It's always been detached, and it's always made the real economy worse.

[THREAD] 1/10

What is profit? It's excess labor.

You and your coworkers make a chair. Your boss sells that chair for more than he pays for the production of that chair and pockets the extra money.

So he pays you less than what he should and calls the unpaid labor he took "profit." 2/10
Well, the stock market adds a layer to that.

So now, when you work, it isn't just your boss that is siphoning off your excess labor but it is also all the shareholders.

There's a whole class of people who now rely on you to produce those chairs without fair compensation. 3/10
And in order to support these people, you and your coworkers need to up your productivity. More hours etc.

But Wall Street demands endless growth in order to keep the game going, so that's not enough.

So as your productivity increases, your relative wages suffer. 4/10
Not because the goods don't have value or because your labor is worth less. Often it's actually worth more because you've had to become incredibly productive in order to keep your job.

No, your wages suffer because there are so many people who need to profit from your work. 5/10
Meanwhile, that class of shareholders move their money around these various stocks often on the basis of feelings and rumors.

Panic buying, panic selling. These are common things in the market and aren't necessarily related to anything you do in the chair factory. 6/10
And as a result of this market of feelings, you might come into the chair factory one day and discover shareholders got nervous and the stock price collapsed.

So the company was sold to Bain Capital who closed shop and took it as a loss in order to reduce their tax burden. 7/10
So now the chair factory, that you have been working at for your entire life, has closed and everyone has lost their jobs.

Not because of anything you did, nor anything related to the market for chairs. 8/10
And, like your wages, this had nothing to do with your skill at making chairs.

It was all due to the decisions people were making on how best to monetize your life. And in the end you were worth more to them unemployed than doing what you're best at: making chairs. 9/10
But sure, the Wall Street is super rational and productive and is incredibly good for the "real economy", and it's just people on Reddit who make it bad. 10/10

More from Economy

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is analyzing damage due to COVID and projecting further severe consequences if current policies persist. They state “despite involving short term economic costs, lockdowns may lead to faster economic recovery by containing the virus”

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Note: This report doesn’t do a dynamic analysis that makes things much clearer, but it does a thoughtful statistical analysis based upon increasingly available data.

https://t.co/5Xmt8y7lCL

A few more quotes:

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“The analysis also finds that lockdowns are powerful instruments to reduce infections, especially when they are introduced early in a country’s epidemic and when they are sufficiently stringent.”

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“lockdowns become progressively more effective in reducing COVID-19 cases when they become sufficiently stringent. Mild lockdowns appear instead ineffective at curbing infections.”

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“The results suggest that to achieve a given reduction in infections, policymakers may want to opt for stringent lockdowns over a shorter period rather than prolonged mild lockdowns...

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I know I’ve been beating this redlining and wealth gap drum for 20+ years but here is a GREAT cliffs notes version.

But don’t take @ambermruffin’s word for it. You should get references...

A thread


How homes in Black neighborhoods are undervalued by $156

Every major bank in the US has been sued for mortgage discrimination and a study that included every mortgage in America found that Banks charge higher interest rates to nonblack customers



https://t.co/sx9tWWB98s

Baltimore redlined areas in 1935 vs Baltimore Drug arrests in 2016

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