The article implies it's a mystery, but to me the cause is pretty obvious:
Some businesses and consumers had spending patterns that were only viable due to ZIRP, COVID stimulus, and QE. The resulting inflation spike followed by QT and interest rate hikes to fight it led to the current slowdown.
It's almost as if doubling the number of dollars in existence between 2020-2022 had some negative long-term consequences...
Theory is that highly skilled people (e.g. capable of creating functioning business) are too valuable for big corporations. They are building their own wealth, instead of corporate shareholder's. Governments in the West are lobbied to crush SMEs and force small business owners into corporate slavery. Once you no longer can run your own business and run out of money, you will have no choice but accept a job at corporations for peanuts.
Also on the front page right now is something about postmodernist deconstruction, where it's asserted that decades of academics talking to academics for validation have created an inbred dialect of jargon which is incomprehensible to almost everyone and doesn't mean a whole lot (though it does have meaning). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405288
Could it not simply be that the control structures of our economy also spent too long chasing validation from each other, developing an inbred language and inbred success metrics, instead of objectively-measured value creation?
In fact globally-recognized money forces even people who recognize this is a bad system to still participate in it and chase inbred success metrics instead of actual value creation. It turns subjective metrics into actual wealth. It doesn't matter that you created a semiconductor fab in your garage - the person who convinced the right people they were about to create AGI got a lot more money - enough to buy a real semiconductor fab.
I think it's a silly conspiracy, but, even if it were, this kind of supression would not be possible to be done by the corporations themselves. They're simply too big and too incompetent because of the org overhead to orchestrate such a thing. The state being co opted on the other hand might be capable of doing this on their behalf. I could believe that. (but I don't it's just silly)
My personal theory is that one of the (key?) reasons the USA doesn’t have affordable universal healthcare is that it keeps most people tethered to Big Inc.
If you remove the incentive from Big Inc’s healthcare benefits, work at such places is far less appealing.
conspiracy ? a flawed term.. I can tell you that 50 years ago in coastal California the proportion of Big Box retail to ordinary small business was vastly different; so different that you would not tend to believe it. The top 10 massive retailers did not exist, and thousands upon thousands of "small business" were operating. Not only "radio repair" or "clothe yardage stores" either.. I mean many of the same goods and services that are now commonly purchased via massive chain corporate stores.
Secondly, the flow of cheap plastic things from China turned into a steady stream of more and more sophisticated, and low priced, goods.. replacing things that were brand names, hand made, or niche markets. Senator Dianne Feinstein and her husband Richard Blum were particularly involved in that change fyi.
Lastly for now, the newspapers and media landscape. Books, magazines and daily newspapers.. immensely and unimaginably at the time, gone.
Technology plus boomers.. "like a pig through a boa constrictor" .. what is left is this headline. It is not only in the USA.
Evidently, the requirement for democracy in the US to survive is for the people who failed to vote for the only viable alternative to Trumpism must feel the suffering they are happy to visit on others, and so recognize that voting for "my team" incompetence is a bad idea.
The suffering is only beginning. It takes an insanely long time for large systems to show effects of bad decisions. Usually the party that has wrecked the economy in every presidency for the last 50 years benefits from the lag and the party of recovery gets blamed, putting the wrecking party back in power. Perhaps this round of the wrecking party will be too effective, and blame will go where it belongs.
The article implies it's a mystery, but to me the cause is pretty obvious:
Some businesses and consumers had spending patterns that were only viable due to ZIRP, COVID stimulus, and QE. The resulting inflation spike followed by QT and interest rate hikes to fight it led to the current slowdown.
It's almost as if doubling the number of dollars in existence between 2020-2022 had some negative long-term consequences...
[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...
Theory is that highly skilled people (e.g. capable of creating functioning business) are too valuable for big corporations. They are building their own wealth, instead of corporate shareholder's. Governments in the West are lobbied to crush SMEs and force small business owners into corporate slavery. Once you no longer can run your own business and run out of money, you will have no choice but accept a job at corporations for peanuts.
Another hypothesis:
Also on the front page right now is something about postmodernist deconstruction, where it's asserted that decades of academics talking to academics for validation have created an inbred dialect of jargon which is incomprehensible to almost everyone and doesn't mean a whole lot (though it does have meaning). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405288
Could it not simply be that the control structures of our economy also spent too long chasing validation from each other, developing an inbred language and inbred success metrics, instead of objectively-measured value creation?
In fact globally-recognized money forces even people who recognize this is a bad system to still participate in it and chase inbred success metrics instead of actual value creation. It turns subjective metrics into actual wealth. It doesn't matter that you created a semiconductor fab in your garage - the person who convinced the right people they were about to create AGI got a lot more money - enough to buy a real semiconductor fab.
I think it's a silly conspiracy, but, even if it were, this kind of supression would not be possible to be done by the corporations themselves. They're simply too big and too incompetent because of the org overhead to orchestrate such a thing. The state being co opted on the other hand might be capable of doing this on their behalf. I could believe that. (but I don't it's just silly)
My personal theory is that one of the (key?) reasons the USA doesn’t have affordable universal healthcare is that it keeps most people tethered to Big Inc.
If you remove the incentive from Big Inc’s healthcare benefits, work at such places is far less appealing.
conspiracy ? a flawed term.. I can tell you that 50 years ago in coastal California the proportion of Big Box retail to ordinary small business was vastly different; so different that you would not tend to believe it. The top 10 massive retailers did not exist, and thousands upon thousands of "small business" were operating. Not only "radio repair" or "clothe yardage stores" either.. I mean many of the same goods and services that are now commonly purchased via massive chain corporate stores.
Secondly, the flow of cheap plastic things from China turned into a steady stream of more and more sophisticated, and low priced, goods.. replacing things that were brand names, hand made, or niche markets. Senator Dianne Feinstein and her husband Richard Blum were particularly involved in that change fyi.
Lastly for now, the newspapers and media landscape. Books, magazines and daily newspapers.. immensely and unimaginably at the time, gone.
Technology plus boomers.. "like a pig through a boa constrictor" .. what is left is this headline. It is not only in the USA.
I, for one, am pleased that the economic crisis Trump's 'policies' have put into motion is appearing to begin in ernest during Trump's term.
USA voters don't get a lot of immediate feedback to their votes, so this should be educational.
Yup
Evidently, the requirement for democracy in the US to survive is for the people who failed to vote for the only viable alternative to Trumpism must feel the suffering they are happy to visit on others, and so recognize that voting for "my team" incompetence is a bad idea.
The suffering is only beginning. It takes an insanely long time for large systems to show effects of bad decisions. Usually the party that has wrecked the economy in every presidency for the last 50 years benefits from the lag and the party of recovery gets blamed, putting the wrecking party back in power. Perhaps this round of the wrecking party will be too effective, and blame will go where it belongs.