I’ve been noticing a recurring sentiment among Americans - frustration and disillusionment with the economy. Despite having gone to school, earned a solid education, and worked hard, many feel they can’t get ahead or even come close to the standard of living their parents enjoyed.
I’m curious - is this experience unique to the United States, or do people in other countries share similar frustrations?
Do people in Europe, Australia, Canada, or elsewhere feel like they’re stuck in a rut, unable to achieve financial stability or mobility despite their best efforts?
Are there any countries or regions that seem to be doing things differently, where education and hard work can still lead to a comfortable life?
Let’s hear from our international community - what’s your experience with economic mobility (or lack thereof) in your country?"
You forsee high unemployment around 2040?
Who are you?
What model are you using?
… Here’s the actual paper I am showing images from, I’m willing to bet its just a little bit more advanced and comprehensive than the IS LM graph from your first macro econ class in college.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jiec.13442
We are not talking about natural declines in human population growth being the single change, where we hold everything else ceterus paribus and then go from there.
We are talking about a systems dynamics model with multiple factors that all affect each other simultaneously, actually based on historical empirical data, taking into account the externalities and caveats and complications that are so often glossed over by pop econ, the stuff you don’t get to until you get a masters or phd.
We are talking about a complex systems collapse that indicates mass die off from famines, food prices hitting the stratosphere, increasing climate disruption.
Maintaining a system in a steady, no growth state actually does become more expensive and labor intensive after less and less farmers can afford fertilizer, the farmland keeps burning down or flooding, less and less logistics can afford gas prices, unmaintained basic infrastructure falls apart, that kinda stuff.
Have you seen this?
https://actuaries.org.uk/document-library/thought-leadership/thought-leadership-campaigns/climate-papers/planetary-solvency-finding-our-balance-with-nature/
Somewhere around 25% less world GDP than now in 2070 from climate change destroying everything.
Not 25% less world GDP growth, 25% lower absolute world GDP.
This is coming from the UK’s most credible association of actuaries, the folks that actually do all the complicated, summated math from the micro level up, that most economists just hand wave attempt to explain from the macro level down.
EDIT: Take a look at that first graph I posted and note how one of the axes labels is Non Renewable Natural Resources
The entire infinite growth paradigm of most mainstream economics is untethered to reality, often handwaved away with ‘oh technology will just make everything better, everything more efficient’.
Everything crashes when its not cost effective to extract the resources the system requires to function, then parts of the system just start shutting down.
You’re describing a very scary future… What would you say we can do to prepare for it?
Fuck if I know, play Fallout games with the difficulty turned up on a self imposed ironman mode.
Or figure out how to signal to the Vulcans that we need help.
That’s very helpful, thanks lol
I genuinely wish I had better advice, but if climate experts explaining, for 20+ years, how fucked we will be if we do not drastically change has achieved negligibly effective results, I am not going to be able to come up with anything that will actually fix the problem.
I am disabled. I live off of SSDI. Fixed income.
If Trump cancels that, I’m dead.
If not, my plan is to try to move to Minnesota.
Low fire risk, relatively low flooding risk, lots of access to water, at least for now its a blue state, and it is the least expensive blue state to live in (that isn’t the desert of New Mexico).
Also has a decent range of assistance for poors like me, a rental rebate program… but who knows what’ll happen if Trump just cancels all the federal funding for all that.
Has a lower required common income to rent ratio, 2.5x compared to 3x in most of the rest of the non climate disaster zone parts of the US.
If I can give any useful individual advice it would be to form a mutual aid network with your friends and family, and go check out some predicted climate danger maps, move somewhere that’s low on that but also affordable, learn how to cook from raw ingredients, learn how to mend and maintain things like appliances, vehicles, clothes, etc.
All my friends and family were QAnon MAGAtards, or hysterical, irresponsible, backstabbing hypocrites, or both, so I’m SoL on the ‘have a support network’ front, but I can at least move somewhere better for me.
I don’t think there’s a lot you can do … a lot of problems are big and complex, like food getting expensive, a staggering economy, … but what you can do is to talk with your friends and build social connections. If it doesn’t change reality, at least it makes you feel better :) and i mean it, lots of mental health problems (that are so widespread today) can be at least alleviated by social contact. And maybe gives society a little bit of extra stability … if people are connected in meaningful ways.
Apart from that, i can only pray that people take the world and the future seriously, and think twice before they put children into this world.
Do you have a matrix chat account? I would like to talk to you in more detail.
I have collected these thoughts discussing with a small group of friends.
To really understand long-term development, it isn’t enough to just consider “pop econ”, as you rightly put it. I have considered some thoughts into it that are right on the border between reality and mysticism, for lack of a better word. The reason people do things is because deep inside, they are moved by the meaningfulness of it all. That is why it makes sense to consider the world’s fate on a story-telling scale.
People believed during the 1960s that economic growth was the right thing to do. As we all know (The Limits to Growth) it can’t go on that way forever, in fact it has to come to a halt. That is why the economy is in turmoil, and people must have fewer children or we face a large unemployment crisis in the future.
When that exactly will be is a subject to debate, and i put 2040 because there’s Renewable Energy that has to be set up, including everything that has to do with it (green steel, …). So that takes a few (maybe 20) years to install. After that … what comes after?
In my eyes, the unemployment crisis is bigger than the food crisis. Acres lose fertility, yes, but they retain 40% fertility in the long-term, even with all the insects dying and the mycorrhiza dissolving. Since people only use 30% of (technically) possible food-sources today, this should work out.
I don’t think we’ll have (and i hope we won’t still have) “GDP” in 2070, honestly.
Unfortunately I do not have a matrix account, I only have a shitty smartphone.
I am still recovering from spending a year homless after being assaulted and held hostage in my apartment for a week… my wrist (and many other body parts) are still massively fucked up, I can only type in bursts before immense pain sets in.
ooh shit, how did that happen? was it a crazy ex? i hope you get better soon. i know how demanding these post-stress syndromes can be. (i’m struggling with something similar, but not as severe)
Had some recently met friends of friends, and friends I’d known longer, over for a small get together.
One of the friends of friends decided not to leave.
Fucked up me and my apartment real bad, injured me so bad I lost my job, lost my phone, lost my computer, got evicted, lost all my other belongings, pent a year homeless, got my wallet stolen many times, further beat up by fentanyl addicts on the streets.
I am recovering slowly, but I have to do all my own PT, as I can barely walk, don’t have a car, couldn’t afford the proper PT anyway as half my disposable income is going toward paying off debt from my stolen credit cards that the credit bureaus refuse to remove from my record.
PTSD is something I now have but is the least of my concerns, Im more worried with re learning how to walk, as my torn muscles attempt to heal around my broken bones.