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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21841560
also, don't forget, pre-covid: "you should have enough money set aside in savings to live without income for SIX MONTHS!!!"
covid lockdowns: "our $ multibillion corporation is going to DIE if we don't end the lockdowns RIGHT NOW!!!!"
Related: 75% of Americans don't have enough money in savings to cover their bills for six months. That's why a recession--which leads to a shrinking number of jobs and decreased consumer demand--is such a huge, dramatic siren for the fed and government. A recession for a nation where a large majority are basically flying without a safety net has an even bigger effect on the recession feedback cycle.
In general our entire economy right now has the knob labeled "high-risk/high-reward" turned to 11. With that many people only a few months from not being able to pay car loans, rent, mortgage, and all their other bills, with huge consumer debt, with car loan defaults already rising, and, therefore, only an economic downturn away from not having the means to maintain robust consumer economy, things would go south in the US very fast and with increasing velocity.
They gave all the power to those with money and they know, deep down, that those people are nasty and horrible. They’re afraid of them and so they give them tax breaks and bailouts like one would give sacrifices to eldritch god in the hopes they don’t get punished for existing.
They aren’t afraid of their neighbour, though. Why do you think all conservative humour punches down? They’re all pant-shitting coward suck-ups.
Nobody said shit about PPP loans either.
I don’t really remember people calling for the bank bailout
Yeah I'm pretty salty about the bank bailouts.
Let them die. If you don't let businesses occasionally fail then you don't have capitalism. You have oligarchical socialism.
Yeah it's a problem for the million or so employees. Bail them out. Bail out the people actually doing the work. Bail out the fucking victims.
Student loan forgiveness is fine, whatever. I'd love to have mine wiped out don't get me wrong, but Jesus it's fucking pointless unless you also change the rules and reform the industry.
All bailed out companies should be required to turn into worker cooperatives
Stay salty. It was a rip off.
The people that have preached free market and competition showed you who they are.
Here's a thought excersise that I hope you feel free to take as rhetorically as you wish:
Can you think of a time when it was "real" capitalism ^^^^tm and not crony capitalism/ forgiving socialism for the rich and robust free market capitalism for the poor?
Personally, I can't and I don't think anyone can name a time that that it was, that would stand up to any scrutiny.
If there was never a time that it could have existed, then It was always a lie.
Just to be clear in right behind you 99%. I may be wrong but feel that if you were to look into that area, you would likely come to the same conclusion as me.
Yeah, as much as these anti-student-loan-relief assholes do that's infuriating and ridiculous, broadly speaking, the ones I've encountered have also taken a dim view of any and every bailout as well.
There's plenty of ways to fairly criticize their position, inconsistency doesn't seem to be among them.
The bailouts should have taken the form of an injection into the FDIC to bail out the account holders after the banks closed their doors.
Guess I shouldn't have been an impressionable teenager that believed adults when I was told I'd work at McDonald's forever if I didn't take the loan. Egg on my face, haha.
Some of those people ended up working at McDonald's anyway, and then had the audacity to want a livable wage... But that would raise prices... But somehow the prices went up anyways... 🤷
That neighbour shouldn't have spent all that money on avocado toast!
Does this person not remember that literally everyone was upset about bailing the banks and auto industry out??? Like why are we pretending that those were popular decisions, and that the population is to blame?
Yeah but no one opposed the other bailouts as hard as they did for students.
250 000$ what the fuck
But now things have changed… the banks will be a “bail in”
In all fairness though, those industry bailouts were generally recovered
Early estimates for the bailout's risk cost were as much as $700 billion; however, TARP recovered $441.7 billion from $426.4 billion invested, earning a $15.3 billion profit (an annualized rate of return of 0.6%), which may have been a loss when adjusted for inflation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008
Ok, that last part about still being a net loss after inflation is fair, but we're talking about a possible rounding error here, not a 12-figure loss for the Treasury.
It should be considered that America is investing in its infrastructure by making sure that its educated population of professionals and pre-professionals is able to find suitable work and stable living conditions debt-free. Instead of that, we have a severe lack of foundational jobs for the educated (unless you're an overpaid nurse or engineer that will always be in demand), exacerbated cost of living, and foreign students taking away competitive education seats from American students. Everything has been one big sellout to the wealthy, domestic or otherwise, while average Americans and their students suffer. Student debt forgiveness isn't a metric designed to be measured by a sum of money arbitrarily gained in return after investing, it's an investment in the wellbeing of its society and its people.
Also auto industry and farmer bailouts seems like a sensible thing considering how many jobs are tied there. Dunno if this sub would have preferred them to go under and those people be out of job, dunno.