I find it increasingly hard to tell the difference between a mastermind playing 7D chess with the world, and someone just acting randomly and implementing all kinds of policies at a whim.
Comment on Do people really think setting up domestic manufacturing in the USA is easy?
AlexLost@lemm.ee 6 days ago
IMO there is something more at work here. I believe he is collapsing the economy on purpose and evaporating everyone’s savings, forcing them back into the labour force under any means. They want to go back to factory towns where workers have zero agency and are at the mercy of their employers. That is the end goal here, the rest of it is just the hand waving show to keep everyone distracted.
yarr@feddit.nl 6 days ago
shittydwarf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
Putin is doing the planning, Trump can’t think
MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Trump was so proud of himself for using the word “reciprocal.” He likely didn’t know what it meant earlier this week.
BassTurd@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I think you’re right that he’s collapsing on purpose, but I think it’s because it’s what’s best for Russia and it’s profitable for the wealthy long term, being able to buy back into the crashed market. But also the control thing too. Just a bunch of shitty things.
conicalscientist@lemmy.world 5 days ago
It’s the tech oligarchs. They’re doing their own gilded age. Their empires exist in the tech domain. Mostly IT services. They’re going after the whole pie. They want the entirety of American industry.
What they have in mind exactly is anyone’s guess. We’re not going back to the times of railroad or oil barons. We’re not necessarily going back steel and auto manufacturing. The future is in things like robotics, renewable energy, semiconductors, or whatever the future holds.
I think crashing the economy just to buy stock is old news too. The saying has become rather mindlessly echoed. They have relatively little to gain from this. The rich hold 90% of stocks. There’s little to extract from the remaining 10%. Plus I think people have believed too much in the idea that stocks are a shell game. It’s not as much as people think. The markets are still based on tangibles meaning actual industry. That is what the oligarchs are after. What’s better than owning stock in the industry is the industry itself.
mog77a@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Fun fact: the top 10% now account for approximately half of all consumer spending which equates to about 30-35% of US GDP. First time since we started tracking it and first time in a long long while that’s happened. Wealth inequality has indeed matched the guilded age. Maybe even surpassed it but it doesn’t quite seem like it yet. Just matched.
Also the stock crash isn’t about stocks. It’s about capital and labor investment. When things go bad, the small to medium sized businesses struggle the most which then Blackrock and the like swoop in to buy them all at steep steep discounts. That is ultimately a smarter long term play than buying “slightly” discounted stocks. IE the stock play is as you said. It’s mostly rich folks that own it but the rich don’t own all businesses yet. Recessions are a chance to do just that which from looking around we already seem to be in with the amount of layoffs and small to medium sized business struggling mightily. The internet omni-presence and ability to earn money sitting at home is too strong for a standard recessionary environment and indicators to show up to the same degree as before. Or at least that’s what I think.
Sludgeyy@lemmy.world 5 days ago
You can make money on the stock market when it goes down
vvilld@lemmy.world 6 days ago
It’s not that complex or Machiavellian.
Look at what rich people have done after every recession of the past 40 years and how what’s happened to their wealth after the recovery. The economy crashes forcing middle-class people to sell off what scant assets they own. Even people on the lower end of upper-class tend to sell off assets when the stock market crashes. Super rich people who have enough money to weather the economic downturn buy the dip, gobbling up all those assets people are selling. Then when the economy recovers the rich people make out like bandits (which they are).
That’s all that’s happening. He’s tanking the economy so Musk and his other rich friends can buy the dip and increase their wealth even more when the economy improves.
AlexLost@lemm.ee 6 days ago
Time will tell. It’s all about the layers, but if you look at the current situation at face value, it makes very little sense, ergo something more sinister is a foot 3-4 steps down the road.
vvilld@lemmy.world 6 days ago
It makes complete sense if you are looking at it from the perspective of an oligarch. They are just trying to tank the economy to hoover up even more assets. They’re banking on an eventual recovery, after which they’ll be even richer and more powerful than they are now.
As with most things in life, assuming some grander Machiavellian scheme is usually wrong. People don’t think and plan like that outside of movies and TV. Most people, especially the very rich and powerful, only plan for the short term.
There is no 3-4 steps down the road. They’re just trying to repeat exactly what they did during/after the COVID recession. And the Great Recession. And the '01 dot-com recession, etc, etc, etc.
AlexLost@lemm.ee 6 days ago
Except he is using a playbook built by other people that we’ve only seen the gist of. This is manufactured, not eventual. He is also removing all consumer and worker protections. There is more too it, but keep turning a blind eye to just “more of the same” and see where that gets ya. I am saying the same thing as you, but I am alluding to it being a byproduct and not the simple end goal. They want housing under their thumb as well as worker protections and healthcare. There is malicious intent there, I’m sure of it. It is more than the accumulation of wealth.
Thaurin@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I don’t get it. Why would anyone be forced to seem their assets? Do they invest with money they actually need? Just wait out the storm.
vvilld@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Two things:
People see because they see the markets going down and want to get out before it hits bottom.
The bigger issue, though, is that a hell of a lot of people will lose their jobs and have no money. Remember the Great Recession? When the job market is that shitty and you lose your job, there aren’t other ones available. No job means no income. You can apply for unemployment insurance, but that only covers a fraction of the income from your last job. So people can’t afford to pay their bills. When you can’t afford utilities, rent, gas, etc, but you have a 401k sitting there, it becomes the only option to pull money out of that. It’s a super shitty decision to have to make, but when it’s a question of losing your home or sacrificing your retirement, short-term material needs win out.
Thaurin@lemmy.world 4 days ago
That would be after their emergency funds run out, which should be at least a year in. But yeah, when it lasts many years…