Mystery? Jesus, no.
As Richard J. Murphy notes, when money goes into the hands of billionaires, it leaves the economy, getting tied up in bank reserves (or corporate reserves if invested) and into literal vaults. That money is no longer in motion, propelling trade, but gets trapped dormant.
This is why when wealth distribution graph is deeply bowed, the economy gets austere.
And as Leeja Miller notes, historically the only way such wealth ever gets redistributed to public interest (either directly to the public, or into a good-faith public-serving state) has been through violence.
Disclaimer: This is not a call for violence, only that corrections in history have involved piling aristocratic heads high after a takeover by force. The 20th century has seen a lot of progress in non-violent revolution.
Right now the ownership class has a powerful propaganda machine to dissuade protest, and mass suffering tends to lead to violent reprisal, especially when families see their own vulnerable suffering and dying, so if we don’t figure out some peaceful action that creates movement, we’ll end up with a lot of self-radicalized folk eager to die in action just to express themselves.
someone remind me what happened in the 70s
I can only answer your question with a question: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
It’s crazy seeing how old the graphs on that site are now.
As I understand it, it’s the effect of a number of policy decisions intended in the surface to stabilize the economy. They stopped approving minimum wage hikes, they accepted a higher rate of unemployment due to factory automation, etc. Also, the difference between worker and executive compensation has grown tremendously.
okay, yes, obviously it’s being stolen and the only solution will come when the last owner is hanged with the entrails of the last enforcer, but can we still have a crossover fic where holmes and shaggy expose capitalism with wacky hijinx, then holmes figures out what’s in scooby snax and gets addicted to them?
the worlds biggest mystery - I left a cake in a room with my dog and when I came back it was gone??!
Not a mystery but I legit think it might take a bunch of Luigis to change anything.
A whole army even…unite.
Of course the financial economist types gotta say “It’s a big 'ol mysterious mystery.” They’ve got their lives tied up in stonks that are supposed to quadruple in value every single quarter forever and ever.
How can they do that if workers get paid? Lol
The actual impressive thing is how they managed to convince working people to actively choose against their own interests
Where is this from? I was looking for the source of this got a while.
That’s why the right aligned with evangelicals all those years ago. Prior to that, Republicans were actually for abortion rights as a personal freedoms thing. But then they started with the family values stuff, casting Democrats as literally against God. “You need to vote for us because we’ll protect marriage, keep you safe from the sin of homosexuality, and most importantly will protect the babies from being murdered.” Once in office, they could pass all of the tax cuts for the wealthy and reduce corporate oversight, which was the actual goal.
And repeat those successes continuously for 50+ years
There’s no mystery. If the workers don’t punch up in unison corporate will maintain the same wages they ever have. Up until COVID happened, there were nurses working on the same wage scales as 2003. Techs and aides fared no better. Outlandish and difficult to believe that is the only type of hourly wage worker who has experienced this gross level of stagnation in wages.
It is because of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall and was predicted as far back as 1880. Now we’re seeing it in reality. The surprising thing isn’t that this is happening, but that it took so long to happen.
I’m unskilled at economics, so I may well be missing something, but this explanation doesn’t sit well with me. I think it’s because I’m not sure how well Marxian economics applies to the current conditions; As part of a university scholarship, I had to do an internship somewhere exceedingly corporate, and I was aghast at how there were entire divisions whose functions seemed to produce nothing of real value, just more metrics and dashboards and spreadsheets. I imagine people more learned than I have applied Marxian economics to problems like that, but trying to reconcile that situation with any notion of “value” makes my head hurt.
To be clear, I’m a big fan of Marx, even if I haven’t the patience for parsing economics definitions.
yeah the phenomenon of bullshit jobs is one of the great riddles of our times
Except corporate profits are higher than they’ve ever been. Only thing falling is the workers’ share of the obscene dragons hoards of riches.
Corporate profits are higher than ever largely because corporations have been able to get greater productivity out of workers without increasing pay. If wages had kept up with productivity, profits wouldn’t be nearly as high.
Edit: the reason this is a mystery to so many mainstream economists is because they don’t want to reconcile with one simple fact: in order for profits to keep going up, worker wages must be suppressed while also increasing productivity. Why do you think so many billions of dollars are being spent on AI development? Many see it as the key to ever increasing profits, because the worker, and their pesky demand for adequate compensation can be removed entirely.
Corporate profits are higher than ever largely because corporations have been able to get greater productivity out of workers without increasing pay. If wages had kept up with productivity, profits wouldn’t be nearly as high.
the reason this is a mystery to so many mainstream economists is because they don’t want to reconcile with one simple fact: in order for profits to keep going up, worker wages must be suppressed while also increasing productivity.
That, and they don’t want to/are psychologically incapable of the self-awareness required to admit their own complicity in the increasing oppression and exploitation of the very people without whom everything falls apart.
Why do you think so many billions of dollars are being spent on AI development? Many see it as the key to ever increasing profits, because the worker, and their pesky demand for adequate compensation can be removed entirely.
Spot on again.
Anyone working in these environments knows the inevitable is coming.
