• afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    GDP is increasing due to inflation and speculation.

    Unemployment is low because you aren’t counting the anyone who is unemployed. The workforce participation rate is hovering around the same numbers as we had in the early 1970s when women entered the workforce in large numbers. Adding this with the gig jobs and the real numbers would be even worse.

    Meanwhile housing, education, medical, insurance, food, consumer goods, and any service you can name has increased in a rate above inflation since 2020. The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased as well. Everyone but the tinest fraction of the population has seen a significant hit in their quality-of-life. All the while dealing with the fallout from the virus. Plus all forms of debt have gone up.

    The only good numbers are those of the stock market. Which really means very little. With interest rates so high and everyone shut out of smaller investments (you aren’t going to invest in a starter home when it is costs 900k USD) of course share prices will go up. Now who benefits from this? The dividends are basically the same, the risk is basically the same, the only thing that went up is the share price. Funneling money to the people who had more money in the past. Present money taken out of the middle class to fund old money.

    So there it is. The steaming garbage heap of our economy looked in total just as you requested.