[mc32]

The people in charge want it both ways so they keep on printing money and funding several optional wars simultaneously. They've kicked consequences down the road and seemingly, the new budget approved, kicks it further down the road. That and you add 10MM new legal+illegal immigrants in the span of three years to the housing demand pool and it pushes citizens further away from housing attainability. It's nuts. Then you have lax enforcement for criminal activity and you get what we have now.

If the Biden admin wants to win the election, they will have to deal with the fact that foreign workers are pushing out perhaps lazier American workers who are also unwilling to work for devalued wages caused by inflation. Foreign workers are used to inflation and whatever we have is better than what they have at home. The Admin will have to deal with that tension -else they will have more traditional core supporters hold their noses and vote for the other guy once again.

I'm quite certain if we had a Ross Perot running as a third party candidate, he or she would win. Biden is decrepit and can't decide if he's for American workers or foreign workers more. Trump shoots from the hip too much and is too thin skinned and impulsive.

[erellsworth]

Birth rates in the US have been below replacement levels for some time now. This means we will need more immigrants to sustain the never ending growth capitalism demands.

[notact]

The stock market may demand never ending growth, to keep generating positive returns. But how does capitalism itself (private ownership of production) demand never ending growth, any more than a planned economy would?

[andsoitis]

> The stock market may demand never ending growth, to keep generating positive returns. But how does capitalism itself (private ownership of production) demand never ending growth, any more than a planned economy would?

You're right that capitalism is when most of the means of production is privately owned (private ownership), but production and income distribution is largely through the operation of markets. More: https://www.britannica.com/money/capitalism#

[smallmancontrov]

> But how does capitalism itself (private ownership of production) demand never ending growth

If rich people own the world and growth = investment returns = how rich people get paid for being rich, do you think they want it to stop? Or will they (and the system they own) do anything to keep it going?

There's a reason why the moralizing lore of capitalism always happens at the bottom of an S curve even though most economic sectors spend most of the time at the top of an S curve. At the bottom of an S curve, a new investment frontier has opened up. By foregoing consumption today and investing, we can enable more/faster/better consumption tomorrow. Investors get part of the windfall, consumers get part of the windfall, everyone wins. However, at the top of an S curve, capital is plentiful and investment opportunities are scarce. The value of investment / foregoing consumption drops to nearly 0, and in practice probably goes slightly negative due to hope springing eternal / boondoggle chasing. That's all ok, the accounting will assign credit and blame in the end, but it's a huge problem if you are rich enough that you obtain your money by investing rather than by working. Suddenly, your source of income (sorry, capital gains, wouldn't want the IRS to tax you like a pleb) has gone away. If there is nothing to invest in, how do you get paid for investing? What to do?

Answer: pull any and every lever to get the growth train going again. But what if the growth is low quality? Doesn't matter. You are here to get paid, not to generate quality growth. Does it cause inflation? Not on your assets -- doesn't matter. Does it cause housing to become unaffordable? Doesn't matter. Does it cause imperial conflict when the overseas growth markets don't like your terms? Doesn't matter. As far as our economy is concerned, the important thing is that the people who literally own our economy get paid, all else is secondary.

NOTE: I'm not nearly as anti-capitalist as you might think. Capitalism is the best system for bringing the maximum amount of resources to bear on new frontiers. In a world that seems to be winner-take-all in so many respects, this may be the horse you want to bet on. Still, almost all of the Big Problems in the world today can be traced directly back to our economic structure. This is not an indictment: it would be true of any economic structure. Still, the question remains of whether what we do is worthwhile and how much we want to do to file down the sharp edges. IMO, it is worthwhile, but we should do more to file down the edges. YMMV.

[mc32]

Those same people in charge seemly also are cozying up to degrowth which is at odds with historical capitalism. I don't think they have figured out what they want which is why the approach is schizophrenic --that want econ growth and degrowth, they want pop growth but also don't want growth so their bargain is to import the growth that they don't want...

[AnimalMuppet]

It's almost like "those people in charge" are not a monolithic group...