GameStop Stock surges due to meme traders

[stroopwafel]

I have no great objection to democratic socialism, such as represented by most of the European left, although I'm more precisely a social liberal.

I am really not very ideological economically; I think a lot of it is "horses for courses": what gets the job done of delivering for a society. Broadly, I'd take a well-regulated capitalist economy. Providing certain sufficiently egalitarian conditions I'd accept anarcho-capitalism, but I suspect emergent proprties would rapidly render it societally dangerous. If you take a country labouring under a self-interested business class where the lot of the people stagnates, I'm quite happy for a socialist to step in and fix things that the usual capitalist exploiters won't. If you need Stalinist Communism to take over and save your people from extermination by militaristic racists, Stalinism it is (but hopefully we don't ever end up in that situation).

I oppose the idea of socialism as a generic boogeyman, because the vast majority of people raging against it can't draw the difference between anarchism, Communism and democratic socialism, despite there being a vast gulf in practice and conditions between the three.

Even with social democracy you have a lot of people exploiting the system. You can make certain things cheaper or facilitate public responsibilities but giving people money is almost never a good idea. There is also the question of mutual reciprocity. 'Free' college education is nice but how is it fair for example that it needs to be facilitated by the taxes of an assembly line worker. Welfare is the same where it is often difficult to determine who really needs it and who is taking advantage of the situation. 'Free' healthcare also sounds nice but how is it fair that someone who watches their diet, exercises etc. needs to facilitate with their taxes the lifestyle of an obese 50-year old with high blood pressure, diabetes and an extended ICU stay for covid complications.

There is also the serious problem that the situation is aggrevated by extensive bureaucracies and interest groups in social democracies that paralyzes the amount of decision making. You end up with public services that are so overloaded by demand that supply actually creates more demand. Like with healthcare, no matter how many collective billions they put into it, it will never be enough. Bureaucracies also lead to a christmas tree of exceptions and entitlements delegated between institutions in the public sector where no one is reponsible and where legitimacy is compensated for by infinite amounts of forms and paperwork. Ofcourse this isn't unique to social democracies but it demonstrates that juridification of official discourse isn't exclusive to more laissez fair capitalist societies. You still end up with either nothing because you can't find a way in the bureaucracy or drown in a swamp of litigation.

You also have to consider the long term implications. I remember with Blair and the 'third way' in 1997 that it was seen as a modernized form of social democracy but the more lasting effects were that more vulnerable people were simply left to their own devices with entire generations being on the dole. The underclass of tattoos, drinking, felonies and asocial behavior was still there but now facilitated by the government and with serious entitlement issues. Not to mention it also didn't prevent the crime and gang violence in east London.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[Agema]

Even with social democracy you have a lot of people exploiting the system.

All systems will be exploited. A system need merely be sufficiently robust to resist excessive exploitation.

There is also the question of mutual reciprocity. 'Free' college education is nice but how is it fair for example that it needs to be facilitated by the taxes of an assembly line worker.

Mutual reciprocity means there's no problem at all if assembly line workers pay for college educations. The idea is that everyone pays for everything. They are all societal goods, even if any one particular good is not used by everyone. The minute you start trying to break these concepts up, everything collapses. People with private educations think they shouldn't pay for state education, people with private healthcare think they shouldn't pay for social healthcare, people with jobs don't think they should pay for unemployment benefits, and the logical end point is no-one pays anything and you have a libertarian state which has an executive, legislature, army, maybe a justice system, and you get nothing but what you can pay for out of your own pocket, and if you're poor, you're screwed.

Welfare is the same where it is often difficult to determine who really needs it and who is taking advantage of the situation. 'Free' healthcare also sounds nice but how is it fair that someone who watches their diet, exercises etc. needs to facilitate with their taxes the lifestyle of an obese 50-year old with high blood pressure, diabetes and an extended ICU stay for covid complications.

Yes, and it's no different in the private sector. Welfare is basically a state-run insurance scheme. Like welfare, with insurance some people pay and never claim, yet their insurance payments are still determined by the misfortune or carelessness of everyone else on that scheme.

You also have to consider the long term implications. I remember with Blair and the 'third way' in 1997 that it was seen as a modernized form of social democracy but the more lasting effects were that more vulnerable people were simply left to their own devices with entire generations being on the dole. The underclass of tattoos, drinking, felonies and asocial behavior was still there but now facilitated by the government and with serious entitlement issues. Not to mention it also didn't prevent the crime and gang violence in east London.

This is utter bollocks. Unemployment under Blair was about 5%: the lowest it had been since the early 70s.

This idea of a soft state chucking money at loafers was the PR of the Conservative Party - it's what they always claim. The same Conservative Party that had overseen 10+% unemployment (>3 million people) twice in 80s and early 90s, who annihilated whole communities by helping destroy the businesses they were based around, and if you want to know what mass, long-term unemployment is, the 80s are your real place to go because there literally weren't jobs for a lot of people to do.

This brings us on to the antisocial behaviour so big in the news in the late 90s and early 2000s. It wasn't the creation of Blair. And besides, how could it have been? You can't turn people from honest, hard-working, law-abiding citizens into feral malcontents with a few years of slightly more generous welfare. They are produced by social deprivation, atomisation, disintegrating communities and depressed social spirit, bitterness and frustration, instilled by parents expressing their lifetime experiences. So if we want to know where that came from, look at the 70s and 80s. The problem teens of the New Labour era were mostly the creations of the Thatcher era.

 

[Eacaraxe]

So to continue with your analogy is it really worth repairing your home when it requires mine to be burned down?

Well, more to the point it's more like blaming your neighbors for the whole-ass neighborhood being on fire when there's a windowless Ford Econoline van with "ARSONISTS!" spray painted on the side, filled with naked men sporting throbbing erections, driving door-to-door spraying gasoline on everyone's houses while setting off fireworks.

Then getting pissed when your neighbors suggest maybe, just maybe, those men are in fact arsonists and not, say, Habitat for Humanity.

And getting even more pissed when the neighbors suggest the HOA doesn't mandate contracting with the naked men to rebuild your burnt-down homes.

And last but not least, saying "now that's a step over the line!" when your neighbors take matters into their own hands and slash the windowless Econoline's tires.

[For the brain-wormed among you, the naked men are hedge funds and the windowless Econoline van is Wall Street. Just thought I'd make that a little clearer.]

 

[tstorm823]

I oppose the idea of socialism as a generic boogeyman, because the vast majority of people raging against it can't draw the difference between anarchism, Communism and democratic socialism, despite there being a vast gulf in practice and conditions between the three.

It should be remembered, this board is basically immune to generic left-wing boogeymen terms, because we run the gamut on left-wing representation here.

I'm fairly sure the frustration vented by Specter there comes from the fact that you are genuinely not far off one another relative to others here, yet you choose to look rightward to find disagreements despite being like 75th percentile rightwing by Escapist standards yourself (our total number of conservatives is similar to our number of actual communists). That's not meant as a criticism, you're obviously free to pick your own fights (and I certainly wouldn't have you stop arguing with me cause where's the fun in that), but if we were to split sides in arguments trying to group people together by ideological similarity, you're probably in the same group as Specter and I.

 

[Kae]

I would suggest a great deal of the problem is not really economic but political.

1) Our political systems lack responsiveness to public will, and have undue responsiveness to extreme wealth.

And we can argue forever about how to fix it, but as long as people with vast wealth exist they will continue to reign over us by dictating how much we get to work and for what salary as well as controlling the government because as long as they have the power they will use it to bribe the political class even if it's illegal so regardless of what system we implement we still would get fucked-

2) For a lot of concerns, it is not so much capitalism but nationalism. One might note the inhumanity that many socialist regimes enacted on their people in their breakneck race to catch up with the capitalist West. With Brexit, the undercurrent is that the UK wants to competitively outperform the EU. The US right's desire to trash international norms because it stops them doing whatever they please. Countries want to develop, and they want to develop in many cases for power over their neighbours and competitors, and they will be inclined to do it the quickest, easiest and dirtiest way they can, capitalist or not. You can kill capitalism, but unless you also kill things like this, you'll just have people trampling over each other for different forms of competition.

I very much disagree, Nationalism is a tool for Capitalist propaganda, Capitalism and Imperialism go hand in hand, they're buddies that need each other to survive, the "developed" countries ultimately need the cheap labour and resources of the undeveloped countries in order to maintain the illusion of a higher standard of living, without it they cannot exist, that's why Democratic Socialism is worthless it fixes things but only at a local level, it still requires the exploitation of the so called "Third World" in order to survive, so basically even if you implement that throughout the so called "Global North" I and the majority of the global population still get fucked, so I won't claim it's not better than what we currently have but it's hardly a solution.

You can argue how ''capitalism is bad'' till the cows come home but in the end the real problem is that human nature is inherently selfish. No one will ever make decisions that go against their own interests or make large contributions or sacrifices when no one is watching. The poor aren't better people because they are poor. People also aren''t born equal. Even in a completely egalitarian society some people will always have something the other doesn't have; more attention, more love, more sex, more whatever people desire. It's human nature. If it's not about money it's about status, or looks, or smarts, or health etc. There will always be winners and losers. People who are succesful and people who are shit out of luck. Even with everything equal. Resentment is an emotion because it has developed throughout human history.

It's pretty naive to believe it will ever get better than it currently is. We are at the top of the development pyramid and none(or few) of us ever experienced war, famine or plague.It's easy to fantasize about the destruction of capitalism but let's face it, most people already panick when facebook is offline for an hour. I don't see most people surviving in extremely harsh environments with no electricity and food scarcities full of chaos and armed conflict. There is a reason why so many people want to migrate to the West and not vice versa.

Sad thing is that a decent income and affordable housing is more than achievable. It are political decisions why this doesn't improve by people either not voting or voting against their own interests. You don't have to blow up an entire system just to increase modest living standards. It's like throwing away the baby with the bath water. The only complicating factor is that the environment shows that there are definite limits to our growth. But even here we must be honest, how many people are sacrficing their vacation for the environment? Exactly.

Well this argument is pretty worthless, assuming that you're right and human nature is inherently corrupt which is debatable, the whole point of discarding the current system and implementing a new one is to establish one in which exploitation is harder to accomplish, so even if what you're saying is correct which I don't think it is, what is naive is to believe that things can get better under the current system when we could establish a new one that protects us against these things a bit better.

Also pretty fucking stupid to say none of us have experienced plague when we're in the middle of the largest global pandemic in history which hasn't been protected against properly in the name of fucking profits and sure the majority of the people in this board haven't experienced famine, but let me remind you that the majority of the people in the world has, again just because you're not seeing it doesn't mean it isn't happening, it's pretty easy for you to pretend we're at the peak of human civilization just because you live in the nice part, but the nice part isn't the whole, in fact it's just a tiny fraction.

 

[CaitSeith]

Meanwhile, from a legal perspective...


EDIT: An important point is that the class lawsuit is DoA because of the ToS; but Robinhood users can still use arbitration in an effective way instead (if they are creative, coordinated and spiteful enough).

 

[Trunkage]

It should be remembered, this board is basically immune to generic left-wing boogeymen terms, because we run the gamut on left-wing representation here.

I'm fairly sure the frustration vented by Specter there comes from the fact that you are genuinely not far off one another relative to others here, yet you choose to look rightward to find disagreements despite being like 75th percentile rightwing by Escapist standards yourself (our total number of conservatives is similar to our number of actual communists). That's not meant as a criticism, you're obviously free to pick your own fights (and I certainly wouldn't have you stop arguing with me cause where's the fun in that), but if we were to split sides in arguments trying to group people together by ideological similarity, you're probably in the same group as Specter and I.

Maybe we should stop worrying about the sides thing

 

[Cheetodust]

human nature is inherently selfish.

Resentment is an emotion because it has developed throughout human history.

Or maybe greed has developed throughout human history because the greedy keep taking all the shit and portioning it out as they see fit to keep the majority infighting over tablescraps. Maybe greed wouldn't have developed in response to a scarcity that shouldn't exist if that scarcity didn't exist. Social darwinism is just a bullshit excuse garbage people use to excuse the fact that they're bullshit garbage people.

 

[Revnak]

Or maybe greed has developed throughout human history because the greedy keep taking all the shit and portioning it out as they see fit to keep the majority infighting over tablescraps. Maybe greed wouldn't have developed in response to a scarcity that shouldn't exist if that scarcity didn't exist. Social darwinism is just a bullshit excuse garbage people use to excuse the fact that they're bullshit garbage people.

There is no fundamental human nature. Dudes just out here vibing.

 

[tstorm823]

Maybe we should stop worrying about the sides thing

I'm not saying we should worry about sides, if anything I mean to say we shouldn't. A lot of people's beliefs fall close to center, but people get so caught up only arguing against one particular side, they take no notice of who they're actually in most agreement with. If you put politics on an arbitrary scale from 1 to 10, there are a lot of 5s fighting with 6s in defense of 1s and 10s respectively, because they have the idea that one direction from them is good and the other is bad, despite 5 being a lot closer to 6 than 1.

Like, this board on that scale maxes out at like a 7, but the 5s here spend nearly all their time fighting with the 6s and 7s (and the one user who is more like someone spilled coffee on the graph) while just ignoring the 1s who actually fundamentally disagree with them. And it's really nice when the 4s and 5s among us look over their shoulder and go "wait, what is going on there?" Like the time lil devils tried to tell me nobody actually wanted to abolish the police, and then I didn't have to say a word for a long time because she had genuine disagreements on the left side to deal with.

 

[Agema]

I'm not saying we should worry about sides, if anything I mean to say we shouldn't. A lot of people's beliefs fall close to center, but people get so caught up only arguing against one particular side, they take no notice of who they're actually in most agreement with. If you put politics on an arbitrary scale from 1 to 10, there are a lot of 5s fighting with 6s in defense of 1s and 10s respectively, because they have the idea that one direction from them is good and the other is bad, despite 5 being a lot closer to 6 than 1.

Like, this board on that scale maxes out at like a 7, but the 5s here spend nearly all their time fighting with the 6s and 7s (and the one user who is more like someone spilled coffee on the graph) while just ignoring the 1s who actually fundamentally disagree with them. And it's really nice when the 4s and 5s among us look over their shoulder and go "wait, what is going on there?" Like the time lil devils tried to tell me nobody actually wanted to abolish the police, and then I didn't have to say a word for a long time because she had genuine disagreements on the left side to deal with.

There's something to be said for this. I'll disagree more with the left when they actually have some meaningful ability to fuck stuff up. As we're all run by the centre or the right, I just don't see a lot of point punching away at the people with no power.

 

[tstorm823]

There's something to be said for this. I'll disagree more with the left when they actually have some meaningful ability to fuck stuff up. As we're all run by the centre or the right, I just don't see a lot of point punching away at the people with no power.

I genuinely can't argue the pragmatism of this.

 

[stroopwafel]

All systems will be exploited. A system need merely be sufficiently robust to resist excessive exploitation.

How is that achieved? By excessive bureaucracies and incompetent government? It is impossible to thoroughly investigate each and every request on public services. Most of the time in government the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. There will always be people who will exploit this system. The amount of tax payer's money lost in bureaucratic waste and on cheaters is inherent to any welfare state and have been around since it's conception.

Mutual reciprocity means there's no problem at all if assembly line workers pay for college educations. The idea is that everyone pays for everything. They are all societal goods, even if any one particular good is not used by everyone. The minute you start trying to break these concepts up, everything collapses. People with private educations think they shouldn't pay for state education, people with private healthcare think they shouldn't pay for social healthcare, people with jobs don't think they should pay for unemployment benefits, and the logical end point is no-one pays anything and you have a libertarian state which has an executive, legislature, army, maybe a justice system, and you get nothing but what you can pay for out of your own pocket, and if you're poor, you're screwed.

I disagree with this. Ofcourse the government should warrant basic and elementary education as 'societal' goods. Not many people would think it's unfair their taxes are used so children can go to school. But why for example should an assemby line worker facilitate with his/her taxes that a liberal arts student can party it up in college? Mutual reciprocity means that people equally benefit. It doesn't mean favoritism where one group pays and the other receives. That much more undermines the solidarity in welfare states. The days where people followed more or less similar life trajectories are long gone. And without any real unifying elements the concept of society has also changed. This isn't the fifties or sixties anymore. People live in their own bubble, sometimes their own reality. If there are no commonalities or similarities between people that form the necessary connections for a greater whole than this invariably leads to a patchwork of competing interests. You can't have policies not reflect that reality without politics driving the wedge between people even further. They are obviously the only ones capitalizing on this discontent.

Yes, and it's no different in the private sector. Welfare is basically a state-run insurance scheme. Like welfare, with insurance some people pay and never claim, yet their insurance payments are still determined by the misfortune or carelessness of everyone else on that scheme.

Yeah, but this implicates that it's a level playing field which it obviously isn't. People who are on welfare and have six kids just to have more welfare. People who don't feel like working and think welfare is a good alternative. People who receive welfare but have jobs besides it they don't report. People who work just the minimum amount to receive unemployment checks and then quit. People of 200 kilos who think the government 'owes' them welfare and act all pedantic how it is 'their right'.

Sure, welfare is a sign of civilization and some people really need it and are also honest but don't pretend the system resembles an insurance scheme when it's more like insurance fraud in many cases. And it's not like your premium will go down when you don't use it either. The rich might be arrogant, selfish pricks but it's a delusion to think on the opposite side is this manifestation of purity and all that is good which is 'the poor'.

This is utter bollocks. Unemployment under Blair was about 5%: the lowest it had been since the early 70s.

This idea of a soft state chucking money at loafers was the PR of the Conservative Party - it's what they always claim. The same Conservative Party that had overseen 10+% unemployment (>3 million people) twice in 80s and early 90s, who annihilated whole communities by helping destroy the businesses they were based around, and if you want to know what mass, long-term unemployment is, the 80s are your real place to go because there literally weren't jobs for a lot of people to do.

This brings us on to the antisocial behaviour so big in the news in the late 90s and early 2000s. It wasn't the creation of Blair. And besides, how could it have been? You can't turn people from honest, hard-working, law-abiding citizens into feral malcontents with a few years of slightly more generous welfare. They are produced by social deprivation, atomisation, disintegrating communities and depressed social spirit, bitterness and frustration, instilled by parents expressing their lifetime experiences. So if we want to know where that came from, look at the 70s and 80s. The problem teens of the New Labour era were mostly the creations of the Thatcher era.

Governments have almost no say in economic growth or recession. These are international trends they have very little control over. When it's a recession governments have an excuse and when it's growth it's thanks to their policies when in fact it's very little of either. Just like social problems aren't solely caused by some nefarious system. You plant a knife in someone's chest? The system's fault. You have a few kids you can't afford then break up with the father? The system's fault. You ruin neigbourhoods and turn them into ghettos dealing drugs and committing crime? The system's fault. You drink yourself silly then beat your wife, dog and kids into a coma? The system's fault.

How is it not a permissive attitude that tries to excuse these kind of behaviors rather than adverse life events that most everyone at one time or another deals with? I'm not saying it's not a contributing factor, it definitely is and it should be improved, but it's just as much people's personal character that is often either very malicious or irresponsible. Even in a socialist salvation state these character traits won't go away.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Governments have almost no say in economic growth or recession.

Certain governments-- governments which don't want to be blamed for anemic growth and endemic recession-- would very much like you to believe that. And if you're a small enough country dependent on trade, it might even be true.

But the reality is that expansionary and contractionary fiscal policy can both have a very large effect in countries like the US and the UK. It's just that the wealthiest don't really care if the economy in general is good or bad, or at least not as much as they care about their tax rates, and so they favor governments that pretend that they can't do anything, or even better, that doing the opposite of what is good is actually the best way forward.

It might seem like governments have almost no say in economic growth or recession when each party is captured by the same people and so do very similar things. It's not that they have no say, it's just that they tend to say the same things again and again, cyclically.

 

[Revnak]

Certain governments-- governments which don't want to be blamed for anemic growth and endemic recession-- would very much like you to believe that. And if you're a small enough country dependent on trade, it might even be true.

But the reality is that expansionary and contractionary fiscal policy can both have a very large effect in countries like the US and the UK. It's just that the wealthiest don't really care if the economy in general is good or bad, or at least not as much as they care about their tax rates, and so they favor governments that pretend that they can't do anything, or even better, that doing the opposite of what is good is actually the best way forward.

It might seem like governments have almost no say in economic growth or recession when each party is captured by the same people and so do very similar things. It's not that they have no say, it's just that they tend to say the same things again and again, cyclically.

It should be noted that recessions since Reagan have continually gotten worse while the recessions of the 50’s and 60’s were noticeably smaller than those before and after them. Policy can clearly influence how bad recessions are even if they can’t influence whether or not they happen, that’s kinda the fundamental conclusion of Keynesian economics.

 

[Agema]

How is that achieved? By excessive bureaucracies and incompetent government? It is impossible to thoroughly investigate each and every request on public services. Most of the time in government the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. There will always be people who will exploit this system. The amount of tax payer's money lost in bureaucratic waste and on cheaters is inherent to any welfare state and have been around since it's conception.

So is your argument to scrap the welfare state in entirety then?

But why for example should an assemby line worker facilitate with his/her taxes that a liberal arts student can party it up in college?

They're paying for someone's education. If the student wants to party, that's what they do on their own money. And besides, I can't help but note that the poor have substantial discretion over how to spend their welfare cheques.

They are obviously the only ones capitalizing on this discontent.

So we need to scrap welfare and social services because they just makes people hate each other? And it's going to peace and love without welfare and social services, is it?

Yeah, but this implicates that it's a level playing field which it obviously isn't. People who are on welfare and have six kids just to have more welfare. People who don't feel like working and think welfare is a good alternative. People who receive welfare but have jobs besides it they don't report. People who work just the minimum amount to receive unemployment checks and then quit. People of 200 kilos who think the government 'owes' them welfare and act all pedantic how it is 'their right'.

Basically, suck it up. Because there aren't as many of these people as the right wing would have you believe, and we don't spend much money on them. The UK spends about £160 billion on welfare every year: that's about 8% GDP. Half of that is the old age pension. The remaining ~£80 billion (4% GDP) covers a wide range of things (child benefit, sick pay, unemployment benefits, income credits for working families, disability support, carer allowances etc.) For a start, it's just 4% GDP, and the vast majority is going to honest people trying to work. Overpayment (which is not all fraud) is estimated at 2.5% of that £80 billion, so, call it £2 billion (0.1% GDP). Basically, fuck all.

Sure, welfare is a sign of civilization and some people really need it and are also honest but don't pretend the system resembles an insurance scheme when it's more like insurance fraud in many cases.

I'm never interested in these claims, because they are always just words that don't survive scrutiny with the data, as per the above. Right-wing talking points endlessly repeated again and again like a mantra, enlivened with the most inflammatory anecdotes to stoke outrage rather than sober reflection.

 

[Agema]

Governments have almost no say in economic growth or recession. These are international trends they have very little control over. When it's a recession governments have an excuse and when it's growth it's thanks to their policies when in fact it's very little of either.

It's certainly true that governments claim more control than reality over the economy when things are going well and less control than reality when things are going badly.

Sure, much of the day-to-day economy occurs outside government control. Long-term growth is usually due to productivity gains from technology, much outside the control of government. But governments can do a lot. They set the laws and regulations, build infrastructure, "pump-prime". They may not be able to predict or prevent recessions, but they can most certainly mitigate the consequences and speed up recovery.

I am immensely suspicious of the ultra-rich, because I don't think national economic growth and the general welfare of the population really matters to them. They, and corporations, are interested in making money for themselves. I'm aware capitalist theory via Adam Smith argues that all this self interest drives economic growth, but that doesn't necessarily translate to much for the man on the street. If GDP rises 2% a year with the top 1% getting 10% richer and the bottom 90% getting 0.1% richer, that economic growth is a crock of shit for 90% of the population and they'd be better off with 1.3% a year GDP growth spread evenly across the population.

 

[Eacaraxe]

It should be noted that recessions since Reagan have continually gotten worse while the recessions of the 50’s and 60’s were noticeably smaller than those before and after them. Policy can clearly influence how bad recessions are even if they can’t influence whether or not they happen, that’s kinda the fundamental conclusion of Keynesian economics.

It should also be noted the same boom-bust cycle happened between 1873-1929 with the same pattern, root causes, roughly equivalent rapidity, and leaps in technological process. It almost seems as if something happened between 1933-1980 that kept economies comparatively stable while averting boom-bust cycles for three generations. But, god forbid we ask what.

 

[Revnak]

It should also be noted the same boom-bust cycle happened between 1873-1929 with the same pattern, root causes, roughly equivalent rapidity, and leaps in technological process. It almost seems as if something happened between 1933-1980 that kept economies comparatively stable while averting boom-bust cycles for three generations. But, god forbid we ask what.

Issue is there’s the stagflation recession of the late 70’s through most of the 80’s that analysis misses, though personally I’d chalk that period up to globalization destroying the Fordist industrial middle class. Nixon opened up the Chinese economy and destroyed western industry to win the Cold War. There was always alternatives to just letting communities tied to industrial jobs die, but our choice was made forty years ago and no viable alternative to that method of cyclically transitioning laborers into property owners over the course of their lives has been developed.