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In February 2022 the fed funds rate was 0.08. In October 2022 it was up to 3.0. From November 2022 to January 2023 Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Salesforce laid off tens of thousands of people. They were no more or less productive then the day before they were laid off. At this time hiring basically stopped for everybody, and wages did not keep up with inflation. So this affected all SWE'S on some level. Nothing happened to their productivity, the system just changed.

Some say some of these people never should have been hired to begin with and they weren't being productive, but that was just another anomaly of the system.

Some defend the system and so-called market at every turn, with workers racing around to be productive at its whims, but it kind of becomes like Calvinists trying to satisfy a fickle god to ensure their salvation.

The unproductive, parasitic heirs at the top use the unproductive business cycle crises endemic to their system to discipline workers - jacking up unemployment and freezing wages.

I look at the new Acela trains in the US, currently slower than the old ones, the power problems and RFK Jr's new health mandates, and I compare them to China's five year plans, high speed rails, solar and wind rollout and capacity, and wonder where the US will be in a few decades, or even one decade.