It seems like the free market is set to bless us with yet another "once in a lifetime" economic crisis, and the working class will get the short end of the stick yet again. What are some tips or advice to not get hit too hard by this? I've heard having all your debt paid off helps but aside from that what are some practical things we can do that aren't just buying 3 years of canned beans and fucking off to a cabin in the woods? Any advice for what the low income and working class can do would be greatly appreciated

  • congressbaseballfan [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    What makes you think we are going to have an economic crisis? The fed literally dumped like 8 trillion into corporations. And we just let poor people die of Covid, long term untreated health issues, or freeze in tx, and they don’t matter anyway /s

    • vsaush [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Before covid we were headed into a recession (Michael Roberts has some good analysis here that came out early in the pandemic). The corporate debt market was overloaded and it looked like we'd have a similar bubble pop like 2008-2009 but with corporate debt at the heart this time. Covid kind of protected us because of unlimited federal money, but there's only so much they can really do - after all, we're marxists we know that capitalism has certain intractable contradictions. The fed and capitalist government cannot prevent recessions forever, so this is always a cogent question anyway.

      The economic damage caused by covid looks like it will be permanently scarring (no v shaped recovery or return to the previous rather anemic growth rate) as well. There's no real way out of this according to neoliberal economics, they've been doing low interest, targeted means tested programs with cuts, and quantitative easing for like 12 years now.

      • halfpipe [they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Quantitative easing went insane , 25% of all circulating USD was printed in the past twelve months just to prop up the stock market. And they can't exactly print 9+ trillion dollars worth of USD, so almost of all of that was just numbers punched into a computer.

        • FeverDream [comrade/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          25% of all circulating USD was printed in the past twelve months just to prop up the stock market.

          Wow! We have generated so much wealth this year.

          :comfy:

      • congressbaseballfan [she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Ok, then if it’s about that time, and you can afford to, save as much as you can - it’s Covid what the fuck are you going to do if your income hasn’t changed? Go to a bar? Probably not, so save your excess and try to get 3-6 months of income in a bank account (NOT in stonks lmao).

        Paying off debt, other than credit card debt, isn’t a totally worthwhile thing to do. When times are really tough, you need to pay for food and shelter, not have paid off debt in advance.

        Idk that’s my best advice. If you don’t have a job because of Covid or other reasons, then keep an eye on poverty finance on Reddit. It has helpful info.

        But, like I said, we essentially had an economic catastrophe last year, we are probably in the clear for a while as a country. That’s not to say individuals won’t struggle in some cases. Shit is pretty bad for most lower income Americans

        • adultswim_antifa [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Do you not think we're in a huge bubble? I'm constantly trying to talk myself down (almost daily) and mostly failing. Stocks look extremely expensive compared to historical norms but I can't imagine how or why that would change. I suppose no one can, otherwise the trend would reverse.

          I'm especially worried about this one because they're already doing everything they're willing to do, which of course rules out everything that might actually help people. So if it pops things either need to change or it will be more painful than normal. But if it doesn't pop, the bubble will just get bigger and the economy will get more and more irrational, right?

          Or there's no bubble and I'm just too blackpilled to see how great the economy is.

          • congressbaseballfan [she/her]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I don’t like the term bubble, because it implies it will pop. Sometimes it slowly deflated. We are probably in that scenario. Financial results from publicly traded companies have been strong and have justified higher stock prices, rather than prices coming back down to meet earnings where they are in equilibrium, so it may be a bubble but that doesn’t mean it will stop, or pop.

            I’m not trying to be an optimist here, because the stock market doesn’t not result in material improvements for 90% of Americans. As people get vaccinated we should continue to see this play out. No irrational exuberance yet, but inflation could start to become a bitch. Good for people with student debt or any non-credit card debt for that matter. But still capitalist hell world where mr Biden owes me $2000. Trump paid me $1800 Biden hasn’t done shit