The truth about recessions

we're in a recession Maybe maybe not though it's not super clear are we headed towards a recession it is coming I think we are on a slow bleed into the recession all of our indicators suggest that leading indicators consumer confidence CEO confidence all point to a recession in the U.S economy it's been at least a year since people started talking about a possible recession nobody's really sure when it's coming or if it's already here because rather unhelpfully there are some contradictory signals right now having their fun speculating and we could too just 20 minutes of pure guesswork but we're gonna do this video a recession is coming no matter what we know it with 100 certainty what we don't know yet is exactly when though based on current trends most people expect it to be sometime soon not to be too obvious with my thesis statement or anything but in this video we're going to break down why we know for sure that a recession is on its way we'll also talk about the fact that these crises where profits go down are counter-intuitively a good thing for capitalists unlike what you might hear them say and then we'll take things a step further and talk about preventing recessions because the truth is we could stop recessions almost entirely if we wanted to okay this is a graph you knew that specifically it's a graph of GDP in the United States if you didn't know GDP or gross domestic product is a garbage number that doesn't really mean much but it means a whole lot to governments and businesses so unfortunately they've made it everyone else's problem roughly speaking GDP measures the total value of all the goods and services in a country in a given year GDP doesn't care if one guy makes all the money from this or if we cut down every single tree in the process or if we're all miserable GDP only calculates the value of all the stuff exchanged for money while cutting out the middlemen in the calculation I'm really oversimplifying here but as long as there's more stuff or more services more value produced than the year before on paper the line goes up these shaded areas here are times where that doesn't happen it's in moments like these where GDP goes down for long enough that an official recession is declared by the nber and as you can see there's been a lot of them currently we estimate there's a recession every four to seven years on average like this right here is 2008 the last big recession before covid in the U.S this line going down was accompanied by nearly 9 million people losing their jobs during the Great Recession unemployment went up to 10 percent 8 million homes were foreclosed on and millions of people lost their savings or their retirement funds just trying to get by [Music] this is why recessions are a big deal they're brutal they're not just a few months where you need to cut down your spending on say four dollar artisanal bread to take a completely random example death rates alcoholism suicide all sorts of really terrible things go up during periods of economic contraction and predictably mental and physical health get a lot worse recessions are incredibly traumatic and difficult sometimes even deadly events for millions of people and for some reason they're treated as a natural phenomenon we know recessions happen regularly under capitalism you saw the graph but rather than contest this part of the deal were expected to accept within our current economic system is that whenever there's a brief lull in growth which happens every couple of years this sort of purge-like event will be announced seemingly out of the blue and life will be measurably worse for millions of people through no fault of their own it's just a part of life but it's not recessions happen regularly under capitalism and not for no reason and almost every school of economics has its theories as to what triggers them marxists for example and here I'm pulling from The Economist Richard Wolff in case you're interested often explain recessions like this in periods of growth companies expand that makes sense things are going well so confidence is high and companies receive Investments borrow money from Banks hire more people merge and acquire produce more stuff and sell more things the numbers go up and this works for a while but as more and more companies do the same thing eventually production exceeds effective demand there's too much stuff being produced because almost everyone is chasing growth by producing for the largest market possible and when everybody follows the same strategy they inevitably step on each other's toes not everyone can produce this much and reap the rewards there's just too much stuff in the economy because we aren't producing a according to our needs each company is producing for its own selfish bottom line not only is this obviously terrible for environmental reasons faced with a lack of effective demand many companies won't make the profits they expected to and invested their money for so they'll lay off their workers investors will stop investing and all throughout the economy the repercussions of this failure to grow begin to bounce from business to business as everyone's inputs dry up more people are suddenly unemployed businesses shudder to a halt profits take a dive and GDP the total amount of stuff being bought and sold goes down and you get a recession foreign to note about this is one it's cyclical and two that recessions can begin under capitalism not because of anything bad happening but simply because profits become harder to come by for the tiny minority of business owners steering the ship eventually though the survivors find ways out of the downward spiral either with bailouts buyouts or increased exploitation of suddenly desperate workers looking for literally any job amid high unemployment the economy starts growing again and kicks off the next boom that'll lay the foundation for the following bust it's cyclical and it's why we know that recessions are always on their way Beyond just looking at the historical record capitalist economists tend to ignore the boom and bust cycle either they'll pretend that each crisis is a totally random event and give it its own name to make it seem self-contained or they'll call this the market quote-unquote self-regulating casually ignoring that markets don't self-regulate because governments are always there to set the rules or step in with bailout money and that self-regulating is a really gross way of framing these events where millions of people go hungry and homeless for no good reason and look while there's plenty of debate about the specifics of how recessions work one thing is very clear who the winners are cap The Narrative politicians and capitalists prefer makes it seem like recessions are bad for everyone but with the numbers going down workers losing their jobs and businesses going under but that's not a very honest way of telling the story of recessions there are winners in a recession and part of the reason why recessions happen so often is because it's always the same people who benefit from them here's the data what you're looking at is a graph of unemployment and capitalist share of income when unemployment is high and the red line goes up systematically predictably inevitably three years later so does the black line capitalists get a larger share of the total economic pie three years after unemployment rises in other words when unemployment increases so does inequality and it's always the same group that benefits and it's not a big surprise as to why workers lose a lot of bargaining power during periods of high unemployment and recessions it's just harder to get a job when only so many are available and the competition is rough and that means that capitalists can absorb more of the total wealth even if that total wealth goes down they now benefit from a more dominant position in the economy when employment is high the times where growth is happening in some ways that's actually bad for capitalists they may earn larger profits on paper but they lose control their share of total income goes down with their ability to exploit somewhat counter-intuitively this means that capitalists want high unemployment because it makes their slice bigger than the worker slice and nothing is better at producing high unemployment than recessions but just forget the graphs for a second we can make the same case with a more direct example have you ever heard that Baron Rothschild quote the time to buy is when there's blood in the streets recessions are a boon to capitalists looking to buy during recessions when there's blood in the streets those with the power to spend and buy meaning almost exclusively those at the top are going to find deals 2008 was the perfect case for this the signs were everywhere but now it's official we are in a recession at the height of the recession companies like Blackstone came in and spent billions buying up repossessed homes at a fraction of their cost they had the money most people didn't and housing is a necessity so a few large corporations were ready to spend a little while prices were low to prepare for extracting rent from thousands of families for decades to come all of this mind you is a risky Gambit periods of high unemployment and hunger get revolutionary real quick and that can be scary to capitalists while they may a profit off disasters and use them to take a larger cut of the pie crises risk changing how we organize the pie in general it's not the best analogy but anyway that said so far capitalism has survived its recessions more than that they've been ways to embolden the system so when capitalists find ways to trigger recessions by pushing Marcus to the edge playing with prices and expectations and so on taking that risk often pays off and that's not all this same story of winning in a crisis takes place not just between capitalists and the rest of society but between big and small capitalists big corporations which can steer the economy by raising their prices suddenly restrict or increase production influence policy and even trigger Wars to some extent or in the undeniable winners of recessions over their smaller competitors during times of what's called stagflation a recession or period of economic stagnation combined with inflation small businesses are weak they aren't as adaptable and strong as large corporations so these are the times where bigger companies win not by making crazy profits but simply by beating the average driving their competition out by surviving when others fail let's go back to 2008 for a second and look at JPMorgan Chase even as a bank in a recession centered around the banking industry with its profits being cut in half from one quarter to the next amid quote Rising defaults in its mortgage home equity loans and credit cards JPMorgan Chase still managed to have its stock price Jump by 11 percent the company wasn't doing well by any means it was just doing better than its competitors and that's enough even when everybody is losing being the least loseriest of them all attracts investors allows consolidation and is ultimately beneficial in other words crises aren't that bad if you can come out on top and the largest corporations as well as capitalists in general know this and take advantage of it they can confidently destroy an economy with a clear conscience because once the dust settles they can be relatively certain they'll come out on top [Music] so how do we stop processions right now they seem natural inevitable even every recession is treated as some freak accident rather than the culmination of predictable Trends and they are built into our current economic system capitalism which can also seem inescapable but what if we didn't depend on growth and profit to live fulfilling lives if that were the case a periodic dip in growth wouldn't be a problem in other words what if we just had a degrowth economy the truth is that the only context where an economy not constantly growing is a bad thing is under capitalism when businesses have to choose between satisfying the needs of their workers and the needs of capitalists to generate profits the latter always wins out in the end growth means profits for the capitalist class and decline also means profits for the capitalist class therefore periods of degrowth become recessions and austerity for the rest of the population as businesses and governments scramble to make sure that for-profit companies stay open for business capitalist firms can't afford not to make profits above the mean and capitalist governments can't function without growth so if they encounter a dip it becomes a crisis the burden of which they simply pass on to the rest of us d-growth economies don't work like that in a socialist degrowth economy basic services are provided on a universal basis like housing food Health Care Child Care and so on by taking them out of Market mechanisms and the hands of profit motivated capitalists we remove the imperative for them to grow and with that we get rid of the idea that if growth ever stops that life necessarily has to become worse to make up for it in other words the things that make life good are guaranteed independently of profit they are provided without being tied to the ability of a few to enrich themselves and it doesn't have to just be basic Services we can extend this further for example with a more planned economy with a planned economy we can control more Industries democratically produce in line with our needs not randomly having every company producing as much as possible which not only destroys the livability of our planet but crashes the economy when profits don't catch up instead of relying on profit to guide our investments we could simply invest in the things we want to see happen with democratically run financial institutions instead of privately controlled banks that only follow the logic of growth to assess whether something is worth doing alternatively think of something like a mutual Aid Network today Mutual Aid doesn't do for GDP GDP doesn't have any way of measuring something that's done freely it just doesn't consider it to exist since Mutual Aid networks are often just people working together to improve their lives providing each other with services and sometimes Goods usually without money changing hands as long as those things remain insular to the collective life gets better without GDP moving an inch economies don't need growth for life to be good or for life to improve when the motivation for doing stuff is democratic will not profit life gets better without some rich guy's bank account getting bigger it's the exact opposite of austerity and recessions it's abundance for all even in the midst of bad numbers and I get that this is abstract the bottom line is that when capitalists aren't in charge we don't need to satisfy their needs before Societies or hope that the two coincide it's actually really simple people before profits now does this mean no more crises no definitely not another Global pandemic a massive drought or a war can all still cause problems some things just can't be avoided entirely that's the reality of life we can prepare but we can't always prevent that said within a socialist framework the consequences don't have to be so bad because the first priority isn't company profits an economy that prioritizes human well-being would simply continue to do so even in the midst of a crisis unlike a growth economy which is ready to sacrifice Collective good for a small group of people's numbers to look better a crisis can be weathered instead of becoming an excuse to cut Social Services and grow the capitalist share of the pie like what happens after every crisis in this decaying neoliberal era I know this might sound utopian but it's really not it's necessary it's Common Sense we cannot keep chasing infinite growth on a planet with finite resources and we cannot keep punishing average people for the greed of a few capitalists we can get rid of recessions life can be better for all of us we talked a lot about what recessions look like and who they benefit in this episode so I wanted to take a second to give an example of what recession news coverage looks like using today's sponsor ground news let's take a single story The failure and seizure of First Republic Bank and see what headlines look like from Outlets with corporate or individual ownership remember recessions benefit those with capital so let's see how these news outlets talk about economic downturns here are three headlines from three different groups which most people would say have different interests take a look at how all three convert around the same kind of wording here we have examples of Centrist corporate coverage supposedly unbiased coverage from an outlet with a single wealthy owner and staunchly right wing coverage notice how the story is framed in each ominous comparison but no direct mention of recession deflection by saying this is just a fluke and positive coverage of the prophets JPMorgan Chase will make if you read each of these stories not one of them says the word recession and all of them attempt to reassure the reader that the system works and that JPMorgan Chase has saved the day by omitting certain details or by giving precedence to one quote or fact over another news outlets can frame a story in a way that nudges the reader towards a conclusion that benefits their operation often beholden to obscenely Rich individual owners or a particular flavor of Economics this is something I get asked about a lot how do I help parents or friends break out of their little propaganda bubble it's great to analyze an event like this comparing coverage from different interest groups but it's a lot of work and none of us have time for that that's why I always recommend people check out ground news because it has a ton of really useful tools to make building media literacy skills a lot easier ground news is a web and mobile app that Aggregates over 50 000 news sources and offers intuitive easy to understand comparison tools so you can do things like what we did here see how a particular story is being spun by various corporate Outlets you can also see the political leaning factuality rating and ownership of every single news source right in the app no tedious research required now full disclosure as a socialist I obviously disagree with the placement of some of these outlets for example I don't think CNN should be placed as far left as it is but honestly this might be a good thing when trying to educate friends and family if you come at them with well actually CNN is a right-wing Network they're not going to take you seriously ground news is the perfect first baby step towards media literacy if you're looking for a way to give your friends and family a great set of tools to understand media bias who it serves and how to spot it I highly recommend you check out ground news