No trickle...
No trickle...
128 comments
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Daily reminder that "higher GDP is good for the economy" is now a wildly disproven myth from the days before economics was a science, by a guy who said we'd get a 15 hour work week.
Monetary inflation is bad. The nitwits who jump in saying "ackchually velocity" are suckers who paid to learn the lie, whose jobs may depend on the lie, and would be very embarrassed to be wrong. Bailouts weren't the exception - they're the rule.
We've been robbed by the 0.1% and don't need to take it anymore.
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Adding to this: GDP only measures the amount of money spent on stuff, not the actual value of the things. That's one of the reasons that makes economists think untouched nature is bad, it doesn't contribute to the GDP
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Two economists are walking in the woods when they see a pile of bear shit.
One says to the other "I'll pay you $500 to pick up that shit."
The other agrees, but immediately regrets it. He says he'll pay the other $500 to take it from him. The other agrees.
The first thinks for a moment and says to the second "I think we're both worse off than before we started this walk."
The second, hands full of bear shit, is shocked and yells "What do you mean, we just increased the GDP by $1000!"
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before economics was a science
So... When is that gonna happen?
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Canadian here, what's "AfterPay"? and PLEASE don't tell me it's like layaway or a payday loan or something.
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That's exactly what it is.
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Yeah, basically a payday loan you can do from your phone. I'm sure this won't crash the economy.
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Okay.
It's an app. Can't tell you any more than that.
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Oh it trickles down. Just not money, but at least it's warm and golden 🙏
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That's by design, the money flows from the average American to the companies. Then slowly trickles into the pockets of the ceo's.
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Money is just abstracted fungiblized value.
It's stealing more of the value you produce. Me@ning you get less
Until chains of debt guilt and terror make you effectively a slave.
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"Slowly"
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Slowly as in, the Niagara falls slowly trickle water.
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Oh, I feel something trickling down alright.
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It's like Robin Hood in reverse.
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Robin Socks
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Robin facial recognition algorithm and randomly spraying your head with water.
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It's trickle up. You can see the cone in section 2. Increase h and the trickle trickles.
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Unironically, it used to be called "Horse and Sparrow Economics," with the rich eating grains, and the poors pecking their meals from the horseshit.
True story
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"Thank you my liege"
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By "trickle down", they meant "pissing in your mouth, peasants", FYI.
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No, that's disgusting.
Trickle-down is a perfectly wholesome synonym for horse-and-sparrow economics, so named because sparrows pick undigested oats out of horseshit. Why'd you have to go and make it gross?
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Where’d this stat come from. Looking around and another site says 25% made payments for groceries. Another site says 60% split payments when buying - not just for groceries. So I sincerely doubt the stat of 60% making payments just for groceries.
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This comment on the post indicates that it's a CitizenWatch article, but that article's own listed sources don't support the 60% number either (as I call out in my response to that comment).
I swear there's barely anywhere online anymore where people practice basic skepticism. If it aligns with their existing biases they just slurp it up, no matter how absurd.
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👍This comment section is a particularly bad example.
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Yeah, that statistic is obviously bullshit and people here should notice. They really should notice
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noticing harder
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It’s not like the statistic wanted to be noticed
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A split payment doesn't necessarily mean being destitute either. My wife and I keep our finances separate and do split payments when we go grocery shopping together.
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Should’ve been 96% or something—the same as the percentage of people I hope realized the number couldn’t possibly be accurate. Make it truly absurd if it won’t be accurate!
@NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org might consider swapping the image with an edit or adding brackets after the title or something - know you’re just resharing fuňe meme
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it never trickles down.
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Username checks out.
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I'm not quite at the bottom but I can see it from here.
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Sadly, Americans are groomed at a young age to dive deep into debt early in life. It has become normalized for most of the population to carry some form of debt (credit cards and student loans are popular choices).
Most people don't even bother making a budget — a task that only needs to be done once a month, and is easier now than ever, thanks to technology.
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It has become normalized for most of the population to carry some form of debt.
Not just normalized, Required. Credit scores aren't based on how likely you are to pay off a loan, but on how likely you are to make the creditor money. If you take out loans and pay them off ahead of schedule, it will fuck with your credit. If you close an old credit card after you pay it off, it will fuck up your credit.
Want a house? You better have 400k cash laying around, or have been paying interest on cards and loans for 10 years to establish a good credit score. Want a decent apartment? They check your credit score too! Did I mention that every single job I've applied for has run a credit check on me?
FYI, Equifax leaked literally everyone's personal info after collecting it and selling it without consent. They still operate as one of the major credit score providers.
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Try and make a budget for minimum wage. Many people can't afford to live even meagerly.
Why bother budgeting if you're just going to lose anyway?
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I have, I mean you kinda HAVE to budget what little you bring in to ensure you don't end up on the streets. and it's not even about saving. saving was just a pipe dream. budgeting was just to ensure rent got paid, bills were paid, and I was able to eat sometimes.
I know people who make 6 figures and can't/won't budget and most live paycheque to paycheque or are absolutely broke just before their next direct deposit. I worked with a guy that made 6 figures and all the time just before payday he'd bum me for cigarettes or ask if I could buy him a coffee or a sandwich cause he had NOTHING. And this was a guy that would always have the latest tech shit, videogames on day one of release - like all of them, nice clothes, etc. just spend, spend, spend.
I've known more people who SHOULD be well off that don't budget and are constantly broke than people who make minimum wage and are surviving.
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Self fulfilling profecy
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I mean, to reduce your losses? I've had a budget balance out red, compared my options and been incredibly lucky. I would not have been quite as lucky if I'd just said 'fuck it' and zero'd out the balance.
Billionaires shouldn't exist, social support structures should be stronger, I have only succeeded based on community and relationships... But you gotta try at least.
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this is it pretty much. personal responsibility when it comes to this line of discourse is mostly just a myth. people are often not really responsible for the majority of their own live’s outcomes, let alone those most disadvantaged. people get deeply offended at the idea they’re not, in reality, some superman personally championing every single successful thing they’re in the vicinity of.
i wish this culture would go away of blaming everyone individually for problems that are almost entirely systemic.
it seems really obvious when you think about it even just a little bit that your future is mostly written by those around you, not yourself. you have a certain freedom of metered and realistic choice, but no freedom of will. couldn’t just will yourself out of a bad situation or to fly, it takes more pieces than that.
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...You assume that I haven't? I originally had to learn to budget when I was making less than minimum wage, to avoid homelessness. Budgeting can be even more important with less money.
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Most people don’t even bother making a budget — a task that only needs to be done once a month, and is easier now than ever, thanks to technology.
Avoidable debt and spending beyond means are one thing, but budgeting only helps so much when the cost of essential goods has skyrocketed, rent is out of control, and pay is all but stagnant. I applaud the sound financial advice of making a simple personal budget, but the problem is (for most people) far, far greater than credit card debt at the stage people are BNPL groceries...
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Legit rules of the trickle
- Trickle tomorrow
- No trickle? See Rule 1
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Weird stat aside, I was watching a podcast with Scott Galloway yesterday and he made a comment about Jerome Powell bringing inflation down to 2% without triggering a recession, and I had to facepalm. The rich, even those with a shred of empathy, are massively out of touch with what the 99% are experiencing right now.
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Me, off in the corner believing debt is immoral
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Society legitimately cannot function without debt. I agree giving people predatory "micro loans" for groceries is dystopian but every society that has discovered agriculture has also discovered the concept of debt because it's a natural consequence of an economic order so tied to seasonal cycles. Interest is also not bad, and every society that has developed debt has also quickly developed interest. Societies that have religious prohibitions or taboos against interest find workarounds because it's proven to be a critical part of how economics works. Personally I am glad that I was able to buy a house for hundreds of thousands of dollars I don't have yet because I will be able to pay off that in time and I appreciate that the bank is willing to lend me that money for such a long time at a relatively low rate of return for them. The Soviet Union even had banks that offered loans with interest but they were run by the State. It's kind of unavoidable.
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Many societies also develop a system of redistribution or debt forgiveness. It's known that too much debt accumulation in too few hands cause increasingly bigger issues or that circumstances change. But there are always those that need to learn the lesson again.
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Why was your house worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? Because we use debt. How do you think people lived for thousands of years? Home mortgages weren't a normal thing until like 100 years ago
Societies without it found workarounds, because it's easy. It's tempting. It's a money dupe glitch combined with gambling. If anyone uses it, they get an insurmountable advantage over all players who don't. It's moloch, it's the demon of racing to the bottom
You should not be able to spend your future
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Are you thinking about usury? Debt in general is actually one of the moat important threads of our societal fabric
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Most important? I'll never go into debt, just won't spend money I don't have. It's a no brainer for me.
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It's not important, it's the cornerstone of modern society. It's a really bad cornerstone though, like great filter level bad
What problem does it solve that couldn't be better solved in another way?
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What kind of debt? Is it immoral to owe someone a favour? Or is it immoral for someone to owe you a favour?
Is it only immoral if there's interest? If someone lends someone $500 to cover rent, that's immoral? Is it more or less immoral to watch someone lose their housing when you could have helped?
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What? You can pay using your ass?
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Do you mean trickle trick? Because that's the trick, it doesn't.
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It trickln't
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When you make a CitizenWatch article into a meme (congrats OP):
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I mean this sincerely: Am I missing something in their sources? None of their three sources about BNPL support the "60%" number for groceries.
https://pueblostarjournal.org/news/2025/06/03/shopping-buy-now-pay-later-groceries
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/26/americans-groceries-buy-now-pay-later-loans.html
CNBC mentions 60% of general admission tickets for Coachella being BNPL sales.
It and the other two articles state 41%-43% of generally surveyed people simply stating they used BNPL last year, not for what.
I'm not seeing any source for "60% of Americans using BNPL for groceries", and anecdotally that doesn't match anything I'm hearing/seeing in my day to day life. Economy's shit, but this feels a little "narrative"-y for my tastes.
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Conversely, roughly 10%+ of the US has a negative net worth, ie, they owe more debt than they have assets.
https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p70br-202.pdf
And I say 10%+ because this is from 2022, and in general, credit scores have been nose diving and car/home loan delinquencies and tenant evictions have been skyrocketing, since 2022.
We've also got roughly ~40% at least using BNPL for something.
We also know that ... having a negative net wealth is, while not exclusive to poorer people/households in terms of their yearly income... it is much, much more strongly correlated with that.
Though this may change in 'fun' ways now that the housing market is collapsing, bye bye remnants of the 'middle class'!
So anyway, I think a more realistic number for uh... people who are worse than living paycheck to paycheck, people who are actually living paycheck to loan repayment...
Its somewhere between ~10% and ~40%.
... Which is still really fucking bad, as that means something aporoximating a quarter of society sre now just literally debt slaves.
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So basically, we have:
A ~20% debt slave class,
A ~50% exploited and struggling worker class (who is often in total denial about this being the case),
A ~25% petitie bougeois, decently paid worker / small business owner class (who routinely gaslights and belittles everyone below them, and aspirationally sucks off and praises those above them),
A ~5% capitalist owner class, that gets astonishingly more powerful and wealthy as you increment up each percent and then tenth of a percent, etc.
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Great search, thank you!
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128 comments
The SP500 hitting highs is a lot less good news when you realize most of that is simply due to the dollar devaluing against other international currencies.
That isn't asset appreciation, it's currency devaluation.
EDIT:
I m on mobile and don't have the ability to make my own chart with DXY and SP500 normalized to each other, but uh...
https://portfolioslab.com/tools/stock-comparison/%5EDXY/SPY
Look at this in YTD, then in 1Y, then 5Y.
Normally, these two things move in the same dirrction, though the SP500 tends to grow much more when the DXY grows a little.
Well, now, basicslly since Trump took office, they're moving in the opposite direction.
So, yeah, this is now what is called a 'melt up', where stocks climb higher, but not because of any kind of underlying fundamental strength of the US economy but because the USD has lost about 10% of its value compared to the currencies it most often is traded against.
When the nixon administration abandoned the gold standard, stock prices rose, too. It's the same mechanism: avoid having cash as the currency devalues.
Is it atypical to learn this in school?
In American schools?
Normal public schools?
Economics is an elective, only available at fairly good schools, usually only taken by overachievers.
Most US Public schools don't even teach the basics of taxes or finances as it applies to an average person who is going to like, work a job that is taxed, buy a car with a loan.
Our education system has been intentionally destroyed by Republican s for decades, the result is that roughly within +/- 2 years of when I graduated college... US average adult literacy rate has been plummeting.
The average US adult now reads at a 6th grade level, average math skills are also terrible.
Uneducated people are easier to lie to and trick.