We are screwed

originally posted by: strongfp
a reply to: ChaoticOrder

If there was no money flowing around we would have fallen into deflation, which is arguably worse than inflation.
The world stood still and stopped for a while, people were losing their jobs and having no income at all.

These sorts of debates fall into two categories, either you believe the pandemic was a scam and the money printing was part of a big scheme or the pandemic was real and entire nations closing themselves up out of fear of mass death from viral disease, caused central banks to print money to keep their economic structures afloat.

Inflation in most western nations is rather stable and wasn't that bad. Comparative to the great depression or what happened in the 70s this is a walk in the park with a bit of drizzle and you simply forgot an umbrella. The last decade before covid we saw cheap money, cheap loans, and an abundance of USD floating around not being tied to any sort of major conflict, that all changed within a relatively short time. We can't always have good times, it sucks but it's better than total collapse or what if covid was extremely deadly and things took a turn for the worse at least we were sort of ready.

It's more of a false dilemma you have put down there.

There was a pandemic but it was the pandemic of lies and fear.

a reply to: Fdttaut

Why then, would they want to implement a socialist economic system that they'd be the biggest losers in?

It's pretty obvious why those in government would be attracted to socialist ideas, because they are absolutely addicted to spending money, and they'll use any excuse to print more money and increase taxes. It's obviously a generalisation to say big business controls the government in any capitalist system, for example the Australian government is trying to create price gauging laws and give themselves the power to break up large super market monopolies if they don't properly obey those pricing laws. That would never happen if those monopolies really had the level of power you claim they do. Having said that, there is obviously a conflict of interest when politicians own a lot of stock in big corporations, and I do think it should be illegal.

If anything the current trend of where western society is heading is the complete opposite direction, it's becoming more unequal, poverty is increasing at the same time that the money at the top is increasing. Governments are also lowering the tax burden of the richest people as well as deregulating, which further increases corporate profit at the expense of quality and environmental standards etc.

This really gets to the core of what I'm trying to explain in this thread; it's very easy to blame all those things on capitalism and then claim socialism is the only humane solution. I argue that the ever increasing socialist sentiment is directly responsible for the majority of our economic problems. For example you talk about corporations destroying the environment in the name of profit, and as a result of that sentiment, many governments are starting to enforce extremely strict environmental regulations which are having very detrimental effects on our economy.

Just last night there was a segment on the news (in Australia) about how the logging industry is on the verge of extinction and timber is becoming very scarce and expensive as a result. Same thing with the energy industry, Australia is rapidly closing all of our coal fired plants and replacing it all with solar and wind, resulting in dramatically higher energy prices, and the same trend can be seen in many nations. At the same time we refuse to use nuclear energy due to fear mongering from environmentalists, if the government only cared about profit and economic growth they wouldn't listen to environmentalists.

A lack of regulations can obviously be very bad, but so can too many regulations. When Trump lowered taxes and cut regulations, it clearly had a very positive impact on the economy and even benefited the middle class, a saw many small business owners talking about how it made life easier for them and allowed them to increase wages a little bit. Then Covid hit and undid all of that progress, and of course the deceptive left uses that as an excuse to claim Trump was responsible for all the jobs lost during that period, and Biden was the economic master mind who created many new jobs even though it was just people going back to work.

Just look at what happened throughout Covid, our governments printed crazy amounts of money and handed it out people and businesses to help them survive the lockdowns, at the same time the large monopolies made record profits and their control over the market increased. The money people got went straight to those monopolies and the results was a massive rise in inequality because all that new money was siphoned into a small number of bank accounts. That's what happens every time we start thinking that handing out new money is the solution to everything.

Everyone these days thinks they are some sort of economics expert but they really don't know the first thing about economics, in fact I would argue they believe in anti-economics because they are convinced socialism will fix everything, but in reality it will only result in a more unequal distribution of wealth. They say the path to hell is paved with good intentions, and there is no better example than the lure of socialism. Obviously some amount of social services can be very beneficial to an economy, but when we take it too far and ignore the intrinsic necessity of capitalism, it never produces desirable results.

a reply to: strongfp

a reply to: BingoMcGoof

I'll reply to you guys in a few hours, I've got some things I need to get done.

Probably sounds the same without a nappy.
a reply to: SpinTop