[mindslight]

> You can't build a sustainable economy on pretending things aren't actually cheap and that people aren't willing to get paid next to nothing to do them.

I'll type this until I'm blue in the fingers, but the fundamental issue driving the wedge is that any savings is prevented from actually benefiting consumer prices, due to explicit national policy.

If Walmart comes in with imported goods and cuts prices in half, then people's cost of living should go down. Even though work is leaving, people should actually need to work less to support their same lifestyle.

But as market progress would cause the CPI to decrease, the federal reserve explicitly creates enough new money to compensate and then some. The new money inflates prices precisely where it can be injected into the consumer economy - anything that can be financialized (eg houses, cars, healthcare, education).

The people are correct to be upset about their economic position - they're bearing the downsides of market progress while sharing few of the gains, by policy. Unfortunately their ire is easily misdirected toward other unfortunate victims, to keep this society-scale wealth extraction scheme going.