We’re Approaching the “Blame the Consumer” Stage of the Boom-Bust Cycle
Posted by AbolishtheDraft@reddit | Libertarian | View on Reddit | 7 comments
Posted by AbolishtheDraft@reddit | Libertarian | View on Reddit | 7 comments
pwilli1973@reddit
The business cycle has always been orchestrated by the Federal Reserve. Print money, create artificial booms where capital gets malinvested, then raise rates to "fight inflation," causing a bust where the regular folks get squeezed while the well-connected get bailouts. Rinse and repeat.
When things crash, they'll blame "greedy consumers" for taking on debt or "irrational exuberance" in markets. Never the central planners who manipulated interest rates and money supply in the first place.
The market needs to discover natural interest rates, not have them dictated by bureaucrats. These cycles of boom and bust would be far less extreme with sound money and free banking. Look at pre
BringBackUsenet@reddit
The Bernays economy is responsible for a lot of damage on many levels: economic, ecological, psychological and therefore cultural. This only only a "problem" for those reliant on wasteful consumerism rather than sensible long term sustainability.
Chris_The_Guinea_Pig@reddit
The problem is more the fuckload of barriers to entry in markets, and the prioritarion of shareholder value, the owner of the business is the owner of the business.
iroll20s@reddit
Not only do new devices rarely add much functionality that I care about, they often add a lot of anti-consumer functions like spying on you. Or the new version has a required subscription service.
Naieve@reddit
They completely fail to mention everyone kept spending long past what economists expected.
Now everyone is flat broke, deep in debt, and everything costs even more than anyone expected thanks to Trump.
No shit people aren't buying new phones every year. You killed the golden goose (middle class)!
The_Derpening@reddit
I've had my $100 Best Buy smartphone for something like 5 years now and it's still working better than any other smartphone I've used. In what world is it my fault that the $1,000+ smartphones can't reach this peak?
AlphaTangoFoxtrt@reddit
I had my last phone for over 4 years because it worked. Why should I buy a new $500-$1,000 device that will be what, maybe 10% faster than my current one?
If you want me to drop that much on a new device every 20 months, then thats your problem. Smart phones aren't improving drastically every 2 years to warrant that kind of spend.
Its not the consumers fault that companies are not making their products attractive at the prices they charge. And its not the consumers fault that stupid ass tariffs are raising prices across the board.
The issue is it could be. The tariffs can be levied, removed, raised, or lowered based purely on Trumps whims at the moment. And you dont price your product based on what it cost you when you bought/made it. You price it based on what it will cost you to replenish your inventory. And if Trump is threatening 10% tariffs on everything, then I will price my goods as if the tariffs are in place. Because tomorrow they might be.