Just re-watched “The Big Short.” Excellent film.
It’s gonna happen again. Nobody wants to hear that. But it’s true. The federal government kicked the can down the road. And it didn’t matter who was elected president (which is one of the many reasons I didn’t bother voting) – this has been building up for decades. Both major political parties are guilty. Guilty. Of lies and corruption and fraud.
And now that FB is censoring, you won’t hear it from other sources on this platform.
I’ve been saying it for years and I’ll keep saying it. This is not just the bankers fault – they couldn’t do any of the stuff they did/do without the federal government’s stamp of approval and encouragement. Which they had and still have.
Think about this: the Dow broke 19,000 for the first time ever today. It was 6,443 in March 2009. Have we tripled our GDP in the last 7 years? Has our standard of living tripled? No. GDP grew at less than 3% year over year. That barely covers inflation, which is created by the federal reserve – which was created by the federal government.
Did wages rise? No. Were jobs created? Less than disappeared forever. And most of the new ones were in government, which don’t produce anything.
Don’t mind the unemployment rate – that gets massaged by whoever is using it to spin their bias. People can be considered “no longer seeking employment” and not count against the unemployment rate.
The number you should be watching is labor participation rate. It’s been falling. Fast. It’s at the lowest point since before the Federal Reserve was created and it’s never going back up.
Never.
That’s hard to hear. But it’s true.
Automation. Robots. They are doing the work that we used to need humans to do. We don’t need humans to ask if I want fries with my meal or deliver the check to me and swipe my card. We don’t need humans in mines or manufacturing plants for much longer. We don’t need humans doing repetitive tasks.
And if we get rid of the ridiculous tax code and replace it with a flat one on corporations and no taxes on individual labor – bye accountants. Your job can be done by software.
HR? Software. Data entry? Software. Sales? Software.
If your job doesn’t require human touch or creative thinking, it is soon to be irrelevant.
This is insane. Lift the veil, people.
This is why we need a universal basic income. We have to have it or people will be dying.
Corporations can afford it. They need people to buy their stuff or they don’t have a business. The people need cash to buy things. So a tax should be levied on business to pay for people’s food, clothes and shelter.
There will be alternatives and new opportunities in this system. It’s not communism. It’s pragmatism in the tech age. And it’s still a free market economy. Hell, my plan is actually MORE free market than the corporatist economy we currently have.
It’s time we accept this fate and devise actual solutions to our problems.
UPDATE: Here’s my response to a comment that implied libertarian principles, namely less government regulation, would lead to rule by corporations –