91 karma · joined March 8, 2017
Congress doesn't want to spend money on infrastructure.
If a president could time a recession, it would make sense to ensure that it was over before the next election.
For a certain class of people, recessions aren't a problem, but a tool which allows you to write off your more speculative investments.
BTW, your comment is yet another indication that Hacker News is infiltrated by people likely to be paid to post pro-hyper-rich propaganda. I mean, what's in it for you to oppose a more progressive tax rate except to prove your deep misunderstanding of the power of capitalism to push all the money to one corner?
So what if the rich pay for everything. Look, man. The poor have nothing. There's nothing left. They're not going to retire. They'll work until they drop dead. They don't get decent health care. They'll die from avoidable, treatable illness. And if conservative Congress had its way, there'd be less Medicaid. Oh, and now they want to take away the right to sue elderly nursing homes. At what point do you decide that torturing your fellow American is enough?
And that's why we need infrastructure spending from the government. But if anything, we have a government (in the USA) that's more interested in demolishing infrastructure that helps actual people, and instead wants to offer tax cuts to very, very rich people.
Douglas Rushkoff is right. All these companies are going after the data-play when in fact, most people simply have no more money to spend.
And one of the reasons why we got both Trump & Sanders during the primaries is because labor has no pricing power. Most people are afraid to ask for a raise, and apparently nobody with any power seems to give a damn.
We have an increasingly supply-side economy. Normal people will reliably spend any extra dollar they get. But I bet you could throw money at super-rich companies like Apple all day long and it wouldn't increase demand for anything (perhaps except the stock price - if they had an aggressive dividend policy, I guess).
And now they want "tax reform" which I suppose will lower corporate tax rates. That's not going to help generate demand.