Billionaire CEO goes "mask off" on the economy

 So, a lot of people are kind of having an oh crap moment in questioning capitalism as this billionaire CEO goes mask off on the economy. He argues that we need 50% more unemployment because "workers have become arrogant." And people are starting to wonder, gee is this what the economy is? A bunch of rich people disciplining poor people in order to keep them down. I feel like occasionally we get moments like this where people kinda sorta realize that yes...we cant just create jobs to solve all economic problems, as workers get more bargaining power, the system compensates by increasing unemployment and effectively destroying jobs in order to keep people desperate.

Now, in defense of this system, I will say there are functional reasons for this. If we had no unemployment, we'd have rampant inflation and a wage price spiral. At some point things get "the best they're gonna get". And we're about there now. "Full employment" is generally 4-5% unemployment or so (article I cited says 5%, I say 4%). Below that you start getting inflationary pressures from worker demanding more money and a lack of competition in the labor market driving wages to unsustainable inflationary levels. So to some extent, this is NEEDED. it's not just a matter of rich people "disciplining" workers and telling them to learn their place. THere are some reasons that sometimes increasing unemployment is necessary functionally.

And in the aftermath of COVID, with high inflation, the great resignation, and "no one wants to work any more", there have been questions as to whether we need more unemployment to bring the market back into check. Many people, even I at one point, called for higher interest rates to increase the unemployment rate. However, then I found out that the current bout of inflation is NOT driven from the worker side of the equation.  Rather, lingering supply chain issues and corporate price gouging are driving the current bout of inflation. As such these billionaire arguments of "bringing on the pain" are misguided and rich people shifting the blame from themselves to workers. Which is scummy. 

Also, lets consider that the inflation rate has actually gone down and is only 3.67%, which is about right. A little high, but I personally would put the target inflation rate closer to 3% than the fed's normal 2%, which is normally oppressive to worker bargaining power. Honestly, I'm fine with anything under 4%, and something around 3-4% is probably what i consider to be the best tradeoff betwee inflation and bargaining power. So this is the ideal economy for us.

The problem is billionaires disagree and want a return to literal austerity conditions with <2% inflation and >5% unemployment. Which is crappy. The current situation of 3.8% unemployment and a similar inflation rate is much better from a pro labor perspective. This is literally the best the economy can reasonably get for workers. So yeah, this guy wanting to "bring on the pain" with 50% higher unemployment (a shift to around 5.7%) is crappy. Might work for rich people, but for everyone else, not so much. And the economy should work for everyone, not just the rich. 

Still, let's not ignore the obvious systemic problem I keep pointing out. We have a society where we expect everyone to have a job, and a system where not everyone can find one. The result is that youre gonna have around 4% unemployment at best with 4 out of every 100 looking not able to work at all. This also means more discouraged worker, more unemployed workers. The U6 rate is closer to 7.2%. THe poverty rate is around 11%. And keep in mind, THIS IS THE BEST IT WILL EVER GET. Normally these rates are higher, with unemployment around 6%, and the u6 around 12%, and the poverty rate around 15%. That's NORMAL. And that's what this guy wants to go back to.

This is baked into the system. Our society literally structurally screws over a certain amount of people in order to maintain its larger functionality. And the difference between a "good" and a "bad" economy is only a couple percent. 

This is why i rightly called out, in the middle of the recession that jobs arent the answer, poverty is an artifical issue created by our social systems and their failings, we have more than enough resources for everyone, and only a UBI will solve this problem. Which is why I support a UBI. 

Yes, I go further. I hate work. I hate the idea of spending all of our time on a sispyhusian grind, and realizing the above about the economy. Realizing that scarcity isnt so much a physical problem in the US as a systemic problem kind of soured me on the idea of work and the american dream in general. This is because as a conservative i was under the impression we all had to work to survive because there wasnt enough to go around and if we didnt all work we'd all starve to death. But now I realize we dont live in the early 1800s any more, we have a society of abundence, it's just very poorly distributed. And honestly, i think we should use our bounty to redistribute wealth more fairly and to move away from this weird protestant work ethic death cult that is the modern american culture on this issue. Ya know? It is one thing if we all have to work, but it's another when our society says one thing and the reality is another. That's literally anomie, a mismatch between norms and values and larger reality. And the answer is to either change the norms or values or reality. And because even if reality matched the norms and values i wouldnt be happy as the only thing that justifies forced work IMO is its necessity, if it's not necessary, why not change our norms and values instead? 

So yeah, that's why I think the way I do. I know this is an unpopular opinion in such a work centric society (or planet, since these attitudes are present to some extent in every country on earth these days), but honestly, I think we should recapture the ideal of a society where we all work less than a society where we all grind seemingly unnecessarily for higher levels of "growth."

To address socialists on this question, I do agree that the rich enforce the flaws of this system to their own benefit. But to differ from them, the difference between an evil oppressive system and a good one is only a few percent. ANd I don't believe socialism is the answer to the above problems for reasons I've discussed previously.