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1

This week on "What Will Crash The Stock Market (And End Capitalism, This Time I Promise)" with Charles Mudede:

Upon viewing a TV miniseries set during the collapse of Communism, Charlie is shaken to his very core. After much soul-searching, Charlie comes to the surprising realization that the stock market must logically collapse and thus mathematically end Capitalism, soon, any day now, just you wait and see.

2

Who's confusing culture and nature? Unicorns, a cultural artifact, very much exist because they're cultural and not natural.

Also, you don't need tack on a ham-fisted analogy to Chernobyl just to call a mediocre finance article mediocre. Obviously the "film critic" in your title is purely decorative. And if they were going to fire you for not reviewing enough film, they would have done it already.

Article is also mediocre, not terrible. It well silly to write a "wage growth will cause a recession" article when you have to admit in the last sentence that wage growth is not yet at recession causing levels. Especially when Trump and his tariffs on Mexico are much, much more likely to cause a recession before wage growth has a chance to take off.

But the article is not wrong. If global populations keep rising and productivity growth doesn't pick up then zero or low economic growth will start to kill people.

3

Good article. While the analogy is obviously a stretch, it is always a good idea to remind ignorant motherfuckers that America was not always like this. It has been like this before (the Gilded Age) but more recently we had a relatively egalitarian society. Despite the fact that racial minorities and women did not fully enjoy the prosperity, the post-war period really was special. We, as Americans, built the greatest middle class the world had ever known. Ironically, when Trump talks about "Making America Great Again", this is the image he conjures up. Yet he ignores the basic economic principles that made it happen. Not only did we have a mixed economy, but one that resembles modern day Scandinavia (high taxes, strong anti-trust and labor protections) more than it resembles Obama era America, let alone whatever crap he is trying to create. Yet we ignore Northern Europe and the obvious lessons it should teach us. While Scandinavia has become more cosmopolitan and less sexist, many think that the key to success is not to follow their economic model, but to go back to the biggest weakness of our golden age of prosperity.

5

Only 3.6 page clicks. Not great, not terrible.

6

"Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people." Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

7

Didn't Henry Ford decide to pay his workers a living wage, so that every worker could afford one of his cars?

8

Since its inception, back in the 1980s when it was launched to spread the lies of the Reagan administration, USA Today has acted as an organ of pro-imperialist capitalist propaganda, using friendly, colorful, graphic charts as a replacement for depth and analysis. Journalists called it "McPaper"; as teenagers we all referred to it as Pravda Today. It was the FoxNews of its day. Quaint by comparison.

At the same time, studying Russian History and Soviet Society at the UW, our professor explained that once a civilization chooses to follow an ideological fantasy instead of verifyable reality—as occurred throughout the history of the Soviet era— it is doomed.

And now here we are, following the myth of the market and the cult of competition to the end.

9

myth

10

An "Army of One" and "Ever[y] Man for HisSELF!"
Is Capitalism's highest Goal.

And the Devil take the Hindmost.*

*that'd be US Ninety-Nine Percenters, Bob.

Three families in these United States own more Wealth than the "bottom" 50% ers of this, the Richest Country on the fucking Planet.

We have a Minimum Wage.
We need a Maximun Wage.

Like we Used TO.
Which made America GREAT.
Once, upon a Time...

12

GasparFagel @8: "Since its inception, back in the 1980s when it was launched to spread the lies of the Reagan administration,..."

I wasn't aware of that USA Today was launched as the print equivalent of Fox News, but after seeing this crazy column "It's great that you got a raise, but it just might hurt the stock market and the economy," I've got to put some credence in this historical assertion.

Good takedown by Charles Mudede too here. Here we have the folks who promoted the GOP tax cut/reform for its wage-lifting effects when they knew damn well that was not its primary purpose or effect or why they were interested in it. Now they're showing their true colors and freaking out when we finally are seeing the least bit of wage-lifting.


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