A person’s opinion of the current economic situation can really stand as a monument to their analytical and critical thinking skills.

You can’t go a full day without hearing some millionaire politician, or millionaire political pundit on almost any mainstream media organization howling about how great the economy is doing. GDP is up! Stock Market is on fire! Unemployment is low!

Yet many Americans have set their Pom Poms down, stopped cheerleading these Macroeconomic metrics, and are scratching their heads trying to figure out why, in such a great “economic boom”, their individual situation feels as dire as ever.

I’ll attempt to briefly provide some insight using the popular “fixed your headline” modality.

GDP IS UP! 

Americans are working longer and harder than ever to produce so that the absolute wealth of the nation (READ: Corporate Elite) increases as their own relative wealth decreases. Fixed your headline.

THE STOCK MARKET IS ON FIRE!

Corporations and the ultra wealthy use government tax cuts to buy back their own stock at record rates instead of investing in equipment, innovation, or higher wages. 78 percent of US workers are living paycheck to paycheck preventing them from participating in a stock market where the top 10% wealth percentile owns 84% of stocks. Fixed your headline.

UNEMPLOYMENT IS LOW!

As CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978, typical worker compensation has risen a meager 12% during that same period of time. In a masturbatory showing of greed by the economic and political elite, more Americans are forced into jobs that pay starvation wages in an attempt to keep themselves and their families alive and off the streets. When employee wages are viewed as an expense to be minimized as much as possible instead of being viewed as investing in the economic prosperity of the nation, unemployment is low and profits are sky high. Fixed your headline.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re going crazy for not understanding how the American economy can be doing so “great”, while having no tangible effect on your own personal financial situation, you’re not wrong. You just need to understand that the macroeconomic markers and indicators of economic health that the corporate media/politicians religiously espouse don’t tell the whole story. In this modern Neoliberal hellscape that many of us have opened our eyes to, one only needs to understand that it is THEIR American economy that is doing so great, not THE American economy. 

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/charts-why-us-economy-feels-bad-2019-8#but-many-americans-havent-seen-the-advantages-of-a-growing-economy-5

https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/01/11/live-paycheck-to-paycheck-government-shutdown/#3766fa54f10b 

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/sep/18/ro-khanna/what-percentage-americans-own-stocks/

One thought on “Whose Economy Is It Anyway?”

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