Unemployment being "at all time lows" is a great example of the cooked books. There's "record low unemployment" but the labor participation rate is also really low and the number of able-bodied people who for example are permanently on disability are high.
Not to mention "a job" isn't necessarily meaningful. When I was in college, we rented our first 2 bedroom place for 325 in Winnipeg, you probably would struggle to find the same place for 1500 now. Meanwhile the minimum wage has only gone up by a few dollars, and proportionally more jobs are low wage jobs.
In Toronto there's 25 strangers sharing a basement, each paying 1000/mo, and according to the numbers that means everything is great, but in reality it's an abomination.
It's also a third rail, but many of those 25 strangers living in a basement are recent migrants. Immigration isn't at all bad, but mindlessly cramming as many people from developing nations as possible into a developed nation is bad for the existing population, and bringing in such people solely for the purpose of exploiting them on an economic ledger is deeply immoral.
And let's talk about "greedflation". It exists, but from who? Well, I'd argue it's from the politicians. The US has increased their federal debt by 10x in 20 years, Canada has doubled its debt in 8 years. These greedy politicians don't intend to pay back the debt, they're just going to run it up until society collapses. In the US, debt maintenance is on track to exceed military spending. In Canada, debt maintenance is on track to exceed universal healthcare. The politicians just can't stop spending other people's money, and the price is mass inflation. Oh man -- the politicians loooooove the 25 strangers living in a basement, it looks so good on their fake little economic ledger!
Some people would blame capitalism, but modern capitalism is a quite recent invention and similar issues have occurred in many different countries throughout history, many of which we would not tend to consider modern capitalist democracies, such as France prior to the french revolution, Spain during the conquest of South America, or the Roman Empire.
You don't need private ownership or control of capital to have corruption and mismanagement, and in fact a corrupt nobility can be made worse by not having a strong merchant class to keep them accountable. Having this separate class that can become more powerful through merit is important because having a strong nobility and no capitalism results in high levels of stability, but also stagnation because there are no mechanisms for meritorious people to be easily elevated by objective means. People could be born a serf and become a noble, but merchants must do it through actually being successful merchants, whereas a serf would have to impress a noble who themselves may not be such a good arbiter of merit.
The fact that the poor can be in trouble under capitalism is true; however it does not suggest that there is a monopoly on such. Feudal Japan is a great example of a distinctly non-capitalist nation that nonetheless had high levels of inequality, with some people barely considered human, and others considered as living embodiments of gods.
The present danger is that the state is so large and so powerful that it distorts capitalism. We can see this where a company like Tesla made Elon Musk briefly the richest man in the history of the earth largely on government largesse -- he got a free factory, he gets huge subsidies, every single one of his vehicles got a huge direct subsidy for the buyer, and because of high inflation due to state money printing (and artificially low interest rates on debt due to government policy) people who want to retire need to save their money in something that grows and so the stock market gets a disproportionate amount of money inside of it because the money needs to go somewhere or it'll disappear.
Banking is a great example of an industry that's completely distorted by government. On one hand, deposits are insured so people don't take their money out of banks. Many loans are backstopped by the government such as mortgages which are insured in favor of the banks. The banks have a unique ability to print money out of thin air that's largely a government construct. If a bank becomes insolvent then there's many different types of insurance to keep the bank going. So often, "deregulation" doesn't touch any of these things and only will seek to reduce the few regulations designed to make sure the benefits don't become a massive moral hazard where banks take huge risks not caring since everything they do is protected.
Not to mention "a job" isn't necessarily meaningful. When I was in college, we rented our first 2 bedroom place for 325 in Winnipeg, you probably would struggle to find the same place for 1500 now. Meanwhile the minimum wage has only gone up by a few dollars, and proportionally more jobs are low wage jobs.
In Toronto there's 25 strangers sharing a basement, each paying 1000/mo, and according to the numbers that means everything is great, but in reality it's an abomination.
It's also a third rail, but many of those 25 strangers living in a basement are recent migrants. Immigration isn't at all bad, but mindlessly cramming as many people from developing nations as possible into a developed nation is bad for the existing population, and bringing in such people solely for the purpose of exploiting them on an economic ledger is deeply immoral.
And let's talk about "greedflation". It exists, but from who? Well, I'd argue it's from the politicians. The US has increased their federal debt by 10x in 20 years, Canada has doubled its debt in 8 years. These greedy politicians don't intend to pay back the debt, they're just going to run it up until society collapses. In the US, debt maintenance is on track to exceed military spending. In Canada, debt maintenance is on track to exceed universal healthcare. The politicians just can't stop spending other people's money, and the price is mass inflation. Oh man -- the politicians loooooove the 25 strangers living in a basement, it looks so good on their fake little economic ledger!
Some people would blame capitalism, but modern capitalism is a quite recent invention and similar issues have occurred in many different countries throughout history, many of which we would not tend to consider modern capitalist democracies, such as France prior to the french revolution, Spain during the conquest of South America, or the Roman Empire.
You don't need private ownership or control of capital to have corruption and mismanagement, and in fact a corrupt nobility can be made worse by not having a strong merchant class to keep them accountable. Having this separate class that can become more powerful through merit is important because having a strong nobility and no capitalism results in high levels of stability, but also stagnation because there are no mechanisms for meritorious people to be easily elevated by objective means. People could be born a serf and become a noble, but merchants must do it through actually being successful merchants, whereas a serf would have to impress a noble who themselves may not be such a good arbiter of merit.
The fact that the poor can be in trouble under capitalism is true; however it does not suggest that there is a monopoly on such. Feudal Japan is a great example of a distinctly non-capitalist nation that nonetheless had high levels of inequality, with some people barely considered human, and others considered as living embodiments of gods.
The present danger is that the state is so large and so powerful that it distorts capitalism. We can see this where a company like Tesla made Elon Musk briefly the richest man in the history of the earth largely on government largesse -- he got a free factory, he gets huge subsidies, every single one of his vehicles got a huge direct subsidy for the buyer, and because of high inflation due to state money printing (and artificially low interest rates on debt due to government policy) people who want to retire need to save their money in something that grows and so the stock market gets a disproportionate amount of money inside of it because the money needs to go somewhere or it'll disappear.
Banking is a great example of an industry that's completely distorted by government. On one hand, deposits are insured so people don't take their money out of banks. Many loans are backstopped by the government such as mortgages which are insured in favor of the banks. The banks have a unique ability to print money out of thin air that's largely a government construct. If a bank becomes insolvent then there's many different types of insurance to keep the bank going. So often, "deregulation" doesn't touch any of these things and only will seek to reduce the few regulations designed to make sure the benefits don't become a massive moral hazard where banks take huge risks not caring since everything they do is protected.
- replies
- 0
- announces
- 0
- likes
- 2