Let’s say the pre-Trump economy is worth $100 trillion, and a particular billionaire’s share is $2 billion. Let’s say Trump catastrophically decreases the economy’s value to $50 trillion, while increasing corruption such that that Trump is getting more power, and the billionaire’s share is $10 billion.
This is followed by a collapsing market that creates a dip in share prices or private valuation, the assets of which can be bought for pennies on the dollar, eventually leading to that billionaire having $30 billion in a total economy worth $20 trillion.
Win/win for Trump and the billionaire, at the cost of everyone else.
That’s basically what’s happening, and will continue to happen.
I’m not an economist, so here’s my ass talking, but I don’t think your example scales out. I think you’re making the mistake of equating the stock market to the economy. It isn’t.
Not everyone wins in a failing economy. If one billionaire makes out, three more lose money.
I just want to inject here my experience in Britain during the 2008 Crash and its aftermath:
In Britain, the Finance Industry was 17% of GDP, so when the Crash happened the country was disproportionally hit.
After the crash the autorities chose to protect Asset Owners above all:
Interest rates were lowered to 0%, thus protecting lenders (i.e. those with the money to lend or ownership of Banks which in the modern system can de facto create money: if you don’t believe me, read the paper “Money Creation In The Modern Economy” from the Bank Of England) from debt defaults, also indirectly protecting Asset Owners by avoiding asset firesales from collateral confiscated after a default thus avoiding the associate asset price falls, most notably for Land and Housing (in the UK the Housing bubble never really stopped being inflated and Land Ownership is the core of Old Wealth)
Banks were unconditionally saved by the state taking a share in them. That Public share was then put under management of a group made up of bankers “so that the government doesn’t interfere in the market”. De facto pressure for changing from the very practices that had cause the Crash was removed and most of the people having the blame for the failures of the Crash kept their positions of privilege.
All this was paid by most people through Austerity. Public services were cut, Social Security (aka "Benefits) were reduced, salaries stagnated. The poorer one was the worst they got hit.
By 2015 the incomes of the top wealthier 10% of the population were growing in real terms 23% per year whilst the bottom 90% were seeing their incomes fall 1% per year in real terms.
This was roughly how things went for about a decade after the Crash. UK inequality is nowadays huge, social mobility near non-existent, average incomes when measured in a currency other than the pound - which went down following Brexit - have stagneted, overall economic growth is anemic and concentrated in highest wealth layers since that “growth” told by official GDP numbers is mostly asset prices going up.
This is the process by which the billionaires make sure they win: everybody gets hit more or less in a Crash, but in during the subsequent period when the state is supposedly trying to fix it, you get also sorts of “extreme measures required by extreme times” that, “curiously”, help the billionaires the most, so some years later everybody but the wealthiest slices of society are worst of whilst the wealthiest are much richer even than before the Crash.
I expect the plans of the billionaires who are cozying up with Trump is exactly to end up richer via this process.
This is spot on, and pretty much how it went down everywhere, not just the UK. Just to clarify: it’s workers, not capital, who create wealth. The staggering rise in inequality, pricing people out of cities and the housing market is having a significant negative effect on productivity which is why Europe is falling behind.
This means lost time where we have not been producing anywhere near our potential, and by consequence also not honing our skills to produce anything in the future. We can’t just win this time back by political change now, it’s lost forever, and young people who should have been at the forefront of developing the economy and making families will never win this back.
We need to be way more angry than we are, and every day that we don’t fix this we’re letting it get worse.
Yeah, I believe so based on what I saw from affar, but I’m more intimatelly familiar with Britain - especially the more subtle elements of politics and policy - since I lived there from before the Crash until Brexit.
Not everyone wins in a failing economy. If one billionaire makes out, three more lose money.
No, yeah, that’s true. But the billionaires are also competing with each other in a (perceived) zero-sum game and they believe the ones who are cozying closest to Trump will be the best ones positioned to make money - either in a corrupt or a failing economy. But every recession has been a golden opportunity for billionaires.
Heck, in post-collapse Russia, this is how oligarchs first appeared - the “shock therapy” of the 1990s transition to a market economy dropped the value of resources to nothing, and the rich at the time bought them and became the ultra-rich. Some didn’t make it. ( Like a super-bacteria forming from the ones not killed by antibiotics, the ones that survived were even more resistant to control.)
Nah, since the 80s at the earliest. The wealthiest were taxed up to 90% and corporations didn’t get the tax loopholes they have now until Reagan took office.
This is followed by a collapsing market that creates a dip in share prices or private valuation
I am not a billionaire, just an average joe lucky to be able to borrow a few thousand from my Roth 401k in order to buy oil stocks in March 2020 at 90% off.
I earned between 15x and 20x what I invested and paid off my student loans when the market recovered.
It’s not just for the billionaires, but you’re right, all of this is intentional and the wealthiest will profit the most.
Their bottom lines aren’t very important to their goal of owning everything. Money is just a vehicle for power, but once they own everything and everyone they won’t need it.
Most of those overlords don‘t care about their business anymore. They want to get the bag now. It‘s how Oligarchies operate. They burn billions to make millions. Or in this case delete trillions to make billions. The goal is have proportionally much more money than us pathetic peasants.
The way Trump operates in particular is unsurprisingly dull. He flips the table and ruins the game for everyone. Then he waits and whoever says some flattering words to him and gives him a hefty bribe is excluded from his bullshit. Suddenly they see their competition crippled while they themselves can do business as usual. That‘s all there is to it. Trump was never the brightest bulb and probably thinks his obvious scheme is brilliant.
The parasites are still making money. Rocking the boat would temporarily interrupt the party, they’ll continue to party until they’re forced to change.
24 trillion. the culture war bs with the right is thier best chance of maintain power in the us, so no, they might have accept less to hold on to that power. Or they just stir up the right wing in other countries, alongside with russia.
The question is incomplete. They will cost trillions, but the presidency, the party fixing elections right now, will cost the country the dollar itself. They will max out borrowing, then print money to pay off the debt and de facto default. They will turn all of those dollars into very much less valuable things.
It’s kind of a weird game theory thing, because the industries affected aren’t consistently losing. A decision he makes on Wednesday can help the finance industry but hurt the tech industry, and then he can reverse it on Thursday and now the finance industry is tanking but the insurance industry is up. It’s tough to know who would work together to pull him out of office, because between any two given days, the people who have the money have different opinions on how he’s doing.
I wonder how many trillions of dollars the Trump dumpster fire will end up costing American business.
You’d think our corporate overlords would remove him.
Let’s say the pre-Trump economy is worth $100 trillion, and a particular billionaire’s share is $2 billion. Let’s say Trump catastrophically decreases the economy’s value to $50 trillion, while increasing corruption such that that Trump is getting more power, and the billionaire’s share is $10 billion.
This is followed by a collapsing market that creates a dip in share prices or private valuation, the assets of which can be bought for pennies on the dollar, eventually leading to that billionaire having $30 billion in a total economy worth $20 trillion.
Win/win for Trump and the billionaire, at the cost of everyone else.
That’s basically what’s happening, and will continue to happen.
I’m not an economist, so here’s my ass talking, but I don’t think your example scales out. I think you’re making the mistake of equating the stock market to the economy. It isn’t.
Not everyone wins in a failing economy. If one billionaire makes out, three more lose money.
I just want to inject here my experience in Britain during the 2008 Crash and its aftermath:
In Britain, the Finance Industry was 17% of GDP, so when the Crash happened the country was disproportionally hit.
After the crash the autorities chose to protect Asset Owners above all:
By 2015 the incomes of the top wealthier 10% of the population were growing in real terms 23% per year whilst the bottom 90% were seeing their incomes fall 1% per year in real terms.
This was roughly how things went for about a decade after the Crash. UK inequality is nowadays huge, social mobility near non-existent, average incomes when measured in a currency other than the pound - which went down following Brexit - have stagneted, overall economic growth is anemic and concentrated in highest wealth layers since that “growth” told by official GDP numbers is mostly asset prices going up.
This is the process by which the billionaires make sure they win: everybody gets hit more or less in a Crash, but in during the subsequent period when the state is supposedly trying to fix it, you get also sorts of “extreme measures required by extreme times” that, “curiously”, help the billionaires the most, so some years later everybody but the wealthiest slices of society are worst of whilst the wealthiest are much richer even than before the Crash.
I expect the plans of the billionaires who are cozying up with Trump is exactly to end up richer via this process.
This is spot on, and pretty much how it went down everywhere, not just the UK. Just to clarify: it’s workers, not capital, who create wealth. The staggering rise in inequality, pricing people out of cities and the housing market is having a significant negative effect on productivity which is why Europe is falling behind.
This means lost time where we have not been producing anywhere near our potential, and by consequence also not honing our skills to produce anything in the future. We can’t just win this time back by political change now, it’s lost forever, and young people who should have been at the forefront of developing the economy and making families will never win this back.
We need to be way more angry than we are, and every day that we don’t fix this we’re letting it get worse.
I’m pretty sure this is exact same thing that happened in USA.
Yeah, I believe so based on what I saw from affar, but I’m more intimatelly familiar with Britain - especially the more subtle elements of politics and policy - since I lived there from before the Crash until Brexit.
No, yeah, that’s true. But the billionaires are also competing with each other in a (perceived) zero-sum game and they believe the ones who are cozying closest to Trump will be the best ones positioned to make money - either in a corrupt or a failing economy. But every recession has been a golden opportunity for billionaires.
Heck, in post-collapse Russia, this is how oligarchs first appeared - the “shock therapy” of the 1990s transition to a market economy dropped the value of resources to nothing, and the rich at the time bought them and became the ultra-rich. Some didn’t make it. ( Like a super-bacteria forming from the ones not killed by antibiotics, the ones that survived were even more resistant to control.)
Good example, especially given that it looks like a Russian oligarchy is where we’ve been headed since 2016
Nah, since the 80s at the earliest. The wealthiest were taxed up to 90% and corporations didn’t get the tax loopholes they have now until Reagan took office.
That’s just what you say. And who cares about billionaires losing money anyway?
The billionaires will be buying up what the millionaires sell off to stay afloat.
I am not a billionaire, just an average joe lucky to be able to borrow a few thousand from my Roth 401k in order to buy oil stocks in March 2020 at 90% off.
I earned between 15x and 20x what I invested and paid off my student loans when the market recovered.
It’s not just for the billionaires, but you’re right, all of this is intentional and the wealthiest will profit the most.
I guess it’s for anybody who’s privileged enough to profit off exploitation and planetary destruction.
Yeah. Keep finger wagging. Worked wonders for you in electoral politics.
USAian business does great under fascism. Just look at the MIC. Both “parties” just voted on a massive handout for genocide, etc.
Business will be fine! The right/rich people will be bailed out. Etc.
Only the mega corporations are doing fine. Small businesses are going bust left and right.
Once people lose their jobs and can’t afford to spend, what do you think will happen?
I mean, the proletarinization of the petit bourgeois isn’t exactly something nobody predicted . . .
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re working on it. He’s destroying their bottom lines.
That said, if you go after the king, you’d best not miss.
Their bottom lines aren’t very important to their goal of owning everything. Money is just a vehicle for power, but once they own everything and everyone they won’t need it.
Most of those overlords don‘t care about their business anymore. They want to get the bag now. It‘s how Oligarchies operate. They burn billions to make millions. Or in this case delete trillions to make billions. The goal is have proportionally much more money than us pathetic peasants.
The way Trump operates in particular is unsurprisingly dull. He flips the table and ruins the game for everyone. Then he waits and whoever says some flattering words to him and gives him a hefty bribe is excluded from his bullshit. Suddenly they see their competition crippled while they themselves can do business as usual. That‘s all there is to it. Trump was never the brightest bulb and probably thinks his obvious scheme is brilliant.
Apparently collapse is profitable
Chaos is a ladder
The corporate overlords area fucking idiots. They always have been.
The parasites are still making money. Rocking the boat would temporarily interrupt the party, they’ll continue to party until they’re forced to change.
24 trillion. the culture war bs with the right is thier best chance of maintain power in the us, so no, they might have accept less to hold on to that power. Or they just stir up the right wing in other countries, alongside with russia.
The question is incomplete. They will cost trillions, but the presidency, the party fixing elections right now, will cost the country the dollar itself. They will max out borrowing, then print money to pay off the debt and de facto default. They will turn all of those dollars into very much less valuable things.
Presuming no one stops them.
I think you wanted to use past tense here.
Oh they will squeeze tens of trillions more out of the federal government before it fails. Every excuse they will borrow.
True risk is also anathema to them, probably hedging bets on how the midterms go before they make big moves
I think it’s simpler than that and just is down to the impact on the next quarter’s profits.
I don’t get it, sometimes you wonder if it’s true and he might be acting to help Russia
Sometimes?
It’s kind of a weird game theory thing, because the industries affected aren’t consistently losing. A decision he makes on Wednesday can help the finance industry but hurt the tech industry, and then he can reverse it on Thursday and now the finance industry is tanking but the insurance industry is up. It’s tough to know who would work together to pull him out of office, because between any two given days, the people who have the money have different opinions on how he’s doing.
They’ll make sure it hurts us, long before it ever touches them.
American big business? Not a dime. It’ll be a bailout on the American tax dollar I bet.