Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
www.bloomberg.com
  • frogbellyratbone_ [e/em/eir, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    21 days ago

    all the official numbers are so cooked and fucked. every time i get a chance to share this site i do: https://www.lisep.org/

    24% real unemployment v. 4.2% “unemployment”

    9.4% true living cost v. 4.1% CPI (the CPI is heavily weighted in areas that do not affect your day-to-day living/life. if you strip down to the essentials of necessity/core living needs - inflation is so so so much worse)

    $1,000 weekly earnings v. $1,194

    edit: i really want to nerd rage about CPI some more. i fucking hate the CPI. i’m also a bit high rn but whatever

    it does consumer-whore adjustments. so like. a faster computer = more for your dollar even though it costs more. but it doesn’t account for this because faster computer = less inflation or something another???

    it also does the substitutions: if pork is expensive it doesn’t account for this because you go buy beef or whatever instead. but what if everything increases? oh you buy tofu suuure.

    it looks at rental costs not buying homes. sure buying a home is impossible, but this isn’t factored in because “rent only went up whatever %” while down payment + interest rate + housing costs went WILD.

    the CPI includes things people don’t buy or put in their budget. jet skis? cool it’s included even though who tf buys jet skis? (okay jet skis are cool… but you see my point?)

    if the CPI was actually accurate, it would look at only/weight HEAVILY core living costs. things like: housing, utilities, internet, food, healthcare, transportation, childcare, and personal good like soap, detergent, basic clothing. fuck everything outside of this.

    • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      21 days ago

      I know RiotDoll already offered some reading material, but it’s worth reinforcing:

      The US has always been (one of) the guiding hand(s) of fascism, from day one. The Nazis literally sent people to the US to learn how we built a racialized caste system through Jim Crow (and were horrified when they learned about the one drop rule, because even they thought that was too racist). American capitalists made millions off of slave labor in the Third Reich and lobbied the Allied Air forces to avoid bombing factories that were producing weapons for the Nazis because they owned them. When the war ended, the US protected and rehired massive chunks of the Nazi and Japanese command to head up NASA, NATO, the South Korean military, etc.

      The only point in favor of the US not being explicitly fascist is that it managed to export the crises and downsides of capitalism internationally to avoid the internal crises that lead to fascism traditionally because Americans domestically enjoy enough treats to avoid class consciousness, and even that’s breaking down now so who knows if that will hold.