I mean, graded on a wide curve of history right now isn’t complete shit. WW1 saw entire generations of young men slaughtered uselessly at the hands of unelected kings. It was so horrific we actually still try not to use chemical warfare. Absolutely brutal combat with casualties that have hardly been seen since. Absolutely nightmare conditions. We baulk at the deaths of 25,000 over a few months of conflict where WW1 regularly saw those numbers in as little as a day. I do not want to minimize the absolutely brutal conflicts going on now. A newly orphaned child is not comforted by history, but your question seeks context and what else is history for but to contextualize the present?

To me, history shows we have not even begun to experience the the depths of the horror people are capable of. At least in the states decenting voices are not carted away into slavery camps, actively trying to wipe out whole populations with starvation at least has some voices calling out the brutality, I do not see people trying to sell their children to survive like in the depression. These are not far away times where these things happened on a scale they do not now.

Long story short, history has shown the measure of brutality and uncaring to be significantly worse at times. Raw and unquestioned genocide, slavery, persecution, war, child beating, women opressing, and all manner of the lowest acts of evil are the norm of humanity, not the relative peace we have known over the last 80 years. This fact does not make life suck less, but can at least act as a measure for how horrid is has been.

The question “Why has the world gone to shit in the past 5 to 10 years” has routinely been asked every five to ten years throughout history. It’s largely due to the perceptual biases of the human mind.

Hang in there kitty.

Chronic disease and general poor-functioning has been skyrocketing and the vast majority of people just ignore it like it’s no big deal.

Obviously it’s a big deal when the intelligence and competence of a majority of people has been severely diminished. We’re now living in Idiocracy. And it’s why for two elections in a row we’ve ended up with the choice of two senile old white men.

You see it all started when some dumb motherfuckers decided to leave the relatively plentiful African Savannah for the dead-land that was the desert. Then they had to invent agriculture and it was all downhill from there.

I think the 2020 election and the pandemic are largely to blame for some spiraling plummets in our feelings about our system as a whole. Both of these events caused some pretty large divides in our government, communities, and even family and friend units.

War and human suffering were already there. Corporate greed and late-stage capitalism effects were already there, as well. We’re all just critically assessing everything together at this point because some of those divides removed a security net of reliability and trust.

So, before I say “capitalism” like everyone else id like to argue many of the monetary/economic policy can be used by either authoritarian state capitalists or free capitalists alike.

https://42macro.com/education Edit: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjqe6xtZYTfvA4pHs0HgJsQ

This can be useful^ it’s a brief read. Also I love Adam Taggart, he’s a really good person to follow on YouTube for economics.

Things were getting bad for a while, and we kick the can down the road until an exponentially worse problem arrives, then repeat. Let’s look at COVID for now tho instead of going back decades

COVID happens, society has to adapt, and now there’s growth issues with the economy (growth domestic product or gross domestic income)

First, government gives a shit ton of stimulus checks to the consumer market. A market is a collection of buyers and sellers. The consumer market is a collection of buyers and sellers who spend their money on one thing and don’t retain that value. So most of the stimmy money went from consumers to corporations. To give you an idea, over the last 3 years we’ve seen 35% of inflation that is never going away, it will forever weigh on the consumer market (and that’s the market that needs to be well off for an economy to be anything more than the stock/financial market)

Second, Fed sees an incoming recession so they lower interest rates to make banking loans cheaper to encourage investment to increase growth again. This means people who are not suffering from the economy can easily afford another house since they’re basically not paying any interest on it, then rent it out to Airbnb or whatever.

All these things cause growth in the short term, while making inflation a much worse problem in the long term.

FED starts raising interest rates slowly over the last year or 2. Now they’re about to lower them again which is a sign we’re in for another recession, but let’s look at what raising interest rates did:

Banks operate on a very tight margin and raising interest rates hurts banks in the short term and takes a while for markets to react to (which is part of the reason why we saw so many bank closures like silicon valley bank)

But raising interest rates also makes it more expensive for people to afford mortgage payments.

H.O.P.E: housing , orders, profits, employment

When mortgage payments got more expensive housing got expensive. When housing gets expensive orders go down and/or credit card usage goes up (which is another separate problem / indicator). When orders go down profits go down, and when profits go down employment goes down.

It should be worth noting the one thing J Powell did right was creating slack in job openings to prevent a complete crash in the labor market, but that’s the last thing to crash in a recession so we’re still just kicking the can down the road.

That’s the best analysis I can do with respect to COVID, but some other interesting things:

The average boomer is 2 years into retirement. The labor force is going to continue shrinking for the next 7 years. It won’t be this bad in America, but in south east asian countries, there’s going to reach a point where there are more old people than young people, and when that happens there’s not enough people to care for the elderly and support the rest of the economy, so both tend to suffer. America will feel this pain as well, but our population “pyramid” is more of an hourglass, where south east asian is an upside down pyramid

Also, geopolitical tensions are likely going to get worse over the next few years. China manufactures everything consumers like that don’t have to do with defense, so things like smartphones are going to get much more expensive , and tech stocks are likely to suffer. Edit: not to mention food and gas prices increasing from Ukraine war (which isn’t in the Feds basket of goods for inflation which is HILARIOUSLY STUPID considering that’s their excuse for inflation)

Also, there’s tons of shadow banks with stealth liquidity where there’s no information how much money they have. So however bad inflation was the last few years and will continue to get with the Fed cutting rates, it can get MUCH worse once those banks start releasing their liquidity.

So, things are bad and they’re going to get worse before there’s a chance things get better. I really recommend listening to Adam Taggart and the people he interviews to help form your decision making

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Here’s the thing… There’s always shit hitting the fan, that doesn’t change. What has changed is our perception. We see everything that happens everywhere all the time right in the palm of our hands. Our ability to have control over any of it hasn’t changed much. I was born in the 60s when a president, presidential candidate and a civil rights leader were assassinated which is pretty intense and everyone is aware of it. There were other events that were “big deals” at the time that younger people today aren’t aware of. It’s a thing that strikes me as I get older. I guess that’s how it goes, we all together stress over one thing or another. The first one I remember getting wrapped up in was the Swine Flu outbreak in the 70’s. My 5th grade class got a new textbook with a picture right inside the cover of a kid getting an inoculation shot. The needle device looked more like an industrial staple gun than a traditional needle and I was scared shirtless of it. I waited for my turn to get that shot and it never came. The next news headline replaced Swine Flu and the whole thing blew over. My point is these things come and they go, it’s nothing new. I’m not saying don’t be concerned about the state of things just don’t stress out too hard. It’s not on your shoulders to save the world at least not yours alone. You do have an effect on things just not everything.

Greed won.

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I think the enshitification of the Internet was sort of just what happens to everything once it gets monetized. It was already happening before COVID.

On the other hand - when I was growing up, my city was rough. So much violent crime, bands would not come here, it was notorious. Now? No. Violet crime has decreased sharply, my kids grew up in a different world than I did.

Jobs haven’t become less secure, or at least not in my experience, that change happened in the 1980s, and it’s been about the same since.

Everyone is broke because of Ronald Reagan, for lack of a better way to explain it. Deregulation. Workers have gotten ever more productive without getting their cut of that increase in productivity and this is the endgame of that trend.

My theory? The Mayans were right. 2012 was the end of the cycle, and so the 12 years before and 12 years after are the transition period.

So we’re in the final lap, we just have to make it to December

(I’m not coping, you’re coping)

Greed !!

I want more, you want more , everyone wants more.

In the UK, 14 years of Conservative government has really made the rot grow.