https://fortune.com/2024/03/18/gilded-age-layoffs-ceos-shareholders-corporate-profits-inequality/
CEOs cite the need to downsize in a rough economy, but it seems corporations are doing better than ever.
When fucking Fortune magazine is calling out late-stage capitalism, you know we're in trouble.
When you put it like that....
I mean, obviously, things are fucked. But if Forbes is calling it out, that means mainstream media is having trouble spinning it. That gives me hope
Remember, the economy isn't real, it's a game of numbers we made the fuck up. We can just stop and play a better game, if even a third, maybe a quarter or less, of people just refuse to play
Here's a crazy thing.
Watch an old movie with a super rich character and look at how poor they seem.
In 1973's 'The Mackintosh Man' the baddie is a British lord, one of the richest in England. His yacht looks like a tugboat compared to today's superyachts.
Hell, In 'Batman and Robin' billionaire Bruce Wayne has a mere three dozen cars.
In the book count of monte cristo, he gets like, a single small chest of gold and gems. And that's supposedly enough to live like kings for multiple lifetimes. Compared to the movie version where it's dozens of large chests and at one point they just give a guy an entire wagon full of gold.
I don't know anyone who was around in the 1800s who can tell us accurately how much one gold coin could buy. Also, gems vary tremendously in value. The Hope Diamond is worth $250 million. Edmund could have had a dozen stones that size in his chest.
Numbers in that book always seem a bit random, but always work as a sort of scale. This lady has an income of 40k Franks while this dude has an income of 5k shillings.
You never exactly know what's what, but you get the scale and the massive fortune the Count must have. My guess is that he was like a billionaire, with 900 million VS everyone else who was at best a 10-20 million type dude.
Fuck billionaires and all, but I think two things are wrong with this.
First, comparing hollywood to real life. They were making super yachts in the 1800s. El Mahrousa was built in 1865 and still in the top 10 in size.
But those megayachts sre super unnecessary and terrible for enviroment.
Secondly, times just generally changed. Poor people shifted a lot too. 1970s poor was a lot more poor than modern poor generally.
But we should still fix the system that fucks over thr majority.
You're completely wrong about the idea that people who were poor in the 1970s were worse off than people today.
Hunter Thompson's book, "Hell's Angels" has a chapter on the economics of being a biker/hippie/artist circa 1972. A biker could work for six months as a Union stevedore and earn enough to hit the road for two years. A part time waitress could earn enough to support herself and her musician boyfriend. A kid who graduated high school and got a minimum wage job could rent a one bedroom apartment and party and still put money in the bank.
And don't say that today's tech is much better unless you can prove that real wages dropping resulted in the creation of the internet.
stevedore
noun.
a person employed, or a contractor engaged, at a dock to load and unload cargo from ships.
(Definitions from Oxford Languages)
Edit: Reformatted for readability ease.
Add two spaces before a line break to preserve said line break after markdown formatting.
Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
noun
a person employed, or a contractor engaged, at a dock to load and unload cargo from ships.
> Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
> noun
> a person employed, or a contractor engaged, at a dock to load and unload cargo from ships.
Appreciate the advice, but I was aware of it. I was just in a hurry though, so I did a quick copy and paste and moved on. Figured the information would be conveyed well enough as is.
Fair enough.
Personally the "learn more noun" bit tripped me up for a moment, so I thought to mention after figuring it out. The information is appreciated regardless.
Yeah, I was just doing a community service after having done the lookup for myself, so I figured anyone with any reasonable mindset would forgive me for it not being formatted perfectly, considering it's still very readable.
The information is appreciated regardless.
You're welcome. It was a easy 'low-hanging fruit' way of making Lemmy a little bit better for all.
But would you consider that poor then? Maybe money was easier to obtain, but starvation/malnutrition rates have constantly been on a steady decline until the last few years. Not often you see people using a burlap sack to cloth their families, child labor, things like that. And we do have a lot of social programs like SNAP that didnt exist pre-1970s.1980s had the Homeless act. The world has changed drastically in the last 50-100 years.
But I guess you could make solid arguments that the economy is generally harder now, so its worse for the majority, incuding the poor.
Not often you see people using a burlap sack to cloth their families, child labor, things like that. And we do have a lot of social programs like SNAP that didnt exist pre-1970s
Burlap sacks and child labor were prevalent in the 1930's Depression.
Johnson's War On Poverty began in 1964
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_poverty
Homelessness became rife in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan slashed spending. He'd done the same thing as California governor and should have known what would happen when he took his act national.
So, we have been progessing over time, until recently, correct?
Now lets bring being poor as a different demographic than white male in history as well.
Because there was a black millionaire in the early 1900s, it was easier to be poor and black before/during the civil rights movement than it is in modern day?
I dont feel like we are having a coherent converation and these replies are purely reactive?
1970s poor was a lot more poor than modern poor generally.
you got any evidence of this? All I'm seeing is 800% inflation and a lot of bootlicking.
I wouldn't call it a gilded age because it's not even pretty to look at. Superyachts are fucking ugly and none of the billionaires have any sense of taste or style.
I can confirm this. My job is building captains chairs for yachts and some of the shit that rolls through here is just like... Do you have eyes?
If you dress terribly and the clothes cost 20$ you are an uncultured peasant. If you dress terribly and the clothes cost 20,000$ you are a sophisticated eccentric who redefines the boundaries of fashion.
I can double that confirmation: I build and maintain homes in one of the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S. - the great majority of the uber-wealthy have NO taste and/or had no exposure to classical art.
Why even lie at this point? Does it even matter if they would just be honest and say "we want more this year so the easiest way to make more is to cut labor."
It's not like anyone will ever do anything except say "guillotines" in a comment and then never actually do anything.
Revolution only really comes when people have nothing left to lose. The French revolution got kicked off because everyone was starving. The American revolution because the English were killing civilians in the streets and basically robbing people.
But those revolutions happened in a time when cameras and internet surveillance didn't exist. Back then if you killed a French guard or a British officer, your chances of getting caught were far lower. Nowadays there are no third places, private, in person discussion makes a minority of discussion. So the only real place left to get people to join your cause is the internet, but if you make credible plans, the government puts you on a list, swoops in, and jails you, because they surveil the internet like a hawk.
The end result being there is no real pathway towards a revolution. Nobody wants to stick their neck out when they still have shiny possessions and their loved ones arent in imminent danger. So all that's left is generic comments like "eat the rich" and "its time for guillotines".
Shit is going to have to get a whole lot worse before people start doing something.
I am glad you brought up 3rd places. My suspicion is that these places were defunded and pushed away on purpose. The owning class is ecstatic everyone turned inward into their cell phones.
Forget revolution, it becomes challenging to impossible to effectively organize without those places. A huge lobbying force used to be citizens themselves through those clubs.
The third places thing is a part of it, but there is a plethora of parts to it. Another one is the systematic brainwashing of workers to believe that unions are bad.
You can't unionize with your coworkers if they thing unions are evil.
The most organized action would be a rogue actor. Those mostly only exist on the side that's heavy into personal rights and its less evident on the side that cares about everyone's rights.
If you care about others... Then you care about others. Makes a person less likely to go rogue or violent. Been like this since what? The 60's?
It's when enough people are directly affected that they hit critical mass. Social media (like this) is a drug that tells us we're doing something when almost always... We aren't. We're commiserating, but not planning, organizing turnout, or anything else that would directly help the downtrodden.
The most organized action would be a rogue actor. Those mostly only exist on the side that’s heavy into personal rights and its less evident on the side that cares about everyone’s rights.
I agree, however individuals action is and never will be enough. There is a critical mass of the population needed.
If a pipeline gets blown up by a rogue actor, the oil industry shrugs and rebuilds 100 more miles of pipeline. If a yacht gets arsoned, the billionaire gets insurance to pay for it and/or gets another 3 yachts. And in each case the rogue actor is pretty much guaranteed to be thrown in jail.
The rich will always just carry on in the face of one off rogue actors.
If you care about others… Then you care about others. Makes a person less likely to go rogue or violent. Been like this since what? The 60’s?
If your family is starving to death, you're gonna take up that grievance with the French government, especially if all your neighbors are having the same issues. Your attachment to your children and spouse becomes a reason to revolt because loved ones are in immediate danger of starvation.
As of right now, that's not happening. People are nutritionally starved, but not enough people are starving starving to do something about it.
It’s when enough people are directly affected that they hit critical mass. Social media (like this) is a drug that tells us we’re doing something when almost always… We aren’t. We’re commiserating, but not planning, organizing turnout, or anything else that would directly help the downtrodden.
Agreed.
We can't do anything because organizing for action will get you kicked off of social media sites, including Lemmy.
If we were able to communicate openly about what needs to be done, we would be able to coordinate action. We cannot create any plans for that French word you mentioned without coordination. Lone actors would be quickly arrested and dismissed as mentally ill, and would effectively accomplish nothing.
Lemmy is developed by commies, they won't kick you off for organizing. But it is public so not the best for opsec.
That’s the beauty of lemmy, you could make your own instance, and when you do, I would be happy to talk about revolutions there.
Yeah, historically this kind of period is usually followed by a period of trickle down.
The heads start to trickle down from the higher classes to the lower ones.
It isn’t as simple as blowing up a couple of buildings anymore. Mr. Robot showed it perfectly—save the world and the world just keeps on preserving the status quo.
Maybe so, but I'm still surprised someone hasn't tried it. It's not like that's something everyone understands.
I think it's coming. The newest generation will probably be willing to take some major risks. Millennials and gen Z were raised with hope but I don't think that idea was passed down.
I think apathy, hopelessness and rage let people do violence and there's a lot of that going around now.
I've often thought that the fastest way to get real gun control in this country would be to shoot up a bunch of board rooms
I clearly don't fully understand how federation affects things... but why the heck can I see that your comment has 6 replies, but I can NOT load them?
Yeah what do you think they mean when they say make America great again? That's what they think was great the Gilded Age.