I’m clearly no economist so maybe I’m missing something obvious, but I cannot wrap my head around why so many believe that the market is just some sort of fundamental, unchangeable property of the universe that is and always will be. Why do we assume that the dollar will always be valuable?
I could be incorrect, but it seems like there is no guarantee that there will be a rebound after a crash (see: 2008). It more so just seems like parts of capital crumble and become inaccessible to people who once had access, thus causing complete inaccessibility for all who come after.
So, boom and bust seems like the greatest misnomer of all time.
Because the alternative is that capitalism is officially pronounced dead as a doornail. Like others have pointed out: we did rebound after 2008. Line kept going up.
The important thing to always keep in mind here is that the line going up and the actual economic circumstances of the average person are completely and totally disconnected at this point (assuming that they ever even were connected at all). The average person has been getting fucking hammered day in day out for the past few years while profits and "greedflation" keep going up. Living conditions for the average person can (and almost certainly will) keep getting worse year after year and as long as line goes up the economy is doing just fucking fine as far as most of the media, political, and capitalist class is concerned.
EDIT: to add further; people assume the rebound will always happen because to them its basically impossible to talk about the alternative for multiple reasons. Straight up: if the rebound doesn't happen then basically you might as well be talking about the end of the world to most of these people in a place to comment on this shit. Literally their entire livelihoods are built on the assumption that the rebound will happen. Capitalism not only assumes but requires perpetual unending growth as part of the premise. Asking them why they assume the rebound will always happen is almost like asking why you assume the sun won't explode tomorrow. Even if you had reason to suspect that it was going to explode tomorrow....its almost pointless to discuss cause what exactly would you even do about it?
Line goes up refers to fictitious capital, which has essentially no connection to the real economy. The rate of profit hasn't recovered from 2008 nevermind the 70s (90s to 00s neoliberalism gave a bit of a boost), profitability is worse than ever.
Is that what "line goes up" means though? I'm assuming it's not exactly a technical phrase but I always thought it referred more to GDP, or immediate profits for the already wealthy (in which case the line has been going up), or even just the health of specific stocks. If it's referring to the rate of profit in general, then the overall trend of the line can't go up, right? Not trying to argue, just understand. My knowledge of this stuff is rudimentary at best.
Line Goes Up is usually specific to the stock market, it's from Wall Street Bets as far as I know. It was a response to the fed unloading infinite cash with low low interest during the 2020 covid crash which was mostly dumped onto the stock market (making everything go up).
You can't usually look at only a specific country to get an idea of the mass/rate of profits because capital is global. But most large western developed economies have undergone a slump in profitability since 2008 and the same with the world as a whole (notable exception being China).