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.
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.
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.
When I was a high school student, the New Deal was a topic that was covered with great fanfare. It was as a part of the Early 20th-century unit that led up to the second World War. I partially remember because I was a deluded right-winger at the time and thought it was ridiculous that they were making such a big deal out of a government handout program.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
When I was a high school student, the New Deal was a topic that was covered with great fanfare. It was as a part of the Early 20th-century unit that led up to the second World War. I partially remember because I was a deluded right-winger at the time and thought it was ridiculous that they were making such a big deal out of a government handout program.
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.
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?
Apparently not
now even degrees arnt guaranteed in jobs, alot of these need grad degrees/graduate level certification to have even a chance.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
If the economy doesn’t need 25% of the populace to keep functioning…what happens?
So many jobs 🫲🍊🫱
Really weird reading an article that interviews someone you’ve worked for (who is a billionaire themselves).