I’ll believe the economics are better when I’m not paying markedly more for everything in my life and my salary increases.
The politicians are so wildly out of touch with the citizens.
This idea that the data is “mistrusted” or “unseen” is ridiculous to the point of incredulity. I don’t care what the data says, I know what my lived experiences are and everything is getting wildly more expensive except my labor, it seems. Show me any study you want, it won’t change that groceries are 30%+ more expensive, my rent keeps going up, restaurants and bars have gotten nearly 50% or more pricier and my wage hasn’t grown to match.
I’ll admit I’m a high income earner. I’ve never had to watch watch what I spend but recently even I’ve noticed increases in everything.
Groceries have doubled from what I paid in 2019. I buy almost the same thing every week and I compared.
Dining out has become much more expensive. Places I used to consider a good value are now expensive.
I ordered a basic meal the other day at a local place. A cheeseburger. Fries. Drink and my friend had a salad. It was almost 59 dollars. Six months ago it was around 30 dollars.
So now I have to watch my spending as everything has increased
Dining out is CRAZY now.
My wife and I were out and about last weekend and needed to eat so we hit a Burger King.
Meals for 2, nothing crazy, was $30… at freaking BURGER KING. We don’t even have a sales tax here.
Workers wanted an increase in pay, so shareholders needed to offset that by even more. Workers can’t get a raise without shareholders getting a raise.
Inflation is majority driven by profit, not wages. Dems barely attack that angle. Republicans actively work against it.
Shareholders don’t need to offset shit. They’re just greedy rent seeking bastards.
Shareholders provide economic value (it’s literally in the name) and are not rent-seeking by definition
Pray tell. How?
Shareholders are key investors and are the principal drivers of M&A and infrastructure investment.
Disagreeing with the idea that companies exist to drive shareholder returns does not change the actual purpose of shareholders, nor suddenly cause them to be rent-seekers.
That is because Americans are not seeing the benefits. CEOs and stock holders are.
Exactly.
This is all simplly caused by our refusal to build housing for the last 50 years. Almost all the pain is because of housing costs.
New housing is built all the time, just not in a places that are in demand where everyone wants to live at.
You mean you don’t want to live in a 500k townhouse that is directly off the highway and has no walkability, sidewalks, or public transportation? Smh
You mean you don’t want to live in a 500k townhouse that is directly off the highway and has no walkability, sidewalks, or public transportation? Smh
Plenty of nice housing in suburbs that are away from the central in-demand urban areas. You’ll have to commute allot, or work from home.
Right it’s a shame that lower class individuals can no longer pay the cost of personal transportation and companies are demanding return to in office work to keep their property investments secure.
Right it’s a shame that lower class individuals can no longer pay the cost of personal transportation
Well I didn’t invent Capitalism, I’m just stuck in it just, like you.
For those lower class individuals (I’m guessing you meant to say lower wage individuals) they just need to try to improve their life, career choice changes, more education, and so forth. Otherwise they have to live within their means and commute long distances, just like we all do.
If you want to have a separate conversation about getting rid of Capitalism for something else, so be it, but while we are in Capitalism those are the ways to being able to own a place to live at, you afford what you can pay for.
and companies are demanding return to in office work to keep their property investments secure.
Yeah this one pisses me off big time as well.
I think everyone should be able to work from home, it would make the point that we’re discussing about having to move far away from the urban center locations to be able to afford a home moot.
It’s not all of us responsibility to help those who purchase real estate to keep afloat.
Having said that, there are still plenty of jobs that allow work from home, either all the time, or the majority of the time.
You should never stay at the same place more than a couple of years anyway, and with such high demand for workers right now, this is the time to move from a company that’s denying work from home availability to a company that does allow it, or even promotes it.
And if you’re a low wage individual who can’t move, then you have a whole other set of problems you need to fix, that I discussed earlier about in this reply.
Hey pompous asshole. Who is going to work at grocery stores if you can’t afford living anywhere but a suburb and can’t even afford that.
Who will work restaurants and small venues. Not every job can be remote and commuting long distances for “low wage” jobs which don’t cover the cost means no one servicing everything else you do besides work.
You are thinking about only people like yourself and ignoring all the people I guess you don’t even consider thinking about.
Hey pompous asshole.
Screw you. I’m only speaking to truth, things I’ve done myself. Things that I’ve actually DONE myself.
Who will work restaurants and small venues. Not every job can be remote and commuting long distances for “low wage” jobs which don’t cover the cost means no one servicing everything else you do besides work.
In the city I live in they have a trolley/bus system that people who can’t afford to live in the expensive areas take to get to/from work.
You going to tell me that the majority of low-income workers live in a city without metro?
You are thinking about only people like yourself and ignoring all the people I guess you don’t even consider thinking about.
If that was true I wouldn’t bother making comments and responding to people like you on the Internet. There’s no joy in it. Just trying to contribute to society by speaking to the truth of things. I ain’t fighting for my soul, I’m fighting for yours.
Also, don’t get pissed at me for stating the rules of Capitalism, I didn’t invent the fucker nor do I support it (much). I’m just stating things you can do today to improve your life under the current system we all live in.
Don’t like that, start a Revolution, or run for Congress.
Edit:
https://lemmy.world/comment/3545962
God finding out I pay twice as much a month for a shitty apartment than what someone I know does for a mansion out in the suburbs which keeps me from ever being actually able to get enough money saved to put a down payment (that is constantly rising higher) to even hope to get a house so that I’m not paying whatever someone feels like charging me for necessity housing…
Yeah that shit is crushing.
If everyone says they feel like the economy is bad, but the metrics say the economy is good, maybe the metrics are wrong or measuring the wrong things!
Possible; it’s also possible they’re believing lies being told to them by people who benefit from others having false beliefs.
Information asymmetry often works to the benefit of employers and landlords, for example. If workers and tenants do have lots of options, but don’t believe they do, they’re more likely to settle for shitty jobs and housing.
There’s a common lie told by upper managers in a lot of industries: “Our business is perpetually in danger; so we can’t afford to pay you more because then we will go out of business and you’ll all lose your jobs anyway.”
If workers and tenants do have lots of options, but don’t believe they do, they’re more likely to settle for shitty jobs and housing.
If workers and tenants are settling for shitty jobs and housing, the economy is bad. It doesn’t matter if they technically have lots of options because the economy is structured to make them feel like they don’t.
Capitalism working as intended 👍
The weird thing is, these information asymmetries make capitalism less efficient than it would be with less asymmetry. They don’t serve the interests of capital; they serve the interests of management.
We’ve stopped being capitalist a long time ago. Now we have corporate feudalism. We prop up old companies, tamp down on startups, and do our best to make sure companies make most of their money from rent seeking.
(pst that’s just capitalism)
Marx characterized this as “anarchy of production” - without centralize control, the whims of the market inevitably undermine economic growth. It’s what causes the boom and bust cycles.
I think Marx also underestimated the class interest of the managerial class, which shows up rather vividly in actually-existing socialisms as well. Principal/agent problems are a doozy.
Maybe.
I think Marx underestimated the class divisions created by colonialism between colonizers and the colonized. It turns out that settlers could be bribed with the superprofits created through the superexploitation of colonized people. It took later theorizing by Lenin and Mao and Fanon and Du Bois to advance theory to that point.
