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this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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A global pandemic is bad for the economy. Who woulda thought.
What do you mean? The GDP has only grown (save for like 2-3 quarters).
The rich just saw their chance to become even richer and widen the wealth gap.
When somebody breaks a window, GDP grows. Hence GDP is just a guesstimate towards how the economy is functioning.
Forgive my terrible sources, at least I had something rather than throwing a random claim to the void.
Government spending has propped up GDP during COVID, which is inline with Keynesian economics.
But we are seeing the effects of some of that years later. Is higher interest rates better than a huge depression? Probably.
the problem is that one small group is holing the rest of us hostage, we needed to do the whole spending to ensure people could continue to afford food/housing etc... and that ended up going to everyone, just when it comes to repaying it, the hostage takers threatened to upend the economy if they have to pay it back, so it falls on the rest of us.
record profits as the average American is struggling to get by
Government spending is not the root cause. If that was the case, we would have seen inflation much sooner, since we've been in the era of quantitative easing ever since 2008. The fed was starting to raise interest rates even before covid because the post-2008 recovery was turning into an expansion; we are still in that expansion phase, and covid fucked up our supply chains which kick started the inflation that would have accompanied the expansion regardless, but would have been easier to control in normal times.
GDP was clearly propped up by the government during covid. What are you talking about. like 1/3 of Americans workers got laid off lol
I didn't say the government didn't spend wildly during covid, I said that spending was not the root cause of our current inflation.
I'm not sure sure what that has to do with the discussion about GDP
Are you calling what I commented a random claim or referring to something else?
I edited my other reply for a bit more context, in case you missed it.
That said, maybe I misunderstood your claim and with "the economy" you were referring to the prosperity of the average person.
Yes. No doubt the economy took a hit at the start/height of the pandemic, but using that as a blanket statement to explain the linked article is unsubstantiated.
Edit:
Could also read the article.
Given the American wealth distribution in 2023, just the top 10% of people hold 69% of wealth.
The article mentions the top 20% saw their savings increase.
I think it's fair to extrapolate that America "as a whole" got richer (e.g. the economy is "doing better"), at the small cost of 80-90% of its inhabitants.
The pandemic has been a disaster for the average person, yet the wealthy used it as another opportunity to exploit them.
^(sidenote, "stockpiled" is a very apt descriptor..)