politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Sure, yeah. It's especially sucks for rich people and business owners, but no it's not just "neoliberal propaganda." It's really simple economics and logic. If your money becomes more valuable over time, it is on your benefit to save it. If it becomes less valuable over time, the opposite is true and you should spend it. And yeah, capitalism sucks, but we're all tied to the health of the economy, which doesn't mean the stock market like the media often links it to, but if businesses can't afford to hire as much staff, all of us lose.
This is true, but it's a bad thing. The economy would be better off if people had savings. We could afford to strike without going homeless. We would consume less and pollute less. Wages would be growing in proportion to the overall economy, not falling relative to the cost of living.
Us being forced to spend money on businesses is good for the businesses, but it hasn't been good for us. Businesses being able to hire more people because we're forced to invest in them is trickle-down economics.
Wages would not necessarily grow in proportion to the economy. In fact, they probably wouldn't. It's a nice idea, but it's assuming a lot. As more people are laid off, there'd be more people competing for the same jobs, allowing businesses to pay less. They'd also be in the same situation as everyone else, where spending is disincentivized. I don't know about you, but I've never know a business to pay more than they have to.
As long as inflation is low, it doesn't force you to spend money. In fact, saving is still encouraged because you can normally get higher returns than inflation. It just encourages you to not sit on money that isn't doing anything. Every dollar spent multiplies. When money changes hands a fraction of it is saved, but the rest is spent. The more that's spent and less saved the more effective dollars there are, as the federal reserve requires a fraction of every dollar saved in a bank to be stored in with the Fed where it can't be loaned out. This isn't trickle-down economics. That is a totally different thing.
If you can find where a concensus of experts say deflation actually helps workers, I might believe you. It's my understanding that they don't think so.
Wages did in fact grow in proportion to the economy before Nixon.
Are we using the same pool of neoliberal economists who brought us here?
Inflation was still positive before, during, and after Nixon. It's only been negative a handful of times for very short terms.
I'm not sure what Nixon has to do with anything.
I'm arguing that wages would increase in proportion to the economy, not that inflation would never be negative.
The Nixon Shock brought us inflation as we know it today. He lied that it would be temporary. The Keynesian rationale was adopted after the fact.
This argument is much weaker, but: most Republican economic policy sounds good at a surface level but actually hurts workers in practice. And I don't think that's by accident.
That gap growing has nothing to do with inflation as far as I'm aware. As you can see from the link I posted above, inflation has been consistently positive since 1933, yet the gap you're talking about between compensation and productivity doesn't show up until much later. Obviously it must be another factor.
Unions are how we get better compensation, not deflation. As the power of unions decreases people make less compared to the productivity they provide.
"Percentage of years positive" isn't as informative as average inflation, which has been significantly higher since the Nixon Shock.
Deunionization absolutely is a major factor around the same time, no disagreement there. We need more savings to strike effectively. We deserve to both earn and keep the full value of our labor - without being forced to invest in the exploitation of others.