*sigh*, we're screwed guys. And by "we", I mean democrats. Because all democrats seem to know what to do on the economy any more is just celebrating how this month OMFG BIDEN CREATED LIKE 300K JERBS! YAY JERBS! That's more than Trump ever made! And for people who think I'm being hyperbolic, no they're literally going around posting crap like this.
*sigh*. First. Okay. 2020 was when the economy shut down from COVID. And 2021 was when it reopened. So let's just ignore that part of the curve. Beyond that, yes, there has been strong job growth from 2022 on. I dont' deny that. I know I dared dispute the narrative being spun here and people were acting like I denied "the facts." No, I'm not saying that Biden DIDNT create those jobs, I'm saying it doesn't matter.
Here's some other stats to consider. The poverty rate is 11.5%. And people might say "yeah that's 2 years ago", but it's not like that changes much without more government intervention. 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. That's worse than i thought, I thought the number would be 50%. But then again that's probably the big one. The fact is, for all of these additional jobs, people don't have economic security. THey have precarity, and they're PISSED about it. They can't afford groceries, they can't afford housing.
And imagine how it comes off when you got these SNEERING centrist democrats going OH YEAH? WELL THE NUMBERS SAY THE ECONOMY IS GOOD, YOU'RE JUST AN IDIOT WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND HOW GOOD YOU HAVE IT!
I admit, if you're coming at this issue from the right, yeah, their grievances with the economy seem limited to D bad R good. But as someone left of the democratic party, I kinda expect more from democrats. My opinion is this. it doesn't matter what the jobs reports says and how good the economy supposedly is. Because the economy itself is flawed. We have a system that forces us to choose between one form of precarity (unemployment) and another (inflation). Even in the best of economic times by traditional measures, there's always gonna be problems. Capitalism simply cannot guarantee everyone a good life. THis is a systemic issue. You literally have a system that forces you to choose between having enough jobs and people not being able to afford to live, and a system in which jobs allow people to afford to live, but there arent enough of them.
And we keep going in circles between republicans and democrats over who creates more jobs and stronger economies, and quite frankly, it doesn't matter. When I look to democratic politicians, I dont look to them to provide a better jobs report than republicans. I look at them to pass the kinds of interventions that improve the system for all. That give us that UBI we need to fill in the gap and ensure no one is in poverty. To give us universal healthcare.
And heck, we need to think beyond jobs. I would LOVE a candidate to get up there in front of a crowd and say "jobs are NOT the answer" to our economic problems. We almost kinda had that with Andrew Yang. He was a bit soft on it compared to me, but he was the ONE GUY who questioned this system of whether jobs can actually provide prosperity, and he was the ONE GUY who questioned our metrics of what makes a good economy. Not even Bernie asked these kinds of questions. He just talked about jobs programs and claimed it was a "better idea" than a UBI. I disagree, Bernie. For as much as I like Bernie Sanders, we need to go further than just so called "full employment" and question the dogma of jobs itself.
And this is what I find so sad about this jobs report circlejerking. It's like we're cheering for our own enslavement. YAY JOBS. YAY, I CAN ASK RICH PEOPLE FOR THE "OPPORTUNITY" TO DO WORK FOR THEM IN EXCHANGE FOR A PITTANCE. I mean, it's like we unironically don't see that in previous eras of society, that we would see our modern system of employment as slavery. We have created a system to enslave humanity. And we somehow are so brainwashed we cheer on that enslavement.
I mean, think about it. You're not really allowed to dissent from this system without being attacked itself. if you ask why we have to work so hard in the first place they just call you lazy and tell you to 'get a job". The overton window doesnt allow for criticism of the idea of jobs. It just has us arguing over who creates more of them, and treats the idea of work and jobs as an intrinsic good. That is what my system and my ideas are intended to criticize. I DON'T want to spend my life on this sisyphusian hell of working jobs i hate and celebrating making more jobs. It's like saying "yay enslavement".
If people want to work jobs fine. I saw it asked on a basic income space recently whether we should pursue full employment or fewer jobs. Heck, my answer is interesting, I dont think there is a contradiction. We should pursue full employment among voluntary participants. We will never get there fully, but we will get most of the way there. But we will, at some point, say that there are too many jobs and now we gotta worry about a wage price spiral. UBI would just fill in the gaps to ensure everyone has some minimum level of income regardless of condition, and it would allow people the freedom to choose. Keep in mind, we can always use the federal reserve's interest rate system to rein in the number of jobs to match the number of workers willing to work them. And that's all I'm really saying that we should do. Give people a choice and then pursue close to full employment among those who wanna work, and whatever the economy looks like at that point, so be it. As long as it's sustainable, it's a win. In the grand scheme of things, growth should actually be a bit lower from people not wanting to work, but maybe we should question growth too as the end all be all of well being. Maybe the numbers we measure dont always measure the right things, and the dems just throwing "the numbers" in peoples' faces is the problem.
Just because the economy looks good from a surface glance doesnt mean it actually is good. And at least for me, my insatiable desire for change comes from the fact that I think there's something wrong with the system and what we value itself, and we need to change that. Centrist libs will then say I'm "moving goalposts", but I never valued their goalposts in the first place and have been advocating for these changes since at least 2014. I'm consistent. I'm not a Trumper just looking to play partisan politics among a certain array of metrics, I disagree with the metrics, and that's what being on the progressive left is about. being for some sort of change to the economy itself. Most people this far left want socialism and crap like that, that ain't me. Again, I just support something like Yang's human centered capitalism. My own approach isnt that much different than his. And we need someone like him to cause us to ask deeper questions about the system, and our measures for what success looks like.
Because quite frankly, I just see cheering for jobs as cheering for more enslavement. And I dont think we should have to work at all if we don't want to. It's the 21st century, there's more than enough to go around. We need to stop thinking in terms of the old ways and create a new way of doing things.
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