The bank’s economics team pointed to the reddit thread r/Antiwork to illustrate how younger workers may be in the midst of a social movement away from work.
Redditors have scared the capital owners :lets-fucking-go:
In my view just as there’s the science of botany and optics, there’s the science of “keeping the proles oppressed and miserable so they stay just where they’re at.”
And this science has hundreds of years of development. So this message has a purpose, and it’s the purpose the rulers want, and they arrived at it after careful deliberation. And it’s part of a continuity of action that goes back a long-ass time. Not random, not spaghetti against the wall.
And this science has hundreds of years of development.
I'll spot you that there's a kind of neoliberal playbook for grinding the proles under. But there's also a Wall Street playbook for maximizing the money coming out of the spigot at any given moment. And a partisan playbook for inflaming the public around certain hot-button social issues. And a foreign policy playbook built around maximizing the control the US exerts abroad.
These playbooks aren't the same. There's... contradiction. What's more, the folks executing the plays have varying degrees of competence. I don't believe the folks currently heading up the top spots in the US system are the most competent at their jobs. Particularly, not when compared to their foreign counterparts operating off their own playbooks towards their own ends.
Afghanistan didn't turn into South Korea. Iraq didn't turn into Saudi Arabia. China didn't turn into Japan. Cuba stubbornly refuses to collapse and submit to US hegemony, even a decade after the Castros went away. COVID is doing far more damage at home than anywhere else in the world. Bitcoin is not really good for US economic hegemony. A senate full of Krysten Sinemas will not secure the fortunes of the capitalist class for another generation.
Not random, not spaghetti against the wall.
Times change and strategies need to evolve. The modern iteration of capitalism is clearly not working as well as its historical predecessors.
Although there are are competing interests within the groups that make up the ruling class, I don’t see the contradictions as negative proof of collusion, so to speak.
Wall St. has its own playbook but when shit gets bad they can get $75 billion a day from the Fed because they do so much good work turning people into feral hogs who want to eat money all day.
There may be a hierarchy and jockeying for resources and power, but the underlying goal is to continue hegemony and white supremacy. That internal coherence, to me, outweighs any cross purpose.
The modern iteration of capitalism is clearly not working as well as its historical predecessors
Americans just watched their country devastated by a plague and now the big media message is “nobody wants to work!” The world is factually, demonstrably dying and people are just going with the flow as rent goes up 40%. Maybe capitalism is not working as well as it has historically, but imo it’s doing well enough.
Although there are are competing interests within the groups that make up the ruling class, I don’t see the contradictions as negative proof of collusion, so to speak.
I see it as individual ideologues and profit-seeking actors executing independently or as a cartel in order to create a kind-of mosaic institution. But, unlike under the post-FDR/LBJ era, I don't know how much of it is ten guys in a smoke-filled room deciding the fate of the nation. In the modern era, its a thousand smoke-filled rooms, with each group trying to get a leg up on the others often to the total system's detriment.
Wall St. has its own playbook but when shit gets bad they can get $75 billion a day from the Fed because they do so much good work turning people into feral hogs who want to eat money all day.
Until you're Lehman, at which point you're hung out to dry because Alan Greenspan needs to prove an ideological point. Or you're Facebook and Donald Trump has a bone to pick over internet censorship. Or you're Solyndra, and the folks over at Exxon want to cut you off at the knees before you can turn into any kind of rival energy producer.
There may be a hierarchy and jockeying for resources and power, but the underlying goal is to continue hegemony and white supremacy. That internal coherence, to me, outweighs any cross purpose.
I think the folks operating the hegemony are entirely too sure of its own success, such that undermining one another is seen as more pressing a concern than upholding the overall hegemony. This is what brought down trade deals like TTP, created autonomous space for countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia and China, and continues to undermine efforts at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, despite the obvious threat to trillions of dollars of developed real estate. Its why Donald Trump became President instead of Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush. The 2016 Election and its consequences clearly illustrate what happens when agents of capital turn on each other with abandon.
Americans just watched their country devastated by a plague and now the big media message is “nobody wants to work!”
Big Media is increasingly fractured and incoherent. The NYT is bitching about people not wanting to work, because its echoing the interests of Wall Street. Meanwhile, right wing internet goons are tacitly encouraging pilots at Southwest to walk off the job over mask mandates, because they're echoing popular resentment at the current Presidential administration.
Time and again, conservatives have demonstrated divided loyalty on populism (particularly Evangelical Populism) versus corporate interests (particularly Big Blue State interests). That's what gave us elimination of the SALT Tax Deduction under Trump, for instance. And the closed US/Mexico border. You know that if Ron DeSantis thought he could become President by calling for a Florida-wide General Strike in 2023, he'd do it in a heartbeat.
The world is factually, demonstrably dying and people are just going with the flow as rent goes up 40%. Maybe capitalism is not working as well as it has historically, but imo it’s doing well enough.
The squeeze on cost-of-living is driving up wages far more rapidly than retailers would prefer. Efforts at unionization are seeing a renaissance. Boomers retiring en mass have drained the reserve army of labor, in no small part thanks to the huge surge in stock prices and home prices.
Capitalism is getting by. But we're a far distant cry from the Glory Days of the 1980s, when the Volcker Shock was disciplining labor and vulture capitalism was the fastest way to make money.
Without the Fed flooding the zone with money, none of this shit can continue to work. And yet the Fed flooding the zone with money is undoing all the work Capital did to constrain labor's influence over markets for the last 30 years.
In my view just as there’s the science of botany and optics, there’s the science of “keeping the proles oppressed and miserable so they stay just where they’re at.”
And this science has hundreds of years of development. So this message has a purpose, and it’s the purpose the rulers want, and they arrived at it after careful deliberation. And it’s part of a continuity of action that goes back a long-ass time. Not random, not spaghetti against the wall.
I'll spot you that there's a kind of neoliberal playbook for grinding the proles under. But there's also a Wall Street playbook for maximizing the money coming out of the spigot at any given moment. And a partisan playbook for inflaming the public around certain hot-button social issues. And a foreign policy playbook built around maximizing the control the US exerts abroad.
These playbooks aren't the same. There's... contradiction. What's more, the folks executing the plays have varying degrees of competence. I don't believe the folks currently heading up the top spots in the US system are the most competent at their jobs. Particularly, not when compared to their foreign counterparts operating off their own playbooks towards their own ends.
Afghanistan didn't turn into South Korea. Iraq didn't turn into Saudi Arabia. China didn't turn into Japan. Cuba stubbornly refuses to collapse and submit to US hegemony, even a decade after the Castros went away. COVID is doing far more damage at home than anywhere else in the world. Bitcoin is not really good for US economic hegemony. A senate full of Krysten Sinemas will not secure the fortunes of the capitalist class for another generation.
Times change and strategies need to evolve. The modern iteration of capitalism is clearly not working as well as its historical predecessors.
Although there are are competing interests within the groups that make up the ruling class, I don’t see the contradictions as negative proof of collusion, so to speak.
Wall St. has its own playbook but when shit gets bad they can get $75 billion a day from the Fed because they do so much good work turning people into feral hogs who want to eat money all day.
There may be a hierarchy and jockeying for resources and power, but the underlying goal is to continue hegemony and white supremacy. That internal coherence, to me, outweighs any cross purpose.
Americans just watched their country devastated by a plague and now the big media message is “nobody wants to work!” The world is factually, demonstrably dying and people are just going with the flow as rent goes up 40%. Maybe capitalism is not working as well as it has historically, but imo it’s doing well enough.
I see it as individual ideologues and profit-seeking actors executing independently or as a cartel in order to create a kind-of mosaic institution. But, unlike under the post-FDR/LBJ era, I don't know how much of it is ten guys in a smoke-filled room deciding the fate of the nation. In the modern era, its a thousand smoke-filled rooms, with each group trying to get a leg up on the others often to the total system's detriment.
Until you're Lehman, at which point you're hung out to dry because Alan Greenspan needs to prove an ideological point. Or you're Facebook and Donald Trump has a bone to pick over internet censorship. Or you're Solyndra, and the folks over at Exxon want to cut you off at the knees before you can turn into any kind of rival energy producer.
I think the folks operating the hegemony are entirely too sure of its own success, such that undermining one another is seen as more pressing a concern than upholding the overall hegemony. This is what brought down trade deals like TTP, created autonomous space for countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia and China, and continues to undermine efforts at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, despite the obvious threat to trillions of dollars of developed real estate. Its why Donald Trump became President instead of Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush. The 2016 Election and its consequences clearly illustrate what happens when agents of capital turn on each other with abandon.
Big Media is increasingly fractured and incoherent. The NYT is bitching about people not wanting to work, because its echoing the interests of Wall Street. Meanwhile, right wing internet goons are tacitly encouraging pilots at Southwest to walk off the job over mask mandates, because they're echoing popular resentment at the current Presidential administration.
Time and again, conservatives have demonstrated divided loyalty on populism (particularly Evangelical Populism) versus corporate interests (particularly Big Blue State interests). That's what gave us elimination of the SALT Tax Deduction under Trump, for instance. And the closed US/Mexico border. You know that if Ron DeSantis thought he could become President by calling for a Florida-wide General Strike in 2023, he'd do it in a heartbeat.
The squeeze on cost-of-living is driving up wages far more rapidly than retailers would prefer. Efforts at unionization are seeing a renaissance. Boomers retiring en mass have drained the reserve army of labor, in no small part thanks to the huge surge in stock prices and home prices.
Capitalism is getting by. But we're a far distant cry from the Glory Days of the 1980s, when the Volcker Shock was disciplining labor and vulture capitalism was the fastest way to make money.
Without the Fed flooding the zone with money, none of this shit can continue to work. And yet the Fed flooding the zone with money is undoing all the work Capital did to constrain labor's influence over markets for the last 30 years.