The Great Resignation

I read around unlikely explanations for the great resignation phenomenon, and they all have one thing in common: although it is an economic phenomenon, no one is looking for an explanation that uses the tools of economics.

Covid-19 is being brought out (but not its economic effects), the customer who is always right (in practice, it's all Karen's fault), the Gen-Z who doesn't want to work, the working conditions in the USA they suck a little, but we carefully avoid giving an economic explanation to an economic problem.

When I notice that the stone guest is at the table, I dive in, and this is what I understand from this dive. First, the emotional phenomenon (Karen, as the shitty boss / manager) are enough to explain a sporadic number of cases. I went through all the dedicated subreddit, and everything I saw there does not justify a mass phenomenon like the current one: these are anecdotes that cannot explain a mass of 10 million people who quit in a few months.

But to investigate in the right direction you need to look at who is hiding what. That is, if we know that a newspaper like Corriere defends financiers, large companies and real estate developers, first of all we need to go and look there.

So, let's notice one thing. If the problem were that American wages have not grown since the 1970s, to be precise since the end of the Bretton Woods Accords, then the phenomenon would have manifested even earlier. And it would have hit back in time too: if your income has been stolen for 40 years, while your son has only been stolen for 20 years, I expect the one who has been stolen the longest to go bankrupt . It is therefore inapplicable the theory that wants salaries to remain as the cause of a phenomenon that affects more young people.

But there is a grain of truth, let's say lateral, in all this. Let's see what I mean.

We are in 2008. A catastrophic crisis has just paralyzed the banking sector (banks do not lend anything because they fear toxic assets), the real estate sector (there are no more mortgages), large industries (remember the Detroit disaster? ) are obsolete and need liquid, which is too expensive. The interests are too high.

The Fed remedies it by saying it can flood the markets with money, but skeptics say if too much money is printed, then inflation will skyrocket. What solution was found?

Falsifying the inflation data, exploiting social dumping linked to low-cost products produced in Asia, and low-cost offers.

By inserting low cost flights in the basket, suddenly the price of travel collapsed, inserting electronic gadgets in the basket ("Pentium II 500Mhz computer", "Nokia phone", etc), suddenly over time the basket was filled with negative values, and this he did. “Official” inflation has become very low.

Just what served as a pretext to allow central banks to become printing works, and help real estate, overcooked industries, banks.

The problem is that by doing so, you have screwed up an entire generation, and you have done it even more than you have done before. If I had the feeling of belonging to a generation thrown into the dumpster, I must say that those who have entered life after 2008 are, literally, “an abortion never performed”. And saying it is bad when you are a father. But that's the way it is.

What happens when official inflation is blocked? It happens that prices rise in essential sectors, but this increase is absorbed by NON-essential sectors. And if this happens for years, a critical condition is reached:

to live in the USA you need to earn at least $ 23 / hour. Home, car (necessary for work because public services are pathetic), food, medical care, education, are all sky high. Student debt is close to two trillion dollars, and is growing dramatically (it was 1.3 trillion just three years ago).

We said, you need to earn at least $ 23 / hour. Now, if we take things like the gig economy and the service sector, for jobs like waiter, shop assistant, apprentice, delivery boy, driver, etc., the average wage is $ 7.5 an hour.

This means one thing: an entire generation has sunk into misery, but it's a strange golden misery for which you can't afford a real steak, but you have a near-latest generation mobile phone, which costs about half of one. of last. (which causes the measure of the increase in prices to collapse).

The result is that in the US words like "roommate" are now the norm, there are "room-mate finder" services, and living in an apartment with two or three people per bedroom is almost the norm for a young person. who works".

By making "deadly balances", dressing low-cost fashion (which in turn decreases the rate of inflation), eating sub-trash food (meaning they'd eat better if they rummaged through the trash of the rich), young Americans have somehow managed to adapt: ​​it is enough to work 50/60 hours a week, even having the second shit job, to live like some subhuman shit, and in some way they have screwed it up.

Why did they go through all this without rebelling? Because politics has flooded them with non-existent problems, such as BLM, the problem of transsexuals in public toilets, the gender gap (a generation that is always and in any case poor does not have a gender gap problem, both males and females are poor. females), and other fashion phenomena. And the usual balls that show the Richard of the situation that makes the tinder for cats and becomes a billionaire, moral: if you can not do it you are not like Richard, be like Richard. And if you're not, pretend you are on social media.

Moral: in the name of the American dream and "work hard" these accept increasingly miserable living conditions.

But now comes a phenomenon, which is called covid. Since we are talking about the economy, let's limit ourselves to the economic effects on the US: the hamster wheel stops.

The hamster stops, and gets off the wheel. And notice that yeah, if he spins the wheel he gets food, but he wouldn't be all this hungry if he didn't spin the wheel.

The young American discovers that he is working to pay for the labor costs. Eating out, moving around, dressing properly, paying rent because now that you are working you are independent and you are out of the house.

And it happens that many return home, to their parents (who own at least one house), and since there is Covid it does not even seem humiliating.

And here begins the story of the great resignation: all those young people who from the province had gone to the city to live on shit return home to the agricultural part of the USA, where food is cheap and parents own at least one house (on average). .

And they quit. Because when you really realize that the difference between how much you earn from work and how much you spend to work is $ 55 a month, you realize that compared to the pocket money your parents gave you, you lost.

Here is the origin of the Great Resignation phenomenon: a catastrophic hoax, mounted with baskets built to prove the false, that is, that the cost of living was not increasing.

This has stopped the growth of wages, but has allowed the cost of living (Rentals, Houses, Cars, Fuels, Utilities, Transport) to increase, offset by the drop in the price of other goods, which are not really useful for living (they are not " cost of life ", are" cost of superfluous ") but have been included in the basket.

Now, you will ask yourselves: what harm is there to admitting that inflation is on the rise and that we need to raise the rates of the cost of money? Eh, Lagasov's problem: there is a debt to be paid with the truth.

In itself, the fact that prices are rising and inflation has returned is filtering (by now it cannot be denied even by inserting horse shit in the ISTAT basket), but there is no talk of doing what should be done, that is 'raise the rates of the currency. Because'?

Because the very low cost currency for decades has created a landowner economy. The latifundium is a situation in which few possess immense quantities of properties, which yield very little but since we are talking about immense quantities, they are enough to make a few landowners billionaires.

But this only works if the cost of money is low and official inflation is low: if your economic empire makes very little, there is no problem because you can use the property as a guarantee, take money at no cost. and buy other properties.

And if the cost of money remains low, the low yield is enough to pay the interest.

Real estate speculation, gas barrel banks, industries that shouldn't have existed for years. This is the debt to the truth, a debt that has left us with more than a decade of lies about the real rate of inflation.

What would happen if tomorrow some heretic decided to tell the truth, calculate a TRUE inflation rate as a cost of LIFE, that is, made ONLY of what it takes to live (House, Education, Food, Medical care, Clothing), and discovered that inflation is around a very quiet 4.7% in the EU, for years now, 5.4% for the US, and that has NEVER been what the central banks said?

This would happen:

• millions and millions of companies that now have a very low EBT, and live on credit, would not be able to pay interest on the credit (because they make little money) and would close.
• millions and millions of real estate investments would find themselves paying gigantic interest on apartments bought (in debt) for the sole purpose of keeping market prices high.
• the major banks would collapse immediately because their assets have not yielded enough to offset the cost of money.

This is the debt we owe to the truth, a mass of lies that now characterize economic information, which have accumulated over the years to the detriment of the lives of the youngest, and which sooner or later will present the price.

Or maybe they're introducing it right now. Because the problem is not the increase in the price of energy. If the fucking processors and chips had dropped in price as usual, the basket would have held steady.

The problem that seems to have blown up the scam is that BOTH the goods that traditionally increase, and the goods that traditionally halve in value "when the new model comes out", are increasing.

And it's no longer possible to hide the lie.

There are two "empirical" signs that speak clearly of what is happening:

• a few years ago Angela Merkel had the idea of ​​raising the minimum hourly wage, bringing a minimum part-time job to 1,380 euros / month. The usual "anti-communist" cassandras predicted an increase in unemployment. On the contrary, employment increased because it became convenient for the neets to leave the house and find a job.
• during the Covid pandemic, household savings in smart working grew to return to traditional levels, a sign of the fact that "going to work" (but not working) costs a lot, and that the exploitation of the commuter was weighing on families.

But all of this only makes sense if we accept that we have lied about the average inflation rate, both in the EU and in the US, at least since 2008.

These lies owe a debt to the truth, and it's a debt we're about to pay.