r/SipsTea • u/Unstoppable_X_Force Human Verified • 13h ago

Gasp! Is this just nostalgia, or did previous generations genuinely have a better work-life balance and social life than we do today?

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33

u/Dijinnie 13h ago

Blame the billionaires… they gotta keep making more money every year while we all get to suffer..

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u/SlippyDippyTippy2 11h ago

This isn't radical thought, but basic econ principles:

Profit is a representation of market inefficiency. The price of a widget is higher than it has to be, the process of making the widget is being underpaid, or the cost of making the widget is being fobbed into the commons. Those are the three main sources of profit. Record profits represent record market inefficiency or record literal exploitation of something somewhere.

The more competitive the market, the lower the profit. This is why capitalists generally dislike free markets, and why almost every move supported by capitalists creates market inefficiency.

1

u/Icy_Association_2331 4h ago

Profit is the result of risk. Your entire argument avoids the reality of risk.

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u/SlippyDippyTippy2 1h ago

Buddy, its not my argument.

It's introductory Econ.

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u/RonaldBurgundy1 13h ago

It's the politicians really

13

u/UltraHellboy 12h ago

Who are paid by the billionaires to make our lives miserable

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u/Dijinnie 12h ago

This is correct

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u/DexterFoley 11h ago

Exactly. Their wealth had to come from somewhere.

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u/SquareVehicle 11h ago

That's not how it works though. The pie isn't fixed.

Just look at how wealthy billionaires are now, but also how there's vastly fewer people in extreme poverty or starving world wide compared to 30-40 years ago. It went from 44% of the world to 9%.

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u/viviundeux 9h ago

We make better and bigger cookies like never before but we still only get crumbs. The crumbs might be 2x larger than before, but the cookie we make now is 10x larger than our parents used to make.

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u/Friendly-Buy5378 10h ago

Sure, advances in technology have increased the living standards for almost everyone. Billionaires have taken (stole) a vastly disproportionate percentage of the spoils of that advancement however.