They will give the poor credit, buy now pay later, till there is nothing left to squeeze out of them/us.
I think this is the answer. They also need to advertise correctly so people feel the need to finance a $70.000 truck instead of buying a small used car for $4.000. Of course with interest and their credit score people will end up paying like double the price anyways.
Another option is to offer crappy versions of the same thing that are more affordable but break earlier. That way you also pay more over the years.
Vimes' theory of boots!
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
Ah, thanks! I knew there was a name for it but couldn't remember.
So many useless pavement pricess pickup trucks.
That's what they've been doing already. It already caused the 2008 financial crash with mortgages. The answer then was to throw around QE money to corporations like a socialist dressed up as Santa Claus and reduce interest rate to 0%.
Apple devices led to Apple Pay, Apple Pay led to the Apple Card, the Apple Card led to Apple Pay Later (installments). Now there are rumors that Apple will offer loans to cardholders.
Google pay now, when?
Yeah but what happens when there's nothing left though
You'll owe your soul to the company store
If there are suddenly far fewer getting a paycheck there is still voting. I wonder what droves of the unemployed will vote for?
It’s irrelevant when neither parties do anything meaningful for the working class.
What if you artificially limited the options at the voting booth using a first past the post electoral system?
Same thing they vote for now - whichever candidate's lies sound better.
Who do you vote for when you don't want any of them
You can see this in Argentina. You can buy pretty much everything in installments. Trips, clothing, electronics, groceries - pay in 3, 6, 12 installments.
Like I can with Klarna, Affirm, Zip, any number of credit cards, etc.
I suspect they will graciously provide the necessities in return for your labour and any remaining rights you have.
Take a look at how company stores and scrip worked. As the song goes: Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go/Sold my soul to the company store.
The lyric is "I owe my soul to the company store". Sold requires a conscious choice, willingly entering into the agreement. Under a company script system children are forced into labor as early as possible to help pay the family debt. In less than a generation teenagers are given the "choice" to go to work or see their families already meager income reduced to cover "their portion" of the family debt.
I stand corrected.
The early 80s will happen again until the late 90s come back, So Reagan then Clinton. Crime will go up, Graffiti, homeless etc The rent is skyrocketing like when Reagan took over. The economy works when the middle class does well and we can't keep funneling the money higher up. When the middle class can afford a home and cooperations stop buying them up to lease that might help.
The upper class: keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class: pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there...just to scare the shit out of the middle class." -George Carlin'
That's the way the ruling class operates in any society: they try to divide the rest of the people; they keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the fucking money. Fairly simple thing... happens to work..." -George Carlin
Yo fuck the middle class, everyone should be thriving if their working. I'm tired of all this middle class shit.. what about all the people living in poverty?
People who work full-time jobs used to be middle class. Living wages, affordable housing, yearly vacations, etc. Now, working people are still in poverty.
People who work full-time jobs used to be middle class. Living wages, affordable housing, yearly vacations, etc.
When?
Do you call camping in a campground a "family vacation" ? because that's as far as my family had growing up in a pensioned job. We never could afford air travel, fancy new TVs, new cars... our house was very basic, we always drove beaters, we spent years without one thing or another to make it work.
This isn't the current generation, or the last one, this was even earlier.
Just trying to understand when this idea that anybody in any job could have the white picket fence and world class quality of life was somehow a reality. I don't think that's ever been the case for the poorest full time workers or even the bottom 50%.
Do you call camping in a campground a “family vacation” ?
I would...
Sure, we never had the latest and greatest, fixed stuff ourselves and such, but we lived in a home that my parents owned and never really wanted for anything. That, to me, feels like a middle-class upbringing, and is what I'd like to be able to provide my own kids when I have them. However, right now the prospect of owning my own home seems increasingly far-fetched.
Campgrounds are everywhere and one in under a 2 hour drive is very doable throughout your whole life for a family vacation. You won't lose access to that.
Housing costs will swing back. We're around the point where we were in the last housing market crash. Prices are at the edge of affordability for the middle class. Mortgages are higher than what can be rented. One market course correction and a ton of people lose their houses and the market collapses again.
They're doing everything they can to try and stop the collapse but homes are still increasing in price way more quickly than wages. Just a matter of time.
Lol growing up there was no fun gas only work gas.
weird, my single mom driving beaters could afford short driving trips (2 hours is short to me.) We did mostly go to a campground that was less than 15 minutes drive away from home though.
We heavily used food pantries though, literally every single week. No air conditioning, bunny ears on our simple tv, school bus rides to school. We even went a couple years without hot water when our hot water heater broke down just boiling water on the stove.
Everyone's experience is different though. Though I was in one of the poorest families in my hometown. None of my aunts, uncles or parents own their own home today and they're 50s and 60s now. The sacrifices of growing up in a wealthy middle class town will enable me to buy a house. Going to see an open house in 35 minutes!
The rich want you hate the middle class. Focus on the rich and seek unity.
Na fuck that, it's always middle class this and middle class that and the fact is the middle class couldn't give a fuck about the cashier at Costco living paycheck to paycheck with no Healthcare or enjoyment in their life.
I have solidarity with every worker but as soon as the middle class gets theirs they will abandon us.
We are all working class.
Everyone in America is middle class. You can be lower middle class or upper middle class, but you're never not middle class.
Middle class does all the work? LOL They are mostly fucking leeches making useless shit and legitimising the upper class. Also they are a minority.
The irony of the last quote. Keep fighting while the billionaires take everything.
All the tradesmen in here to bootfuck this guy with our steel toes
The problem here is that everyone has a different definition of "middle class".
I think you're using the definition of "middle management", and Carlin was using the definition of "working class". The lower class would be the poor who have less than full time employment (inconsistent or on welfare, etc), and "the rich" would be people who don't actually have to work for a living.
In 2025, advancements in medical technology have perfected bio-mechanical organs.
A corporation known as The Union sells these expensive "artiforgs" on credit, and when customers are unable or unwilling to pay for their artiforgs The Union sends "repo men" to locate and forcibly repossess the organ - invariably resulting in the death of the owner.
I thought you were talking about the better, original version "Repo! The Genetic Opera" at first
Zydrate!
Is that the stuff that comes in a little glass vial?
"In Time" starring Justine Timberlake has a theme that is close.
I'd argue we're already there. Once you hit zero it’s not like you zip out of existence. When everyone is poor and has no money, the rich get to hire you and pay you enough to buy their products and keep them comfortable. You'll never make enough to get out of poverty because it's designed to keep you there.
Poverty isn't just about not having money, it's about never making enough to get out of poverty. When you're always living paycheck to paycheck, payday loan to payday loan - you're screwed. The system will never let you out. You're too profitable in that state to let out.
Think of the boot theory. If I only give you 10 bucks a year, you have to buy the 2 dollar boots every year that last only a year. The moment you made 11 dollars, you could buy the 5 dollar boot that lasts you a decade. The system incentivizes company's to sell 2 dollar boots cause it makes them more money in the long run, and if the entire world agrees to never pay you more than 10 dollars a year, every company can make that much more money. That's why your market value is not your fair pay.
The real reason poverty exists is because rich people need a slave class without being directly liable for owning them.
Nothing they will just sell their goods to those who can afford them. If individuals can’t afford an appliance, they will sell them to a landlord, a laundromat, a restaurant, another corporation, or rent them directly.
once poor people have no more money to use.
Unless you are referring to chattel slavery, or some barter system where people pay directly with goods or services, this is an impossibility. The poor will always be able to earn some meager amount of money (even if it’s company scrip), they just won’t be able to earn enough to escape poverty and debt. That’s what makes money valuable, that it can be exchanged for goods or labor.
They’ll loan money to the poor people and once that reaches its conclusion they’ll import more poor people.
Well the young people in China have taken to "lying flat".
Finally, words for it. Thanks
Other companies like Klarna will pay and you'll pay them back over however many months. My nan used to call that type of agreement 'putting it on the never never'
The rich capitalists haven't made money the traditional way for about a generation now. The majority of wealth is made on the real estate and stock market which is based off of speculation and expectations of perceived value that have little to do with actual value.
So they'll just keep making money off their own money.
A little secret, if you want to see how this works, look into how to make LEAP Options calls on the SPY ETF. Basically you can leverage some money by buying an Options Call on a safe bet like betting on the top 500 US companies via an Exchange Traded Fund. A LEAP just means that bet is LONG term,over the course of years. Unlike Stocks, Options require you to either cash out (exercise) your Options after a certain amount of time (weeks to years) with the option to "roll over" your option call by putting down money for more time if it didn't do well in that allotted time, essentially doubling down on your bet should your bet not turn as much of a profit as you wanted.
This bet can be risky, but if you place your bet on say , the S&P 500, you bet on the top 500 companies. And you're basically betting on them doing well over a certain time period (say the next 3 years). The key to this is that Options call allows you to acquire say 60% more stock than you could technically afford, but you can only hold it for 3 years. If those 500 companies do well over the next 3 years (highly likely, pensions, retirement accounts, 401Ks, IRAs all rely on the S&P or some variation thereof), you get the returns of those stocks, and you got to leverage 60% more stocks than you could technically afford all because you were willing to make that bet within a certain time limit.
Worst case scenario is the US goes into a recession that lasts those 3 years and you either lose your entire investment or you invest some more money (but not as much as the initial bet usually) to extend your Option call out for another period of time.
It's one of the many ways even the moderately wealthy can earn a hefty profit over legalized gambling. The strategy I've just described to you is considered one of the safer bets amongst stock bros I've talked with, and it's a real life Free Money Glitch that works as long as US economy line goes up.
Now imagine the insanity that goes on in actual Wall Street with actual dynamically changing algorithms and people who have devoted their lives to making more money out of existing money, and you start to realize that these rich fucks at the top can basically say fuck all to investing in companies that create actual value, they just need lower level investors to believe that paradigm still exists.
They don't rely on your pennies to stay wealthy, they've created the ultimate dream of capitalism, where money infinitely generates more money regardless of what's happening in reality.
Every trade has two sides. Someone has to sell you the options contract. No one is out there selling "free money" contracts. Why wouldn't they just give you the money and skip the song and dance?
To everyone else: please don't trade options if you don't understand them, there is no quicker way to drain your savings.
I agree. I'm not saying its not without it's risks, Options on individual stocks are pretty risky, but a call Option that follows the S&P500 over the course of 3 years? That's a pretty safe bet. It takes a multi year US recession to lose that bet, and while certainly not impossible (we've obviously had a few of them over the past couple decades), but it's the safest bet I've seen on Options.
And yeah, there's somebody on the other side of the bet, in this case usually a Brokerage Firm or other large Financial Institution, as they're the only ones I can think of that would consistently bet against the S&P. This part I'll admit does elude me somewhat, but generally there's always somebody who believes a US recession is coming, and occasionally they're right, just not as often as the person willing to believe US line go up. The amount of pensions, IRAs, and 401ks that rely on the S&P is massive, and because of that I think there's a strong incentive amongst the Fed and Wall Street to make sure that line generally always goes up.
I'm not advising people to buy Options, btw, I'm using this scenario as an illustration to point out how making money on the US stock market is usually based off of mass speculation rather than any actual value made by people actually producing goods and services on the ground floor.
You are encouraging random internet people to do this.
Most of them don’t have enough sense to pull off gambling on a scale like you are talking about, my self included
Ok so put it on black?
Hey man, the Internet has information, if you're not able to use it, that's not the information's fault
Don't be put off by my jargon and in depth explanation. It is actually STUPID simple to do this. Do a SMALL bit of research and then use a Stock Market simulator to simulate a small purchase Call Option on the S&P 500 for 2 or 3 years. Then leave it. Don't look at it don't think about it forget about it.
Come back in 2 to 3 years and look at your simulated account. If the US did not go into a recession in the last 2 to 3 years you will have at least doubled your simulated money. After that do it for real.
Or you could be like me and walk away in disgust. It just made me very jaded about US economics and modern capitalism.
I just invest in liquidity mutual funds and already made 30 dollars in a month. Way more than what my bank gave me as interests 😅
What i dont understand: These gains are calculated into the option premium, so how is this still attractive?
Basically betting the line goes up faster (or earlier) than the seller predicted?
Yeah that’s basically how leaps work. In this Calls example, you aren’t really betting that on expiry the stock will be near or slightly above the target price. You’re betting that sometime in the next 3 years, the price will be above the option price, or at least ahead of the expected rate of growth. Then you cash out on the additional extrinsic value at that point in time by selling the option.
This is a better explanation than I gave, thanks.
eyup. price to earnings ratio has not been normal since before 2000 and we all know how housing has been. The wealth disparity is so high now that whats left of the middle class and lower make little to no difference relative to the larger money pool. all gains at this point are people putting money in because its the only place to put the money.
Use us as cheap labor to produce products intended to be sold overseas, just like China has been doing for the past 40 years or so.
Do you really think the people that made your iPhone will ever be able to afford an iPhone?
You're thinking about it like it's some abstract future event. It's not. It's a very real thing, not limited to the future. There are people who are broke right now, and people have been going broke for a very long time.
There isn't a point in time where everyone goes broke. People go broke at a rate. If you wait until everyone is broke you'll be waiting forever.
The thing that's wrong with the current financial reality is that the rate at which people go broke has increased. This means more homeless people on the streets than there were, say, 25 years ago.
It's like Monopoly, they just keep going until there's only one player left and nobody is on speaking terms.
In The Outer Worlds video game it's the reality - there's a few megacorporations and people are basically their property.
We work to earn the right to work
Why would they need us except as consumers? At a certain point automation and AI actually do get far enough.
That may take longer than people think.
They will go bankrupt, but the shareholders will already have cashed out and moved to the companies of the next country.
Some suspect that production will start to shift to worker owned enterprises and user owned services. These don't work for profit like capitalistic enterprises and can provide cheaper goods and services, something desperately needed when money is tight.
Another trend is distributed production. Capitalism works with the central production and distribution. However solar and wind often generate local and go against that model. Likely more forms of local production and distribution of food and goods are going to happen.
If it happens gradually, then some will go out of business while others will modify the ordering to appeal to those with money. If it happens suddenly that people don’t have money to spend, then governments will try to bail them out with public money, thus accelerating the public’s descent into poverty and then some will go out of business while others will modify the offering, etc.
But the thing is, people who have the financial power or political influence to prevent common people from going into poverty don’t stand to loose from this collapse. People with power and money increase their power and money both when thighs go well and when they go bad. Unfortunately more so when they go bad.
Unless, of course, the French Revolution happens.
Unless, of course, the French Revolution happens.
Unfortunately I think the only sort of revolution any country in the "West" is likely to see in the near future is a fascist one. Things haven't been going too great for the past N+1 years, so morons are flocking to the extreme right in droves because they promise easy solutions to complex problems – namely murderizing the fuck out of anyone who's not like them
Well, the French Revolution wasn’t really that goes for the people of the time either. It was an extreme event which punished innocents too. The eventual changes in society were the beneficial ones. The same is true about WW2 I guess.
Yeah that's true, their revolution did fail in many ways and basically just turned into more of the same for a long time
The first 0.1%er to die wont be the beginning of their downfall. It will be the beginning of corporate extraterritorial privilege. Corporate armed bodyguards will be afforded the same qualified immunity as police. Why would the government allow this? Because who would be next on the chopping block after the billionaires? Them so a politician walking down the street wouldnt have to fear being egged or assaulted because if you shove your hand into your pocket near them the worst that can happen is they have to pay a wrongful death settlement when their bodyguard shoots you and the bootlickers will endorse it because "everyone should have the right to protect themselves" and the masses wont kick and scream because they never do.
I know your thinking thats not how a revolution works, 2 guys with guns isnt that scary we have numbers! Tomorrow its 4 guys with sub machine guns and the week after it looks like a PMC convoy in Falujah. Yeah you might get them, but who is volunteering to be in the front row trying to charge down a mounted belt fed machine gun on an SUV?
How many people do you know who cant tell the difference between the "upper middle class" and the uber-rich? People who wouldnt be able to differenciate between killing someone for driving an Audi vs the CEO of the Volkswagen-Audi group? It would descend very fast into checkpoints into certain neighbourhoods and gated communities with heavily armed guards.
I genuinely believe things can only get worse.:)
More exploitation probably.
Oh, i see you have stumped onto one of the main inconsistencies of capitalism
The whole model they operate on is unsustainable. Either Blackrock and vanguard keep them afloat. Or they'll take on personal loans, issue out corporate debt. Or find ways to downscale, either job losses shrinkflation. Or raise prices. These are all desperate measures and are signs of an unsustainable company.
Losing the middle class (if that's their target market) is a company's biggest downfall.
And I feel that the little people will start to lose hope cause it feels like it doesn't matter... But it's similar to someone on credit card debt. You can only do it so long before it starts to catch up.
something really funny
Trickle down shitononics will be taught to get your daily bread and water rations
I've seen a sudden upsurge of promoted videos in the last week or two championing trickle-down economics in my youtube suggested video feed. I thought it was odd. They don't use the term trickle-down economics, but they promote the rich as job creators and use all the Reagan talking points. Based on the comments, lots of people are eating it up as amazing insight.
And this is why they are billionaires and we are not :)
I imagine they'd go under if they rely on the general public as their customer base. Companies that cater to the wealthy would probably grow. Companies are created and go bankrupt all the time, individuals in the owner class will win or lose but that won't affect the broad distribution of power. If it gets really bad feudalism might come back.
Companies catering to the wealthy is already happening. The richest man in the world, Bernard Arnault, sells luxury goods. It used to be that selling products to the most amount of people was better, Ford, oil barrons, even Wal-Mart. Now money is made selling products to the wealthy. The growth in inequality of the last 50 years shows up in many ways today. Housing sizes are larger because builders need to sell to the wealthy instead of to the masses where margins on modest sized homes are smaller or non-existent.
I'm reading the answers, and it seems like no one understood the question. 😔
I want to hear from someone who actually finished a game of monopoly
We'll circle back to feudalism
We never left it. Capitalism is just thinly veiled feudalism.
I'm a fancy digital serf now, yay
Make shittier products under shittier conditions to keep slaves barely-alive. Use slaves. Reap shiny.
Currency will still be used. Unless everyone starts to absolutely own nothing, there will be bartering with something other than a fancy note with a promise of value from your local government. For example, food has been a staple currency for as long as agriculture has been a thing.
Based on what I'm seeing in the small business community around me...
Small businesses see less foot traffic, take out loans to survive, realize things aren't picking back up due to a drop in general spending, a drop that businesses like this can't weather but mega corps can
Small businesses close, go bankrupt, etc.
Eventually only mega corps left, it'll become the only option to do or buy anything, and we're all fucked
edit: At some point I hope we all realize we could stop fighting each other, have power in numbers, and eat the rich.
the poor people will have given all of their money to the companies.
And then rich people will simply have all of the money.
But then what
History repeating itself..
we have no money, we fucking die.
This happens to varying levels during most economic crises. Basically it results in contraction of the economy as companies cut expenses, I.e. wages. Usually there is some consolidation so that fewer, stronger firms can survive the downturn.
Then things get better.
They might be able to produce things with automation and AI and only sustain a small lower class to maintain those machines.
Maybe it drives unity?
They might go on fire a bit.
Once the poor people have no money for bread they will feast on richflesh.
The working class are a necessity until full automation is possible, at which point we will be genocided with kill bots. (except for the hottest of us who will remain sex slaves.)
There are a infinite amount of reindeer games the 1% can use to keep us floating precariously on the edge until said time... including UBI. The rules are made up, and fiat currency doesn't matter.
They will give the poor credit, buy now pay later, till there is nothing left to squeeze out of them/us.
I think this is the answer. They also need to advertise correctly so people feel the need to finance a $70.000 truck instead of buying a small used car for $4.000. Of course with interest and their credit score people will end up paying like double the price anyways.
Another option is to offer crappy versions of the same thing that are more affordable but break earlier. That way you also pay more over the years.
Vimes' theory of boots!
Ah, thanks! I knew there was a name for it but couldn't remember.
So many useless pavement pricess pickup trucks.
That's what they've been doing already. It already caused the 2008 financial crash with mortgages. The answer then was to throw around QE money to corporations like a socialist dressed up as Santa Claus and reduce interest rate to 0%.
Apple devices led to Apple Pay, Apple Pay led to the Apple Card, the Apple Card led to Apple Pay Later (installments). Now there are rumors that Apple will offer loans to cardholders.
Google pay now, when?
Yeah but what happens when there's nothing left though
You'll owe your soul to the company store
If there are suddenly far fewer getting a paycheck there is still voting. I wonder what droves of the unemployed will vote for?
It’s irrelevant when neither parties do anything meaningful for the working class.
What if you artificially limited the options at the voting booth using a first past the post electoral system?
Same thing they vote for now - whichever candidate's lies sound better.
Who do you vote for when you don't want any of them
You can see this in Argentina. You can buy pretty much everything in installments. Trips, clothing, electronics, groceries - pay in 3, 6, 12 installments.
Like I can with Klarna, Affirm, Zip, any number of credit cards, etc.
I suspect they will graciously provide the necessities in return for your labour and any remaining rights you have.
Take a look at how company stores and scrip worked. As the song goes: Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go/Sold my soul to the company store.
The lyric is "I owe my soul to the company store". Sold requires a conscious choice, willingly entering into the agreement. Under a company script system children are forced into labor as early as possible to help pay the family debt. In less than a generation teenagers are given the "choice" to go to work or see their families already meager income reduced to cover "their portion" of the family debt.
I stand corrected.
The early 80s will happen again until the late 90s come back, So Reagan then Clinton. Crime will go up, Graffiti, homeless etc The rent is skyrocketing like when Reagan took over. The economy works when the middle class does well and we can't keep funneling the money higher up. When the middle class can afford a home and cooperations stop buying them up to lease that might help.
The upper class: keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class: pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there...just to scare the shit out of the middle class." -George Carlin'
That's the way the ruling class operates in any society: they try to divide the rest of the people; they keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the fucking money. Fairly simple thing... happens to work..." -George Carlin
Yo fuck the middle class, everyone should be thriving if their working. I'm tired of all this middle class shit.. what about all the people living in poverty?
People who work full-time jobs used to be middle class. Living wages, affordable housing, yearly vacations, etc. Now, working people are still in poverty.
When?
Do you call camping in a campground a "family vacation" ? because that's as far as my family had growing up in a pensioned job. We never could afford air travel, fancy new TVs, new cars... our house was very basic, we always drove beaters, we spent years without one thing or another to make it work.
This isn't the current generation, or the last one, this was even earlier.
Just trying to understand when this idea that anybody in any job could have the white picket fence and world class quality of life was somehow a reality. I don't think that's ever been the case for the poorest full time workers or even the bottom 50%.
I would...
Sure, we never had the latest and greatest, fixed stuff ourselves and such, but we lived in a home that my parents owned and never really wanted for anything. That, to me, feels like a middle-class upbringing, and is what I'd like to be able to provide my own kids when I have them. However, right now the prospect of owning my own home seems increasingly far-fetched.
Campgrounds are everywhere and one in under a 2 hour drive is very doable throughout your whole life for a family vacation. You won't lose access to that.
Housing costs will swing back. We're around the point where we were in the last housing market crash. Prices are at the edge of affordability for the middle class. Mortgages are higher than what can be rented. One market course correction and a ton of people lose their houses and the market collapses again.
They're doing everything they can to try and stop the collapse but homes are still increasing in price way more quickly than wages. Just a matter of time.
Lol growing up there was no fun gas only work gas.
weird, my single mom driving beaters could afford short driving trips (2 hours is short to me.) We did mostly go to a campground that was less than 15 minutes drive away from home though.
We heavily used food pantries though, literally every single week. No air conditioning, bunny ears on our simple tv, school bus rides to school. We even went a couple years without hot water when our hot water heater broke down just boiling water on the stove.
Everyone's experience is different though. Though I was in one of the poorest families in my hometown. None of my aunts, uncles or parents own their own home today and they're 50s and 60s now. The sacrifices of growing up in a wealthy middle class town will enable me to buy a house. Going to see an open house in 35 minutes!
The rich want you hate the middle class. Focus on the rich and seek unity.
Na fuck that, it's always middle class this and middle class that and the fact is the middle class couldn't give a fuck about the cashier at Costco living paycheck to paycheck with no Healthcare or enjoyment in their life.
I have solidarity with every worker but as soon as the middle class gets theirs they will abandon us.
We are all working class.
Everyone in America is middle class. You can be lower middle class or upper middle class, but you're never not middle class.
Middle class does all the work? LOL They are mostly fucking leeches making useless shit and legitimising the upper class. Also they are a minority.
The irony of the last quote. Keep fighting while the billionaires take everything.
All the tradesmen in here to bootfuck this guy with our steel toes
The problem here is that everyone has a different definition of "middle class".
I think you're using the definition of "middle management", and Carlin was using the definition of "working class". The lower class would be the poor who have less than full time employment (inconsistent or on welfare, etc), and "the rich" would be people who don't actually have to work for a living.
The terms are inconsistent.
They will ask central banks to print money so poor people can take loans.
Wait a second....
The first thing that came to mind upon reading the title is the movie Repo Men from 2010.
Plot from the Wikipedia:
In 2025, advancements in medical technology have perfected bio-mechanical organs.
A corporation known as The Union sells these expensive "artiforgs" on credit, and when customers are unable or unwilling to pay for their artiforgs The Union sends "repo men" to locate and forcibly repossess the organ - invariably resulting in the death of the owner.
I thought you were talking about the better, original version "Repo! The Genetic Opera" at first
Zydrate!
Is that the stuff that comes in a little glass vial?
"In Time" starring Justine Timberlake has a theme that is close.
I'd argue we're already there. Once you hit zero it’s not like you zip out of existence. When everyone is poor and has no money, the rich get to hire you and pay you enough to buy their products and keep them comfortable. You'll never make enough to get out of poverty because it's designed to keep you there.
Poverty isn't just about not having money, it's about never making enough to get out of poverty. When you're always living paycheck to paycheck, payday loan to payday loan - you're screwed. The system will never let you out. You're too profitable in that state to let out.
Think of the boot theory. If I only give you 10 bucks a year, you have to buy the 2 dollar boots every year that last only a year. The moment you made 11 dollars, you could buy the 5 dollar boot that lasts you a decade. The system incentivizes company's to sell 2 dollar boots cause it makes them more money in the long run, and if the entire world agrees to never pay you more than 10 dollars a year, every company can make that much more money. That's why your market value is not your fair pay.
The real reason poverty exists is because rich people need a slave class without being directly liable for owning them.
Nothing they will just sell their goods to those who can afford them. If individuals can’t afford an appliance, they will sell them to a landlord, a laundromat, a restaurant, another corporation, or rent them directly.
Unless you are referring to chattel slavery, or some barter system where people pay directly with goods or services, this is an impossibility. The poor will always be able to earn some meager amount of money (even if it’s company scrip), they just won’t be able to earn enough to escape poverty and debt. That’s what makes money valuable, that it can be exchanged for goods or labor.
They’ll loan money to the poor people and once that reaches its conclusion they’ll import more poor people.
Well the young people in China have taken to "lying flat".
Finally, words for it. Thanks
Other companies like Klarna will pay and you'll pay them back over however many months. My nan used to call that type of agreement 'putting it on the never never'
The rich capitalists haven't made money the traditional way for about a generation now. The majority of wealth is made on the real estate and stock market which is based off of speculation and expectations of perceived value that have little to do with actual value.
So they'll just keep making money off their own money.
A little secret, if you want to see how this works, look into how to make LEAP Options calls on the SPY ETF. Basically you can leverage some money by buying an Options Call on a safe bet like betting on the top 500 US companies via an Exchange Traded Fund. A LEAP just means that bet is LONG term,over the course of years. Unlike Stocks, Options require you to either cash out (exercise) your Options after a certain amount of time (weeks to years) with the option to "roll over" your option call by putting down money for more time if it didn't do well in that allotted time, essentially doubling down on your bet should your bet not turn as much of a profit as you wanted.
This bet can be risky, but if you place your bet on say , the S&P 500, you bet on the top 500 companies. And you're basically betting on them doing well over a certain time period (say the next 3 years). The key to this is that Options call allows you to acquire say 60% more stock than you could technically afford, but you can only hold it for 3 years. If those 500 companies do well over the next 3 years (highly likely, pensions, retirement accounts, 401Ks, IRAs all rely on the S&P or some variation thereof), you get the returns of those stocks, and you got to leverage 60% more stocks than you could technically afford all because you were willing to make that bet within a certain time limit.
Worst case scenario is the US goes into a recession that lasts those 3 years and you either lose your entire investment or you invest some more money (but not as much as the initial bet usually) to extend your Option call out for another period of time.
It's one of the many ways even the moderately wealthy can earn a hefty profit over legalized gambling. The strategy I've just described to you is considered one of the safer bets amongst stock bros I've talked with, and it's a real life Free Money Glitch that works as long as US economy line goes up.
Now imagine the insanity that goes on in actual Wall Street with actual dynamically changing algorithms and people who have devoted their lives to making more money out of existing money, and you start to realize that these rich fucks at the top can basically say fuck all to investing in companies that create actual value, they just need lower level investors to believe that paradigm still exists.
They don't rely on your pennies to stay wealthy, they've created the ultimate dream of capitalism, where money infinitely generates more money regardless of what's happening in reality.
Every trade has two sides. Someone has to sell you the options contract. No one is out there selling "free money" contracts. Why wouldn't they just give you the money and skip the song and dance?
To everyone else: please don't trade options if you don't understand them, there is no quicker way to drain your savings.
I agree. I'm not saying its not without it's risks, Options on individual stocks are pretty risky, but a call Option that follows the S&P500 over the course of 3 years? That's a pretty safe bet. It takes a multi year US recession to lose that bet, and while certainly not impossible (we've obviously had a few of them over the past couple decades), but it's the safest bet I've seen on Options.
And yeah, there's somebody on the other side of the bet, in this case usually a Brokerage Firm or other large Financial Institution, as they're the only ones I can think of that would consistently bet against the S&P. This part I'll admit does elude me somewhat, but generally there's always somebody who believes a US recession is coming, and occasionally they're right, just not as often as the person willing to believe US line go up. The amount of pensions, IRAs, and 401ks that rely on the S&P is massive, and because of that I think there's a strong incentive amongst the Fed and Wall Street to make sure that line generally always goes up.
I'm not advising people to buy Options, btw, I'm using this scenario as an illustration to point out how making money on the US stock market is usually based off of mass speculation rather than any actual value made by people actually producing goods and services on the ground floor.
You are encouraging random internet people to do this.
Most of them don’t have enough sense to pull off gambling on a scale like you are talking about, my self included
Ok so put it on black?
Hey man, the Internet has information, if you're not able to use it, that's not the information's fault
Don't be put off by my jargon and in depth explanation. It is actually STUPID simple to do this. Do a SMALL bit of research and then use a Stock Market simulator to simulate a small purchase Call Option on the S&P 500 for 2 or 3 years. Then leave it. Don't look at it don't think about it forget about it.
Come back in 2 to 3 years and look at your simulated account. If the US did not go into a recession in the last 2 to 3 years you will have at least doubled your simulated money. After that do it for real.
Or you could be like me and walk away in disgust. It just made me very jaded about US economics and modern capitalism.
I just invest in liquidity mutual funds and already made 30 dollars in a month. Way more than what my bank gave me as interests 😅
What i dont understand: These gains are calculated into the option premium, so how is this still attractive?
Basically betting the line goes up faster (or earlier) than the seller predicted?
Yeah that’s basically how leaps work. In this Calls example, you aren’t really betting that on expiry the stock will be near or slightly above the target price. You’re betting that sometime in the next 3 years, the price will be above the option price, or at least ahead of the expected rate of growth. Then you cash out on the additional extrinsic value at that point in time by selling the option.
This is a better explanation than I gave, thanks.
eyup. price to earnings ratio has not been normal since before 2000 and we all know how housing has been. The wealth disparity is so high now that whats left of the middle class and lower make little to no difference relative to the larger money pool. all gains at this point are people putting money in because its the only place to put the money.
Use us as cheap labor to produce products intended to be sold overseas, just like China has been doing for the past 40 years or so.
Do you really think the people that made your iPhone will ever be able to afford an iPhone?
You're thinking about it like it's some abstract future event. It's not. It's a very real thing, not limited to the future. There are people who are broke right now, and people have been going broke for a very long time.
There isn't a point in time where everyone goes broke. People go broke at a rate. If you wait until everyone is broke you'll be waiting forever.
The thing that's wrong with the current financial reality is that the rate at which people go broke has increased. This means more homeless people on the streets than there were, say, 25 years ago.
It's like Monopoly, they just keep going until there's only one player left and nobody is on speaking terms.
In The Outer Worlds video game it's the reality - there's a few megacorporations and people are basically their property.
We work to earn the right to work
Why would they need us except as consumers? At a certain point automation and AI actually do get far enough.
That may take longer than people think.
They will go bankrupt, but the shareholders will already have cashed out and moved to the companies of the next country.
Some suspect that production will start to shift to worker owned enterprises and user owned services. These don't work for profit like capitalistic enterprises and can provide cheaper goods and services, something desperately needed when money is tight.
Another trend is distributed production. Capitalism works with the central production and distribution. However solar and wind often generate local and go against that model. Likely more forms of local production and distribution of food and goods are going to happen.
If it happens gradually, then some will go out of business while others will modify the ordering to appeal to those with money. If it happens suddenly that people don’t have money to spend, then governments will try to bail them out with public money, thus accelerating the public’s descent into poverty and then some will go out of business while others will modify the offering, etc.
But the thing is, people who have the financial power or political influence to prevent common people from going into poverty don’t stand to loose from this collapse. People with power and money increase their power and money both when thighs go well and when they go bad. Unfortunately more so when they go bad.
Unless, of course, the French Revolution happens.
Unfortunately I think the only sort of revolution any country in the "West" is likely to see in the near future is a fascist one. Things haven't been going too great for the past N+1 years, so morons are flocking to the extreme right in droves because they promise easy solutions to complex problems – namely murderizing the fuck out of anyone who's not like them
Well, the French Revolution wasn’t really that goes for the people of the time either. It was an extreme event which punished innocents too. The eventual changes in society were the beneficial ones. The same is true about WW2 I guess.
Yeah that's true, their revolution did fail in many ways and basically just turned into more of the same for a long time
The first 0.1%er to die wont be the beginning of their downfall. It will be the beginning of corporate extraterritorial privilege. Corporate armed bodyguards will be afforded the same qualified immunity as police. Why would the government allow this? Because who would be next on the chopping block after the billionaires? Them so a politician walking down the street wouldnt have to fear being egged or assaulted because if you shove your hand into your pocket near them the worst that can happen is they have to pay a wrongful death settlement when their bodyguard shoots you and the bootlickers will endorse it because "everyone should have the right to protect themselves" and the masses wont kick and scream because they never do.
I know your thinking thats not how a revolution works, 2 guys with guns isnt that scary we have numbers! Tomorrow its 4 guys with sub machine guns and the week after it looks like a PMC convoy in Falujah. Yeah you might get them, but who is volunteering to be in the front row trying to charge down a mounted belt fed machine gun on an SUV?
How many people do you know who cant tell the difference between the "upper middle class" and the uber-rich? People who wouldnt be able to differenciate between killing someone for driving an Audi vs the CEO of the Volkswagen-Audi group? It would descend very fast into checkpoints into certain neighbourhoods and gated communities with heavily armed guards.
I genuinely believe things can only get worse.:)
More exploitation probably.
Oh, i see you have stumped onto one of the main inconsistencies of capitalism
The whole model they operate on is unsustainable. Either Blackrock and vanguard keep them afloat. Or they'll take on personal loans, issue out corporate debt. Or find ways to downscale, either job losses shrinkflation. Or raise prices. These are all desperate measures and are signs of an unsustainable company.
Losing the middle class (if that's their target market) is a company's biggest downfall.
And I feel that the little people will start to lose hope cause it feels like it doesn't matter... But it's similar to someone on credit card debt. You can only do it so long before it starts to catch up.
something really funny
Trickle down shitononics will be taught to get your daily bread and water rations
I've seen a sudden upsurge of promoted videos in the last week or two championing trickle-down economics in my youtube suggested video feed. I thought it was odd. They don't use the term trickle-down economics, but they promote the rich as job creators and use all the Reagan talking points. Based on the comments, lots of people are eating it up as amazing insight.
And this is why they are billionaires and we are not :)
I imagine they'd go under if they rely on the general public as their customer base. Companies that cater to the wealthy would probably grow. Companies are created and go bankrupt all the time, individuals in the owner class will win or lose but that won't affect the broad distribution of power. If it gets really bad feudalism might come back.
Companies catering to the wealthy is already happening. The richest man in the world, Bernard Arnault, sells luxury goods. It used to be that selling products to the most amount of people was better, Ford, oil barrons, even Wal-Mart. Now money is made selling products to the wealthy. The growth in inequality of the last 50 years shows up in many ways today. Housing sizes are larger because builders need to sell to the wealthy instead of to the masses where margins on modest sized homes are smaller or non-existent.
I'm reading the answers, and it seems like no one understood the question. 😔
I want to hear from someone who actually finished a game of monopoly
We'll circle back to feudalism
We never left it. Capitalism is just thinly veiled feudalism.
I'm a fancy digital serf now, yay
Make shittier products under shittier conditions to keep slaves barely-alive. Use slaves. Reap shiny.
Currency will still be used. Unless everyone starts to absolutely own nothing, there will be bartering with something other than a fancy note with a promise of value from your local government. For example, food has been a staple currency for as long as agriculture has been a thing.
Based on what I'm seeing in the small business community around me...
Small businesses see less foot traffic, take out loans to survive, realize things aren't picking back up due to a drop in general spending, a drop that businesses like this can't weather but mega corps can
Small businesses close, go bankrupt, etc.
Eventually only mega corps left, it'll become the only option to do or buy anything, and we're all fucked
edit: At some point I hope we all realize we could stop fighting each other, have power in numbers, and eat the rich.
the poor people will have given all of their money to the companies.
And then rich people will simply have all of the money.
But then what
History repeating itself..
we have no money, we fucking die.
This happens to varying levels during most economic crises. Basically it results in contraction of the economy as companies cut expenses, I.e. wages. Usually there is some consolidation so that fewer, stronger firms can survive the downturn.
Then things get better.
They might be able to produce things with automation and AI and only sustain a small lower class to maintain those machines.
Maybe it drives unity?
They might go on fire a bit.
Once the poor people have no money for bread they will feast on richflesh.
The working class are a necessity until full automation is possible, at which point we will be genocided with kill bots. (except for the hottest of us who will remain sex slaves.)
There are a infinite amount of reindeer games the 1% can use to keep us floating precariously on the edge until said time... including UBI. The rules are made up, and fiat currency doesn't matter.