a grassroots nonprofit defining a democratically managed global currency around four simple ideas—one government, one vote; transparent blockchain accounting; automatic trade‑balance rules; and jobs as a human right. with de‑dollarization chatter, tariff war, the cbdc arms race, china & the brics pushing their own monetary bloc, and ai upending work, it feels pretty timely...
Fair enough. To each their own. My MacBook is running 32gb of ram so I'm not as concerned over a few hundred mb. But noted.. I'll have to make one in native code for you.. ;)
If you have a limited amount of money coming in and you allocate it in highly unequal ways (via a race to the bottom (in terms of expenses), can you be surprised when there are so many people who are suffering from not having an increased standard of living? You cannot disassociate the choices made in compensation of corporations to the standard of living of people in general. Amazon is putting small businesses out of operation because they can do it cheaper at a mass scale. Those families who are put out? They're toast. What did you expect? And Jeff Bezos is the one who reaps all the reward of all the lost wages of small mom and pop shops.
Blame Wealthy Liberals? What does the liberal part have to do with it. Blame wealthy corporations. The formation of ultra large corporations who pay people in highly unequal ways is the root cause of all of the country's problems; offshoring of labor, layoffs, huge executive compensation, real wages being stagnant, corruption that led to the 2008 housing crisis, government corruption, etc..
The epitome of how capitalism can and will cannibalize itself. As corporations move towards maximizing profits for shareholder value, the individuals upon whom they depend on for profits are squeezed out of the system. The more successful companies can produce profits, the less people can afford the very products and services being produced and the companies will have no customers.
It is a short term injection of value into stocks. This clearly can be abused. That money which could have been used to invest in, oh say hiring more Americans or paying employees better wages, or infrastructure, or anything with long-term value generation is rather diverted and put into stocks, which is a short term appreciation. The vast majority of stock is owned by the the very wealthy and many people at the bottom have next to zero or zero stock ownership. This obviously is a threat to a balanced society and the reduction of inequality. If a company wants to increase its stock value, why not invest the money it has into long-term growth investments rather than driving up the stocks?
The decision to perform stock buy-backs could be an indication of the general pessimism that corporations have about the economy. If consumer debt is at an all time hight, how can we find more people to buy the products we are making? We tried giving people more debt than they could handle (mortgages) and that ended in spectacular disaster in 2008. So maybe the only thing corporations can do to increase value is to rely on buying back stocks! Makes a lot of money for some people..
^^^^^^^^^ THIS IS More evidence that the condition of the world is degrading. Making huge sums of money is immoral. The 62 wealthiest people in the world have as much wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion people. This is completely immoral and should be illegal. The mere fact that a person has billions of dollars is evidence that there is tyranny in the world. The paradox of capitalism is that the more a capitalist succeeds in reducing his costs (labor), the less money the mass of people will have to buy the very products by which a capitalist produces and thus cannot sell the products and services he is producing. It is bound to fail in time... and after it does, we will have to find a system which puts morality and love for one another at the center of its goals.