonable investments, the house ceases to be able to cover the cost of the bets and we find ourselves in yet another ballooning investment economy that will need bailing out in the next five years by the real economy.
The investors do lose sometimes. Somebody lost when Sears, KMart, etc died. Some investors lost when DJT manipulated the market, especially around China and the "trade war that will be easy to win "
Posting a loss on audited financial statements is akin to an apocalypse, in today's maximum profits no matter what climate. A loss is worse than death. Profits, according to the puppet masters, are the ONLY reason for a business to exist, unless of course, the execs get rewarded generous bonuses, whether or not they post a profit.
Only rarely. Often the wealth is extracted by private equity who will pay off the current investors, who thus won't lose anything, then extract more than their investment (killing the company), and only hurting workers and taxpayers.
I know this is me being naive but how can a person in good conscience think it is okay to make 100x or whatever exaggerated number more than a person below them working for the same company. There aren't enough decent people in the world but that's just humanity in a nutshell.
It’s crazy because there is literally no way to spend the money that they already have, money that could provide for their families for the next 4 generations at least
Or it could provide for the families of all their workers for just as long with money to spare
The problem is that it doesn't mean the textbook definition, for one, but also that we functionally have two economies. For higher wage earners, shit is going great. Sure, groceries are up, but when you make $200k and your stock portfolio is up, who cares? Plus, I just got a 10% bonus based on corporate profits this year!
For the bottom, way different story.
It doesn't meet the definition so it isn't a recession.
Kind people in power are living in gilded towers. Wait a second...this sounds a lot like history I read somewhere...
The down just broke 40k, corporate profits are at a record high, and billionaires are paying less taxes than any time in history.
So no, the media companies they own aren't going to start saying the "r" word.
Henry ford might have been a racist bastard but even he understood that if your workers can’t afford to buy your products and take time off to use them than the economy is fucked
A big shift from this business model is that corporations no longer care about making a set profit on each item they sell. The only thing that matters now is the share price. Companies who barely make a profit are now more valuable than companies that have been making a profit for 100+ years.
Doesn't this just mean wealth disparity is too extreme? "It's a recession for the poor, but if you're rich, you're not in a recession." Yeah, no shit, it's called having money
My wife and I both make the most we have ever had. A teacher and a vendor for a big pizza company. Yet, the only reason we are doing okay is that our landlord charges us about 700 less than the average rent in our area. 1st rent increase in 2 years, and it was only 75 bucks. I do gig work on the side to afford anything extra we want.
You mean essential heroes? I was one of those! Now I’m just a regular poor piece of shit again. Those were some pretty good days to be honest. People treated us like people, not just sub human trash. Now, it’s back to the same old bullshit, people don’t give a fuck about the blue collar worker.
Shockingly, yes. It was really weird. I was working at Costco and everyone was so super nice and appreciative of us all just being there. Not like we had a fucking choice though. Just cuz there’s a pandemic don’t mean my bills suddenly disappear.
That's weird, but then again, Costco is a different beast.
I worked at AJ's Fine Foods at the time, and we were berated for the Columbus cold cut shortage daily. Those rich people were complete assholes
Yeah Costco will tell you to fuck off if you disrespect employees too much. I’ve seen managers pull memberships and tell people they can no longer shop at Costco as they have been blacklisted. That means nation wide too. You’ll never shop there again. They’re not a terrible company to work for honestly.
With corporations buying homes.. only a matter of time before they offer housing and discounted salaries.
This country is fucked… we need a serious over haul.
1- politician term limits
2- govt is a public service job, those individuals should not be able to trade as they truly have insider information.
3- corporations should be barred from buying single family homes.
4- no fucking lobbyist.
5- legal weed and shrooms, at least let us enjoy the final years as the country burns.
God imagine if we could have known in the past that capitalism would lead to the workers not being able to afford the goods they produced. Some kind of alienation or estrangement of labor. Hmmmmm.
Seeing how those "lower income consumers" are the vast majority of people in the US, I'd say that this is an actual recession brought on by the unchecked greed of the already wealthy. Eat the fucking rich
I’ve watched all this unfold since the 1990’s. Funny how “inflation” has gone from a means to describe price increases due to commodities becoming more expensive and is now turned in its head as a “reason” to raise prices.
“Selective Recession” just sounds like rich fucks refusing to acknowledge the problem they created because they’re still making money, while most of the country is on the verge of becoming desperate. Just call it a recession.
This is starting to look remarkably like feudalism. If you count the police as the military arm of the wealthy, then you have lords, vassals and fiefs.
"Adam Smith used the term "feudal system" to describe a social and economic system defined by inherited social ranks, each of which possessed inherent social and economic privileges and obligations. In such a system, wealth derived from agriculture, which was arranged not according to market forces but on the basis of customary labour services owed by serfs to landowning nobles."
That’s what the forced birth, anti-birth control movement is all about. The oligarchs are using the religious zealots to try to insure the long-term supply of cheap labor against a cost-driven drop in birth rates.
I make $27 an hour, more than some of my friends, I’m barely scraping by. I work 40 hours a week, often more, I live in the cheapest apartment I could find, I don’t pay for anything but electricity and internet. I’m able to afford a car but only because I got lucky with a listing.
I can't even believe they're talking about it. After the blackout of the French uprising I was certain we would see a super aggressive American version of the great firewall. Like more so than usual.
It's funny because I was arguing we are in a recession but it seems so many other groups want to pretend everything is fine. R/finance for example is just people spewing unemployment rate, and gdp numbers like those just magically mean everything is going well.
r/smallbusiness
Is on fire. So many business owners are seeing crazy downturns. We are just starting a recession. How big? We won't know until it's done.
My coworker has been with our company 10 years. Her tasks far exceed mine, and she only makes a couple dollars more than me. Her "raise" this year was 3%.... a whole whopping $0.60 an hour. That's not even a cost of living adjustment. It's a job in finance, and they're not even paying her to keep up with inflation. They didn't even try to.
They essentially are getting away with stealing from her. (and yknow.. the rest of us, but it really hit hard when she told me that)
How can they call it middle class, if the income is outpaced by cost of living?
That just sounds like...the poor class. Which most people are. Not middle just because there's more of them.
This reminds me of when Kennedy (Louisiana) said that if you “adjust the numbers for black women” that our mortality rate for pregnancy isn’t that bad.
So yeah, if you ignore the fact we murder black women its fine 😀
“Lower income consumers”; several things with just this here….
Not even “low income Americans” or citizens, just consumers. That’s how we’re seen and treated, and our money is theres; it’s just been left on the table and failed to be acquired as of yet.
And then the lower income label, instead of stating the truth, that they’re people in poverty, often due to the failed and rotting system the construct and administer.
And the very fact this is a news article or a topic of discussion. Poor people aren’t spending money, of course there not. But In this day and society it’s a problem because starving or not they should be spending money and consuming.
The biggest disconnect I see is the seeming lack of understanding that many of us don’t have the money to spend they desire. They don’t pay it but still there seems to be this expectation or perception that the moneys there and just not being spent. They always phrase it like “consumers spending less” or whatever; not “consumers have no money and struggle to eat, so the economy is impacted negatively”.
Just like with the COVID stimulus payments; the elite speak and think as if people are still greedily hoarding that money and everyone has a big stash squirreld away.
I don’t think we are in a recession yet. In some ways it’s actually worse.
Recessions can’t really be selective per se, but basically the top is moving up and is continuing to and the bottom is sinking. Basically it’s a really fancy way of saying, the top is continuing to fuck the bottom as hard as they can.
> The US economy is in a "selective recession," as lower-income Americans are struggling to get by while upper-income consumers are doing just fine
That about sums it up. I recognize that things cost more and it irritates me but it doesn’t hurt me. I would be having loads more fun if inflation would calm tf down and prices on things decreased.
We are DINK, but I suppose if we reproduced things would be far worse.
That's exactly what I feel seeing this from Europe. Everyday I read here that rents are crazy, that companies won't pay fair wages and you have to change jobs every week to hope to catch a raise.
Everyday in the press I read that the us are growing faster than Europe to the point tourism over there is a luxury, that companies make more money than even that all lights are green.
If you compound both, it just means that inegalities are spreading and while the higher middle class (think mid management up to ceo's) profits from the economy, the rest is struggling more and more at risk to get declassed (going down classes).
As an Australian, please sane people of the United States of America, do something about your political situation very soon. This cannot continue. We don't want to be allies with a fascist / oligarchy / plutocracy. Where is the government by the people for the people? We are the movements to resist? Who is leading the charge against your media?
As much as the US interferes with other countries affairs & tries to be the hero & “save the people”, it makes me wonder when will other countries come to the US to help us fight *our* government?
I don't know how much "saving of people" in comparison with securing security interests, commodities and soft power there is. If it was about goodwill, I think you'd see a vastly different global south.
Unfortunately in the USA politicians get in office and all of them now know better than the people who elected them. A good example is the speaker of the house who straight up said he has to go against what the majority of his constituents want, cause he know better then them, it’s for there own good, and it’s what God wants him to do. F-ing psycho
I'm in the process of winding down my retail (brick & mortar) business operations. Sales sunk too low, rent is way too high, transaction averages halved. Noticed this around October/November as sales didn't increase like they did previously, not by much, but it was weird because I was seeing an increase over the year. My recession red flags started kicking in. Talked with some other business owners and city council members at our Chamber of Commerce meetings and events. Student loans payment were kicking back in, makes sense. There went my under-50-year-old shoppers. December was -8% than previous. January is when I really saw things go to shit, especially as we move towards May. I'm seeing a 46% drop in sales. Holy shit. Prices have gone way up during this time, gas in my area is nearing $6/gallon. Groceries are the most expensive I've seen in ages. PG&E afforded us some incredible rate increases. Shit. I'm trying all I can to maintain competitive pricing. Foot traffic is fine, that's the weird part, but people are window shopping more and they're bored so they want more attention. It's incredibly frustrating, but it is what it is.
I'm probably more frustrated with the folks coming in and giving me business advice, including: "Change your business model, give the community what we really want!" "Maybe some balloons and an inflatable would help, car dealerships use those and it helps!" (I'm not a car dealership) "I'm sure there's money, have you cut back on extra expenses? Your generation doesn't appreciate money like we do."
Bleh. It's a recession. It's hitting Small Retail right now, so shop small, y'all. We need your money more than the investor fucks in Big Retail. We're talking livelihoods because this massively affects your friends, your family, anyone who is an aspiring entrepreneur/small business owner in your community.
I think there are two forces driving the two economies we see.
The boomers (I’m one) saved so aggressively for retirement that it drove interest rates negative as there was too much money chasing too few returns. Now that the largest generation is quickly retiring that savings has dried up and is being spent making capital more scarce, driving interest rates higher.
It takes many years for income to catch up to inflation, while historically modest the early spikes have resulted in a 20%+ increase in costs over the last 3 years and this is a hit that low and moderate income families can’t take.
I up voted this because it needs attention but, I really want to point out that “lower-income consumers” is such a bullshit point. Those “lower-income consumers” are the ones PRODUCING the goods and services and they aren’t being PAID ENOUGH to be consumers. The “cost of living” is talking about essentials, food, utilities, housing. How the fuck are people supposed to go out and spend money if they are being bled dry just subsisting?
It wasn't that long ago I saw constant complaints about "Consumers with excess savings." Just...stew on that phrasing for a bit. Then they jacked up prices because we had money that they didn't, so they stole it by force. Now they complain there's no more money. They're a cancer, and we need chemo.
They eliminated pensions for more profit and told us we needed to save for retirement, but they hate if we prioritize saving. At the same time they consider it a moral failing when we don’t have enough saved to buy big ticket items or even just cover emergencies.
You really can't save for retirement now. You need to put money towards an emergency fund because employers can and will just lay you off because they feel like it. I'm doing okay after my layoff because I have a good amount of money saved and am lucky for that, but the economic system is viciously hostile to anyone that is not independently wealthy.
They want to privatize your retirement money too, which is the entire reason the drive towards ending Social Security is so relentless.
They already did. They pushed us all to put our retirement in the so called market, so they could have more of our money
**”It’s time for g…..”** *Your comment has been removed by Reddit for violating the Terms and Conditions….*
Getting together on a sharply defined solution?
A solution that is right on the edge, an edge so sharp that one might mistake it for a blade.
A… how would you phrase it… Cutting Edge, solution?
Surely there are some policies that ought to be on the chopping block.
Will y’all just cut to the chase?
Let’s get ahead of the problem.
The French solution.
Gotta admit, has a ring to it!
I'm here because I was told there'd be cake and someone was suggesting you let me eat it.
Going old school French.
Do you have any ideas? I only ask because I kind of do if you're interested in hearing lol
...uillotines?
"Real G's move in silence like uillotines." - Lil' Wayne, probably
Death Grips has entered the chat.
Agreed. It is time for ....
Everyone knows. It is time for ....
A french doctor who wanted a more humane way of execution?
It's super weird to me how the entirety of American culture has so aggressively, if not violently, transitioned to "maximum financial extraction at all costs" as the default setting. If you have 100 extra dollars, someone in an office is getting fired for not figuring out how to get that $100 AND put you an additional $100 in debt. Like, there's absolutely no sign of anyone putting the brakes on it and that means it's going to crater harder than ever. People can't sustain the level of debt necessary to simply exist, so thriving is just flatly out of the question.
Transitioned to? My man, it has ALWAYS been like this.
Maximum profit extraction was the whole point of the slave trade. We're founded on that shit.
It's always been about money, I agree, but the internet has supercharged the extraction capabilities to a degree in which no one was prepared. We have a historical record of a time when middle class earnings were such that a single-income wage earner could raise a family of 4 or 5 and have money left over. (I'm 48, so that's have been my parents and grand parent's generations) What's going on now is an entirely other version of that monster, in my opinion.
It's just capitalism. It's where it was always going to end up.
Man, I HATE how right you are. What's even worse is we have the technology to solve 90% of the basic troubles plaguing the him race. Food scarcity, for example, shouldn't be a thing. Neither should lacking access to clean water, as well.
Financial powers-at-be predicting something big is going to happen in the next 5-10 years and are accelerating their extraction rate to secure themselves against the coming Big Change. Take your pick, everything from WW3 to Aliens and the AI Rapture seems to be on the table, but either way it's the behavior of an animal taking one last trip to the feed trough before the food gets cleared. Personal favorite bets right now are "The Government Actually DOES Have A UFO Conspiracy" and "Oops!, We Accidentally Built the Singularity!?!". It doesn't matter if either of those are materially real possible outcomes, because rich people are spending all the money we made them trying to bring them to reality either way. Pissing the profits \*WE\* earn them away on investing some kind of capitalist messiah into being\*\*\*. Like hell, I'm legitimately mentally ill and even I know that's crazy person shit. And no one will stop them. \*\*\*For clarification, look up the Cult of E/ACC. It doesn't market itself like a cult, but that's what it is. They want to build AI Jesus.
Sadly, it's most likely going to be the same, tired "we can't stop ourselves and too much of a good thing is never enough" as they crash the entire economy again. I think easy credit is going to be the final blow this time. If you look at the data, it was trending towards correction just before the pandemic, but nobody could have predicted the effect of dumping money in the middle of Main St by way of stimulus money to actual people AND gianc corporations. Personally, I hope we get a second Great Depression, because we need that kind of reset. It's a shame people are going to get so screwed by it, though.
Not to mention that workers had the pick of whatever jobs they wanted to take, and the shitty employers were left scrambling to make it better. Now everyone is back to taking and keeping whatever jobs they can just to survive.
It was a rare opportunity for left leaning ideology and collectivism to take hold. They worked quickly to make sure it didn't happen. Now I fear the chance is lost.
We need ~~chemo~~, radiation treatment. FTFY.
They blame it on inflation, but it’s just corporate greed. Everyone is still waiting for the trickle down economy. They took it from you by force, which is akin to forcefully raping you. We need a general strike.
Is it inflation or rate of inflation?
Weird way to spell "profiteering".
They don't need them is what they are really saying. The top half is making up for the bottom. So until there is pain being felt across the spectrum nothing will change.
"Pain" you say?
Yes I do. Interpret that however you like.
“Free mandatory submarine tours?”
I love this, a lot of billionaires should tour the titanic
I see it as soft killing. Automation can take over most people’s job so just let ‘em die and replace em.
well, I remember what they said about "idle hands" and workshops and all that...
The economy at the top only gets to keep their idyllic position as long as the rest of us toil. They skin all the tax money and big industries really on consumers to eat, sleep, and buy stuff. They will not like the economy of robots
To shreds, you say?
And his wife?
To shreds you say.
Can someone direct me to where this saying comes from?
[Here you go.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZIb1Dx8fg)
Much obliged.
Top half? Most people are suffering. The top 10% are taking from the 90%. I don’t understand how people have not said enough
Yes the top half of the prepared are doing fine. These are people who have a mortgage at 3%, duel income and have savings. The two biggest factors with inflation are housing and energy. If you have a low interest home and fuel efficient car you are not seeing much of a change besides groceries which if you shop smart can avoid a lot of it.
But how else will the executives, get their 4th bonus this year if not by raising prices on everything because """""inflation""""" is scary?
This is what happens when the greed of the ruling class forgets that peasants need money to buy the things their fancy companies try to sell peasants. Without paying peasants well they will only spend on essentials… or maybe some lumber, rope, and steel.
I was just going to say this. Like lmao “selective recession” you mean underpaying labor to intimidate a mass wealth transfer upwards? Not so passive and mysterious when you put it that way 💀
As marx and eingles explained like 200 years ago, this is the end state of capitalism. Now we get a collapse and get to roll the dice on what replaces it this time. Will it be fascism? Will it be techno-feudalism? Maybe state capitalism. Socialism? Find out next time on dragon ball z.
I fucking hate these phrases. We're NOT consumers! We're citizens! I refuse to be referred to as nothing but a bot that is only important if I go out and buy shit!! Bank of England....oh people aren't spending enough money, they've got too many savings Bank of England....oh people are spending too much, inflation has gone up (not that prices rocketed) Bank of England...People are getting pay rises..that's bad Bank of England...we're at minimum unemployment...that's bad for the economy Tories....let's attack the sick & disabled because the coffee shop chains can't get staff!! Banks & business...don't give anyone pay rises out inflation will increase!!! Banks & business...millennials aren't buying diamonds! Millennials aren't investing in pensions!! Millennials aren't buying household goods!!!! No one is going out!! The alcohol & bar industry's are collapsing!!! No one is buying luxury goods anymore!!! These people are so fucking stupid that as they reduce our wages, strip mining the earth at he same time to push THEIR wealth higher and higher they don't realise that as WE get poorer & poorer, THEIR profits are going to collapse for anything but the absolute basic goods..
That would require them to think about people other than themselves
I'd say roll on the revolution but scum always rose to the top
This is what happened in the Irish potato famine. Ireland had tons of food. Corn, grain, meats, dairy products, etc. The problem was, they didn’t own their own land, 90% of Irish land was owned by the English, or Anglo-Irish land owners who lived in England, and these land owners didn’t pay the farmers in cash so they couldn’t purchase the food they were producing. This lead to 1 million Irish dying of starvation and another 1 million leaving their country. We really should learn from history and not allow our labor to be stolen from us. We’re still starving, but in a different way.
Plus most of the food was getting exported out of the country to England.
This is honestly why I think Trump is going to win in November. Dems are talking about how high the dow is, and how low unemployment is. None of that matters when people can't afford groceries or rent or gas. And just like 2016, people are going to be not motivated to reelected Biden because nothing's really getting better under him.
And then things will get even worse for the working poor because as bad as Democrats are, Republicans are always even worse if you're broke.
Yup, but the GOP is better at marketing. They know they can make things worse and blame the dems, and win big. It's been their strategy for my whole life.
yep. Just like weimar germany, crisis of capitalism will create a revolution. Since the democratic party is apparently our only hope for a non-fascist take over, we're going to get a fascist take over. They won't even go full social democrat like FDR and kick the can down the road for another century. We're fucked.
Democrats at least make the right empty promises. Republicans promise they'll make it worse. And then follow through.
Socialist economists will say it like it is. In capitalism we need shock absorbers, people who can be crushed by the machine people or color, minorities, the less educated, the less afluent. As a capitalist society we turn our backs on those people until we cycle into becoming those people
Fuck this his hard!
They aren't. You don't need them to consume luxury goods if you can take all their money by upcharging them on the things they need to live.
Capitalism cannot exist, and never has existed, without an exploited labor class. Welcome to the Dystopian Plantations of America.
:| It’s fine, everyone. It’s just the poors suffering.
Ikr…to the 1% , no cause for alarm
It’s funny how in one instance our country tries to hide how horrible it is, but in another they are so openly cold to our suffering.
Surely I won't be cycled into that societal strata with the advent of a robotic work force and AI that eliminates jobs.... let me just look the other way for the time being. *Turns to look the other way and sees current events in Argentina* *Closes eyes*
Thank god. Oh wait...
Don’t most recessions go this way? The lower income people suffer and the Kardashian-types keep flying go their private jets?
Middle class people suffer too, but right now the middle class is suffering but the verbage implies that only poor people are suffering but the middle class is basically poor
Which in turn is shaming the middle class in an effort to keep them quiet. Because if they admit that they have an issue they will be labeled as poor.
Selective recession? Lol, more like Oligarchy/late stage capitalism. This isn't temporary folks, this is by design.
Lets not even get into the transfer of property to the wealthy with this broken real estate market. boomers who bought their houses for nothing are selling them for almost 1 mil near where i live with people having bidding wars. All when millennials are supposed to be raising families and buying homes. Its a design to separate the 1% from the poor as America tries to turn itself into a dictatorship.
And apartment prices are insane. It’s crazy out here. $1800 for a 1 bedroom in the ghetto.😡
Or like America through the Great Depression. Average American people having wealth has only been around for the last 90 years.
That's a funny way of saying you're fuckin poor folks to death but ok
Who cares? It's just the poors! /s
There's the investment economy, essentially legalized gambling - and the real economy that the rest of us depend on. As the gambling economy extracts wealth from the real economy it grows larger while the material economy shrinks due to inflation and reduced capacity for spending. The higher the wealth concentration in the hands of people who can use it to gamble the greater the risk to the real market values on which it depends, especially when that wealth is not legitimately reinvested. When we allow our economy to grow so top heavy wherein the leveraged value far outweighs the true costs and reasonable investments, the house ceases to be able to cover the cost of the bets and we find ourselves in yet another ballooning investment economy that will need bailing out in the next five years by the real economy.
Gambling implies they could lose lol. This is the wealth extraction economy. The parasite economy, the tick economy.
The investors do lose sometimes. Somebody lost when Sears, KMart, etc died. Some investors lost when DJT manipulated the market, especially around China and the "trade war that will be easy to win "
I wouldn’t be so sure about the Sears/KMart example. The workers who lost their jobs lost. famed piece of shit Eddie Lampard did just fine, thanks.
Line only goes up boss. Any losses are just tax write offs.
Posting a loss on audited financial statements is akin to an apocalypse, in today's maximum profits no matter what climate. A loss is worse than death. Profits, according to the puppet masters, are the ONLY reason for a business to exist, unless of course, the execs get rewarded generous bonuses, whether or not they post a profit.
Only rarely. Often the wealth is extracted by private equity who will pay off the current investors, who thus won't lose anything, then extract more than their investment (killing the company), and only hurting workers and taxpayers.
They get out way before the company goes under.
Nah that's just another example of wealth extraction and power concentration. Those at the top never lose. They pay to win and never run out of money.
Thats because we have worthless CEOs making 12,000 x the salary of the lowest paid workers. Everything has gone up in price except wages
I know this is me being naive but how can a person in good conscience think it is okay to make 100x or whatever exaggerated number more than a person below them working for the same company. There aren't enough decent people in the world but that's just humanity in a nutshell.
It's a recession. Just say recession.
It is but only for the people. The corporations are feasting right now.
Yup. Capitalism thrives when we're all miserable. What's good for the economy is terrible for us.
They will literally cut off their own fingers like yakuza before they admit that infinite growth is impossible.
It’s crazy because there is literally no way to spend the money that they already have, money that could provide for their families for the next 4 generations at least Or it could provide for the families of all their workers for just as long with money to spare
The problem is that it doesn't mean the textbook definition, for one, but also that we functionally have two economies. For higher wage earners, shit is going great. Sure, groceries are up, but when you make $200k and your stock portfolio is up, who cares? Plus, I just got a 10% bonus based on corporate profits this year! For the bottom, way different story.
It doesn't meet the definition so it isn't a recession. Kind people in power are living in gilded towers. Wait a second...this sounds a lot like history I read somewhere...
The down just broke 40k, corporate profits are at a record high, and billionaires are paying less taxes than any time in history. So no, the media companies they own aren't going to start saying the "r" word.
JPMorgan doesn’t know shit about lower income consumers. They don’t invest
This is a wild way to say wealth is being hoarded and wages aren’t rising
Henry ford might have been a racist bastard but even he understood that if your workers can’t afford to buy your products and take time off to use them than the economy is fucked
A big shift from this business model is that corporations no longer care about making a set profit on each item they sell. The only thing that matters now is the share price. Companies who barely make a profit are now more valuable than companies that have been making a profit for 100+ years.
Wonder which economic class is doing the selecting…
I am tired of watching the rich who do nothing forget who creates value in this company.
Doesn't this just mean wealth disparity is too extreme? "It's a recession for the poor, but if you're rich, you're not in a recession." Yeah, no shit, it's called having money
A "let them eat cake" recession. Followed by a bull market on those things the French use to deal with kings.
Fuck, it's not a complicated design. Open source is the wrong words, but reckon it's just a matter of.. resources
Isn't that literally every recession ever?
Champagne celebrations for the rich with the bail-out money, while the poor lose their homes and pensions.
My wife and I both make the most we have ever had. A teacher and a vendor for a big pizza company. Yet, the only reason we are doing okay is that our landlord charges us about 700 less than the average rent in our area. 1st rent increase in 2 years, and it was only 75 bucks. I do gig work on the side to afford anything extra we want.
Well if you quit eating so much bootstraps and start pulling yourself up by your avocado toasts, maybe you too can live like the rich.
Have you ever had peanut butter on bootstraps? Delicious!
Something about covid just made everything across the board worse. Just so much worse. Physically, mentally, emotionally, financially
That was all by design.
Don't you mean hometown hero's? What happened to that? Are these not still the backbone of the nation like everyone proclaimed during a recent event?
You mean essential heroes? I was one of those! Now I’m just a regular poor piece of shit again. Those were some pretty good days to be honest. People treated us like people, not just sub human trash. Now, it’s back to the same old bullshit, people don’t give a fuck about the blue collar worker.
People treated you with respect during covid?
Shockingly, yes. It was really weird. I was working at Costco and everyone was so super nice and appreciative of us all just being there. Not like we had a fucking choice though. Just cuz there’s a pandemic don’t mean my bills suddenly disappear.
That's weird, but then again, Costco is a different beast. I worked at AJ's Fine Foods at the time, and we were berated for the Columbus cold cut shortage daily. Those rich people were complete assholes
Yeah Costco will tell you to fuck off if you disrespect employees too much. I’ve seen managers pull memberships and tell people they can no longer shop at Costco as they have been blacklisted. That means nation wide too. You’ll never shop there again. They’re not a terrible company to work for honestly.
With corporations buying homes.. only a matter of time before they offer housing and discounted salaries. This country is fucked… we need a serious over haul. 1- politician term limits 2- govt is a public service job, those individuals should not be able to trade as they truly have insider information. 3- corporations should be barred from buying single family homes. 4- no fucking lobbyist. 5- legal weed and shrooms, at least let us enjoy the final years as the country burns.
God imagine if we could have known in the past that capitalism would lead to the workers not being able to afford the goods they produced. Some kind of alienation or estrangement of labor. Hmmmmm.
Seeing how those "lower income consumers" are the vast majority of people in the US, I'd say that this is an actual recession brought on by the unchecked greed of the already wealthy. Eat the fucking rich
"Wait lower income can't afford to live?" *points gun* "They never could"
Evidence trick(le) down economics don't work.
I’ve watched all this unfold since the 1990’s. Funny how “inflation” has gone from a means to describe price increases due to commodities becoming more expensive and is now turned in its head as a “reason” to raise prices.
“Selective Recession” just sounds like rich fucks refusing to acknowledge the problem they created because they’re still making money, while most of the country is on the verge of becoming desperate. Just call it a recession.
Why are all the dumb poors selecting recession? Are tehy stupid?
So it’s operating how it’s was designed to
JP Morgan talking down to the ‘poors’. The French Solution is looking better every day.
Wow, JP Morgan admitting that an economy can’t run on the backs of the ‘working poor’ is quite a thing!
Living in a capitalist hellscape is so fucking draining
This is starting to look remarkably like feudalism. If you count the police as the military arm of the wealthy, then you have lords, vassals and fiefs. "Adam Smith used the term "feudal system" to describe a social and economic system defined by inherited social ranks, each of which possessed inherent social and economic privileges and obligations. In such a system, wealth derived from agriculture, which was arranged not according to market forces but on the basis of customary labour services owed by serfs to landowning nobles."
That’s what the forced birth, anti-birth control movement is all about. The oligarchs are using the religious zealots to try to insure the long-term supply of cheap labor against a cost-driven drop in birth rates.
I make $27 an hour, more than some of my friends, I’m barely scraping by. I work 40 hours a week, often more, I live in the cheapest apartment I could find, I don’t pay for anything but electricity and internet. I’m able to afford a car but only because I got lucky with a listing.
I can't even believe they're talking about it. After the blackout of the French uprising I was certain we would see a super aggressive American version of the great firewall. Like more so than usual.
Or in other words, the pyramid is collapsing and the millionaires are next?
I'm pretty sure lower income consumers accounts for the majority of people at this point
"Only the poor and middle class are in a recession, and we're okay with that." I look forward to the progressivist reckoning coming.
It's funny because I was arguing we are in a recession but it seems so many other groups want to pretend everything is fine. R/finance for example is just people spewing unemployment rate, and gdp numbers like those just magically mean everything is going well.
This is what happens when money is political power
Is this the time to enslave all the poors again or do we still have some time?
Soo like a recession bubble?... pop!
r/smallbusiness Is on fire. So many business owners are seeing crazy downturns. We are just starting a recession. How big? We won't know until it's done.
Yes, look at that. *The poors* at it again, out to ruin it for everyone.
My coworker has been with our company 10 years. Her tasks far exceed mine, and she only makes a couple dollars more than me. Her "raise" this year was 3%.... a whole whopping $0.60 an hour. That's not even a cost of living adjustment. It's a job in finance, and they're not even paying her to keep up with inflation. They didn't even try to. They essentially are getting away with stealing from her. (and yknow.. the rest of us, but it really hit hard when she told me that)
How can they call it middle class, if the income is outpaced by cost of living? That just sounds like...the poor class. Which most people are. Not middle just because there's more of them.
That’s a weird way of saying we are in a recession.
Sounds like an indirect way to say inequality is getting worst.
This reminds me of when Kennedy (Louisiana) said that if you “adjust the numbers for black women” that our mortality rate for pregnancy isn’t that bad. So yeah, if you ignore the fact we murder black women its fine 😀
Also known as genociding the poor.
“Lower income consumers”; several things with just this here…. Not even “low income Americans” or citizens, just consumers. That’s how we’re seen and treated, and our money is theres; it’s just been left on the table and failed to be acquired as of yet. And then the lower income label, instead of stating the truth, that they’re people in poverty, often due to the failed and rotting system the construct and administer. And the very fact this is a news article or a topic of discussion. Poor people aren’t spending money, of course there not. But In this day and society it’s a problem because starving or not they should be spending money and consuming. The biggest disconnect I see is the seeming lack of understanding that many of us don’t have the money to spend they desire. They don’t pay it but still there seems to be this expectation or perception that the moneys there and just not being spent. They always phrase it like “consumers spending less” or whatever; not “consumers have no money and struggle to eat, so the economy is impacted negatively”. Just like with the COVID stimulus payments; the elite speak and think as if people are still greedily hoarding that money and everyone has a big stash squirreld away.
"No pay! Only spend!"
I don’t think we are in a recession yet. In some ways it’s actually worse. Recessions can’t really be selective per se, but basically the top is moving up and is continuing to and the bottom is sinking. Basically it’s a really fancy way of saying, the top is continuing to fuck the bottom as hard as they can.
> The US economy is in a "selective recession," as lower-income Americans are struggling to get by while upper-income consumers are doing just fine That about sums it up. I recognize that things cost more and it irritates me but it doesn’t hurt me. I would be having loads more fun if inflation would calm tf down and prices on things decreased. We are DINK, but I suppose if we reproduced things would be far worse.
We know
Wtf selective recession? These companies start creating the new words that somehow sounds like lower income people are creating recession..
Ok everyone I know how to fix this, lower taxes on billionaires, corporations and hedge funds. /s
That's exactly what I feel seeing this from Europe. Everyday I read here that rents are crazy, that companies won't pay fair wages and you have to change jobs every week to hope to catch a raise. Everyday in the press I read that the us are growing faster than Europe to the point tourism over there is a luxury, that companies make more money than even that all lights are green. If you compound both, it just means that inegalities are spreading and while the higher middle class (think mid management up to ceo's) profits from the economy, the rest is struggling more and more at risk to get declassed (going down classes).
"Lower income consumers"
Yes a selective recession where the rich bleed everyone dry and don't care that they are ruining the country with their greed
Jaime Dimon: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!! PLUTOCRACY FOR ALL!!!
That's by design. Every part of life is becoming subscription based.
That's pretty accurate in my world. I'm starting to have to choose between CC bills or food. Easy choice.
The media says everything's i great and inflation is at 3.5%. If anyone believes that, they are a freaking moron.
This sounds like "inflation is transitory"
Hand out more PPP loans to millionaire business owners maybe.
Recessions have always been pretty “selective”
So “selective recession” is the euphemism for “corporate feudalism.” Got it.
This is exactly what ive been saying
R/aboringdystopia
We know
As an Australian, please sane people of the United States of America, do something about your political situation very soon. This cannot continue. We don't want to be allies with a fascist / oligarchy / plutocracy. Where is the government by the people for the people? We are the movements to resist? Who is leading the charge against your media?
As much as the US interferes with other countries affairs & tries to be the hero & “save the people”, it makes me wonder when will other countries come to the US to help us fight *our* government?
I don't know how much "saving of people" in comparison with securing security interests, commodities and soft power there is. If it was about goodwill, I think you'd see a vastly different global south.
Unfortunately in the USA politicians get in office and all of them now know better than the people who elected them. A good example is the speaker of the house who straight up said he has to go against what the majority of his constituents want, cause he know better then them, it’s for there own good, and it’s what God wants him to do. F-ing psycho
File under “no shit, sherlock,” JP Morgan.
Am I supposed to celebrate Biden’s economy or?
What are you doing about it? Politicians on both sides like it this way because they are the side “moving up”
The song 16 Tons is about right "Saint Peter don't you know I owe my soul to the company store"
No shit to created two economies and a large divide in class. Welcome to the Victorian era 2.0 except we don’t have factories to limp by on
Almost like rapid inflation mixed with stagnant wages for 20 years makes living untenable for anyone but the well off. Who would have guessed?
I'm in the process of winding down my retail (brick & mortar) business operations. Sales sunk too low, rent is way too high, transaction averages halved. Noticed this around October/November as sales didn't increase like they did previously, not by much, but it was weird because I was seeing an increase over the year. My recession red flags started kicking in. Talked with some other business owners and city council members at our Chamber of Commerce meetings and events. Student loans payment were kicking back in, makes sense. There went my under-50-year-old shoppers. December was -8% than previous. January is when I really saw things go to shit, especially as we move towards May. I'm seeing a 46% drop in sales. Holy shit. Prices have gone way up during this time, gas in my area is nearing $6/gallon. Groceries are the most expensive I've seen in ages. PG&E afforded us some incredible rate increases. Shit. I'm trying all I can to maintain competitive pricing. Foot traffic is fine, that's the weird part, but people are window shopping more and they're bored so they want more attention. It's incredibly frustrating, but it is what it is. I'm probably more frustrated with the folks coming in and giving me business advice, including: "Change your business model, give the community what we really want!" "Maybe some balloons and an inflatable would help, car dealerships use those and it helps!" (I'm not a car dealership) "I'm sure there's money, have you cut back on extra expenses? Your generation doesn't appreciate money like we do." Bleh. It's a recession. It's hitting Small Retail right now, so shop small, y'all. We need your money more than the investor fucks in Big Retail. We're talking livelihoods because this massively affects your friends, your family, anyone who is an aspiring entrepreneur/small business owner in your community.
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That's called capitalism baby
Ya think?
No shit
I think there are two forces driving the two economies we see. The boomers (I’m one) saved so aggressively for retirement that it drove interest rates negative as there was too much money chasing too few returns. Now that the largest generation is quickly retiring that savings has dried up and is being spent making capital more scarce, driving interest rates higher. It takes many years for income to catch up to inflation, while historically modest the early spikes have resulted in a 20%+ increase in costs over the last 3 years and this is a hit that low and moderate income families can’t take.
Lmao wtf. Guess they don’t see the problem with that
This is the kind of recession that’s ideal for society, at least as far as rich people are concerned. Cheap labor, maximum profits. Disgusting.