• HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    57
    ·
    5 months ago

    We just subtly redefined the economy. It no longer involves provision of essential goods and services to actual people. It’s all a scoreboard of stock prices and interest rates.

    Cults never change: we’re all going to transcend and become beings of pure energy Nevada Limited Liability Corporations that no longer need food or housing because we can subsist on Lord Kalutika’s Golden Light eternal 9% annualized paper growth.

    • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      59
      ·
      5 months ago

      This is why GDP is such an irrelevant measure. In the US it includes financialization. Rents are included as “product.” Insurance is “product.” Tech industry vaporware investment is “product.” They define things that most definitely are not being produced as “product” and say look how much we produce the economy is great! It’s just made up

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        52
        ·
        5 months ago

        It’s even worse than that because a lot of the GDP comes from the industries that are actively harmful to society. Private health insurance is a perfect example, it’s an industry that profits of basic needs of the people, and it’s making the working majority poorer and less healthy. Yet, it bolsters the GDP on paper.

    • FourteenEyes [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      5 months ago

      There’s lots of work being done so people are being paid, it’s just that this work is not productive so the money generated by other actually productive sectors of the economy is essentially being put in a big pile and lit on fire