11-08-2020, 10:20 PM
(11-08-2020, 08:13 PM)jleagans Wrote: Also, everyone here should check out the "generationology" reddit. Its humorous to me that the majority here believes in later 4T starts, while those folks all buy the #pewlies 1996.
Panics of 1857, 1929, and 2008 indicate that the supposed Good Times of the 3T that result from a speculative boom serving multitudes well have come to an end when there are no more buyers. The panic may not be the cause; it is the symptom of a reality in which the bubble is devouring wealth and calling it an investment or prosperity. Bubbles divert investments from plant and equipment that produce things and create jobs. Once the illusion of easy money vanishes, people can no longer sweep other problems under the rug. Political resentments surface upon any pretext as cause for revolutions, coups, pogroms, usurpations, and political splintering.
We've had it relatively easy this time. Maybe we backed the banks faster this time to stop the bank runs that gutted the shaky economy of 1931 and 1932. The fault with that is that we rescued the most reactionary interests in America, the ones whose idea of reform is to enrich the economic elites.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.