The point is people are poor because of their personal decisions. Those teenage boys could have had ramen!
This whole thread read like libertarians saying that the billionaires making more money is actually good because poor people get extra crumbs
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Wages have gone up and unemployment is at all time lows. That helps poor people. But I’m sure not really because vibes.
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I would agree with you if you could provide an anecdote about someone you know personally who is doing well in this economy
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Suzzer believes both that the economy is booming and also that there is rampant retail theft causing grocery and drug stores to close.
The economy is good if you are rich or solidly upper, upper-middle class. For everyone else it is a wash to bad.
Interest rates rising are killing high interest debt holders and student loan borrowers (middle and lower class) and inflation is killing the poors. Yes unemployment is low and working class wages are up but most or all of this gain is eaten up by rents going through the roof and inflation on groceries and the like.
Anecdotally my bankruptcy practice has been insanely busy this year so far after bankruptcies were down overall in my district 40-50% from 2020-2023.
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Not once have I said that rampant retail theft has forced grocery and drug stores to close. I think most of those cases are overblown and while shoplifting is a problem, the companies are using it as an excuse to close the stores.
I do believe that people shooting up and smoking crack on the sidewalk and smoking fentanyl on public transit with no repercussions is bad for the working class people who actually live in those neighborhoods and need to use public transit. I also don’t believe that enabling addicts who have zero desire to get clean helps anyone, including the addicts. Sorry if that fails the moral purity test.
My personal interpretation is that socialism is capitalism, at least 95% of the time. Discussion gets confused because there are different types of socialism, especially historically, and Marxists and their progeny often refer to themselves as socialists. So, you often have a very stupid situation where three competing systems are called “socialism”, which immediately renders any statement like, “under socialism…X” vague and/or untrue.
I have problems with capitalism but they are more unusual than Marxist issues with capitalism–though I am sympathetic to how 1840/50s Manchester would lead intellectuals of a certain type into conceptualizing alternatives.
If you want power to the people and for basic needs (I want to eat and I don’t want my children to die) to be met then capitalism is the only game in town. Any other system has too many information and coordination problems, and that’s when things go well (which is rare, as often it’s just dictatorship and famine and executing critics).
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Depends on what you call “Capitalism” then. Markets predate what many people are talking about when they say Capitalism.
Sure? It seems the salient point of my post is that it’s fairly ridiculous to point to a child mortality graph going “down” and being like “aha! suck it you socialist turds!” when (again this information is easy to search yourself) the top countries in these categories are generally considered “socialist” countries, not even to mention it’s making a lot of assumptions about cause/effect which I’m sure has been pointed out here already and I don’t need to belabor. If you want I can list the specific countries I’m talking about but I trust you are an adult that can do your own research here.
Really, it’s fairly myopic and a little uninformed to frame these kinds of things as “socialism vs capitalism” when really, in the context of today’s political discussion and propaganda machines by the republican/democrat establishment e.g cnn/fox/huffpost/breitbart et al (which frequently looks more and more similar these days - look at how the votes went for the recent FISA bill, I promise it is illuminating) - these are pretty loaded terms that mean different things to different people. and frankly, even china is practicing capitalism on some form - and I can’t really point to any countries practicing purely marxist ideals. So the argument in favor of these systems also seems stupid in the context of these arguments, which is why I find the whole framing of these types of discussions a bit ridiculous.
As microbet pointed out, free markets have been a thing for a long time without the united states’ particular brand of capitalism. And, regarding the united states’ brand of capitalism, which seems to be roughly equivalent to “funnel wealth to the top and then blame the peasants for wanting their basic needs met as long as stocks go vroom and banks stay open” - is not working. For a lot of people. And people are dying every day because of this same lame-ass capitulation I see on this board, on 2p2, on NMNM, SPE, wherever - there seems to be this idea that because people aren’t starving “the economy is good actually.” Inequality is a major driver and precursor to societal collapse, there are plenty of historical examples to draw from, and I doubt even the most fervent capitalists here would dare to say we have anything close to an equitable system.
dare to dream of something better, or at the very least, hold the people in power responsible for the state of affairs, which albeit may be tolerable now, certainly won’t be for much longer.
I’ll get off my soapbox and sorry if I interrupted any highbrow discussion here. My understanding is that this is/was a place for nuanced arguments.
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also as my final post I’m pretty sure an intelligent, mathematically minded person would understand why a “small” change of 1 or two points on an infant mortality scale would mean tens of thousands of dead kids, and countless lives destroyed, in the supposedly greatest country on earth, especially not on a forum that acknowledges the (event happening you know where that I’m not sure I’m allowed to mention here).
Good day.
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This is bad news for Joe Biden. My column…
Cool now do the previous few decades
not sure the point of this post, besides the fact it’s cherrypicked statistical nonsense
It’s a little unclear what views you were attributing to people on various forums, but personally I think the economy is really good right now because almost everyone who wants a job has one, and the rewards of economic growth are being shared very fairly. In previous decades, to the extent that was not true, I think most people on those forums would have said the economy was bad, not good.
Absolutely not.
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He’s sleeping at the moment.
This alone means no one should ever take anything you post seriously ever again.
There really is no defending a take like this when the top quintile makes more in income alone then the bottom 4 quintiles combined. And especially not when graphs like this exist:
This isn’t even getting into racial inequalities, or the fact that the bottom quintile you referenced averages $16k a year pre tax in income while that barely covers the average cost of rent in fucking alabama.
Anyway this was all clearly bait I fell into, so I won’t exhaust my point, other than to say if I were to take your ridiculous statement in good faith I’d wager you’re the exact type of shitlib on this forum that makes a good wage and therefore generally has no issues with the status quo, so hides behind weak, statistically undefendable positions like “economy
good becuz everyone has a job.”
Hint: you can still have a job and be starving in this country. Capitalism! But no, please point out more short term single-digit income gains (during statistical outlier covid years) to a wage class that can’t afford cost of living in a single US state.
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