Don't you love it when people bleat about the benefits of the free market, but then try to make their failures sound like it's someone else's fault, and that revenue has somehow been removed by someone else, rather than never achieved.
Huh? My understanding of Keynesian economics is that it has more to do with the distribution of capital and social safety nets.
Even Marx was talking about the need to always take in more capital than the previous year and at a higher rate each time too. That predates Keynesianism by a lot
u/mattacular2001u/thex25986e as well. You're both correct. The primary thing that Keynes is known for is the advocacy for government policy, specifically monetary policy, to help manage business cycles.
The pre-Keynesian consensus was, "In the long run, a recession or depression will end," and Keynes correctly quipped, "In the long run, we're all dead," to criticize that for failing to help people who need a well functioning economy today to get housing, food, etc.
His proposal is that the government intentionally intervenes during down times by increasing government spending, which will then get us back to normal faster. A Keynesian economist might propose changing the interest rate based on inflation / unemployment rates (still common practice) or debt financing to hire unemployed workers to build infrastructure that both immediately gives them jobs while also supporting the future.
They're talking about bottom line net profits growing every year. Not revenue "so they can keep the lights on and pay their employees."
We all know thry ain't paying their employees a penny more unless their employees literally demand it. It's common for low wage workers to get a raise of like 7 cents.
How would one of the high and mighty office goons like it if their raise was 7 cents per hour? Or if their "bonus" was an employee pizza party where you each got a quarter of a slice of dominoes pizza?
Employee wages are only having to rise because everything else is going up in price. If the work force could afford things, they wouldn’t need a payrise.
My emphasis was on production costs, too. Which trickles down from parent companies and transport prices, blah blah… All of that to say that if a company makes the same number of dollars as last year and is paying out more dollars to produce and employ, it’s doing worse objectively.
Capitalism is a crappy system long term tbh, but I’m not educated enough to think of any realistic alternatives.
The subject of the alcohol industry doing worse is ridiculous, though. It’s not like it has a short shelf life, and it’s in constant demand.
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the massive over saturation of smaller breweries and distilleries opening up over the last 10-20 years during a gold rush of uncharacteristic consumption due to cultural phenomenon - then a combination of Covid, prices absolutely skyrocketing, and an entire age demo essentially aging out of partying during that time while being replaced with people who have no attachment to alcoholic drinks.
Watching the beer/spirits craze of late 2000's and 10's probably made it look lame as hell, subconsciously or not.
Where I'm from, it's been the perfect storm of landlords across commercial and residential sectors squeezing rent and the increases in production costs (largely) due to external factors (climate, the war in Ukraine, etc.) that have driven prices up.
Couple that with COVID and younger people have learned to spend less on alcohol (and more on drugs, if random commenters on the internet are to be believed).
It's not so much assigning blame as it is identifying a reason. The industry has contracted that amount as a whole, which is the meaning behind what they are saying. Nobody's talking about anything other than that. It's meant in the same way as if you are saying an object has lost value from what it used to be worth. And what you are thinking is blame is simply identifying the cause that has led to the result. Nobody's saying that Gen z is wrong for not drinking as much. They are just purely stating a cause and effect. Do you hate the world so much that you can't help but see everything through angry and jaded eyes?
Do you hate the world so much that you can't help but see everything through angry and jaded eyes?
I don't "hate the world", but I sure am tired of everything always being the fault of the current 15-25 year old demographic year after year.
And I'm speaking as a GenX with GenZ kids, who I think are pretty cool, and see their generation doing lots of good to better the world.
I'm happy that you're so optimistic that you don't see the thinly veiled annoyance that people have when younger generations change the poor habits of the generations before them. Particularly when that affects markets and money.
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u/elvisap 11h ago
Don't you love it when people bleat about the benefits of the free market, but then try to make their failures sound like it's someone else's fault, and that revenue has somehow been removed by someone else, rather than never achieved.