Late stage capitalism?

[Sweetpeaa]

Browsing reddit and came across this.

All I can say if this is accurate then that is some seriously fucked up shit. I do remember one of my friends parents working at Sears in 2006 and the other parent working in a mail room and they lived in a very nice detached home in a suburb.

Faux-left publications will tell you ''the wages fell off in the 80's during the Thatcher-Reagan times when greed took over''. But I don't believe that at all, I think things began to decline in the 2010's after the great recession. They don't want people to know this is a much more RECENT phenomenon. It's fairly obvious we're in the late stage of our economics system.. or maybe it really just collapsed in 2008 for good.

 

[Night Crawler]

Yes, we are in late stage capitalism. Without the government keeping the capitalist high finance class in check capitalism was allowed to get this way. The "Great Recession" as the Boomers in the media called it wasn't really so much a recession as it was a micro collapse. Things never really recovered from that. You aren't seeing recessions but little micro collapses that will probably lead to an actual full scale collapse. People who talk about the US economy collapsing like to bring up the collapse of the economy in Weimar Germany and the Soviet collapse. But the US is a much different position than Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union were in. The US could possibly keep this BS economic charade going for a while. But eventually the music will stop and the party will come to an end. Right now, people are ignoring the music and noticing the ship is taking on water. It was easy to brush it off in the early and mid 2000's. But more people are being impacted by the economy than back then. That's why you see so many people complaining. The lower middle class and the working poor were gutted. Now it's reaching up into the middle and upper middle class.

The US has an unsustainable economic system. Capitalism relies on people producing things and people consuming what is produced. The production part is fine. But the issue with that is they moved all the production to foreign countries. Now they are shipping those products back into the US and trying to sell them to the unemployed and people making poverty wages. The rising cost of living and inflation over the past 20+ years hasn't helped either. Unemployed people, people working in the low paying service industry and those that are paying 50% of their income just for housing don't make good consumers and that's what Capitalism needs. It needs people being good little consumers. That's hard to do when you don't have a job, or you are working for chump change.

In the early and mid 2000's the US economy was mostly kept afloat by credit. Boomers and Gen X types with credit cards and whatever else. This is where that phrase people were out buying things they didn't really need that they couldn't afford and with money they didn't have came from. The credit got burned up and it came time to pay it all back. That's what happened back then. No one had any real money to consume so they did it all on credit. Credit doesn't last forever. People are getting credit cards and loans now but not to purchase consumer goods they are using it to buy groceries and pay bills and it's going to cause the same kind of problems very soon.

The other part of this is the increase in legal and illegally labor which is suppressing wages. That's the whole point of it though. To break the backs of the American labor force. Capitalists want the legal and illegal labor. That's why the border never gets secured. It's why no mass deportations happen. It's not because those things are impossible because they aren't. The rich people don't want it to happen. They donate money to the politicians campaigns. They went to DC and lobbied for all of this. The foreign labor legal and illegal the bad trade deals and so on. The rich get what they want and everyone else gets screwed. Don't let the capitalism apologists fool you. Capitalism is causing the problems. Capitalism is failing. All across Eastern Europe people that lived under Communism are coming to the same conclusion. Communism was bad but capitalism isn't the answer either. More people are understanding that we need something else.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

No shit you were browsing Reddit.

Now compare this to what happened to socialist Venezuela since the 70’s.

The real problem is always non producers extracting value from the economy. And it’s not always in the form of welfare, but most often the expansion of bureaucracy for nepotistic rewards.

The growth of the administrative state is the reason that everyone talks like economies only work on infinite growth models and can’t ever reach something like homeostasis. Every administration brings one or more entirely new three letter agencies

 

[McMitch]

@Night Crawler The problem is you’re not describing capitalism, but corporatism (which is an accurate description of the US’s current economic system). The major difference between the two is competition, which would be an Avenue to create jobs, is subverted by overbearing taxation and government regulations on commerce and industry (inherently anti-capitalist concepts), as well as a failure of the government to protect its citizens from a foreign threat (i.e. letting illegal immigrants flood the country).

The concept of “late stage capitalism” is a cope by Marx, who insisted that capitalist economies would naturally become socialist on their own, rather than the reality of the transition being intentionally driven by corporations and government (which is where we are now).

 

[Sweetpeaa]

No shit you were browsing Reddit.

Now compare this to what happened to socialist Venezuela since the 70’s.

The real problem is always non producers extracting value from the economy. And it’s not always in the form of welfare, but most often the expansion of bureaucracy for nepotistic rewards.

The growth of the administrative state is the reason that everyone talks like economies only work on infinite growth models and can’t ever reach something like homeostasis. Every administration brings one or more entirely new three letter agencies

I don't want to talk about socialist countries. They're irrelevant. I just want to talk about the enormous wage fall since the recession in G7 countries.

I don't like the attitude of deflection that some people are using "bring up Venezuela" and it's failure is a common tactic people use who want to avoid talking about other things. I don't want to talk about a socialist country nor to I want certain countries to become socialist countries.

Many people are still in the dark of exactly what happened after the recession. Most people do know things have never felt the same though...

 

[SpergioLeonne]

I don't want to talk about socialist countries. They're irrelevant. I just want to talk about the enormous wage fall since the recession in G7 countries.

I don't like the attitude of deflection that some people are using "bring up Venezuela" and it's failure is a common tactic people use who want to avoid talking about other things. I don't want to talk about a socialist country nor to I want certain countries to become socialist countries.

Then skip that single line. Notice how non teaching staff in universities grew 130% more than enrolled students?

Who do you think pays them? You do, if you go to university

 

[libRT]

How do you define late stage capitalism? I assume its when a capitalist society is transitioning into socialism (or getting near to). So yeah, thats basically most of the west rn

 

[Ashkenazi Porn Actress]

Faux-left publications will tell you ''the wages fell off in the 80's during the Thatcher-Reagan times when greed took over''.

Shit hit the fan in 1971 when the last vestiges of the gold standard were abolished.
What the fuck happened in 1971?

The concept of “late stage capitalism” is a cope by Marx,

Marx never wrote about "late stage capitalism". According to Marx the capitalist system itself would ensue wages would steadily fall towards subsistence levels for the proletarians (i.e. all people who live off wage labor and do not own the means of production) which would set the stage for them becoming class concious, overthrowing the bourgeoisie and instituting the dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

[The Gene Genie]

One of the most insidious parts of the current economic system that the US has is that our economy, which was once production-based and centered around industry and producing shit for domestic sale and foreign export, has been replaced by a complete money scheme where 99% of the people working in the economy provide what amounts to luxury services. How much of the economy is tied up in shit like restaurants, hotels, bars, and the like? These are service-based jobs which provide a luxury service, that is to say, a service that is not necessary for people to actually live. These are all fake jobs but so much of our economic "growth" and sustainment is tied up in them. I think that "this" is the real late-stage American economy, since it's not even really capitalism (over-regulation and tax breaks from the Government incentivize the corporations to off-shore as much as possible.) Things have been off-kilter since the death of heavy industry across the country, replaced by corporate bughives of office drone workers (soon to be put out to pasture by the development of Data Index algorithms which can do their job automatically) and a host of restaurants, hotels, and bars.

There's nowhere to really go from here except downward. When the economy takes another shock, and it will, these luxury services will no longer be used enough to clear the operating costs. And what happens to the workers? Now they get laid off and the business is shuttered, which means more people out of work and a worse-performing economy. It's a negative feedback loop.

 

[Lobster Cult High Priest]

This is where that phrase people were out buying things they didn't really need that they couldn't afford and with money they didn't have came from. The credit got burned up and it came time to pay it all back.

That term is conspicuous consumption.

 

[Rei is Shit.]

Tendency of the rate of profit to fall is like 50% correct.

How much of the economy is tied up in shit like restaurants, hotels, bars, and the like? These are service-based jobs which provide a luxury service, that is to say, a service that is not necessary for people to actually live.

Its mostly a service based economy;

 

[Ashkenazi Porn Actress]

Its mostly a service based economy;

And it's "service based" because it is vastly more profitable for the people who actually own the economy to reap the profit of global labor arbitrage than to let native chuds make the widgets.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Late stage capitalism is retard Commie babble and I despise seeing it pop up everywhere now, usually some California-lisping faggot saying it. My understanding of it is that it boiled down to that Marx understood the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, which capitalist economists (including in the modern day, though they tend to call it something more like perfectly competitive with free entry) also recognized. As entrants move into a market the rising supply reduces profits per firm until there are no profits left, assuming there isn't some barrier to stop the entrant from moving in.

Then, and this is where Marx went full retard, the firms react by depressing wages of the workers, which is like a prisoner's dilemma because each individual firm wants to depress their own worker's wages, but not the others. This might have made sense back when robber barons had armed thugs to beat down workers and colluded with each other, but in a modern world with labor regulations and effective law enforcement you don't have that. Labor is a competitive market and rising output requires more of it (rising demand) and you get higher wages. And what happens in the real world when we have an economic boom? Rising wages. And are people living at pure subsistence levels compared to 1848? Fuck no.

And Marx predicted the cycles would get wilder and wilder. I'd have to go back and take a look, but I don't believe that to be a case. It's a classic case of people taking one mild and predictable (predictable like bad snowfalls and hurricanes are predictable) event from their own lifetime and freaking the fuck out over it like its the apocalypse because they have no perspective on things.

Aside from all that, if you want to compare cost of living you also have to keep in mind:
1) Improvements in the quality of goods, like features (though with many things, this has actually gotten worse, particularly durability)
2) The thing costs more, but does it cost more as a share of your income?
3) Don't cherry pick some specific good or class of goods. Some things really do become relatively more expensive. If everything else as a whole isn't then it's hardly doomsday.

What worries me about the direction of the American economy is a depraved and hostile business elite controlling everything, especially trying to kill off the Mom and Pop shops/petite-bourgeoisie, and the complete dependence on the likes of China for basic things like pharmaceuticals. There needs to be enough industrial capacity in the country for a global trade breakdown to at least be survivable.

 

[Otoya Yamaguchi]

the US has not been a capitalist society since the civil war, with the last remnants of anything remotely capitalist being swept away by the 1960s

the redditor is complaining about communism/socialism, they just cant identify it as such becaue they went to public school in the US, which is run by socialists

 

[Whatevermancer]

It's not capitalism, it's corporatism. Real capitalism has never been tried...
​

 

[Angry Alt Right Nerd]

It's not capitalism, it's corporatism. Real capitalism has never been tried...
​

Libertarians are actually correct when they say we don't have true free market capitalism because of government intervention, the problem is even if we had true free market capitalism it would be a disaster. What you actually want is a government that intervenes but not in retarded ways.

 

[Night Crawler]

@Night Crawler The problem is you’re not describing capitalism, but corporatism (which is an accurate description of the US’s current economic system). The major difference between the two is competition, which would be an Avenue to create jobs, is subverted by overbearing taxation and government regulations on commerce and industry (inherently anti-capitalist concepts), as well as a failure of the government to protect its citizens from a foreign threat (i.e. letting illegal immigrants flood the country).

The concept of “late stage capitalism” is a cope by Marx, who insisted that capitalist economies would naturally become socialist on their own, rather than the reality of the transition being intentionally driven by corporations and government (which is where we are now).

No, it's capitalism. You are just in denial.

That term is conspicuous consumption.

I don't have an issue with people being consumers. But we used to have a strong middle class and they used to buy things with cash. But when you start having people using credit to play the consumer role that's when things tend to go bad. Like what happened in the late 2000's. Though that was just one of the issues.

Late stage capitalism is retard Commie babble and I despise seeing it pop up everywhere now, usually some California-lisping faggot saying it. My understanding of it is that it boiled down to that Marx understood the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, which capitalist economists (including in the modern day, though they tend to call it something more like perfectly competitive with free entry) also recognized. As entrants move into a market the rising supply reduces profits per firm until there are no profits left, assuming there isn't some barrier to stop the entrant from moving in.

Not really. Everyone uses the term late stage capitalism. It's true. We are in late stage capitalism. I guess you could say terminal capitalism. The race to the bottom.

the US has not been a capitalist society since the civil war, with the last remnants of anything remotely capitalist being swept away by the 1960s

the redditor is complaining about communism/socialism, they just cant identify it as such becaue they went to public school in the US, which is run by socialists

No, it's been capitalism from the start. The difference is globalism. Even in the early days capitalism had issues. But the introduction of globalism after Communism failed made things even worse. What people need to understand is that this is what capitalism will evolve into. Capitalists always put short term gains above everything else. It's all about profits and reducing spending so they can increase profits. If that means sending jobs overseas or bringing in cheap foreign labor illegally or legally they will do it no matter what the consequences are. Capitalism has destroyed the country all for profits.

 

[McMitch]

Capitalism has destroyed the country all for profits.

Capitalism is simply the private ownership of capital. There is no greater or driving force behind it, and no definition beyond it. To sacrifice that concept because our economy has been twisted away from that definition is retarded, because the reduction in the individual's ability to gain capital is exactly what put things in this mess to begin with. The fact that you anti-captialists, regardless of whether or not you're a commie, always respond with "No, that is capitalism" when it's explained that you are describing everything but belies your intellectual dishonesty. Simply, you want a boogieman to blame and have chosen the very example given by those who wish to strip you of your ability to improve your economic solution.

 

[Otoya Yamaguchi]

Capitalism has destroyed the country all for profits

But that's a communist maxim and pillar of communist policy and is only possible in a communist society...and impossible in a capitalist one

 

[Sweetpeaa]

Wages never returned to pre 2008 levels. Nor did the reasonable rent (look how little a 1 bedroom cost in 2007). Something went very wrong and the U.S and much of the world never came out of it.