Seems like this has been declared over and over throughout history, and it has never been correct. I understand Late Capitalism was first used to describe the post WWI economy, where wealth was mor concentrated than today, obviously capitalism has survived that period by at least 100 years and contributed to the incredible economic growth of the last century. It was brought back into vogue in the 1970’s stagflation era, and again, the stage was nowhere near late in terms of the economic growth provided by the capitalist engine nearing a peak. We had a temporary setback due to supply shock, somewhat similar to today (completely different root causes but post Covid economy also has supply issues similar to oil embargo era economy). Some people combine the idea of late stage capitalizm with thing like peak oil.
The idea that efficient markets are somehow a cancerous idea is something you should expand upon. I disagree wholeheartedly, but there’s not enough substance offered for a debate. In the end equilibrium pricing (which is slightly different from efficient markets and what I was discussing) is a descriptive term about how commerce works when there are free and competitive markets. I am curious what your beef is there and why you feel it so strongly. I don’t know of any modern corporation who doesn’t espouse at least some duty to stakeholders beyond shareholders, so the idea of corporations only duty being to it’s shareholders isn’t really a thing, or not a thing that would be espoused by neoliberals in the last 25 years or so.
As to the decline of the American worker’s position in the global order, I think it is much more reasonable explanation to view the period from WWII to the 1970’s as an artificial inflation of their standing due to the results of WWII and the ongoing cold war.
I’m curious why you think this. These sorts of things only tend to change when there is a real massive crisis. Great depression, world war, etc. If 2008 wasn’t the impetus and COVID wasn’t the impetus, why would 7% interest rates and low unemployment be the trigger?
Clearly you have some strong emotions here. I just offer that saying “the house isn’t on fire” isn’t the same as saying there is no issues for society to solve. The existence of problems doesn’t mean there is no progress or that Biden shouldn’t be proud of low unemployment and growing wages, or publicly claim his economic policies are more effective the Trump’s.
I think a lot of Americans’ current frustrations are really due to not having experienced inflation in decades or lived under high inflation or even moderately interest rates for so long they are not accustomed to how this impacts their daily lives. Economic growth is currently being suppressed by the Fed due to inflation which was largely caused by pandemic era supply shocks and stimulus. It’s not some inevitable stage of the progression of a capitalist system. A claim like that, which has been wrong every time it was theorized in the past, should be accompanied by stronger evidence than anyone has offered in this thread.
This is the issue in a nutshell. The progress made under FDR was due to being able to completely capture labor together under one party, along with being a wartime president giving him the political capital to go for four terms.
The problem is, a huge chunk of labor was racist because we live in a country founded on racism. So capital drove a wedge in between labor by appealing to the racist crowd with the southern strategy started with Nixon and perfected by GW.
We’ll never be able to make that sort of progress again unless we can get so much of the country to stop being captured by stupid wedge issues, forcing the democrats to rely on appealing to the elite class instead of just labor.
It’s not a coincidence that from Nixon to GW, the only two term president the Dems had was successful because he was a kinda racist southern guy who could also appeal to labor.
Basically the example in my post that a huge chunk of the republican voter base votes against their own economic self interest because racism. Other examples would be voting against your own self interest because of abortion, because of guns, because of homophobia, transphobia, etc.
I’ve always understood wedge issues to be topics that can capture single issue voters and break them away from a voting block or coalition they would normally be aligned with. So thing like gun control and abortion rights.
Stupid wedge issues would be things of that variety that are synthetically manufactured by propaganda machines like critical race theory or the threat of Sharia law
They won’t need to use social issues, they’ll run millions of dollars of ads saying that the communist takeover of housing is going to drive up rents and housing prices, and people will fall for it.
Literally saw this happen in 2020. My building was 25% empty and they wouldn’t budge off a 38% rent increase.
It means that the wealth and power are so concentrated that they endlessly generate more wealth and power, and the income inequality gets worse and worse. Regulatory capture is a big part of it. The wealthy in this country own both political parties and the Supreme Court.
Legislation in the New Deal era reset it. Well-regulated capitalism with reasonable protections for labor is great.
Can you name some publicly traded corporations that have prioritized other stakeholders over shareholders at any significant cost anytime recently? They can print whatever they want about employees and communities in the CEO’s letter in the annual report or on the About Us page on their website, it doesn’t actually mean anything.
The cycle seems pretty clear to me. In our current meta, things will keep getting worse for the average person until they get bad enough for people to vote for candidates who will fix it rather than voting based on imagined threats and culture war bullshit. Then the right candidate will have to come along to convince those people that they can fix it if they forget about their racism and bigotry for a minute.
Then, if that happens, it’ll be reset back to some sustainable point, and then capital will begin trying to recapture it all again and eventually it’ll end up back in the same spot. Probably after the generations who lived through this period have died off, though. They probably won’t fall for the same bullshit again.
On the other hand, capital will be trying to slap as many shitty band aids on as many of these blood-gushing head wounds as possible to keep that from happening. Exhibit A would be the Affordable Care Act. The wound under that band aid is really starting to lose a lot of blood again. I’m hearing more and more complaints about health insurers not covering stuff again.
If R>G where R is the average rate of return for financial products and G is the rate of growth in the national income then things will be getting worse for anyone who owns less than the average amount of financial products in terms of their personal share of the national income. If you’re going to try to play the big picture do it right: simply since that’s the only reason anyone ever used the big picture in the first place.
Sounds more like an issue you have with with democracy than our capitalism. Yeah I was against Citizens United too, but this is not a thing that Biden can do much about or is it really having much to do with the economy. Regardless it’s all projection and I disagree. The issue is primarily local, involving local governments. There usually aren’t millions of dollars of ads run in those elections. The bigger problem is homeowners are much more attuned to local policies which might impact the value of their housing asset while renters just aren’t as attuned to local policies that will lead to higher rents.
And there are a lot of pro NIMBYism arguments that sound good and don’t invoke communism, like “preserving the character of our historic neighborhoods”
Yeah well things were weird in 2020 and not sure that’s predictive. Also it might be a little different in larger buildings than with single family homes or duplex because a lot of the carrying costs (e.g. building security, exterior maintenance, etc.) are just born by the current tenants of the other units and not the landlord. This is not possible in SFH.
I am sure these landlords have an optimal vacancy rate that is somewhere above zero and less than 25% (probably between 5 and 10%) and I am sure that the owner of your building was not happy with the 25% vacancy.
But wealth and power are always concentrated that way. The whole “late stage” thing sounds weird to me for a couple reasons.
1.) The New Deal didn’t end the capitalist system.
2.) The New Deal wasn’t just a response to people being fed up about robber barons, it was a response to people not being able to find jobs and feed their families. If we’re seeing both growth in real wages and growth in jobs that outpaces population growth, we’re nowhere close to that track regardless of wealth concentration.
You could try to argue it’s about homes being unaffordable but so much of the voting population already owns homes, and benefit from housing prices being high, I don’t see that as the catalyst for a massive social change. So why are we at late stage? Just because Elon Musk has more money than Henry Ford did in the 1940s?
There are a few things being debated in this thread that overlap. But for Biden/re-election, it just goes back to not telling people who are struggling hard how great they have it and to pull the lever for more of the same.
I think if they’re buying entire developments, then there are carrying costs that are spread across the whole project and not dependent on any one home - like exterior maintenance/lawn care.
I’m sure they weren’t happy, but they also weren’t lowering rent. Mainly because they were leveraged up against the building and couldn’t devalue it by dropping rent.
I don’t want to end the capitalist system, and I doubt boredsocial does either. I want well-regulated capitalism with some protections for the working class. That’s a great and sustainable system.
Yeah the numbers say all that, the lived reality of the people in the lower class doesn’t match. Seems like lots of people who aren’t in the bottom 50% ITT telling people who are in the bottom 50% what it’s like in the bottom 50%, and refusing to believe the responses.
Myself and boredsocial both answered this already.
Really man? Do you think and BoredSocial are representative of the bottom 50% and the rest of us are Monopoly men who are just out of touch with the working class?
Panic over asylum-seekers at the Southern border
Panic over libraries they never set foot in having books they’ve never read with LGBTQ+ characters
Outrage over Bud Light paying a spokesperson who’s different from you
Outrage over athletes exercising their first amendment rights
Outrage over a Black woman making a country music album
Pretending that there’s a War on Christmas, or getting upset that people acknowledge the existence of non-Christian holidays.
Stoking resentment that some Black people have decent jobs
Great Replacement Theory
People could live their lives in absolute blissful ignorance of all of these things and never once suffer a negative consequence from any of them, and yet they are used to shore up Republican support, and thus policies favorable to the very rich, along racial lines. At least with gun control, I have to grant that gun owners derive a certain amount of pleasure e.g. going to gun ranges and firing guns, so while it’s used as a wedge issue as well, at least there is something tangible there that would impact these people.
these are all definitely A Thing ™ but this isn’t what a wedge issue is. These are all things that unite and energize the base.
wedge issues are the opposite, they fracture a united group. Support for israel is a wedge issue against the left, and anything less than a total ban on abortions is a wedge issue against the right. Usually the GOP has a big advantage in deploying wedge issues to drive division in the left, but this year I think it’s much different for the first time in a long time.
note I don’t think israel is ultimately a very good wedge mostly because voters don’t usually give a shit about foreign policy when the chips are down. abortion is way more likely to be a supereffective wedge than overseas genocide
Yeah, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee ALL went for Slick Willy TWICE, in no small part because of lingering effects of New Deal politics (and being cool with a Southern white guy at the top of the ticket). W and Trump got them all comfortably GOP with gay marriage and racism.
Boredsocial is almost certainly not in the bottom 50%, but he’s been there and he still gets it. I’m right around that cutoff, depending on how you measure it, and struggling quite a bit. I’m pretty confident the people arguing the other side are doing quite a bit better than me, and seem to all own homes in particular, so while you may not be “Monopoly men,” this thread is pretty good evidence you’re out of touch with the working class.
Regardless of whether my income is in the top or bottom 50% I have friends, co workers, neighbors, and family in different economic circumstances. I’m not out of touch at all, I grew up poor and have worked jobs at different income levels since I was a kid. Painting disagreement as lack of understanding of what’s going in people’s lives is just a move to ad hominem because you haven’t made any sort of convincing argument.
The longer this thread goes on I am starting more and more to think you’re so dug into this position that the overall economy sucks and and willing to handwave away the data to the contrary just because you’re not happy with your personal circumstances. Are you even working class? Don’t you play poker and day trade for a living?