No shit. All that “keeping up with inflation” and “supply chain shortages” sure are profitable, aren’t they? Bastards.
That’s because they are now openly saying “fuck you” while pissing on all of us from above. No need to be polite in the trump sponsored corporatocracy.
It’s what I’ve said for a while. Businesses and business owners have always been greedy and would always sell their own mother for $1 more profit. What’s different now, is that there is zero downside to cutting headcount, cutting costs, and enshittifying a product. All of which achieve the outcome of more money at the top.
So, this is why many of us in the private sector have seen real world pay cuts for years now, all these top companies are shedding thousands of their headcount year on year, and we’re constantly paying more, for less, with way worse terms of use.
That the government of the most powerful country in the world is also aligned with the people responsible for this is just icing on their cake. They were already at it for some time before.
I’m sure a bunch of them that have been sliding under the radar see the writing on the wall and are trying to take whatever they can before things collapse and they attempt to slither away in the chaos with their bag.
New Zealand, island compounds in hawaii, mega yachts, security details…they’re causing and building the apocalypse they fear both economically and environmentally.
Someone else has always footed the bil their whole lives so why not gamble they’ll make it through?
The outcomes are inevitable, it’s just a matter of timing and which scifi flick is running that will most closely match what happens.
Liberal economists will say this is perfectly fine. They’ll say The Market™ has decided and it’s never wrong.
Meanwhile we don’t live in free markets. We live in oligarchies — analogous to capitalist dictatorship — where your level of representation and justice is proportional to your wealth, and our “representatives” actively collude with the oligarchs to exploit, deceive, and extract wealth from the working class.
I like to call it neo-feudalism.
What did Neo do to deserve such slander?!
He was a pawn of the Architect and Oracle.
It’s kinda funny that the hero of the human species, who could read the code and “see the matrix”, was also being played like a fiddle.
Neo-liberal maybe. But just about every economist I have heard says the wealth disparity is bad.
Neoliberal economists are liberal economists. It’s literally in the name.
Yeah, I don’t know what atomicbooks is on about… Wealth disparity is the point of liberalism
It would be true. Except this only works in a genuinely free market. We’ve not had a really free market for a long time now. The people at the top are just not competing as would be required to make an open and free market work.
A genuinely free market would be even worse. We do have various protections in the US. If we had zero, companies would be dumping waste and giving everyone super-cancer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal
I had a conversation with a coworker a while ago where he was like, “Well I just wouldn’t buy the swill milk.”
I was like, "How would you know??
The utter hubris of that kind of person thinking they’re going to like spin up a whole chemistry lab to check the quality of everything they buy. The insanity of thinking that’s a good world to envision.
The people at the top are just not competing as would be required to make an open and free market work.
Which seems to be an inevitability, unless state power is used to force the people at the top to play by the rules. But don’t most liberals consider that authoritarianism? It seems to me whenever something like that is mentioned, there is much hand wringing and clutching of pearls at the thought of such big government overreach.
It is, but when people talk about a free market preventing this. They would be right when there’s genuine competition. However at some point, there’s always going to be a better upside for those at the top to collaborate, in order to share the far far more cash they can extract from everyone below them when they do.
It’s just, it’s no longer fashionable to put on a face of decency. They’re full mask off now.
Yes, the mask is fully off. So, again, won’t state power be needed to reign these people in?
Power yields only to power, so yes, that’s one option. Ultimately it’s going to come down to “Play nice or we’re going to shoot you”, and it’s a question of how many layers of politeness soften the threat.
So. Ultimately, yes. But I think their hold on politicians all over the west has not loosened yet. But governments will need to do something at some point. Not least because if AI and robotics continues to remove the number of available roles humans are required for, and the number of humans needed for the roles that do remain we’ll reach a point where not enough tax is being paid. But in any case there is a definite feeling that while those that were middle class and above were safe until now, I would argue they’re targeting everyone who isn’t in the 1% now to try to siphon more upwards so that they can become the 0.1%.
Recall that the only trickle down economics that exists is the tax system. Those with money don’t pay tax. But they do pay the employees that pay taxes. Pretty much all the taxes. There will be a critical point where there will be too many people unemployed, or just not paid enough to be covering the cost of the benefits systems, especially those over here in Europe etc. It should be no surprise why those on the right that are seeking power and are backed by those with money, are also wanting to shut things down like the social healthcare system here in the UK as an example. Eventually these will collapse if things continue how they are.
Governments will need to collect money from those people they’ve always been happy to give a free ride. Either that, or there will be a revolution. Again, no surprise the richest people are building bunkers/otherwise finding hideaways for themselves. They know the end result of their way of life.
When talking about this, I generally say we’ve not hit the bottom yet. We’ve not reached the worst this will get yet. We have some way to go and things are likely to get pretty bad.
So in summary, yes it will be needed. Don’t hold your breath for seeing anything like that kind of action any time soon. It’ll take a lot more visible depravity before they’re forced to act.
We’ve not had a really free market for a long time now.
Citation needed.
I’m not writing a wikipedia article here[1]. Just writing a comment on what is just an internet forum.
[1] https://kbin.life/m/[email protected]/t/588402/CEO-pay-soared-in-2025-20-times-faster-than-workers/comment/7663743#entry-comment-7663743 “just a comment” posted to kbin.life, part of the threadiverse.
I’m calling bullshit on any idea suggesting there was more than 30 seconds of a “really free market” at some point in any modern countries history that could qualify the “we”
Right. I mean I don’t know how far back we’d need to go to find a truly free market, possibly before we have the concept of money. I think fair is also too subjective for me to give any real definitive article for too.
Yeah, but they’ll use that money to create lots more JOBS! Rich people are just born better than we are.
Listen, I’m not saying thatall CEO’s should be guillotined. Most of them, though…
everyone one of them should be period
you can’t be a billionaire and a person who does good to the world at the same time. (that’s tooo many incomprehensible e zeros for my stupid brain)
Anyone who self-proclaims CEO status is engaged in an act of hubris that a loving God would immediately smite.
CEO should be the kind of status bestowed upon you unwillingly, like one of those Roman Consuls who had to be hunted down and dragged into the Senate to accept the office. Like, people should draw lots to not be the CEO. It should be private sector equivalent of US Vice President. Just a job where you’re required to eat shit publicly for a few years and then retire.
They are all bald, and prefer building dick rockets, than finding a cure for hairloss, saving humanity.
Finally someone figured something out. Now the people who vote people into office have to figure out how to be less stupid with their vote
Do any voted reps do anything? have they ever…and now they are pretty brazen about bought and paid for by these CEOs. Even if you found a few MPs with the fight and ethics…they are not enough to change system. Its been built to keep people down. Appealing to better nature, via the voice of a politician is not working.
It will make a difference. Hopefully before I’m dead so tick tock
Happy Mayday everyone.
The Purge: CEO
Their pay has already been rapidly accelerating for approximately half a century. It’s insane. There should either be much less poverty, or so much more free time for workers (and likely therefore so many more jobs)
