Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

This is all fascinating to me..I've made more than 30k in a year once. We have a mortgage on a house after years of being homeless and living in subpar conditions.

But investing just seems insane to me

It's fascinating to me too, as a no-longer USA resident. it seems so inefficient (wrt "having time to do things you like") to have to invest individually for retirement with these "index funds" when you could just have a state apparatus do it for you. but I guess it's so americans can think the dream of getting rich was meant for them and will continue to sit quietly while the pirates loot their bounty.

This ties into something else upthread: that because "we know how monetary policy works now" that "the economy" can't crash into depression anymore. but since "the economy" only means what >= upper-middle-class people do, this leaves out what happens to < upper-middle-class people. & then this ties to something I saw on another thread, about whether you can ethically participate in this >= upper-middle-class economy while still being "leftist". I guess I should be heartened that so many people agree with me that the answer is "no", but it seems nevertheless like the response is "can't knock the hustle", "I don't make the rules, gotta look out for #1" etc.

It's just an old "pet peeve" of mine to see people who present as leftist living in income-maximizing ways & then trying to justify doing so as consistent with their leftism. I think they're full of shit, even when they say "oh it's so I can give all my extra money to the SPLC" or whatever, because they're regularizing "the economy" & that's their actual contribution to morality.

I can afford to save some money away, but I can't quite afford to live in my own apartment in my area without giving up over half of my income to it. So yeah, I can only claim to be so far to the left, I guess? But in honesty, I'm never going to tell people that I donate to leftist causes for social points.

i guess i have a hard time thinking is consistent or inconsistent with anything if you are not given a choice but to save on your own for retirement unless you want ("want") to work until you die, and you don't have a choice to not sell your labor for money and spend the money on commodities in order to survive. we also have to save money for future health expenses and other crap we should never have to pay for.

railroading citizens into participating in the stock market so they don’t have to eat cat food when they’re elderly is one of the more despicable things american style capitalism has ever done

and probably the biggest contributor (outside of just straight up racism) to the insane death cult drive for people who’ve made it to 50 or so with 6 months of living expenses to their name

xp i've been chalking it up to inertia, terror and greed myself but i think we're saying the same thing.

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses)

i keep thinking about how the stock market behaved after trump got elected. i have a pretty good idea of how the stock market will behave if joe biden gets elected. i remember how obama got blamed for all sorts of shit he had nothing to do with and it was a joke but people still believed it, people still _accepted_ it, and i have a hard time imagining things will be any better on this front with biden. this worries me a _lot_.

yeah I just remember after coming into office during the worst failure of capitalism in 80 years Obama spent an inordinate amount of time placating and soothing and lovingly stroking Wall Street... only to be repaid with a parade of Very Serious economists and CEOs coming on CNBC and talking about “uncertainty” vis-a-vis this radical community organizer’s administration.

and that’s about when I started thinking it was probably time to burn down their vacation homes and sink their yachts

like homeboy you should be IN JAIL, but instead you’re out here on “the news” explaining how the guy who’s been president for 20 minutes is hampering the recovery

sorry but there are no ethical reasons not to buy some bonds and broad index funds, only innumeracy.

Maybe it’s kind of like the airplane mask analogy. If you want to carry on the struggle to improve the political and economic situation in the world, you need to take care of yourself first, which means doing something to ensure you’re not completely broke at a point in the foreseeable future.

pretty sure that's how we got here?

again, i'm not holier than thou; i'm participating in the systems same as everyone else! But we all draw our lines somewhere and this has been mine for about two decades. COVID insolvency has me tripping more lately and feeling like i may have to give in to this fucking indignity.

That green chart up there is really pretty, it looks like bird plumage.

it is how we got here but we didn't have a vote in the design of this system. or if we had one vote, bankers who wanted the 401k system and mortgage lending system got billions or trillions of votes. i want to be clear i'm not begrudging anyone for not wanting to buy into it but as far as ethical choices go it's like feeling guilty when you didn't recycle one plastic bottle even though oil companies routinely spill millions of gallons of oil into the ocean and your recycling gets sent to china to become trash anyway. not to mention if you fail to save they claw it back from you when you need a bigger loan to buy a house or car. there is no winning.

happy thursday!

i guess where we're missing each other harbl is that I'm suggesting there's other ways to work the system that are less nakedly toxic than investing in the stock market based solely on greatest ROI. putting money into home ownership or green stocks might be 25% less reward on your investment than buying XOM or SWBI but they contribute less directly to the dumpster fire.

that's fine though. i don't want you to think i'm saying you're dumb for wanting to do that.

i diggit. i think flopson actually DID call me dumb for wanting that tho' so that's what I'm responding to.

i also think kate's otm about the onus for trump's megaquadrupleclusterfucking of the greater economy in service of general kleptocracy landing squarely on biden's shoulders. Trump woke up on second base and declared himself a genius; biden will inherit a country squarely in the middle of a severe depression and folks are gonna act like he shit the bed no matter what happens.

how about if i think the entire underpinnings of the american economic structure are intentionally racist classist and unethical by their very nature?

after much thought and puzzling over how to personally disentangle myself from the global capitalist economic structure, I came to the conclusion that there were no escape hatches by which I could make myself no longer complicit in its inherent classism and racism. I'd very much appreciate any hints regarding a reasonable way out that is entirely within my own sphere of choice. I have never found one.

after much thought and puzzling over how to personally disentangle myself from the global capitalist economic structure, I came to the conclusion that there were no escape hatches by which I could make myself no longer complicit in its inherent classism and racism. I'd very much appreciate any hints regarding a reasonable way out that is entirely within my own sphere of choice. I have never found one.

― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless)

i got no solutions either, best i can do is own my own complicity

"owning" anything is complicit *takes big hit of j*

isn't this what that other guy was asking about months ago. his spouse wanted him to get it together but he hates the idea of money. my feeling about him was, "duuuuuude".

"owning" anything is complicit *takes big hit of j*

― Give me a Chad Smith-type feel (map)

thanks pascal

here's a scallop

oh i found his posts, dn SA. It wasn't as bad I remember.

_how about if i think the entire underpinnings of the american economic structure are intentionally racist classist and unethical by their very nature? _

after much thought and puzzling over how to personally disentangle myself from the global capitalist economic structure, I came to the conclusion that there were no escape hatches by which I could make myself no longer complicit in its inherent classism and racism. I'd very much appreciate any hints regarding a reasonable way out that is entirely within my own sphere of choice. I have never found one.

NOT COOL

Suicide?
― Boring, Maryland, Thursday, August 20, 2020 1:44 PM

Banned, insta- and perma-.

ty

Boring, you obviously haven't read up on the ILE or 77 Board depression threads, where multiple ilxors describe their long, exhausting struggle with suicidal ideation. Not a joking matter here or elsewhere.

i laughed actually -- i know for some folks it's super sensitive and triggering -- and for me, it is both, but c'mon, really? permaban? that's way too harsh

it seems so inefficient (wrt "having time to do things you like") to have to invest individually for retirement with these "index funds" when you could just have a state apparatus do it for you

which state apparatus? The ideological one or the repressive one? Honestly, the "buy index funds, have shares reinvest, take RMD's when you retire" isn't that far off from having a government pension which is managed by a responsible fund manager.

also - yo, flopson -- are you familiar with this Roger Lowenstein book about the beginnings and history of the Federal Reserve Bank?

And not to be all Captain-Save-An-Investment-Banker -- but these state apparatuses are notoriously bloated in terms of management costs and inefficiency and these costs are retained by the apparatus and not distributed to the investors, er, citizens ... it's kinda like, pick your poison: oligarchs or corrupt politicians and bureaucrats

after much thought and puzzling over how to personally disentangle myself from the global capitalist economic structure, I came to the conclusion that there were no escape hatches by which I could make myself no longer complicit in its inherent classism and racism. I'd very much appreciate any hints regarding a reasonable way out that is entirely within my own sphere of choice. I have never found one.

― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Thursday, August 20, 2020 12:57 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

It seems to me that, if one can afford it, some enterprise that provides rent-to-own housing to disenfranchised people is one way to go about this (nb, I absolutely cannot afford to do that).

just putting this out there again in case it got lost in the shuffle:

I'm suggesting there's other ways to work the system that are less nakedly toxic than investing in the stock market based solely on greatest ROI

some enterprise that provides rent-to-own housing to disenfranchised people is one way to go about this (nb, I absolutely cannot afford to do that).

Basically it sounds like what you are describing could totally work and not necessarily require every investor to put in a lot of money -- it would be the equivalent of real estate investment company (either trust or partnership) that people could buy shares in, but the enterprise would focus on stable affordable housing for disenfranchised people. This is kind of along the lines of what I was talking about earlier ... maybe I'm misreading idk

And not to be all Captain-Save-An-Investment-Banker -- but these state apparatuses are notoriously bloated in terms of management costs and inefficiency and these costs are retained by the apparatus and not distributed to the investors, er, citizens ... it's kinda like, pick your poison: oligarchs or corrupt politicians and bureaucrats

― sarahell, Thursday, 20 August 2020 19:20 (thirty-eight minutes ago) link

Are they? I don't know that generally to be true -- source?

a source for the inefficiency and bloated costs in government agencies that manage money and benefits? ... Dude, the IRS sent thousands of stimulus payments to dead people!

You know there are other countries that are better run than the US, right?

yeah but I don't live in one!

Like I know you are skeptical of government involvement because US government at all levels is incompetent and corrupt, but it honestly doesn’t have to be that way!

it's like me telling someone who lives in Chicago -- You know there are cities with nice weather for most of the year, right?

We don’t vote on the weather

Like I know you are skeptical of government involvement because US government at all levels is incompetent and corrupt, but it honestly doesn’t have to be that way!

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, August 20, 2020 1:09 PM (three minutes ago)

I don't entirely disagree with you.

Basically it sounds like what you are describing could totally work and not necessarily require every investor to put in a lot of money -- it would be the equivalent of real estate investment company (either trust or partnership) that people could buy shares in, but the enterprise would focus on stable affordable housing for disenfranchised people. This is kind of along the lines of what I was talking about earlier ... maybe I'm misreading idk

― sarahell, Thursday, August 20, 2020 2:57 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yay community land trusts!

yay someone else who knows about and says yay community land trusts!

i really want to start one/participate in one once we are in a position to do that

Haha - I was wondering if my posts would come up as the whole "how is investing in stocks ethical?" debate happened again. One reason I don't post more is I feel pretty inarticulate in the internet message board format and it is cringe-inducing to read my old posts.

Very happy to see community land trusts come up. My spouse (the one wanting me to play the stocks game because her dad and brother-in-law are both super into it), works for a community land trust. Shit is awesome. I didn't know what they were until recently. Things like that give me hope in the face of all the "that's just the way the system is, pal - you gotta look out for #1".

so talk more about that? how does one invest in a community land trust and what's the return?

SA, i think I confused some of chief k.'s sentiments with some of yours. When i went back to find your posts, it wasn't what I had remembered. also,I don't really think that being good at sports betting or fantasy sports? (this thread is too big for me to go back again to find it) is a good reason to start daytrading. Or because your spouse is seeing her other family members do it. It's work and risk/stress and time. But it's not a terrible thing for both of you to learn together to see if it's something you both would want to do after knowing more of the logistics.

Oh good. Yeah the Chief was coming in blasting some aggro stuff at the same time. I agree about the fantasy football correlation - I don't see it at all. Just something my wife mentioned in passing once. I guess it all seems like predicting numbers to her.

My wife is a freelance development/fundraising consultant and most of her current work is for Atlanta Land Trust. She's only been working there for a couple months (this happened after my round of "are stocks ethical?" posts) but we were both super excited about this place. Doesn't seem to have much info on investing but this is it: https://atlantalandtrust.org/get-involved/i-am-an-investor-or-philanthropist/

(And as some of you might remember from last time, I am personally not really in the financial place to look for somewhere to chuck my money - I was only curious about it from an ethical standpoint.)