"Let them eat cake". (B/M)illionare CEOs reactions to inflation

[highlander]

Well it's Fox News. Consider the source

 

[ygolo]

Just a reminder that this stagflation problem is not just a US thing.

Is stagflation coming to the UK?- Times Money Mentor

Stagflation happens when a mixture of high inflation and low growth create a perfect storm for a miserable economy. Is the UK at risk now? Find out more.

www.thetimes.co.uk

Ukraine War Continues to Slow Global Growth, Report Says

“Risks remain tilted to the downside,” the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said, predicting economies will grow only 2.2 percent next year.

www.nytimes.com

Also, further reflection on debt cancelation... I realize that its complicated an maybe slightly inflationary even, but the main idea is in housing in particular, and is motivated by not having people resist the need for prices to come down. Also to frankly make it okay that people who were basically forced into taking on debt of various sorts due to the current inflation to not have to suffer more when temporary deflation does happen.

Divide the price for basic human rights with the wages for a year. That is basically the only measure that matters.

 

[ygolo]

Watching Twitter implode in the open for all to see - I really hope the myth of billionaire competency can die now. Elon Musk is one of the stupidest mfers on the planet.

You may enjoy this. I don't agree with everything he says (nor really disagree either). But he's pretty funny.

 

[ygolo]

I could have posted this in the housing thread too. There is so much stuff I agree with in this video that I felt the need to post this too.

Unlike the previous post, which was more about humor than content, this really crystalized my understanding of the inequity based inflation that is the current global economic situation.

 

[ceecee]

I could have posted this in the housing thread too. There is so much stuff I agree with in this video that I felt the need to post this too.

Unlike the previous post, which was more about humor than content, this really crystalized my understanding of the inequity based inflation that is the current global economic situation.

This is an excellent channel and website, although UK centric, which tends to make some in the US ignore it but they shouldn't. If you listen to any MSM in the US, you'd think the US is the only country suffering from inflation, high gas prices, high rents and a ridiculous housing market and so on and that it's caused by some vague, unseeable forces.

 

[ygolo]

This has a lot of similarities to things I talk about. This actual course ran last spring. I swear I did not take his course before. But I have listened to his speeches before.

 

[ygolo]

Financialization has been a major problem for a while. Listen to what they were saying almost a decade ago, and notice the similarities.

 

[ygolo]

This is a good summarization of myths and belief systems that "Davos man" spreads. Although, I still hold out some hope for stakeholder capitalism, I have no inkling that current corporate rulers will voluntarily head there by themselves.

Trust busting needs to essentially atomize large corporations. Currently anti-trust just give minor fines that are taken as the cost of doing business. That needs to be replaced by the consequence that their corporate empire will be broken up to small pieces that all compete and you only get a small piece.

Campaign finance needs to limit the amount of money in campaigns, directly or indirectly.

Lobbying as an activity needs to be highly regulated.

Financial innovation needs to regulated to real productiviy instead of nonsense variations of the Ponzi scheme.

 

[ygolo]

Four years old but still so relevant. Seeing all the parallels of now from the 70s to now, hopefully we make different decisions than what the Thatcher-Reaganites did back then. Hopefully, Biden will have more political strength than Jimmy Carter did to do what needs to be done.

 

[ygolo]

Once again in his course Reich hits on the fact that there is a "suspension bridge" in inequality and new gilded age.

When you think about the fact that the last stagflation crisis was what started the climb of inequality (Thatcher, Reagan and their ilk) because people saw this as means to push for supply side economics. There is a ridiculous amount of fear that "austerity" will be proposed again at a time when inequality is back at Robber Barron levels.

I don't think society can afford this. The amount of scapegoating and drop-out over the decades of people have me worrying about a global level societal collapse. Defusing inequality is the only way to defuse this powder keg.

People dropping out in the US:

Men without college degrees are dropping out of the workforce because they viewed their dead-end jobs as a threat to social status

Men without degrees are quitting in growing numbers because limited pay growth impacts their social status and marriage prospects.

www.businessinsider.com

(There are a lot of similar articles if you run into a pay wall)

"Lying flat" in China (it has been a while there too):

The ‘lying flat’ movement standing in the way of China’s innovation drive | Brookings

China's push for tech innovation is encountering an unlikely obstacle: a prevailing sense of social and professional stagnation.

www.brookings.edu

The "Great Resignation" doesn't seem to be done:

Great Resignation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I hate to think what would happen if all these idle hands and minds get motivated by revolutionary or reactionary violent impulses. We've had a lot of flair ups. Of particular note is the coup attempt in the US. There have been the election of those with fascist impulses around the world like Trump, Bolsonaro, Duterte, etc.

edit: This is a long-term structural phenomenon.
Here is an OECD report from 2016: https://www.oecd.org/economy/outloo...-2016-promoting-productivity-and-equality.pdf

We may not be able to predict when destructive forces will eventually lead to destruction, but we know if that if those forces are never abated, destruction will follow. Inequality is the main destructive force, leading to drop-out, reactionary/revolutionary violence, election of totalitarians, etc.

 

[ygolo]

The main problem with the economy today is that ______________ hurts the poor the most. Where ______________ is any economic problem or its cure.

Right now the most relevant are that inflation hurts the poor the most, and that the austerity-like measures including suppressing wages and raising interest rates.

Really the only palatable measure is explicitly hurting the rich the most. 1. Corporate profit compression (pre-distribution) by breaking up every large corporation is sight and making them compete with each other while sharing scaled means of production(that are subsidised by the various gov'ts already anyways). 2. Wealth taxes (re-distribution) on the wealthiest individuals.

For more motivation on the stark realities of unsustainable inequality in both wealth and income, data follows.

Edit: An incredibly up-to-date and comprehensive summary. Just found the link, I haven't been able to go through it myself.

The World #InequalityReport 2022 presents the most up-to-date & complete data on inequality worldwide

:💵 global wealth🌍 ecological inequality💰 income inequality since 1820♀ gender inequality 👉 Check it out wir2022.wid.world👥 World Inequality Lab - WID.world

wir2022.wid.world

These charts show the growing gap between the world's richest and poorest

The latest World Inequality Report highlights the extent of the wealth and income inequality between and within countries.

www.weforum.org

Global Inequalities

The big picture on wealth, income, ecological, and gender inequality looks bad.

www.imf.org

 

[Virtual ghost]

This is a pretty good documentary that is basically about consumer fraud or at least consumer manipulation.
Even if the whole thing is masked into the subject that should be fundamentally fun.

 

[ygolo]

This is a pretty good documentary that is basically about consumer fraud or at least consumer manipulation.
Even if the whole thing is masked into the subject that should be fundamentally fun.

Another important element in the story of video games is that the people who work on them actually have rather abusive relationships with their bosses and companies.

There are in fact a lot of places that have had similar abusive worker-employee relationships for ages. Think about "sages" that aspiring top end chefs have to do, and the fact that Noma had to shut down recently because people don't want to take that deal anymore.

Along a similar vein, not as many people want to work "hard core" for a "great man" for far less pay, no semblance of work-life balance, ultimately no credit, vanishing chances of future "greatness" themselves, etc. People have known that this deal had high chances of being a raw deal for some time. But now we know the rawness is basically guaranteed, and nobody wants to take that deal. Actually, given the levels of inequality, even if they wanted to, only the children of elite being supported by those elite can even afford to do this sort of thing.

We had the Jan. 6th incident when a guillotine came out in the US targeting a high level gov't individual. I am actually thankful we don't have people going door to door dispatching scapegoated "elites" by now. The genocidal maniacs can be either revolutionaries or reactionaries. Either way they are going for some form of palingenesis. Antitrust, even aggressive antitrust, and redistribution through aggressive wealth taxation, are completely in-system and evolutionary (rather than revolutionary) way to defuse this global half-century long gestating societal bomb.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Let the CEOs eat my big nuts

 

[Virtual ghost]

Let the CEOs eat my big nuts

You would "give" your nuts to a CEO !?

 

[ygolo]

You would "give" your nuts to a CEO !?

Not to derail too much, but:

World's largest nut gets new holographic tag

The world's largest and heaviest nut, the coco de mer, is getting an upgraded anti-counterfeiting system.

www.securingindustry.com

 

[Virtual ghost]

I saw some internet comments recently that are on the level "Let them eat cake" and I just can't believe that some people are this short sighted. Do they really want to have open social rebellion on their hands. After all "Let them eat cake" is evidently a part of such story.

 

[The Cat]

I saw some internet comments recently that are on the level "Let them eat cake" and I just can't believe that some people are this short sighted. Do they really want to have open social rebellion on their hands. After all "Let them eat cake" is evidently a part of such story.

pretty sure that's why robotics is being funded at break neck speed.

 

[Virtual ghost]

pretty sure that's why robotics is being funded at break neck speed.

True.
However my post should be looked in the light that I am from the corner of the world that had 6 political systems since the day my grandfather is born. This isn't the US where nothing really changes for decades. Here it is more like "we did it so many times that we my as well do it once more". I mean here we don't really have social consensus that we should be a Capitalist country. Therefore even those that politically advocate going in that direction are kinda careful. While some business people are just copy/pasting US logic on all this and that is evidently risky. After all the revolutionary voices are getting louder in the polls and in the physical sense.

 

[The Cat]