So, we've been hearing it again and again. Unemployment is down, wages are up, the economy is strong, and this is allegedly the best it's been from a numbers perspective in 50 years.
Yet people are unhappy. Why?
Well, there are some very obvious issues we are facing. We just had two years of the most insane inflation in 40 years, and people still havent quite adjusted to that despite it subsiding by any official metric. A lot of people are unhappy about the cost of living post covid and how no one can afford anything.
But beyond that, the economy just kind of...sucks. It's not necessarily a problem with "this economy"....colloquially, it's a problem with...this economy....the economy. As in, laissez faire capitalism.
I've written before about how under traditional metrics, capitalism will never achieve perfect outcomes. Either you'll have high unemployment and people struggling to survive on wages too low to live on, or you'll have low unemployment, better wages, but then deal with high inflation that makes those wages...hard to live in.
And unlike the economy 50 years ago that was the "greatest economy ever", we didn't have the staggering inequality that we do today. I mean, normally inflation is due to wages and worker bargaining power being too high, but this post covid inflation was different, it was sparked off by businesses just seeing how much they could squeeze out of consumers. The money isn't going back into the worker's hands, it's going into the rich's pocketbook. Just like in the post recession climate where people were suffering while businesses were touting "record profits", now we're dealing with high inflation...with those same businesses still touting record profits.
This economy isn't working for the people.
To some extent, things need to change. 50 years ago, there was a similar malaise over the economy growing. Under Nixon in the aftermath of the war on poverty, poverty was still winning, and they did a study to look into the reasons. And they found that the only way to make the economy better and to eliminate poverty once and for all, was with a universal basic income. Now, Nixon used this study to push his "family assistance plan", and that was kind of a watered down UBI, but in the early 1970s, both parties pushed various forms of guaranteed income plans. They were never perfect, but they were something.
We just saw similar improvements under Biden when the child tax credit expansion was a thing, and child poverty LITERALLY DROPPED IN HALF because of it. And when we removed it, surprise surprise, child poverty went back up again. it's almost as if giving people money stops people from being poor, who knew?!
Well, we've known the answer for 50 years now, people just like to scratch their head and act like they don't while acting like the actual solution is beyond the pale.
Will UBI solve all problems? No, it won't stop corporate greed if the businesses decide to raise prices again for no other reason than "F U, that's why", but there are ways to deal with that. Windfall profits taxes, and of course, just raising the fed interest rate until the economy equalizes. Which will, admittedly, throw people out of work, but if people have UBI, then they'll still be arguably in better shape than they are, and then the economy will adjust to the new normal and things will improve again.
The fact is, our economy will never be perfect because honestly, high or low unemployment, poverty exists. High or low inflation, cost of living issues exist. And we need to get the economy moving again where people have enough money to survive and thrive. A UBI is a good step toward that, and done properly the risk of inflation should be minimized. And if inflation does happen, again, there are ways to deal with that.
Honestly, i think the reason why there is malaise in this country and why no one is happy despite "the numbers being good" is because those numbers don't always translate to what a good life is. Having a job doesnt necessarily mean your life is good. hell a job can mean your life is hell on earth. And if you cant afford your needs and your paychecks are squeezed, well, things will never get better.
Biden is a status quo president with status quo policies, and while the status quo is great...by status quo standards, i think people are fed up with the status quo. And the left is gonna have to step up to provide solutions for our current problems, or people will fall back into proto fascism and trump's demagoguery. And that's literally where we are now as a country right now, as I see it.
Even I don't have all the answers to this climate. The high inflation complicates things as my normal solutions don't necessarily resonate in these situations. My ideas were created during the aftermath of the great recession and I have to recognize the problems are much different now. Still, given my broader worldview, I could've predicted something like this would eventually occur. Because it has happened before.
I just hope that this time we don't go hard right like we did last time and change our entire country's ideology for the worse when all we needed was a few corrections and a few years for things to get back to normal. Just as, in the late 1970s, there was nothing wrong with keynesianism, and abandoning it was a disaster in my opinion, we shouldn't give up on my own ideas simply because we hit a rough patch of inflation.
Even in these inflationary times, the child tax credit still worked. Imagine what a UBI would do.
And that's all I have to say on this matter for now.
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