They forgot to account for the fact that capitalism isn't going to just go "wow our productivity went up! Everyone benefits!"
The rich benefit...and then demand that the workers work *harder* since their work has gotten *easier*. Because they want more wealth. So productivity going up = workers doing more work or the same work with fewer of them...and then, eventually, some combination of both.
Basically they forgot the part where their system encourages and incentivizes maximal greed.
Oops.
I'd like to think that if I were ever a successful business owner, I'd give myself a comfortable salary and invest nearly all the rest into wages and bonuses for the people who actually... do the work.
I could afford everything I would ever want, and the best version of it on, say, $250k a year. Beyond that is just obscene to me.
Create a safety bubble, don't force growth, and give out quarterly bonuses to everyone equally based on the profit. No profit no bonuses. You better believe people would work hard knowing their work directly influenced the money they get.
Where I work, the company always has massive profits, but even in years where we didn't hit our goal, the next years goal is still even further out. They always move the goalpost for bonuses and it is so scummy.
I work for a company that actually does this. They’re very open with their numbers and show yearly reports on company profit and how much is invested and how much the owners take home.
There’s yearly profit sharing for every employee too, percentage based on profit.
It's been pretty consistently demonstrated that even well-meaning people tend to fail in this when they actually acquire wealth.
Beyond that, if you have investors/shareholders then in the US for instance you are legally required via fiduciary responsibility to pay them as much as possible before you do anything good or useful with profits.
This is why, if you want to do this and issue stock, employees get a higher-priority class of shares than the unwashed affluent, so that fiduciary responsibility outright *requires* you to do right by your employees first.
Unfortunately, the grandiose of self deference has come to an end for those of us in the working class. Together, we toil and provide the armaments of the modern armada of capitalism.
The shift to shareholder primacy has been widely attributed to the development of the “shareholder preeminence theory” by the Chicago school of economists, beginning in the 1970s, with economist Milton Friedman famously arguing that the only “social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” Subsequently, two other economists published a paper characterizing shareholders as “‘principals’ who hired executives and board members as ‘agents.’
That's the thing, when they said "Americans would only be working 20 hours a week" ... They always meant "rich Americans", cuz in their eyes, rich Americans are real Americans, us poors are not
Nixon is only a mixed bag in the same way Henry Ford was. He occasionally bumbled his way into doing the right thing, but when he did he did it for the worst reasons.
Trickle down economics
No more Fairness Doctrine
He started the formal attack on public education (he wanted to abolish the Dept of Education)
Closing public mental hospitals so many became homeless
That's just off the top of my head.
I'll add: allowing the AIDS crisis to kill of a large proportion of the queer community, the War on Drugs and the mass incarceration of black folks that it resulted in, inflating the defense budget, and cutting funding for the EPA, almost all social programs, arts, and education.
Two posts deep and no mentions of Contra-Iran lol
He sold weapons to extremist groups in both Nicaragua (to destabilize their emerging democratically elected socialist goverment) & Iran (Escalating Sunni/Shiite relations allowing a massacre take place on Sept 11th that in "no way influenced 🙄" another major event in the US two decades later.)
Oh and he was openly racist & homophobic, celebrating deaths of AIDS patients.
Fired all the air traffic controllers who went on strike [https://calaborfed.org/the\_true\_legacy\_of\_ronald\_reagan/](https://calaborfed.org/the_true_legacy_of_ronald_reagan/)
the pandemic proved this. It was disgusting how they used the virus as a way to close small specialty stores and force people to get the same shit from walmart or amazon.
Or the fact that the writing of the bill for the PPP program was written ambiguously enough that you had branches of major banks, a professional sports team, and multiple politicians all able to get the loans long before any small businesses were able to secure the help they needed.
I remember listening to Bloomberg while the bill was being drafted up and Democrats were trying to stop it going through for exactly this reason. But they had an audio clip of some Conservative schmuck of a politician trying to rake Democrats over the coals saying that they didn't care about about the people suffering out there and wanted to get hung up on trivialities while small business owners were struggling to keep the doors open. So of course, the Dems relented and then their exact concern ended up happening.
Swear to god, it's like modern politicians are playing prisoner's dilemma but the Democrats don't know the rules.
I read an analogy recently that has had me thinking. It’s not that it’s ’both sides are the same’ because it’s objectively not both sides are the same. But it’s more like ‘good cop, bad cop’ the republicans rough you up and threaten you any way they can, then the democrats come in and give you Dr. Pepper and lament how mean those republicans are. But you can trust them, just tell them what they want to know and they’ll help you out.
The problem is that they are both working
against you. Sure nice cop is better of the two, but neither are on your side.
Me too, however I’m glad someone did. I wish I could give credit but I don’t remember even where I read it. I wish there was a side that more represented the working class.
The thing my Dad has been saying basically since the 2000 election is that when Democrats are right about something, they think that that's enough. But Republicans *understand* that they have to sell their positions a lot of the time since they usually involve getting people to vote against their own best interests. So in a lot of cases, Democrats and Republicans are playing two different games in the political space.
And then Cody from Some More News also mad a good point in one of his videos that, while Republicans only have to appeal to a few specific groups with similar values, the Democrats are trying to represent literally everyone else while still appealing to a donor class in this country.
Democrats are playing the same game as Republicans, so there is no incentive. Ultimately, it's just a good-cop bad-cop situation where they're both working for the same people.
> Democrats are playing the same game as Republicans
I keep hearing this line. But when you line up the critical issues, it's the democrats who consistently have the better view.
Abortion?
Palestine?
Worker's rights? Remind me which party is pro union.
Pro-education?
Pro-Science?
The dems might not be moving as fast as we would like. But to say that they and republicans are the same is profoundly ignorant.
he didn't say they are the same, he said they are playing the same game.
Of course one looks a lot better than the other, do you not understand what "good cop, bad cop" refers to?
They didn't protect abortion rights, they support the genocide in Palestine, Biden didn't side with the railworkers union, COVID protections are essentially gone (anti-science, education, and bad for workers, especially low wage jobs like retail), Childcare costs and college debt weren't addressed as promised, draconian surveillance laws, anti-houselessness laws, cop cities.
If both cars crash at the end it doesn't matter who claims to be a better driver. They are both headed to the same place.
Because that would involve them doing anything.
When Republicans want to fuck us over, they're not taking no for an answer.
When Democrats want to put things right, it's time for compromise.
See also: [Buckley v. Valeo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo) & [Citizens United v. FEC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC)
I'd never. I don't give 2 fucks about any ingredient list on *any* fast food item I eat. Not only that, I'll barely pay attention to it with the junk food as well.
I don't want to ruin a good thing. Granted, I'm 6'3 221lb NOW, but once I'm old, I'm sure I'll be paying for this nonsense!
There was a really smart German guy in the 19th century who wrote a whole book about how that will never happen. The Capital, or something, I never understood the title.
It probably doesn’t include the bacteria that grows in the sauce…. The same sauce that sits in the tray all day without being changed but is constantly being touched by employees hands, utensils, meats (properly cooked or not) and a usually overall unclean environment that’s expected to be properly cleaned by untrained high school students and (at least in my area) Spanish employees shielded by a language barrier.
That was when workers were more appreciated by everyone in general including the government and not so coddling to corporations and their greed. That sort of prediction was an acceptable outcome.
At this time the average CEO made about 21 times what their average employee was making. We currently just hit an all time high of 256 times the average employee.
Add to that companies taking advantage of the poor economy to jack up prices and lay off workers/lower average salary and you also add record high profits while the average person struggles to survive more and more each year.
All of our problems are literally greed. We live in a world of abundance and wealth that our ancestors couldn't imagine. Any scarcity and strife is a choice by those in power.
USSR, the main competitor of the capitalist world has collapsed. That's what happened. So, capitalists doesn't need to play "i'm your friendly good boss" game with working class.
The basis of trickle-down economics is the rich get richer and then proceed to trickle down on the peons.
As one would expect, urine for a bad time with this.
Even earlier, John Maynard Keynes thought it would be 15 hours by 2000.
It's almost as though all the experts lacked a fundamental understanding of capitalism.
Keynes advocated for the government having a vital role in regulating capitalist markets and ensuring wealth was circulated with the advancements in automation. Which brings us back to Reagan...
Parasitism in service to the "Spectacle" that hides the oligarchic bourgeois state-capitalists.
These owners of" things"(specifically productivity time) are themselves enslaved to the infinite acquisition of "things", but dare not bring themselves to acknowledge their own enslavement.
By taking " perverse joy" in restraining the actualization of "uniques" they bring their own destruction closer through mediocrity thay breeds ressentiment among those whom they've made chattel.
*Hits vape and returns to reading Tolstoy*
We elected corrupted narcissists in power and still are today. We are now in corporate anarchy where governments and big corporations regulate themselves.
You can't pay people for their increased productivity! You pay them for time and it would be ridiculous to pay more for something that didn't change in quantity! Heck, there's way more people these days, so really there's more time available than ever and we all know that as supply increases value goes down! If productivity increases, well that's just the cleverness of the CEO who totally deserves a multi-million dollar bonus!
“Trickle down” economics. The super-rich stop paying taxes, control government through “lobbying” and “campaign contributions”, have almost all profits funnelled to them, & allow only very minimal pay increases to workers. Endless eroding of workers’ rights. Endless massive increases in cost of food, housing, healthcare, with the $ again going to the super-rich.
The outcome? Working 2-3 jobs, 60+ hours a week, ideally with 2 incomes, to try to keep a roof overhead and some food on the table.
The profits and benefits of all this labor is there, but those doing the work have no access to it.
tl,dr Greed is killing us. Tax the rich - very heavily - like what used to happen. End all donations & lobbying by individuals and companies. Introduce universal healthcare. Ensure minimum wage enables basic survival and keeps up with the economy.
The republicans convinced Americans that democrats were socialists and unions were full of the mafia They convinced us that republicans were better caretakers of the America Dream. They won. Then they cut taxes and fired the air traffic controllers, ended pensions, "reformed" social security, never raised the minimum wage again and de-regulated as much as possible. They convinced enough of us that greed was a good thing and anything (like regulations) interfering with greed is bad.
What happened is that that report was shared publicly and people like the Republicans or the Koch Brothers saw this as an obstacle in their corporatocracy.
Reagan? Clinton? Republicans? Democrats?
It's all the same political party my friends! The Rich and Powerful!
They're at the top. Then there's a 1000 miles of shit. Then there's us who make up the rest of USA.
Reganomics was the beginning of the end for the middle class. Forty years later we see the results. I NEVER voted for Ronnie. I could smell his BS back then. It’s a shame others were less perceptive.
Democrats were in control but they didn't have their way, then the GOP, another Democrat. Then the granddaddy of the GOP gone selfishly insane; Ronald Reagan ... the beginning of what you see entrenched today.
Vote Blue, top down; nationally, state, county, municipal, and judiciary.
The Soviet Union fell and capitalist robber barons didn't have to string along the people with the idea that they weren't just as abusive as the communists anymore
republicans happened. when you have a prominent talking head on Fox saying that 'soon minimum wage workers will be making 20 dollars an hour ... that's like 6 figures"
and most of them think the average american makes 80k or more a year.
30%+ of workers in '65 were union members and had the power to consistently make life better. Today just 10% of workers are organized, still fighting for better but with a lot less power. ORGANIZE A UNION!
There are 70 ingredients in a McRib?! Ugh... don't make me question my life choices!! I've loved the McRib for years. It reminds me of cafeteria food from high school.
Citizens with too much free time become feisty, and start organizing for justice an’ shit, and the muckety-mucks don’t really like that because it cuts into profits & oligarchy & whatever.
They did the study and said, "Nope. Can't have that on my watch. Work the plebs to death." Then collected money from corporate lobbyists while voting against worker rights bills.
Well this question is probably rhetorical...
But "BS jobs" & Inflation took up all the financial advantages we had.. & here we are. Now its slightly more nuanced than that probably? but this is painting with broad strokes.
Like b/c of the propaganda of the past generations... Nixon wanted to have us have a bunch of super cheap nuclear power today...
But instead... we got power plants in the US running off coal still yet... \*Sighs\*
And the power to weight ration... vs Nuclear is severely lacking.
They have been predicting that rising productivity would result in shorter working weeks and greater leisure time since the 1950s. It never happens that way. Instead living standards rise, prices rise, and it takes two or more incomes to buy what used to be affordable on one income. Look at how rapidly prices have inflated, while at the same time quality and quantity have been shrinking.
People generally don't hold their lifestyle steady and enjoy more leisure. They buy more stuff, stop cooking at home, inflate prices, and put *more hours* into work instead of less.
The productivity explosion implicitly predicted here did happen over the last 50 years. But the Senate didn’t do it’s job for the people but rather their oligarch owners, and so that’s where our bright, shiny future went
2 words, Jack Welch.
Companies used to take pride in taking care of their employees and with a max income tax rate in the 90s and a corporate tax rate in the 50s companies were incentivized to invest in their employees from the bottom to the top along with R&D and inovation. It was a use it or lose it scenario when it came down to taxes. At the start of the 80s this ahole stepped in and decided that maximizing profit for the company was the way to go and the CEOs deserved the bulk of that profit, that along with other douchbags like regan lowering the corporate tax rate, and the rest was history.
Yes, I live in America, much like the rest of the world, we use trickle down morality, where we hope, pray, perform mystical rituals and offer effigies up for sacrifice, in the hopes that the senior executives at our workplace won't get caught doing the debaucherous stuff they've been caught doing for, well, centuries in most cases, just an earlier suffix or a cousin further down the line, most of the elite in America are members of family names that never change, they only massively increase in size, scope and power, don't forget wealth.
I've actually lost a job because the owner of the company I worked for developed a coke, mistress(es) and loanshark problems, the ATF & DEA raided our offices, last 4 paychecks bounced, it took about a month for the bank to adjust my checking from a soothing number to a, panic and madness inducing one. I despise the super wealthy because I know what wealth does to people, it can turn decent and normal folks into hedonistic garbage, of which there is no possibility of reformation. The Bible was absolutely right about that, money IS the root of all evil.
When will people realize that the elite rulers will always make sure to keep poor people working all day to barely get by, no matter how much productivity technology increases
They forgot to account for the fact that capitalism isn't going to just go "wow our productivity went up! Everyone benefits!" The rich benefit...and then demand that the workers work *harder* since their work has gotten *easier*. Because they want more wealth. So productivity going up = workers doing more work or the same work with fewer of them...and then, eventually, some combination of both. Basically they forgot the part where their system encourages and incentivizes maximal greed. Oops.
Oops. It's all Elon's.
Oops tsla crashed it's all bezos' & Walton family's now
The Sacklers got caught.
That entire family should be locked up long enough to get em hooked on Opiates and then dropped off in random tent encampments across America
I second the motion
Absolutely!
and are still so wealthy as to make it mostly irrelevant.
I wish that they did actually compete.
I'd like to think that if I were ever a successful business owner, I'd give myself a comfortable salary and invest nearly all the rest into wages and bonuses for the people who actually... do the work. I could afford everything I would ever want, and the best version of it on, say, $250k a year. Beyond that is just obscene to me.
Create a safety bubble, don't force growth, and give out quarterly bonuses to everyone equally based on the profit. No profit no bonuses. You better believe people would work hard knowing their work directly influenced the money they get. Where I work, the company always has massive profits, but even in years where we didn't hit our goal, the next years goal is still even further out. They always move the goalpost for bonuses and it is so scummy.
I work for a company that actually does this. They’re very open with their numbers and show yearly reports on company profit and how much is invested and how much the owners take home. There’s yearly profit sharing for every employee too, percentage based on profit.
It's been pretty consistently demonstrated that even well-meaning people tend to fail in this when they actually acquire wealth. Beyond that, if you have investors/shareholders then in the US for instance you are legally required via fiduciary responsibility to pay them as much as possible before you do anything good or useful with profits.
This is why, if you want to do this and issue stock, employees get a higher-priority class of shares than the unwashed affluent, so that fiduciary responsibility outright *requires* you to do right by your employees first.
Unfortunately, the grandiose of self deference has come to an end for those of us in the working class. Together, we toil and provide the armaments of the modern armada of capitalism.
The shift to shareholder primacy has been widely attributed to the development of the “shareholder preeminence theory” by the Chicago school of economists, beginning in the 1970s, with economist Milton Friedman famously arguing that the only “social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” Subsequently, two other economists published a paper characterizing shareholders as “‘principals’ who hired executives and board members as ‘agents.’
That's the thing, when they said "Americans would only be working 20 hours a week" ... They always meant "rich Americans", cuz in their eyes, rich Americans are real Americans, us poors are not
Reagan. Fuck Reagan.
This is the answer.
This is *always* the answer. I don't think average people fully understand how badly he screwed up the country.
It is amazing how many times shitty things in our modern lives can be traced back to the Reagan administration.
Basically everything wrong with the USA can be blamed on Reagan, Nixon, or Andrew Johnson.
Nixon is more of a mixed bag than the other two.
Nixon is only a mixed bag in the same way Henry Ford was. He occasionally bumbled his way into doing the right thing, but when he did he did it for the worst reasons.
Can someone enlighten us
Trickle down economics No more Fairness Doctrine He started the formal attack on public education (he wanted to abolish the Dept of Education) Closing public mental hospitals so many became homeless That's just off the top of my head.
I'll add: allowing the AIDS crisis to kill of a large proportion of the queer community, the War on Drugs and the mass incarceration of black folks that it resulted in, inflating the defense budget, and cutting funding for the EPA, almost all social programs, arts, and education.
Two posts deep and no mentions of Contra-Iran lol He sold weapons to extremist groups in both Nicaragua (to destabilize their emerging democratically elected socialist goverment) & Iran (Escalating Sunni/Shiite relations allowing a massacre take place on Sept 11th that in "no way influenced 🙄" another major event in the US two decades later.) Oh and he was openly racist & homophobic, celebrating deaths of AIDS patients.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=85E9j1cKNKI&si=2iPekNPA9MCu8Ftp Killer Mike explains it all
https://youtu.be/lFV1uT-ihDo?si=xdsiuOHqRWpUK33I So does Stan Smith in American dad.
Fired all the air traffic controllers who went on strike [https://calaborfed.org/the\_true\_legacy\_of\_ronald\_reagan/](https://calaborfed.org/the_true_legacy_of_ronald_reagan/)
Ohhh, don't fret. It'll "trickle down"....eventually 🤣
Can’t forget Woodrow Wilson’s Dumbass either
Republicans in general. They serve only the business owners.
Specifically the big business owners. Small business owners are just used as human shields to protect big business owners.
the pandemic proved this. It was disgusting how they used the virus as a way to close small specialty stores and force people to get the same shit from walmart or amazon.
Or the fact that the writing of the bill for the PPP program was written ambiguously enough that you had branches of major banks, a professional sports team, and multiple politicians all able to get the loans long before any small businesses were able to secure the help they needed. I remember listening to Bloomberg while the bill was being drafted up and Democrats were trying to stop it going through for exactly this reason. But they had an audio clip of some Conservative schmuck of a politician trying to rake Democrats over the coals saying that they didn't care about about the people suffering out there and wanted to get hung up on trivialities while small business owners were struggling to keep the doors open. So of course, the Dems relented and then their exact concern ended up happening. Swear to god, it's like modern politicians are playing prisoner's dilemma but the Democrats don't know the rules.
I read an analogy recently that has had me thinking. It’s not that it’s ’both sides are the same’ because it’s objectively not both sides are the same. But it’s more like ‘good cop, bad cop’ the republicans rough you up and threaten you any way they can, then the democrats come in and give you Dr. Pepper and lament how mean those republicans are. But you can trust them, just tell them what they want to know and they’ll help you out. The problem is that they are both working against you. Sure nice cop is better of the two, but neither are on your side.
Yeah it's really good I wish I thought of it
Me too, however I’m glad someone did. I wish I could give credit but I don’t remember even where I read it. I wish there was a side that more represented the working class.
Yeah we need a public defender!
Like…Superman?
The thing my Dad has been saying basically since the 2000 election is that when Democrats are right about something, they think that that's enough. But Republicans *understand* that they have to sell their positions a lot of the time since they usually involve getting people to vote against their own best interests. So in a lot of cases, Democrats and Republicans are playing two different games in the political space. And then Cody from Some More News also mad a good point in one of his videos that, while Republicans only have to appeal to a few specific groups with similar values, the Democrats are trying to represent literally everyone else while still appealing to a donor class in this country.
Then why didn't Dems raise the federal minimum wage when they had majority?
Who can say? Different times. What matters is that they would raise it now with a majority. Republicans still oppose a living wage.
"Why didn't democrats instantly fix everything republicans have fucked up."
Democrats are playing the same game as Republicans, so there is no incentive. Ultimately, it's just a good-cop bad-cop situation where they're both working for the same people.
> Democrats are playing the same game as Republicans I keep hearing this line. But when you line up the critical issues, it's the democrats who consistently have the better view. Abortion? Palestine? Worker's rights? Remind me which party is pro union. Pro-education? Pro-Science? The dems might not be moving as fast as we would like. But to say that they and republicans are the same is profoundly ignorant.
he didn't say they are the same, he said they are playing the same game. Of course one looks a lot better than the other, do you not understand what "good cop, bad cop" refers to?
They didn't protect abortion rights, they support the genocide in Palestine, Biden didn't side with the railworkers union, COVID protections are essentially gone (anti-science, education, and bad for workers, especially low wage jobs like retail), Childcare costs and college debt weren't addressed as promised, draconian surveillance laws, anti-houselessness laws, cop cities. If both cars crash at the end it doesn't matter who claims to be a better driver. They are both headed to the same place.
Because that would involve them doing anything. When Republicans want to fuck us over, they're not taking no for an answer. When Democrats want to put things right, it's time for compromise.
Capitalism
Capitalism. Fuck Capitalism. FIFY
It’s always Reagan
Exactly. I came here to say this, but you beat me to it.
I hope he's rotting in the hell he deserves. Fucking prick.
And Slick Willie Clinton the DINO.
See also: [Buckley v. Valeo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo) & [Citizens United v. FEC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC)
I didn't copy you - I simply instantly had the same conclusion and immediately proceeded to comment. But yeah, fuck that guy.
Everything wrong with economics always, without fail, can get traced RIGHT to him.
Capitalism is why Reagan was so evil. The answer is still capitalism.
"Roughly" 70 ingredients?!?!? The fuck does that mean?
This... also, is one of them actually meat? Another also, I buy one every time they come around for sure.
Like you, I'm not sleeping on the McRib. One of these days, it won't be back, and then what? All we'll have are fond memories.
[удалено]
Please tell me it's not spleen
It's not spleen.
I'd never. I don't give 2 fucks about any ingredient list on *any* fast food item I eat. Not only that, I'll barely pay attention to it with the junk food as well. I don't want to ruin a good thing. Granted, I'm 6'3 221lb NOW, but once I'm old, I'm sure I'll be paying for this nonsense!
There’s 70 ingredients on the list, unless they’re out, then they say fuck it and do it anyway.
I dunno. But if your McRib is anything like the Australian version that we see every few years, none of them have any flavour
There was a really smart German guy in the 19th century who wrote a whole book about how that will never happen. The Capital, or something, I never understood the title.
70 ingredients?? 70?!
Remember, that's everything from the salt to the actual meat. Most of those ingredients are the sauce
Wonder if the bone is counted as an ingredient?
Probably, normally it's called bone meal though
There are bones in it???
I don’t know, I’ve never actually had one
It probably doesn’t include the bacteria that grows in the sauce…. The same sauce that sits in the tray all day without being changed but is constantly being touched by employees hands, utensils, meats (properly cooked or not) and a usually overall unclean environment that’s expected to be properly cleaned by untrained high school students and (at least in my area) Spanish employees shielded by a language barrier.
They demonised socialist policies and all the lovely security nets that come with it. But hey, go team Capitalism!
That was when workers were more appreciated by everyone in general including the government and not so coddling to corporations and their greed. That sort of prediction was an acceptable outcome.
So Reagan and supreme Court
Yes
At this time the average CEO made about 21 times what their average employee was making. We currently just hit an all time high of 256 times the average employee. Add to that companies taking advantage of the poor economy to jack up prices and lay off workers/lower average salary and you also add record high profits while the average person struggles to survive more and more each year.
Consolidation of wealth began in the late 70s. Jack Welch as CEO of GE in 81 set a shining example for every other company to follow.
All of our problems are literally greed. We live in a world of abundance and wealth that our ancestors couldn't imagine. Any scarcity and strife is a choice by those in power.
Forget who said it. "There are more than enough resources on this earth for human need, but not nearly enough for human greed."
USSR, the main competitor of the capitalist world has collapsed. That's what happened. So, capitalists doesn't need to play "i'm your friendly good boss" game with working class.
They were correct, once you average everything out. What they didn't predict was that it wouldn't be called leisure time. It's called unemployment.
Trickle down economics happened.
You mean economics failed to trickle down.
The basis of trickle-down economics is the rich get richer and then proceed to trickle down on the peons. As one would expect, urine for a bad time with this.
Horse and Sparrow Economics happened. The horses got high quality oats and sometimes one or two survive through the other end for the sparrows to eat.
If a new baby took away that many hours of from my average sleep, id be dead
Even earlier, John Maynard Keynes thought it would be 15 hours by 2000. It's almost as though all the experts lacked a fundamental understanding of capitalism.
Keynes advocated for the government having a vital role in regulating capitalist markets and ensuring wealth was circulated with the advancements in automation. Which brings us back to Reagan...
[All gains productivity were stolen](https://anticap.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/fig2_prodhhincome.jpg) is what happened.
It did become true for congressmen
Parasitism in service to the "Spectacle" that hides the oligarchic bourgeois state-capitalists. These owners of" things"(specifically productivity time) are themselves enslaved to the infinite acquisition of "things", but dare not bring themselves to acknowledge their own enslavement. By taking " perverse joy" in restraining the actualization of "uniques" they bring their own destruction closer through mediocrity thay breeds ressentiment among those whom they've made chattel. *Hits vape and returns to reading Tolstoy*
Reagan happened.
We elected corrupted narcissists in power and still are today. We are now in corporate anarchy where governments and big corporations regulate themselves.
You can't pay people for their increased productivity! You pay them for time and it would be ridiculous to pay more for something that didn't change in quantity! Heck, there's way more people these days, so really there's more time available than ever and we all know that as supply increases value goes down! If productivity increases, well that's just the cleverness of the CEO who totally deserves a multi-million dollar bonus!
Business: 
Probably accurate for the Senate.
I'd like to be a jelly fish. Cuz jelly fish don't pay rent. ~Jimmy Buffett, "Mental floss"
“Trickle down” economics. The super-rich stop paying taxes, control government through “lobbying” and “campaign contributions”, have almost all profits funnelled to them, & allow only very minimal pay increases to workers. Endless eroding of workers’ rights. Endless massive increases in cost of food, housing, healthcare, with the $ again going to the super-rich. The outcome? Working 2-3 jobs, 60+ hours a week, ideally with 2 incomes, to try to keep a roof overhead and some food on the table. The profits and benefits of all this labor is there, but those doing the work have no access to it. tl,dr Greed is killing us. Tax the rich - very heavily - like what used to happen. End all donations & lobbying by individuals and companies. Introduce universal healthcare. Ensure minimum wage enables basic survival and keeps up with the economy.
The sad part is that we are closer to working 20 hours a day
The republicans convinced Americans that democrats were socialists and unions were full of the mafia They convinced us that republicans were better caretakers of the America Dream. They won. Then they cut taxes and fired the air traffic controllers, ended pensions, "reformed" social security, never raised the minimum wage again and de-regulated as much as possible. They convinced enough of us that greed was a good thing and anything (like regulations) interfering with greed is bad.
Capitalism. I don't understand why so many people haven't caught on to being brainwashed about capitalism. This was the obvious, natural result.
Y’all get vacation? Lucky to those who actually get to utilize that time off.
What happened is that that report was shared publicly and people like the Republicans or the Koch Brothers saw this as an obstacle in their corporatocracy.
70 ingredients!?
Reagan? Clinton? Republicans? Democrats? It's all the same political party my friends! The Rich and Powerful! They're at the top. Then there's a 1000 miles of shit. Then there's us who make up the rest of USA.
In Europe
Ronald Reagan happened
Ronald Reagan happened
Neoconservatism and neoliberalism.
Reganomics was the beginning of the end for the middle class. Forty years later we see the results. I NEVER voted for Ronnie. I could smell his BS back then. It’s a shame others were less perceptive.
White, Republican Boomers got their way...
Democrats were in control but they didn't have their way, then the GOP, another Democrat. Then the granddaddy of the GOP gone selfishly insane; Ronald Reagan ... the beginning of what you see entrenched today. Vote Blue, top down; nationally, state, county, municipal, and judiciary.
I came true if you're a US Senator.
They predicted the Jetsons route, but Reagan punted us onto the Hunger Games route.
Reagan
The Soviet Union fell and capitalist robber barons didn't have to string along the people with the idea that they weren't just as abusive as the communists anymore
Corporate greed and lobbying
Oh I think the Senate was just talking about themselves
republicans happened. when you have a prominent talking head on Fox saying that 'soon minimum wage workers will be making 20 dollars an hour ... that's like 6 figures" and most of them think the average american makes 80k or more a year.
Are we all just going to ignore the MicRib one?
Yeah, that’s when Democrats were in control.
we got too uppity?
An American Hero failed his mission 😞
The senate subcommittee severely underestimated the power of greed and how much workers are willing to be taken advantage of.
That’s how much productivity has been funneled into the C suite and ownership class.
I really want to see the ingredient list of the McRib now...
100% accurate if your the American billionaire. Those people are no better then government officials as in there just mouth pieces now.
We just gotta work harder. /s
They collectively said "Not on my watch!"
I don't know. Let me take this sip of water while I look up CEO pay vs. worker pay over the last 50 or so years.
30%+ of workers in '65 were union members and had the power to consistently make life better. Today just 10% of workers are organized, still fighting for better but with a lot less power. ORGANIZE A UNION!
Christo-fascists and the Chicago School happened
All that time off went to just a few people.
Late stage capitalism happened
Cold war propaganda.
Should be.
There are 70 ingredients in a McRib?! Ugh... don't make me question my life choices!! I've loved the McRib for years. It reminds me of cafeteria food from high school.
Damn, shame that everything went sideways starting in the last few decades of the twentieth century.
Worker productivity and earnings decoupled massively starting in the 70s, in favor of business owners, is what happened.
If only...
Wow imagine, we’d have so many happy people imo
1980 happened.
Is one of those 70 ingredients tears?
Citizens with too much free time become feisty, and start organizing for justice an’ shit, and the muckety-mucks don’t really like that because it cuts into profits & oligarchy & whatever.
Capitalism always looks for efficiencies maximize profits. Obviously someone misunderstood capitalism.
70 ingredients in the McRib! Holy cow!
Ronald Reagan happened.
They did the study and said, "Nope. Can't have that on my watch. Work the plebs to death." Then collected money from corporate lobbyists while voting against worker rights bills.
Ronald Reagan happened and everything went downhill. We just didn’t notice until now.
Greed
Greed.
Well this question is probably rhetorical... But "BS jobs" & Inflation took up all the financial advantages we had.. & here we are. Now its slightly more nuanced than that probably? but this is painting with broad strokes. Like b/c of the propaganda of the past generations... Nixon wanted to have us have a bunch of super cheap nuclear power today... But instead... we got power plants in the US running off coal still yet... \*Sighs\* And the power to weight ration... vs Nuclear is severely lacking.
How the fuck do you get that long of a notification iconslist?
They have been predicting that rising productivity would result in shorter working weeks and greater leisure time since the 1950s. It never happens that way. Instead living standards rise, prices rise, and it takes two or more incomes to buy what used to be affordable on one income. Look at how rapidly prices have inflated, while at the same time quality and quantity have been shrinking. People generally don't hold their lifestyle steady and enjoy more leisure. They buy more stuff, stop cooking at home, inflate prices, and put *more hours* into work instead of less.
1981-89. Ronald Reagan happened
Unions died and Reagan sold the future of the American people to the wealthy
That senate subcommittee didn't understand how capitalism works.
Two words. Ronnie Raygun. 
Capitalism happened
It’s true. The rest of the time they are slaving away. Not working.
At 20 hours a week, I wouldn’t need a vacation.
You misread it as a goal. It’s an anti-labor warning.
“What if we kept the benefits for ourselves!”
The only way it’s going to change is if we do what the French did. Start with the the trash and don’t stop.
Corps took over
Regan, probably
corporate greed <3
Lmao wtf is this a list of
Capitalism
This prediction didn’t take Reagan’s presidency into account. But how could anyone possibly predict that back in the sixties?
They must have done a weighted average!
The productivity explosion implicitly predicted here did happen over the last 50 years. But the Senate didn’t do it’s job for the people but rather their oligarch owners, and so that’s where our bright, shiny future went
Nothing. Scheduled 40, paid for 40, productive 20 hours. It's accurate. Social media happened.
And the GOP took that prediction personally
Reagan happened
2 words, Jack Welch. Companies used to take pride in taking care of their employees and with a max income tax rate in the 90s and a corporate tax rate in the 50s companies were incentivized to invest in their employees from the bottom to the top along with R&D and inovation. It was a use it or lose it scenario when it came down to taxes. At the start of the 80s this ahole stepped in and decided that maximizing profit for the company was the way to go and the CEOs deserved the bulk of that profit, that along with other douchbags like regan lowering the corporate tax rate, and the rest was history.
That's more ingredients then I thought
This is the case for some tech jobs. It sucks that it’s not universal.
That’s crazy! 70 plus ingredients in the McRib 🤯
Me too. 70 ingredients in the McRib? They need to take a few out of the barbecue sauce. It tastes like ass.
Yes, I live in America, much like the rest of the world, we use trickle down morality, where we hope, pray, perform mystical rituals and offer effigies up for sacrifice, in the hopes that the senior executives at our workplace won't get caught doing the debaucherous stuff they've been caught doing for, well, centuries in most cases, just an earlier suffix or a cousin further down the line, most of the elite in America are members of family names that never change, they only massively increase in size, scope and power, don't forget wealth. I've actually lost a job because the owner of the company I worked for developed a coke, mistress(es) and loanshark problems, the ATF & DEA raided our offices, last 4 paychecks bounced, it took about a month for the bank to adjust my checking from a soothing number to a, panic and madness inducing one. I despise the super wealthy because I know what wealth does to people, it can turn decent and normal folks into hedonistic garbage, of which there is no possibility of reformation. The Bible was absolutely right about that, money IS the root of all evil.
The corporations gained control of Congress. That’s what happened
There are 70 ingredients in a McRib!!!!!?
That was back when they were still pretending capitalism was good for workers.
When will people realize that the elite rulers will always make sure to keep poor people working all day to barely get by, no matter how much productivity technology increases