We’re already there. The only reason we aren’t calling this a depression is that the stock market hasn’t been affected much.
But when 25% of Americans are functionally unemployed, it’s hard to argue we aren’t already largely ‘crashed’.
The biggest issue is the need for families to have two incomes to support a houshold. Unemployment would plummet if single incomes for the working class were feasible again,since unemployment is based on looking for employment.
Basically if jobs had living wages and we had universal healthcare we wouldn’t be in this mess.
That ship sailed under Reagan, and it’s never getting back to port, sadly. Thanks to him, families now needed two incomes.
Then, Bush and Clinton came along, and you needed not only two incomes, but two college degrees. Now, with Dubya, Obama, and Trump, not even that’s enough, and they’re capping student loans instead of regulating student loan interest, so your only real shot at being a doctor now is being born in the right zip code.
America, baby. Dig it.
it’s never getting back to port
In the event of an actual crash, a lot of these “nevers” will get re-evaluated. The New Deal consisted of a lot of “nevers” that all got passed because people didn’t want a repeat of the first Great Depression; I’d expect a similar snap-back after the second Gilded Age finally burns itself out.
I mean that’s hopeful, but remember that the New Deal also came against the backdrop of the height of socialism in the West and the labor rights movement. Modern Americans don’t have the organizational strength to make such a compromise attractive in the eye of the ruling class, and they don’t seem intent on ever having it.
Historically, humans don’t just suffer in silence for more than a couple of generations.
Lot of assumptions there.
I hope you’re right.
Well, it’s either that or American Revolution II: Electric Boogaloo, so I hope so too.
The new deal though is not a good deal lmao. It will literally make the rich gen richer and poor get poorer. Like I’m middle class American but still rely on summer and after school programs for my kids. What am I supposed to do when that goes away? Magically afford a daycare? Or is my 10yr or 6yr old supposed to get a job?
They’re not talking about a new deal as in a new status quo after this whole mess; they’re talking about the New Deal and are hoping for more of that.
TL;DR for the article: Pretty much all federal social welfare programs and worker rights in America were established as part of the New Deal. Think if Bernie became president with a cooperative Congress.
Indeed. Yikes, our history education is in rough shape.
I mean something tells me that’s one topic that wouldn’t be appropriately covered in schools, but that’s just my guess.
You misunderstand me, as the other comment notes. I’m talking about actual change: “The New Deal,” capitalized: the relief, reform, and recovery of the 1930s, not “the new deal,” lowercase, that they just passed.
Why would a new deal get rid of after school programs? If would expand on them.
Or is my 10yr or 6yr old supposed to get a job?
Yeah man they have started rolling back those regulations for child labor.
Trump just passed a huge cut it he 21s CCLC down to $0… This stops all funding to after school and summer learning programs. I just got an email from. The center my kids go to saying they might have to close because they didn’t get their July 1st budget payments…
… You don’t know what the New Deal was, do you?
now even degrees arnt guaranteed in jobs, alot of these need grad degrees/graduate level certification to have even a chance.
if jobs had living wages
But but billionaires would be slightly less obscenely rich then, oh no!
This is part of my problem. My wife has medical issues and can’t work which is exaserbated by our higher than typical medical costs. It sucked before but we managed and now it seems like the end.
Yeah, I don’t know if OP is in the USA, but having someone like Donald Trump elected to high office is 100% part of a crash already in progress. Inequality got so bad that democracy is not functioning. In a healthy society, Trump would be an unelectable laughing stock.
Yeah. I consider Trump the “blow everything up” candidate, he got a lot of support from people who were just so generically desperate that they wanted to vote for whoever seemed like they were going to majorly change something, somehow. It almost didn’t matter what Trump did as long as he smashed the existing order while doing it.
Agreed. People were angry - many with good cause. Unfortunately, people often make bad decisions when they are angry.
he is doing it, smashing everything to smithereens. the republicans voters hope its phoenix rising out of the ashes type of situation.
24/7 propaganda, plus MSM helping all along the well, plus adding a little culture war(racisms, sexism, anti-immigration,evangelicalism) helped alot.
Also, not so fun fact, but this got me curious so I looked up the unemployment rate during The Great Depression: apparently then it was around 20% to 25% as well, so I feel like that reinforces the point I’m making a bit.
apparently then it was around 20% to 25% as well
No, the unemployment rate was around 20-25% under the traditional definition. It’s currently 4.2% under that definition.
If you want to use this LISEP definition, fine, but recognize that it’s been above 30% for most of its existence, and has only been under 25% since COVID. Basically, if you go by the LISEP definition then you’re saying that the job market after COVID has been better than it has ever been before.
The 1% own even more stock than they own outright money. You could replace “the economy” in every article with “rich people’s yacht money”. The stock market is 100% dissociated from reality and shouldn’t be used as a measure of general wealth by any means.
most of billionaires money is in investment schemes, not actual cash as people think.
I stopped working a year ago. Burnt out, broken down, and various physical ailments just broke and depressed me. Moved back in with family to help support my useless ass. Shit sucks and it ain’t going to get any better. But I’ll turn up to every local protest I can cuz this GOP shit is bullshit.
From your own source on “true” unemployment, it’s the lowest it has been since they started calculating it. It peaked in 09 at 35% and again in COVID, but all through the early 00s it was between 28% and 30%.
You can’t use that number as evidence we “already crashed”, because as we’ve seen in other actual crashes it spikes up to 35%.
When the definition of unemployed is changed to exclude the majority of working age people without jobs then it is no longer a helpful statistic.
That’s why we see people calculating real unemployment with other variables.
When the definition of unemployed is changed to exclude the majority of working age people without jobs then it is no longer a helpful statistic.
U-3 has used the same definition of unemployed since 1940.
Whatever metric you want to use, you should look at that number and how it changes over time, to get a sense of trend lines. LISEP says the “true” unemployment rate is currently 24.3% in May 2025, which is basically the lowest it’s ever been.
Since the metric was created in 1994, the first time that it dipped below 25% was briefly in the late 2010’s, right before COVID, and then has been under 25% since September 2021.
Under this alternative metric of unemployment, the unemployment rate is currently one of the lowest in history.
I don’t know how to make you engage with reality.
Slaves arguing for their continued enslavement is just something i will never understand.
You can’t understand because you can’t even read the numbers in your own sources haha
I didn’t post any numbers.
“Indignant slave mocks another slave to make themselves feel better.”
Haha
You’re the one saying we shouldn’t be cross comparing different numbers with different meanings… While literally comparing different numbers with different meanings to support your point
Hello friend.
This point has been discussed elsewhere in the thread. I hope you have a nice afternoon.
And the stock market is just another way for the top percent to continue to siphon wealth.
Meh, please don’t quote unusual statistics without giving any context for how to interpet them.
For this value, it is calculated by:
Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes.
24.3% is not that out of the ordinary - you can see historical data back to like, 1995 here.
Not saying this stat is useless, but the way you’ve chosen to use it is intentionally and inaccurately inflammatory.
I dunno, H.
I may be wrong in saying it’s indicative of a crash, and I’m okay with being corrected.
As to inaccurate or inflammatory, maybe it feels that way if you’re on the winning side of the equation.
I think we should be inflamed about this. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that thirty years of high functional unemployment being ordinary is an objectively bad thing, but when you couple it with the increasingly supercharged price gouging and inflation the US has experienced over the last several decades, things that seemed improbable before suddenly become feasible. (Like making fascists electable.)
The fact that it’s pegged to 25k means that the number is much much higher. It’s not 24.3%. its 24.3% plus everyone who can’t afford to live at today’s prices.
That’s terrifying.
Im at 42 weeks. My life plane is heading straight down and the rudder is not responding.
Best way to recover from a spin is push the yoke to straight down and rudder opposite the spin.
If the economy doesn’t need 25% of the populace to keep functioning…what happens?
The stock market is not the same thing as it was at the start, different players, different motives, and lots of failsafes. That time it was a signal that things were bad, this time we could continue to get worse and you’d never know it looking at the DOW.
Can you ELI5 why the stock market isn’t affected much?
If we look at historic crashes, they had major catalysts causing mass sell orders. Right now markets have had time to adjust because the speed of decline has been very slow.
Markets are also largely speculative, many stocks are traded way above their fundamental value (think Microsoft, tesla, or coca-cola). These will probably be hit the hard, algorithms will default to what a stock should be and drop hard. But these companies might have the strongest chance to bounce back as well.
Companies with the strongest books will be safer, but many more risk taking companies won’t be as lucky. This is part of what due diligence of a stock will tell you, but also probably one of the hardest parts of investing.
As long as decline is slow, stability can be found. But when uncertainty rises fast, so does the unstability of the stock market. Catalysts such as the public losing confidence in banks causing a bank run, companies downsizing at unseen scales to cut costs, or global political instability are possible.
TLDR: it needs to get way worse, very quickly for the market to crash
So many jobs 🫲🍊🫱
Really weird reading an article that interviews someone you’ve worked for (who is a billionaire themselves).
It depends on who “we” are.
If you’re in the US, then bad news buttercup - you’re already under the thumb of a ruthless insane dictator, and the economy is the last of your worries.
We are heading into a feudal system of a sort. The wealth gap is absolutly massive and the only way to end up in the upper class is to inherit. As per usual the population feels that the system is unfair, but is unable to see the real problem. Media is really pushing far right talking points, as the upper class realizes that the system is broken and a real revolution is a problem. Thats how the US ended up with a de facto monarchy. The UK is moving towards that pretty quickly too.
The good news is that Labour might make some really usefull changes. Mainly end first past the post to prevent Reform from taking over. That might very well allow left wing parties like the LibDems and Greens to win more seats and change the narrative.
What makes you think Labour are looking to change that?
Labour had a bit more then a third of the votes, which is pretty close to were Reform is polling today. However Labour won a massive majority with those votes. If Labour wants to prevent a Reform victory they need to change the election system. It is even worse for the Tories. So long term Tory supporters will cheer them on.
I know that makes sense to do, but that’s different from them making plans to do it
The first change doesn’t seem to be related, but that second link is promising.
We’re headed for a revolution, of the French variety.
Bonjour
Don’t worry. Trump is making sure you can get a job picking crops. You’ll be living in a tent. No rent, not utilities. You’re welcome!
We are always headed for a crash. That’s the cycle of capitalism without strong regulatory mechanisms to mitigate it. I believe it is every 4-7 years that a crash has happened in the last 300 years.
Yes. We are heading towards a crash. We are very much already in one, and have absolutley no way out.
Trump killed all US international commerce with his TACO tariffs and is currently propping up a failing stock market by converting medicaid dollars into ICE / TECH BRO MILITARY funding. The stock market keeps doing great because our tax dollars are propping up companies like Google, Plantir, and Amazon through government grants instead of providing us a safety net. That money will run out eventually, but likely not before more CEOs are killed over it.
Literally we are living through the gilded 1920’s again but with an American Hitler.
We now have years of uncontrolled inflation well above target rates, a corrupt government, wealth inequality worse than the French revolution, and rampant unintelligent Tariffs hurting all international trade at the cost of every small business in America. These are the same factors that caused the great depression, and if you think it’s not going to happen again, you are wrong.
We are a country being lead into disaster by the least competent people imaginable.
We are heading towards a crash. We are very much already in one, and have absolutley no way out.
I think this is what folks lose track of when they talk about “the crash”. We’re all waiting with baited breath for the financial system to topple over. But the financial system is increasingly just a dozen private equity firms bidding up one another’s baseball cards. They can’t “crash” in the traditional sense until a sufficient number of them refuse to contribute more to the pot, and so long as everyone has easy credit there’s no real reason to do that.
Incidentally, JPow and Trump (and every Fed Chair/President going back to Bernenke/Obama) have both been militant in keeping Fed Interest Rates at historic lows going on nearly two decades.
Literally we are living through the gilded 1920’s again but with an American Hitler.
I mean, the parallels between Trump and Coolidge Eras are in abundance. War on Immigration. A finance/tech sector that’s eating the industrial economy. Massive spike in white nationalism paired with a full blown Red Scare. Deficit hawkery that never touches the national security state. Global ecological crises compounding into massive famines and agricultural failures.
We are a country being lead into disaster by the least competent people imaginable.
Part of the problem is that we’ve lost track of a consensus on what “competent” looks like. I see plenty of people (rightly) insist guys like Trump and Speaker Johnson and governors like DeSantis and Abbott are criminally incompetent. But then these same people get fully behind Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris, seemingly without recognizing that they’re pushing the backside of the same privatization / national security state coin.
What do you do when blue state bastions like California and New Mexico are turning out Crypto Shills as quickly as any captured conservative enclave like Wyoming or South Carolina? What does competency look like in the wake of Biden’s squandered four years or Obama’s or Clinton’s corporately compromised time in office, for that matter?
How do you talk about climate change or even scratch the surface of our US-backed genocides in Gaza and Yemen and Afghanistan or talk about housing policy or college debts or union organization when half the elected liberal contingent is just a commodity that’s traded on the stock market?
We’re all waiting for the dream to end in a sudden shocking economic turn. I don’t know if that’s necessarily what will happen. What if we’ve just pivoted our economy towards a monetization of human suffering? What if this system is stable and enduring? There is no crash because there’s nothing left to be broken into and fleeced.
Competency implies having some qualification other than loyalty, listening to subject matter experts, considering consequences. The result of competency could easily be just a matter of degree and awareness.
For example, tariffs can be a powerful tool for addressing specific trade inequities or supporting local production, especially in conjunction with other tools. Many US administrations have successfully used them. Only an incompetent buffoon would just throw them down everywhere all at once as the only tool, or as a bullying tactic.
wealth inequality worse than the French revolution
When the creator of the Revolutions podcast was asked about the one theme that follows every revolution, he said that it was wealth inequality.
If I remember correctly, the French revolution had three major elements that kicked it off the way it did: huge wealth inequality, a major event that hits the lower classes (in this case a drought that destroyed lots of crops and therefore caused a wheat shortage), and incompetent leadership that is unable to deal with said event. Looks like the US is getting there, step by step.
ye best start believin in economic depression, yer in one!
Slapping on tariffs at a time with inflation, high consumer anxiety, and wage stagnation is going to be looked on as one of the worst moves a president has made.
He is, without a doubt, the worst and second worst president in the country’s entire history.
Trump: “Ah, but you have heard of me!”
FAKE NEWS TDS, TRUMP IS OUR LAWD N SAVIOR, HE HAS RISEN AND REPLACED JESUS CHRIST. /s
He rose from the dead? I knew something about him seemed zombie like. The dead eyes and awkward hand motions gives it away.
Um, dude we’re not just talking about any normal man, we’re talking about Our Lawd N Savior Convicted Felon Donald J Trump. He didn’t just rise from the dead, he made his own bible.
Praise be his hypocritical name. In the name of the racism, the grift, and the holy crime, amen.
Amen in the name of the bigT
We can only hope! (That this is considered one of the worst ones…)
You will own nothing, live in the company town, owe your soul to the company store, and be grateful.
And that’s different from now, how exactly?
What I am saying is that IS now. Next up, rats and maggots on the menu.
More of a slow collapse than a crash. Ever seen a dilapidated house on a country road, parts of the roof caving in, paint chipped, vines covering the yard? We’re working on being that house by slowly letting social and physical infrastructure in the US collapse over time.
my parents house is like that, lol dad getten older and is too lazy to do anything, he keeps hoping something will magically happen.
Florida is already the rusty old car on blocks in the front yard.
with hurricanes washing away homes that are built on flood prone areas too.
It’s in the making since 1971
What you’re describing is basically stagflation. It doesn’t necessarily mean a crash. It’s possible for the majority of people to keep on earning less and less real income for a long time without a crash.
I do wonder what the effect of all the layoffs from tech and the public sector and all the cuts in federal funding will do though. Dunno if that’s enough to flood the housing market and crash it or not. I think I’ve read that banks are in a good position to absorb housing market losses, so it won’t be like 2008.
AFAIK, most current economic indicators are OK. Not necessarily great, but not dire either.
The stock market makes no sense to me. It doesn’t appear most stocks move on the fundamentals of the companies or anything like that. It all appears to be driven by hype/gambling, and propped up from sustained lows by 401ks on auto-pilot and people trained to “buy the dip” by the quick Covid recovery.
The USD appears to be rapidly losing a lot of value compared to other currencies like the EUR. But, that fits well into the plan to reduce imports and boost US exports. Inflation with stagnant wages makes US exports more attractive/cheaper.
Could the housing market crash independently? Or would it be always with the other markets?
Isnt a crash in the housing market a good thing for the average person?
The crisis happened because everyone got credits to buy a house, even if they shouldnt, and banks made money by betting against them ever paying it back. This caused a huge bubble that had to burst.
It was more a housing-credit crash than anything else.
Sure, it’s bad for people wanting to sell their house to make profits, but it’s good for people that want to buy a house.
The stock market makes no sense to me.
That’s because “The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
The US could poke along forever, North Korea style because our entire country is full of cowards who will just take oppression without any fight.
…the climate, tho. 😬