Why growth is stupid - Gary’s economics

[Chadders]

I highly recommend anyone who wants to understand how the economy actually works and how it’s leading to chronic dysfunction in society e.g. growing poverty, wealth inequality etc, to watch Gary’s economics 

Gary was a successful trader on the London stock exchange and in his time he’s been able to understand how it all works and why we are seeing this seismic shift of assets from ordinary people to the wealthiest in society. Majority of his success as a trader was down to his theory that wealth inequality will continue to get worse as more of it is directed to the riches in society

He does a great job of untangling economic concepts in straight forward terms. Really great stuff

Here’s his recent upload. All of them are worth watching. He also has a book the Trading Game

 

 

[bebotalk]

so some edgelord guy who has an "alternative" economic system that he cannot implement and will just "say" it works?

How do we ensure all have jobs or access to wealth without economic growth?

[Chadders]

@bebotalk you haven’t watched the video

[LordFall]

Yeah, he's right. We're nearing a late stage capitalism that the communists and Marx warned about. Where the working class loses all it's power to the business, banking and political class. Solution is some kind of systemic revolution, I don't see what else is gonna change it. 

Stuff like global conflict gonna make it even worse for the average person as these rich entities play capitalism while the average people can barely buy bread. 

[sholomar]

Seems like it's a combination of factors... large numbers of old baby boomers taking from social programs, still living in their homes,  low birth rates, underbuilding of real estate, allowing people to "invest" in residential real estate, foreign investment, turning homes into rentals and AirBNBs.

Housing is the real problem as far as costs go. I see lots of people spend money recklessly and they always have. A lot of items people don't have to overpay for, they choose to pay what is being asked.. that's on them. If people had impulse control and said "no" when something is being overcharged, the price would come down. If you own the latest $1200 iphone and then converse with me about how tight finances and living costs are... likewise if you have heated steering wheels on your $50K+ vehicle. You did that to yourself.

I think there's too much emphasis on supporting the top and bottom and no political party anymore represents the middle. What really hurts morale where I work are the 5% of employees who abuse paid FMLA to get months per year off, and they never get fired for it, or the work from home types who hardly have any actual work to do. The average person who actually shows up for work is busting their butt for crap wages. If they are talking about lacking productivity why don't they start with the FMLA/disability users and work from home types, and maybe cut CEO and upper management pay and give more of it back to the employees.

It may also be because much of the boomer's world was built on foreign low wage labor, and many of those nations are trying to improve their living standards, so we can't live like kings in our western nations as other nations try to modernize and strengthen their middle classes.

Edited April 23 by sholomar

[Chadders]

@sholomar Like Gary says productivity is not an issue this is just what the ‘no-ideas’ ‘nothing interesting to say’ economic establishment keep saying. Not that there is no impact on productivity. In the UK we have a much higher turnover of staff and increasing sickness rates. We can all guess why (mental health crisis, consuming shit food, lack of community and spiritual connection etc)

The key point is that the trend won’t change until there is a transfer of wealth from the super rich back into society. There needs to be a wealth tax ultimately 

Edited April 23 by Chadders

[Chadders]

@LordFall We need visionary leaders who actually have fucking bollocks to start shifting consciousness away from rampant materialism. 

It should be obvious to people that buying a third Bugatti won’t make you happy. The accumulation of wealth with the bling bling money money Louis Vuitton, Rolex and Gucci hand bags just disgusts me actually. I really do pity people that still think they can buy their way to happiness 

[tvaeli]

We need a constant progress to stay in time, in completeness of history something very high has to be achieved and we are far from it.

But really, growing smaller is also a good thing - doing with your mind and hands where you need a machine today; applying some simple idea or theory by one person where you now need a whole company or country; using less resources, workers, conceptions and thoughts to achieve the same practical thing, where we now need many.

I am a person who definitely seeks to not need all the conforts and helpful tools civilization has to offer; people, who need separate clothes and full bag of things just to go to forest seem to have "grown too big", or rather they look like children. Scouts, for example, just need a knife and then they can somehow manage in forest. Achieving the same with simpler things is where you can grow; you can do many things without helpful tools.

It's possible you figure out a simple theory doing everything what a big collective of scientists is doing, or a simple tool and method replacing a whole factory, or self-organization system, which replaces the work of one whole government. Then, those institutions, in turn, have a chance to grow into something much bigger.

But this is inevitable that in life, we somehow grow. But if it's growth in number of workers, garbage and resources wasted, it's not a good thing - here you need an opposite, positive word, where a single human gets advanced so much, that he does not need a very big system any more to achieve much; then, you have many such humans to form a big system again - you always organize all the humankind for organized effort, however big is a single person.

Edited April 25 by tvaeli