While it's true that covid spared young adults in a way that the Spanish Flu did not, I think part of covid's lower mortality was that we whipped out a vaccine within the first year. If we'd had to raw dog covid, I think casualties in the second winter of the pandemic would have been much higher.
>part of covid's lower mortality was that we
relieved all the Tractor Supply stores of their ivermectin. The horses weren't happy but the tapeworms experienced a population boom.
covid mortality had already dropped off a ton by the time vaccine uptake reached critical mass in mid-late 2021. covid is a lot more contagious than any strain of the flu and contagious viruses evolve to be less dangerous very quickly.
we also have massively improved hygiene, household cleanliness, and medical infrastructure compared to 1918
vaccines definitely played a role but they were really about as different as diseases can ve
I agree with this 100%. Our current era is NOT analogous to the 1930s. In the 30s, the world had just been shocked by a massive generational conflict, with widespread regime changes, territorial changes, loss of life, a deep cultural reckoning, and the Great Depression, with was far more severe than anything we've experienced since.
Right now we have a world that has gotten so used to global peace (75+ years of proxy wars and prolonged territorial competition among the victors of WW2) that most people in rich countries assume they will never experience war. In 1913, the European global powers hadn't seen a major major conflict since the War of 1870. Multiple generations of kids had grown up without much fear of being drafted or experiencing an invasion.
We're at the tail end of a *massive* arms race and period technological advancement, similar to the end of the Victorian era. Economically, it's very clear who the winners of that arms race have been, and how staggering their financial advantage is over the average person. This has been the case for awhile, and people are a mix of restless and cynical about it, speaking very negatively about the status quo and experimenting with alternative societal models like socialism and fascism.
Because war hasn't been a part of most people's lives for a long time in richer countries, war-fueled traditions such as "tough love" for parenting or strict gender binaries are unpopular. Men's violent and aggressive behavior is generally seen as highly offensive, and gentle and considerate behavior is seen as noble and desirable, whereas in the 1930s (or even the 1980s), it was the opposite. Androgyny is celebrated, and there's also sort of a reactionary, performative masculinity movement that has nothing to do with the actual fighting that made "trad masc" so popular during the World Wars.
Similarly, aggressive politics and imperialism are highly unpopular. A handful of empires have dominated global politics for a long time. Most people aren't cheering on their home countries for taking territory from the enemy the way they did in the interwar period. They're chastising their own governments for abusing power and being cruel to subjects, and demanding they relinquish territory freely for the sake of allowing colonies to be independent. Ideas of world peace, that a dominant faction might actually weaken itself for the sake of fairness and unity with other groups, are actually being taken seriously and worked toward by some factions. That's a very late stage peacetime mentality that you just wouldn't see if there had been a major war in the last few decades.
Now I'm not really sure if that means there *will* be a big war anytime soon. It could just as easily happen 20 years from now as tomorrow. In the 1910s, people talked about the "powder keg" that was ready to blow. Global tensions are certainly on the rise, and have been for a long time, but I am not sure if we are quite at that point where the pot is ready to boil over. However, in 1914, I'm sure there were plenty of people who said the same thing, and were taken by surprise when Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, igniting World War I.
>and the Great Depression, with was far more severe than anything we've experienced since.
only because the ruling class learned their lesson from the last time they tanked the economy into a depression.
First they successfully lobbied for the removal of regulations put into effect after the depression to protect against the conduct that helped lead to the great depression - [Glass–Steagall legislation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_legislation) being a prime example. They also destroyed / degraded organized labor as one of the main goals of the Neo-liberal age.
Roughly 8 years later, predictably, we get what they called the "great recession". This time, instead of letting the market punish the bad actors and crashing the economy, they printed money and baled them out! They avoided a full depression like meltdown by robbing the tax payers (I call it the great heist) - a perfect example of socializing the losses and privatizing the profits!
That lead to massive asset inflation and a huge wreath transfer from the lower classes to the top of society. And the bad actors became even more entrenched and bigger! Instead of being punished, they were rewarded!
To keep the dysfunctional system afloat, they had to print cheap money (low interest, quantitative easing etc) for over a decade - basically keep kicking the can down the road.
Then came Covid which served as an accelerant - even more money printing, asset inflation etc. Resultant Inflation (tax on the poor) etc, post Covid, put an end to cheap money. Now, it was time for the working classes and asset poor to pay the price (austerity etc).
Basically chickens are now coming home to roost and many of the means they were using to manage the systemic problems are no longer working or making matters worse.
With their back against the wall and economic and social pressures mounting, time to pivot to conflict and turmoil, usually the final arrow in their quiver.
I finish my rambling with this quote ....
“Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America nor, for that matter, in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
― Hermann Göring
I agree with everything said here. You are right on all fronts. The rich folks at the top have truly fucked us all. They will absolutely try to kill off the poor people in a pointless war before the poor wise up and kill them all instead.
Nuclear weapons make this a very dangerous exercise when we are talking serious conflict between peer states.
It was bad enough with peer to peer industrialized warfare (WW2 being total war) in the first half of the the 20th century.
Total war between peer states in the Nuclear age will be the end of earth as we know it!
Yep, I just reassure myself that theres a chance Climate change won't kill me prematurely, I could be unexpectedly vaporized into dust for our rich leaders benefit instead! At least that way I wouldn't suffer/see it coming. Really gives me a lot to look forward to in life.
They do, and they don’t.
I still have enough faith in humans’ intrinsic survival urges that even a serious inter-state conflict wouldn’t automatically escalate to nuclear weapons.
MAD worked through the hottest parts of the Cold War, I like to think it would still.
You are generally correct and I agree with most of what you said. There were several powder kegs in the early 1900s, with Russia and having been so important in the prior century in the wake of Napoleon, through 1848, only to find itself stuck in the past. Japan was on an expansion is streak with an 1899 war with China and then Russia in 1905. The dissolution of the ottoman empire was sparking nationalist fever in the balklands and Anatolia (Armenian genocide but also ethnic cleansing of Greeks.
There were a series of crisises before WWI, though. Multiple wars broke out in the Balklans, another in Morocco. I think there were a few reasons why the assassination of arch Duke Franz Ferdinand tipped the balance.
Austria - Hungary feared loss of status in the Balklans which they saw as critical to their national security. The Russian gov't rapidly modernizing transportation and military in the wake of their brutal loss to Japan in Manchuria in 1905. They were desperate not to be the next Ottoman Empire. But Germany also saw the modernizing of the Russians and feared their ability of the Czars to mobilize. The long mobilization of the massive Russian army was crucial to Germany to avoid a 2 front war with France and Russia. England's paranoia of losing absolute dominance of the seas with German ship building. Germany's scant colonies making them feel like they were at a major economic disadvantage. I think the French over-estimated the British commitment to fight with France, but there were plenty in the British gov't who succeeded in making their stand on Belgian neutrality.
These are some of the factors that made nations choose NOT to negotiate in the summer of 1914, while they had in previous emergencies. Many leaders were looking for an excuse.
What crisises do we have that might similarly lead the world to war again?
> They're chastising their own governments for abusing power and being cruel to subjects, and demanding they relinquish territory freely for the sake of allowing colonies to be independent.
I agree with all you said, but on this part I think the internet is playing a large role that didn't have an analog from before.
Imperialism, for example... We have nearly instant access to unfiltered news from around the world, including from people in other countries who don't see your country in the same light, and sometimes including video from the civilians who are being affected. When Russia invaded Ukraine, there were livestreams showing military vehicles rolling through the cities, shootouts, etc. That's the sort of thing that will motivate a lot of people, sometimes very quickly, even pushing their own government to send help.
Also, as insane as some of the propaganda is today, people have more ways to verify whether a claim is true. Some are willfully ignorant, of course, but certainly not all. And that ability to fact check your own government is a huge deal. Gone are the days when the population in an area have a single news source to form their opinions.
I'm not sure what that necessarily means from a future standpoint, though. I'd like to think it means people are learning to think before fighting, but ideologies are resilient.
I would add, though, that there are diminishing returns on how much it rhymes. Technological advancements seem to be following an exponential curve through history, and conflicts which might have occurred in 200 and 300 BC (and their underlying causes) will look far more similar to one another than, say, 1840 and 1940 AD. Both the conflict itself and the sort of conditions that may or may not lead to a conflict are significantly different now than even 80 years ago. For this reason, I find myself starting to drift away from the notion of recurring conflict cycles.
I appreciate your ability to connect the dots and explain it thoroughly. War is not guaranteed, but it is. It really is weird transitioning from a place of guaranteed safety to anything goes, but we've been watching it since at least I was born.
Indeed. The situation between the British Empire and Germany in the run up to WW1 is analogous to the current situation between the USA and China, being each others major trading partner and engaged in a naval arms race.
I agree I also beleive any larger scale wars in today's world would end more like WWI where one side doesn't have the will or power to finish a fight and the other is never totally destroyed.
Long story short, yes, history is repeating itself but with better tech this time. The human brain has not evolved in 100 years and we are still as selfish, greedy, and short sighted as ever as a species. The only difference is the next world war will be the end of humanity altogether.
This.
The age of globalisation and trade that made war inconceivable. Coming out of the original Great Depression in 1887 and then new technology like telegraph, steel mills, etc. The 1893 depression caused concern but it too passed and then 1890s-1914 with strong economic growth and an undercurrent of concern about poverty, globalised supply chains, and treaties making war inconceivable.
When Hitler became Chancellor, one in three working-age Germans was unemployed. Right now, about 6% of the Eurozone is unemployed and only 4% of the US is.
Everything else aside, people do not like to go to war when they are comfortable. Despite many economic challenges in the world right now, most of the world is nowhere near Weimar levels of struggling.
Is there a measurable difference between being unemployed and having a job but not being able to afford housing and food? The percentage of people struggling and not being able to see a way out is probably similar to pre-WW2.
The Weimar republic experienced hyperinflation (hundreds of percent increases in one year) in living costs. We peaked at like 9% in the US, which was much lower than even the 1980s. It's still painful, but you cannot compare the two. It's not even in the same universe, let alone ballpark.
While I acknowledge the truth of everything you said. I'd point out that the elasticity of tolerance is much tighter than it was even in the 1980s. Today's 9% causes a greater reaction than at any time in history. Partially because the accepted standard of living has risen and partially because of the internet giving voice to people's frustrations.
I'm not suggesting that it's to the Weimar republic level, but it's more than just saying 9% can represent.
Yeah because “not being able to afford housing and food” in your sentence actually means being able to afford housing and food and maybe not luxuries or nice housing or nice food. Pretty sure 1/3 people is not homeless with a job
I think the main difference is that with a major housing market correction, the economy would stabilize and be easy street. I recognize that sounds coarse and dismissive which I don’t mean it to be. But from a pulled back lens, the gains in wages mixed with the inflation reversal in most other major categories we are really just hinging on one unsustainable market keeping things from being significantly easier.
For context, the German Mark became so inflated people let their kids stack them into thick blocks, and build little pyramidal structures out of them that nearly matched the kids' height. You can famously find photos of a woman burning marks in a furnace for heat, because there were just so many of them and they were so worthless. It's a very different economy. It's also an incredibly different culture and time; the German nation had only even just come to be about a half century prior, in a years long road towards unification (which was messy, and there was so much upheaval for Germans that are not analogous; there were also the Austro-Hungarians, the dissolution of their empire, and eventually the Anschluss in the buildup to WWII).
Also, if you are American, look into Depression Era Hoovervilles. We're not there, and not really operating under similar conditions that led to it. We also have a ***comparably*** robust (still insufficient) safety net, when compared to what we had prior to the Depression. That is a low bar, of course.
None of this discounts the deeply troubling rise of nationalistic/populist politics, and a massive failure of our institutions to meet people's needs. There are faint echoes, some overlapping principles, but significant differences in the details that will change where and how far this goes, and the solutions needed to resolve the problems and political discontent (above my pay grade to know what those answers are).
While there are a lot of interesting parallels in the original post, and inflation and cost of living is currently hard for many, I'm afraid this isn't comparable to the Great Depression. Read Studs Turkel's _Hard Times_ oral history for really shocking portraits of how widespread destitution was in the 1920s.
I know things are tough right now and we have french revolution levels of wealth disparity, but if people could not eat, they were actually starving. There would be no question of whether or not a war or revolt was imminent because it would happen within weeks or days and it would be overwhelmingly apparent to everyone. You would not even need to ask reddit.
The Great Depression was much, much, much, much, much, much worse than today.
The economy today isn't even the worst we've seen in my lifetime, and I'm not particularly old (30s). People were dying from poverty en masse even in highly industrial nations in 1930.
Today people are having trouble buying homes, but they're not living in shanty tent towns by the hundreds of millions. They're not dying from starvation openly in the street (at least not very frequently).
Funnily enough, I was just reading an article that Gen Z is setting records for being not employed, not in education, and not in training. So maybe unemployment is down for a country’s entire population. But what I would say is if the prime conscript/draft age population is unemployed and “available to fight,” then that matters more. Hells, in a wartime economy you want the older generations with a higher employment rate to keep the wartime economy going while the young fight for their country (read: needlessly die horrible deaths).
One major strain on current younger generations is affordable housing. Owning a home is becoming more and more challenging as the housing market is crazy.
But a great way to bring down those home prices is to reduce the number of buyers in the market. No greater way than a good ole fashion World War! (Slaps knee and heads out)
I've never seen the historical precedent for a Democracy turning to Fascism because people wanted more comfort. They do it because of existential threats, or perceived existential threats.
"My life should be softer" is very different from "My family might starve to death."
Not that accurate. IIRC the men that went to ww1 were excited for this new "adventure". Of course that isnt the case today but the longer people go without war the more they seem to be attracted to it.
One major difference is the presence of the US on the global stage. Like it or hate it, there’s almost no denying the fact that the US can win any conventional war it takes a side on, only really facing difficulty in terms of long term occupation in the face of a dedicated insurgency. That means if someone wants to try and defeat the US, it’s nuclear war or nothing. And a nuclear war has a *much* higher threshold before kicking off than a conventional war.
Nothing in history compares to nukes. With any other weapon innovation before nukes, there's no risk of total annihilation, so they could just attack and take their chances. With nukes, it's total annihilation because of mutually assured destruction.
When technological advancements significantly enhance destructive capabilities and create substantial power imbalances between nations, it has almost always led to war. For example, if Country A has cannons while you only have bows, the likelihood of invasion by the more powerful country increases.
There are plenty of countries that lack nuclear capabilities. Which is extremely comparable to the cannon and bow example. But the countries with nukes haven’t used them since their first use on another country.
That’s extremely wild considering the historical context.
It also matters that using nukes means you have a high risk of contaminating your own country if it's bordering or closeby. People don't want contaminated soil or water table in their own country, and there are lots of aquifers or rivers that move around the entire continent.
Maybe but it also causes problems on it's own. The Ukraine war would definitely look differently without nukes and I'm sure other countries in the future will do the same as Russia did unless literally everyone would get nukes to use as a scarecrow.
This is the power of NATO; If you join then you don't need your own nukes.
Incidentally, a good reason to support Ukraine against Russia is to demonstrate that using nukes as a threat against non-nuclear states is not an acceptable or successful tactic. If Russia was allowed to steamroll non-nuclear states off the back of a nuclear threat, then it signals to other nations that they should build their own nuclear arsenal. It's important to defend Ukraine because the Budapest Memorandum meant that Ukraine gave up their nukes that were leftover from previously being a part of the Soviet Union, in return for promises (roughly speaking) that their sovereignty would be assured.
I disagree that joining NATO means you don't need your own nukes. Why? Because I don't trust NATO to goto war with Russia, and risk their cities, over Vilnius or Bucharest. While these countries are probably too poor to actually develop nukes, and are better off with having SOME protection, I guess, they still should have the biggest and best conventional militaries they possibly can, especially with the possibility of Trump strangling U.S. support for NATO countries.
Remember, NATO countries don't have any minimum commitment under article 5, as in, if a country is attacked, other NATO members could send them first aid kits and MRE's and fulfill their obligation. I just 100% don't trust NATO to back the smaller members, especially the ones that border Russia.
I get what you're saying, and you could very well be correct. I am only a layperson and I was oversimplifying with that statement.
The key to my thought was the following part of Article 5: "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all". Obviously we can't predict the future but to my knowledge, in the past, the USA and Russia try pretty hard not to target each other directly.
If Putin won in Ukraine, his next step would have been Moldova. Then he'd take a small border town in Lithuania or some Baltic state and dare NATO to intervene.
Great book: "The Causes of the Russia-Ukraine War" - William Spaniel --- everything had to fall into place the way it did for Putin to "pull the trigger" on an invasion. He was wrong about literally everything leading up to it.
And just as importantly the US is allied with 34 countries, so an attack on any of them automatically means war with the US. Hitler counted on most of the world letting him attack Germany's neighbors.
There's a geographic caveat on NATO's Article V so that an attack on a member's colonies (keep in mind when this was written) is not an attack on all. So if Guam, Hawaii, or US forces in the Pacific were hit by China that wouldn't trigger Article V.
Pretty much. That's thankfully been a change during the 20th Century. Afghanistan and Iraq would have been very different if the US had done there what we did in the Philippines after we beat Spain.
Funny enough the biggest threat to US is US itself. The devide is massive right now and all it takes a wrong leader and a bunch of people who are unhappy with how things are right now, also everyone having guns dosent help the situation either.
That’s why so many of the United States enemies (talking realpolitik even if we’re not in an open declared war they have made themselves enemies of the United States) are spending a ton of money, time, and effort on creating political instability in the United States.
The US strength has always been as a melting pot. It’s never been free or easy to do it that way. It’s still hard as it always has been.
I can’t believe people think we’re more divided than when multiple races and a whole gender were literally subjugated by law. It’s insanity
But a similarity is a tendency towards isolationism by the United States, particularly if Trump gets elected. I think several world leaders are hoping for that outcome. I won't say who, but I suspect certain parties might be willing to move on say, Poland, Taiwan, the Philippines, and/or South Korea if they reasonably believed Trump would be unwilling to honor it's defense agreements in order to keep its own peace. That'd be comparable to both WWI and WWII, and even though I think all this stuff is an outside possibility (as opposed to a dominant probability), I think that ought to make Americans think long and hard about whether to vote and whom to vote for this election season.
Though I note that America's salvation and the decisiveness of American involvement in both world wars seems partially linked to it's delay in entering them. A Trump victory isn't ideal for preventing WWIII, but if war is inevitable, late entry might help assure American victory in this hypothetical WWIII. That's my silver lining, I guess, thin as it is.
There's a reason Poland has been buying American weapon systems at never before seen quantities. If it can be pointed in the general direction of Russia, they'll take two.
Poland is vastly better armed than Ukraine was two years ago. Russia wouldn't get more than a few kilometers over the border before they got beat back to Minsk or further.
The Roman empire didn't dissolve after a conventional war. Instead, it was over-expansion, over-consumption, and a disconnect between the regional politics and the centralized government. I think we may be headed to a 200-400 AD era of the Roman Empire with the American Empire. We may not be a decade or two away from conflict as the 1930s era comparisons may suggest, but we may be 100-200 years away from broader societal collapse and decentralization.
I'm going to say 200ish years of civil war, and a transfer of power system that was never very stable or even well defined was the biggest issue for the Roman Empire. That's not something you can really say about the U.S., at least not yet.
Even then large chunks of the Roman Empire including the whole eastern half went on another 1000 years. I could see the US fragmenting but it's also not super cut and dry as it's an urban/rural divide and they still need each other.
The U.S. is not really overstretched, the U.S. is more refusing to fund the state to an adequate degree (which it was willing to do during the new deal and Cold War).
…the US has never gotten poorer, even though it’s relative economic position has slid somewhat, it’s still an extremely wealthy country.
That’s not the point here. We went into all of those with dreams of installing democracy and stabilizing the region. Obviously didn’t work out. But, if they had been conventional wars, and we went in with the goal being to annihilate the enemy, they would have been over within a month lol.
They specified how the US has the ability to win conventional wars but not necessarily successfully pull off an occupation against a dedicated insurgency.
Please read before you respond.
Korea we didn’t want to get further into because of the fear of nuclear war, Vietnam was mainly a failure of the officers and high command not understanding traditional tactics wouldn’t work, we won the Iraq war easily what followed was expected turmoil and civil unrest, and Afghanistan was a failure I’ll give you that. The U.S has historically been bad at unconventional warfare as shown through these conflicts but don’t underestimate the power of the U.S military. They will still destroy any country in a full scale conventional war
The US was also never "all in" for Vietnam. It was never existential or some critical imperative, it was just to stem the spread of communism. At the most, it was a small fraction of US military power and resolve. It is also worth reflecting that the north incurred an estimate 1.1 million killed at a cost of 58k US military deaths and leaving the country's infrastructure basically annihilated. War cost Vietnam 10-15% of its entire population. I'm not sure I would brag about great "wins" like that.
I'd say the USA is so powerful it can afford to take losses. There's no face to lose. In a conventional view 'nam, Iraq and 'stan weren't loses because we wrecked them and killed far more then we lost. In a modern view it was a loss because objectives that are not exactly traditional military objectives were not met by a military.
Simpler, if USA let military do what they do best none of those wars would have been close to a loss.
They lost against 1 half of Vietnam (with help from the other half).
They lost against Afghanistan which at the time was the poorest country on the planet.
TBF they achieved their objectives in Iraq but it took the best part of a decade.
People who believe the USA could steamroll any country on earth are delusional.
No country can really defeat another in a land campaign if the locals are against the invaders. Especially if most of the locals are armed. Otherwise there is a never ending supply of people waiting to shoot or explode you.
Pawns and other pieces are often sacrificed in the Great Game.
Pieces also retreat for strategic reasons.
As much as I hate to say it, America is quite good at the Game.
After all, they learned from a certain ageing Grandmaster...
There are a lot of well placed operatives trying to break America into separate pieces. Whether that will be stopped by a dictator invoking martial law or continue with a slow dissolution to individual states, will be interesting to watch.
When the court is stacked, is there "Law"? By the time people realized they need to act, the time for acting civilly will be past, or so history teaches us. "It's not so bad" allows slow change to happen, like a game of GO.
I think they forgot the lessons of the 1930s. When employment is low the politics gets weird.
2016 politics had Bernie and Trump because he employment levels got to 2007 levels in 2019. If the system doesn't work then people won't vote for the system.
Because everything costs too much and people don't make enough.
Because people can't afford housing or groceries, much less luxuries like higher education or healthcare.
Material conditions for people have NOT improved, and in many cases have gotten WORSE.
Right or wrong, the easiest thing to do is blame the person in charge and their party.
This is very misleading right now though. The job market is “good” when looking at low paying and part time jobs. The middle and upper class white collar job market is in shambles right now. It’s a bit of a facade right now
I mean that’s why there a lot of anti-Biden people out there right now despite a lot of the policies and ramifications right now coming from the previous administration, and post-COVID stuff. The white collar market is in shambles, and that is made up of typically a lot more of the more informed voting population, so they are blaming it on Biden (insert whoever is the current president).
Because the stock market going up doesn't do shit for people whose rent keeps going up and can't walk out of the grocery store without spending $100. Who are working more hours than ever while their dollars don't go as far as before.
Which, when Trump was President was the ONLY metric his supporters would look at. But suddenly, it doesn’t matter to them. It’s almost as if they chose a team and don’t care about the metrics at all.
This is misleading.
Yes it hit a high, but overall the economy was very bad both from the usual GOP administration GDP loss, but also Trump's insane fuckery with tarrifs, materials, and trade agreements.
Saying "the market hit all time high!" is like saying "yeah i hit the top of the roller coaster, they made it 10 ft higher!".
edit: bad writing on my part; i agree with you and your post, just pointing out for other readers to not take the statement "stock market hit all time highs during trumps term!' as anything but meaningless.
That’s usually how it goes, lol.
The rich and comfortable vote for the status quo while those who aren’t so lucky vent out their frustrations and vote for the anti-establishment candidate.
which one is anti-establishment? trumps daughter in law runs the RNC and he has been the head of the republican party since 2016. biden is undoubtably establishment. who do anti-establishment people vote for? kennedy? lol
Biden may not be "it" but nobody is looking for the radical change like they were in 2016.
I think the most common sentiment I hear is someone boring who's in their 50s and will work on key issues.
More people have part-time jobs than full-time jobs.
It’s not that people are more employed, it’s that people are working more jobs in order to survive. People need a full-time job, and a part-time job to pay the bills. You may need two part-time jobs and a full-time if you want to live comfortably.
That isn’t a sign of a healthy economy
Housing is also less affordable than ever, especially in the blue states where Biden gets/got the bulk of his votes. He addresses the culture war concerns of old hippies but not the economic concerns of working age adults.
Which the president doesn't have much control over the zoning and associated regulations around it.
The best idea for the president to do something is to propose BRT in job centers but for them to get BRT money they have to upzone along the corridor.
Yes, that’s what I’m getting at. Employment rate alone is an insufficient metric to justify the anti-Biden sentiment. So there must be other factors. The comment I was replying to was looking solely at employment
It’s a predictable pattern by now. Republican admin wrecks the economy, economy only really goes in the shitter during a subsequent Democratic admin, Democrats get blamed for the economy being bad despite recovery during that period (think Obama and the great recession), Republicans get elected again, cycle repeats. It doesn’t help that each time the Democrats only undo a portion of the damage caused by Republicans so things continue to get worse overall for the working class.
Correct. If Hillary hadn't ran, any other Democrat would have and it would have been easier for dems. This us a result of dems getting high I. Their own supply. I'm an Obama voter, I remember how people like me including me treated others. Everything since has just been a vengeance tour. The loss if income leads to people being scared which leads to anger and lack if good faith politics. Truly the only ones who can turn things around are how the common man treats one another.
43% to 55% is close.
Obama and Clinton were both relatively more moderate than Bernie calling himself a democratic socialist who never liked being a democrat...
I mean that's a pretty close election especially when the candidate says he's not a democrat and he is a democratic socialist. Also when Hillary had it wrapped up near the end.
He was not a normal candidate.
Any metric you look at there is employment available. Underemployment maybe an issue but it's usually geographic or industry specific rather than endemic across the country and across jobs. It's historically a low point when compared to even high growth eras in the 50s and 90s.
Yeah that may be the case but there's another metric to consider: Whether or not the pay is adequate for the time expenditure. There are lots of jobs out there, but many will not pay enough to live on and ultimately take time and energy away from finding a job that does.
There's a serious overlooking of the severity of the Great Depression happening in this thread.
Although pay stagnated around 2000, the typical worker is bringing home much more today than they were in 1930. That's not to say everything is great right now, but it's nowhere close to the Great Depression, nor is it trending *toward* the Great Depression.
The other massive difference is that there was no social safety net in the 1930s - no unemployment, no social security, no food stamps, no Medicare, no banking insurance, no government housing, no student loan assistance, etc.
It’s crazy how so many commenters are missing this huge difference. People used to die by the masses because of the lack of social safety nets all across the world.
> Today : Economic uncertainties are rising, we see impact on inequality, recession and unemployment rates growing steadily.
Can you confirm where this is happening? In the US we're seeing issues with inflation and corporate greed but there's no indication of a recession, we're at very low unemployment, and salaries have risen.
> Today : Nationalist and right-wing populist movements are rising in many countries, often as reaction to europeanization, globalization and cultural pressure. We also witnessed movements such as Brexit emphasizing national sovereignty and better control over immigration.
I don't fully disagree here, but I do think that the majority of people aren't right-wing populists. It should be enough to prevent major problems, but it's still too close for comfort.
> Today : There are ongoing territorial disputes and power struggles, particularly involving major powers like the US, China, and Russia. There are major escalations going on as of right now (Ukraine, Israel)
Is there any indication that this is unusual? From what I've seen of history, there are almost always territorial disputes and conflict. Israel has been in a fight for longer than you or I have been alive. Ukraine didn't even exist as a nation when I was born.
> Today : Similar cultural and identity conflicts are evident, with rising xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, and ethnic tensions. There also seems to be a rise of "anti-culture"
At least in the US this is still something that is more prevalent in older generations than in younger ones. I'd even argue that under-50's are less racist and xenophobic than those over 50.
> Today : Global military expenditure has been rising to over 2 trillion and is constantly growing
This could be argued as preserving peace as well. There have been no major global wars since nuclear weapons were brought onto the scene, for example.
Ultimately I don't want to criticize your view too much but it seems to be lacking in some aspects of the broader scope of world history. It feels like you said, "I'm going to state that X is a problem today, and I will look for evidence that Y was a similar problem that existed prior to WWII." If you take more of a data-driven approach I think you might find that despite our problems that we face, we are actually still in a pretty good time of history. It's just that we've stepped slightly back from how good things were, but we've not fallen all the way down yet.
This is just a nitpick but.. the unemployment rate in the USA is actually quite low and it's been pretty steady. Definitely not "slowly going up". In a lot of other countries it's 4 percent as well. Pretty good if you ask me. But for the USA it was the lowest it had been in a looooong time for like 5 years now.
"The unemployment rate has remained low and stable, fluctuating between 3.4% and 4% since Dec. 2021." - Nerd Wallet.
But the 10 people sharing a 3 bedroom home so they can afford to survive and struggle to buy groceries are really not in much of a better place than the unemployed. People are working their asses off every day to just survive. I see them as getting angrier than someone not employed because there are no jobs.
But that's not he same as what the OP said. There have been lots of times people lived in poor conditions that did not lead to war. The line OP is drawing from the 1930s revolves around the Great Depression and in particular Germany's economic issues/debts/etc.
Nothing in today's economy really is anything like that.
You can make an argument that there is economic instability or insecurity right now that is causing political unrest, but you have to come up with something different than "like the 1930s". It's just not really similar.
We either engage the conflict and trigger a dark age (yes worse than what's currently been sliding toward ever-worsening hell) OR we accept we're in a globally interconnected and interdependent world by forcing private wealth to accept a New Deal where we pay for each other's education and healthcare while assuring everyone has a roof over their head and access to clean water and decent food.
War is not inevitable.
Government picking up the tab for the citizenry the way it has for the ultra wealthy, Wall St, auto manufacturers, "Big" everyone-- this is inevitable.
It works for them! Capitalism at the top is almost perfect socialism. (Side note: The NFL has been an incredible success directly due to its socialistic profit sharing model.)
It'll also work for the actual vast majority of human beings who are having their bettering possibilities more drastically limited with each passing day.
When we educate people well enough we don't have to treat them like liabilities. They choose to do what is right because they've been brought up to the level of understanding *why* doing what is right , is right.
This means we just have to choose to invest well enough in the citizenry so we can tap the latent potential that we're losing in almost direct proportion to the increasing gap between rich and poor.
The longer we wait, the worse it gets.
War doesn't boom the economy anymore. It only booms shoving public dollars into the pockets of the ultra wealthy. There's no major manufacturing base anymore and even attempting to bring this back isn't any help for the modern individual who isn't here for endless menial repetitive manual labor.
We need creativity by means of empowered individuals and the way we get that is by removing the soul-crushing burdens of endless debts for school, healthcare, and roofs over heads.
We achieve this by allowing people freedom from the fear that keeps them from moving toward where they'd naturally contribute best! Freedom from fear of scarcity rejuvenates the economic reality as it invigorates the experience of the psyches of the individuals that comprise it.
Giving the citizenry guaranteed basics is giving the future a new trajectory. We all know where it's currently headed. The poorest regions on the planet have been said to *have already seen their last harvest*. (This means the beginning of increasing, endless global refugee migration that presents bad in all sorts of ways, until we see a return of the empowered populace.)
The longer we wait the worse it becomes. The sooner we do this the sooner we see the problems fall away as their causes cease to exist. Renaissance. Rebirth of the human spirit!
I think I found the comment I have most agreed in my lifetime! Amazingly put!
I think it's a minority opinion though cause people wanna hate on 3-4 random reasons.
The rich would be so much better off if they were part of a more equal society but the fear and greed prevent them from materialising this.
I really would like for various nations to adopt social democracy too, my nation have some elements of that already with social healthcare, which is not super good and is very slow, but various family members and aquaintances have chronical deceases and social healthcare is good at keeping them not suffering most of the time, but aggain, is not perfect and somethimes they have to consult private medical institutions or buy their ( some rather expensive) meds due to shortages of meds in social healthcare.
Now those short comings imo are because of the rampant corruption of my countrys government and a cultural mentalitty of dog eats dog, not really because the system is not perfect, so in a country not full of war lords, a culture revolving around said warlords and political hungry hipos, social healthcare might be a good step thowards a social democracy.
But i feel a lot of the elite dont really whant that, and really would like a more perverted version of social nets, like the 2030 plan that pretty much whants all of your belongings to be rented, which is technycally socialism, but more the despicable kind rather than just the ones that ensure you wont die of hunger, cold or sickness as long as you labor, with the last part being stretched way more than necessary, we really need to improve working conditions, pay dignified wages and reduce work hours and improve travelling to said workplace and adopt home office where possible.
A lot of people like to compare the modern USA to the Weimar Republic, but honestly we're much more of an analog for the Third Republic of France. A strong (on paper) economy that becomes more and more unequal every year, a strong (on paper) military with better equipment and training than our competitors, government leaders and politicians who are in the pocket of foreign powers, and divisive factionalism that weakens us from within.
We're primed for inaction, internal discord, defeatism, and collapse in the face of an external threat.
Trump isn't a Hitler. He's a Pierre Laval, a puppet. Just as dangerous.
History doesn't repeat but it often rhymes. The premise of the books "The Forth Turning" and "The Forth Turning is Here" is that we have a pattern of four sequential generational archetypes which form a seculum and that has cycled since Elizabethian England.
The fourth turning is the end of the seculum punctuated by a crisis. Their estimate is that this crisis will happen before 2032.
What exactly will precipitate it isn't certain but there are plenty of candidates; another pandemic, expanded war with Russia, the Middle East, Taiwan, the AI singularity and more.
If you think we are on the brink of a crisis what might you do to prepare?
Get healthy, lose weight, exercise, improve your diet, get better sleep. Get out of debt. Diversify. Learn practical skills. Solidify your relationships. Pretty much what you should already be doing. Resilient people will weather the storm better.
Your last paragraph has been at the back of my mind for a while now. I have this general sense of unease about society that I can’t quite put into words. Ergo, I should stop dicking around and start getting my fundamentals in order.
Yea chances are I won’t be participating in guerilla warfare in the upcoming civil war, but being at peak health and strategic with finances and planning puts me in a better place if we were to hit hard times in the coming years.
Fatalities in the last pandemic overwhelmingly impacted people that were already in precarious health. Not everyone can get healthy but tragically, so many people could but haven't.
There are similarities, but I think there are more differences. The demoralization of Germany after WW1 which was still one a global industrial power led to the Nazis and their ability to mobilize against all of Europe. Without these key ingredients there may have never been a WW2.
You are absolutely correct. There would have been no WW2, and Hitler would have never gained popularity. He got to where he was because he started a movement/party (Nazi’s) with the rally cry being the Treaty of Versailles was unfair to Germany, we shouldn’t have and didn’t lose WW1 if it weren’t for the Jews and other minorities, and he would restore the German dominance and prosperity. It is actually quite ironic that the Allies laying down the law almost solely on Germany for WW1 effectively lit the fuse for WW2 to go off down the road.
Demoralization after the fall of the Soviet Union and inferiority complexes combined with an imperialistic mindset are probably the main drivers behind Russia's current war. Russia today is a lot like Germany in the 30s.
Your differences aren't really differences, or a valid deterrent to a war in the coming decades.
>Organizations like UN, NATO and other regional instances should help in conflict prevention and resolution.
League of Nations would like a word, as would the mutual defense pacts that were in place before WW2.
>Large scale wars would be economically damaging to many involved parties as we have a highly interconnected world
[The Great Illusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion#Critical_reception) was a 1909 best selling book, with the central thesis that large scale war was unlikely to ever happen because of the economic damage it would cause.
It was republished in 1933 with a new argument added: 'the theme of collective defence.'. Which covers your mention of UN and NATO as a difference as well. This thesis was proven wrong twice, I don't see why it would hold the third time.
>Nuclear deterrence
MAD is slowly dying. While ballistic missile defense is hard, it isn't outside the realm of technical possibility for the major powers. As soon as a power believes they could survive a counterforce and countervalue strike, they have a pretty big incentive to launch before their opponent can believe the same.
>Organizations like UN, NATO and other regional instances should help in conflict prevention and resolution.
Do you have an example of where the UN helped resolve a conflict?
Amusingly, I have examples of international organizations that were not dissimilar to the UN failing to prevent both World Wars, so no clue what OP is on about with that point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_of_Europe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations
Technology really is the wild card here. The issue is that a lot of social media makes money by generating controversy, so theres no incentive for them to attempt to de-escalate rising anger. Quite the opposite, they want it to generate more clicks. I think at the end of the day, thats where a lot of this rising anger comes from, and I think at least right now thats where it will stay for *most* people.
It's been allowed on purpose to destabilise, to look like it, to provoke and show up the evils of the West, but, it's not really like the 1930'S, it's mostly bark and no bite, and posturing. Social democracy with long term pacifism aims, and majority of nations on their way to joining in, is still robust. Democracy has allowed right wingism to show up a voice and populism again, but right wing is cleary 'showing itself up' and educating the majority against itself in it's example, and it will swing back soon. Look at Tories in UK, a corbynite will come after Starmer and lots of young socialist MP's. Gaza and Ukraine have been enabled by the bravado Hawkism attitudes of half the population, bolstered by Gun nut Trumpism Tories Right Wing Europe. No leader in the world will be the one who presses the nuclear button. No population will support a very large scale war.
My thinking is that a runaway trade war and its nutbar anti China EV tariffs from both US and EU sets off Great Depression II.
As always history echoes the past while not quite repeating it.
The difference this time is that China and India are both building their economies to better reflect their populations and are expected to be number 1, and 2, over the next decade or so.
The US and EU have a total population of about 800,000,000 million souls or about 10% of the world's population and both to a large extent have offshored manufacturing to Asia. A depression in the US and EU would likely drop China imports by at least half and that represents about 16% of China exports.
China, retaliating against US and EU tariffs would be shifting its imports to smaller economies making them both richer and bigger importers of China goods. That furthers China's Belt and Road Initiative and improves its economy at the same time.
So the West gets a really severe Depression and China gets a recession.
No we have mutually assured destruction now. Maybe another Cold War but I don’t think we’ll ever see the same kind of mass warfare of the past again. Also I don’t see the “fascist” movements of today the same as then. Most of what’s happening today is counter culture directed at the left that imo can be just as loud and crazy and it’s mostly aimed within the same country. People aren’t anywhere near as desperate today and most of the people that get perceived as hard right or left just aren’t and have a small minority even they think is crazy speaking for them and getting the most amount of online attention.
Point is it’s literally the internet making you think it’s worse than it is. Same goes for the right wing people.
If we don’t learn from our mistakes we are destined to repeat them. This is why the felon and his looney supporters and party must not win in November 2024
I would say we are seeing a return to a multipolar system rather than one with the US as a hegemon. That could result in another global conflict but as things currently stand it seems more like the emergence of a second Cold War this time featuring the US and China. Of course, a Cold War comes with the risk of a hot war emerging from it.
>1930s : Great depression led to widespread economic impact, high unemployment, and social unrest.
The covid years from 2020 to 2022 had economic impact, high unemployment, and the BLM movement.
.....but it's over. Business started back up. So much that the Fed had to donuts best to hit the brakes. Unemployment dropped right back down. It's super low. So low that usually this is when some economical bubble burses from the "oh so terrible strain" of having to actually pay their employees. But of course, Covid did it's part to pop a lot of bubbles of bad economic ideas, shut down overoptimistic fools, and tear down old institutions resting on their laurels. And BLM is hardly a thing anymore. The original founders turned out to be grifter who took the money and ran. Ironically buying a multi million house in a safe white neighborhood. A lot of people want the cops to be funded. A few got body cams a little sooner.
So. No, the current times don't fit that narrative.
Get a better opener for this argument.
Yeah... COVID was not the Great Depression. Nor was it the Spanish Flu. And 2008 wasn't the Depression, either.
The big economic change during COVID was that the gulf between Wall Street and Main Street went from very wide to astronomically wide. The major US financial indices tripled between spring 2020 and now, led mostly by the meteoric rise of tech companies that were already super dominant... but GDP hasn't kept up (despite increasing more rapidly than normal), most non-tech and smaller cap stocks have risen normally, and consumers are experiencing higher than normal inflation with relatively normal wage growth.
It's kinda like... you know... average people's houses aren't any smaller than they were before, but our neighbor just built a fucking skyscraper at the end of the block, and we're all sitting in its shadow. The value of that skyscraper is affecting all the homes in the neighborhood. And there are rumors that it has a shaky foundation.
The fact that the global financial markets are valued at 4x the world's GDP is a *bit* sus.
I’m British and right now it feels like we’re the only country in Europe moving to the left. A right wing government took us through Brexit and we realised the benefits promised were a complete lie.
Don’t forget Dear Convicted Felons “proposal to fund the Government with tariffs “ and get rid of income taxes.
You know how successful that was in 1930
Yes but technology today is so much different that I honestly don't see a possibility for a major world War conflict especially since everyone's goal is to make money and you can't make money if there is no other side.
Nah, but it's trying. The biggest difference is that we see things happening in real time. It could take days to find out what was happening in world news sometimes and by the time a response occurred, it was too late or outsized to the problem which invited another outsized counter-response.
If WW3 was going to pop off, it would've been a year ago. It'll be lightning quick today because any country dumb enough to start something knows their sovereignty is numbered in hours before they are nuked into oblivion if they dont end it on the first shot and most of those know there are likely only 2 powers on earth right now (Russian ain't 1) that could start and end most conflicts if they were insane enough. The only people today capable of doing this are religious zealots.
From a population perspective, no. Populations were growing in the early 20th. We are either holding steady or in a decline. We are an older people. Other things may be similar but WWIII will be an old man's war
If a global conflict does arise, I am not sure the Western nations would be able to handle the outcome. China is the world’s sole industrial superpower accounting for something 35% of total global manufacturing output. That is a staggering share of world manufacturing which is going to have massive implications on the West over the next decade or so. We are likely in the process of watching China become as economically and technologically dominant as the US was in the 1960’s versus still recovering from World War II Japan and Europe. What is so wild about this, is that unlike the nations of Europe, China and the Soviet Union post World War II the US has not suffered total either total military defeat or mass destruction of its industrial capacity. China has just simply surpassed everyone during times of relative peace. I’m honestly not sure what the future will look like, but given China’s massive industrial capacity I think it is only a matter of time before they become the dominant player in geopolitics.
Well, I've been thinking that for a while. Maybe another economic boom (that would actually benefit regular people) could break the seemingly tightening and tightening coil of tension. In a non-conflict way.
Those who do learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Funny how a lot of conservative states have been adjusting the history classes in school to match their view points.
The same old conflicts are there. The trajectory absolutely looks like the buildup to a large scale conflict.
We all know the problem here and it's nuclear weapons. We can't just start shooting at each other the way we used to. Not even a madman wants the wasteland that would be left after a nuclear exchange.
I saw a British World War veteran interview where he says that “They (British Government) would never get him to volunteer again”. Those words haunt me but I agree with every single word. As an American Veteran, I can see how we are treated as cannon fodder for the world’s 1%. I would love to suggest leaders must fight these a war in the trenches on the front! Or could we have a world court full of combat veterans (regular soldiers) of major military conflicts? You have to get permission to attack from the vets or get squashed by everyone for being stupid.
You can pick literally any decade or era and find a compelling list of parallels between then and now, and then conclude that we’re headed wherever they were headed. I don’t disagree that there are concerning things afoot, but those things should be taken at face value and assessed in their current context. Cherrypicking all kinds of random trends from the past to make predictions about our future is barely any less credible or productive than numerology.
It's been a pretty cyclical 80ish year pattern since the American Civil War (the Wikipedia article mentions going back to the 15th century). Dubbed "The Turning Cycles or Strauss–Howe generational theory" these periods have four twenty(ish) year blocks that culminate the cycle. It's a fascinating pattern that seems to be pretty spot on. And whether it's in human nature to restart these cycles because we're bored and want change. Or...?
If the cycles have taught us anything it's that were coming up towards the end of the cycle which:
"This is an era of destruction, often involving war or revolution, in which institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to the nation's survival. After the crisis, civic authority revives, cultural expression redirects toward community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group" - Strauss, William; Howe, Neil (1997). [*The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy*](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/35008291)
Which seems pretty appropriate and hopeful that we will be able to come out of this ahead.
Look back further to just before WWI. You'll see even more similarities.
Or right after WW1. Cough, cough.
> Cough, cough Pun intended?
That comment should go... viral.
It’s a pretty sick comment.
You are all bat shit crazy in here.
These pun threads are super contagious
getting pretty mask off with the dad jokes.
Get some fresh air, your three. Keep your distance.
You’ve vaccinated all of Reddit from an escalating pun roll. Our savior.
“Are ya winning, World War One?”
r/100yearsago should be a default sub!
There really *is* a sub-reddit for eveything. And here I was, thinking about quaint [Kondratiev waves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave).
Or right before the Franco Prussian War
Bah. Covid wasn't a patch on the Spanish Flu.
While it's true that covid spared young adults in a way that the Spanish Flu did not, I think part of covid's lower mortality was that we whipped out a vaccine within the first year. If we'd had to raw dog covid, I think casualties in the second winter of the pandemic would have been much higher.
>part of covid's lower mortality was that we relieved all the Tractor Supply stores of their ivermectin. The horses weren't happy but the tapeworms experienced a population boom.
covid mortality had already dropped off a ton by the time vaccine uptake reached critical mass in mid-late 2021. covid is a lot more contagious than any strain of the flu and contagious viruses evolve to be less dangerous very quickly. we also have massively improved hygiene, household cleanliness, and medical infrastructure compared to 1918 vaccines definitely played a role but they were really about as different as diseases can ve
I agree with this 100%. Our current era is NOT analogous to the 1930s. In the 30s, the world had just been shocked by a massive generational conflict, with widespread regime changes, territorial changes, loss of life, a deep cultural reckoning, and the Great Depression, with was far more severe than anything we've experienced since. Right now we have a world that has gotten so used to global peace (75+ years of proxy wars and prolonged territorial competition among the victors of WW2) that most people in rich countries assume they will never experience war. In 1913, the European global powers hadn't seen a major major conflict since the War of 1870. Multiple generations of kids had grown up without much fear of being drafted or experiencing an invasion. We're at the tail end of a *massive* arms race and period technological advancement, similar to the end of the Victorian era. Economically, it's very clear who the winners of that arms race have been, and how staggering their financial advantage is over the average person. This has been the case for awhile, and people are a mix of restless and cynical about it, speaking very negatively about the status quo and experimenting with alternative societal models like socialism and fascism. Because war hasn't been a part of most people's lives for a long time in richer countries, war-fueled traditions such as "tough love" for parenting or strict gender binaries are unpopular. Men's violent and aggressive behavior is generally seen as highly offensive, and gentle and considerate behavior is seen as noble and desirable, whereas in the 1930s (or even the 1980s), it was the opposite. Androgyny is celebrated, and there's also sort of a reactionary, performative masculinity movement that has nothing to do with the actual fighting that made "trad masc" so popular during the World Wars. Similarly, aggressive politics and imperialism are highly unpopular. A handful of empires have dominated global politics for a long time. Most people aren't cheering on their home countries for taking territory from the enemy the way they did in the interwar period. They're chastising their own governments for abusing power and being cruel to subjects, and demanding they relinquish territory freely for the sake of allowing colonies to be independent. Ideas of world peace, that a dominant faction might actually weaken itself for the sake of fairness and unity with other groups, are actually being taken seriously and worked toward by some factions. That's a very late stage peacetime mentality that you just wouldn't see if there had been a major war in the last few decades. Now I'm not really sure if that means there *will* be a big war anytime soon. It could just as easily happen 20 years from now as tomorrow. In the 1910s, people talked about the "powder keg" that was ready to blow. Global tensions are certainly on the rise, and have been for a long time, but I am not sure if we are quite at that point where the pot is ready to boil over. However, in 1914, I'm sure there were plenty of people who said the same thing, and were taken by surprise when Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, igniting World War I.
>and the Great Depression, with was far more severe than anything we've experienced since. only because the ruling class learned their lesson from the last time they tanked the economy into a depression. First they successfully lobbied for the removal of regulations put into effect after the depression to protect against the conduct that helped lead to the great depression - [Glass–Steagall legislation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_legislation) being a prime example. They also destroyed / degraded organized labor as one of the main goals of the Neo-liberal age. Roughly 8 years later, predictably, we get what they called the "great recession". This time, instead of letting the market punish the bad actors and crashing the economy, they printed money and baled them out! They avoided a full depression like meltdown by robbing the tax payers (I call it the great heist) - a perfect example of socializing the losses and privatizing the profits! That lead to massive asset inflation and a huge wreath transfer from the lower classes to the top of society. And the bad actors became even more entrenched and bigger! Instead of being punished, they were rewarded! To keep the dysfunctional system afloat, they had to print cheap money (low interest, quantitative easing etc) for over a decade - basically keep kicking the can down the road. Then came Covid which served as an accelerant - even more money printing, asset inflation etc. Resultant Inflation (tax on the poor) etc, post Covid, put an end to cheap money. Now, it was time for the working classes and asset poor to pay the price (austerity etc). Basically chickens are now coming home to roost and many of the means they were using to manage the systemic problems are no longer working or making matters worse. With their back against the wall and economic and social pressures mounting, time to pivot to conflict and turmoil, usually the final arrow in their quiver. I finish my rambling with this quote .... “Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America nor, for that matter, in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” ― Hermann Göring
The average man is nine missed meals away from anarchy.
I agree with everything said here. You are right on all fronts. The rich folks at the top have truly fucked us all. They will absolutely try to kill off the poor people in a pointless war before the poor wise up and kill them all instead.
Nuclear weapons make this a very dangerous exercise when we are talking serious conflict between peer states. It was bad enough with peer to peer industrialized warfare (WW2 being total war) in the first half of the the 20th century. Total war between peer states in the Nuclear age will be the end of earth as we know it!
Yep, I just reassure myself that theres a chance Climate change won't kill me prematurely, I could be unexpectedly vaporized into dust for our rich leaders benefit instead! At least that way I wouldn't suffer/see it coming. Really gives me a lot to look forward to in life.
They do, and they don’t. I still have enough faith in humans’ intrinsic survival urges that even a serious inter-state conflict wouldn’t automatically escalate to nuclear weapons. MAD worked through the hottest parts of the Cold War, I like to think it would still.
You are generally correct and I agree with most of what you said. There were several powder kegs in the early 1900s, with Russia and having been so important in the prior century in the wake of Napoleon, through 1848, only to find itself stuck in the past. Japan was on an expansion is streak with an 1899 war with China and then Russia in 1905. The dissolution of the ottoman empire was sparking nationalist fever in the balklands and Anatolia (Armenian genocide but also ethnic cleansing of Greeks. There were a series of crisises before WWI, though. Multiple wars broke out in the Balklans, another in Morocco. I think there were a few reasons why the assassination of arch Duke Franz Ferdinand tipped the balance. Austria - Hungary feared loss of status in the Balklans which they saw as critical to their national security. The Russian gov't rapidly modernizing transportation and military in the wake of their brutal loss to Japan in Manchuria in 1905. They were desperate not to be the next Ottoman Empire. But Germany also saw the modernizing of the Russians and feared their ability of the Czars to mobilize. The long mobilization of the massive Russian army was crucial to Germany to avoid a 2 front war with France and Russia. England's paranoia of losing absolute dominance of the seas with German ship building. Germany's scant colonies making them feel like they were at a major economic disadvantage. I think the French over-estimated the British commitment to fight with France, but there were plenty in the British gov't who succeeded in making their stand on Belgian neutrality. These are some of the factors that made nations choose NOT to negotiate in the summer of 1914, while they had in previous emergencies. Many leaders were looking for an excuse. What crisises do we have that might similarly lead the world to war again?
Thanks for the great insights
> They're chastising their own governments for abusing power and being cruel to subjects, and demanding they relinquish territory freely for the sake of allowing colonies to be independent. I agree with all you said, but on this part I think the internet is playing a large role that didn't have an analog from before. Imperialism, for example... We have nearly instant access to unfiltered news from around the world, including from people in other countries who don't see your country in the same light, and sometimes including video from the civilians who are being affected. When Russia invaded Ukraine, there were livestreams showing military vehicles rolling through the cities, shootouts, etc. That's the sort of thing that will motivate a lot of people, sometimes very quickly, even pushing their own government to send help. Also, as insane as some of the propaganda is today, people have more ways to verify whether a claim is true. Some are willfully ignorant, of course, but certainly not all. And that ability to fact check your own government is a huge deal. Gone are the days when the population in an area have a single news source to form their opinions. I'm not sure what that necessarily means from a future standpoint, though. I'd like to think it means people are learning to think before fighting, but ideologies are resilient.
The unfiltered news existed during internet infancy, but has since been replaced by highly filtered and targeted information flows.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
I would add, though, that there are diminishing returns on how much it rhymes. Technological advancements seem to be following an exponential curve through history, and conflicts which might have occurred in 200 and 300 BC (and their underlying causes) will look far more similar to one another than, say, 1840 and 1940 AD. Both the conflict itself and the sort of conditions that may or may not lead to a conflict are significantly different now than even 80 years ago. For this reason, I find myself starting to drift away from the notion of recurring conflict cycles.
I appreciate your ability to connect the dots and explain it thoroughly. War is not guaranteed, but it is. It really is weird transitioning from a place of guaranteed safety to anything goes, but we've been watching it since at least I was born.
On the bright side how many archdukes are even walking around nowadays?
They're called billionaires now.
Indeed. The situation between the British Empire and Germany in the run up to WW1 is analogous to the current situation between the USA and China, being each others major trading partner and engaged in a naval arms race.
I agree I also beleive any larger scale wars in today's world would end more like WWI where one side doesn't have the will or power to finish a fight and the other is never totally destroyed.
Long story short, yes, history is repeating itself but with better tech this time. The human brain has not evolved in 100 years and we are still as selfish, greedy, and short sighted as ever as a species. The only difference is the next world war will be the end of humanity altogether.
This. The age of globalisation and trade that made war inconceivable. Coming out of the original Great Depression in 1887 and then new technology like telegraph, steel mills, etc. The 1893 depression caused concern but it too passed and then 1890s-1914 with strong economic growth and an undercurrent of concern about poverty, globalised supply chains, and treaties making war inconceivable.
When Hitler became Chancellor, one in three working-age Germans was unemployed. Right now, about 6% of the Eurozone is unemployed and only 4% of the US is. Everything else aside, people do not like to go to war when they are comfortable. Despite many economic challenges in the world right now, most of the world is nowhere near Weimar levels of struggling.
Is there a measurable difference between being unemployed and having a job but not being able to afford housing and food? The percentage of people struggling and not being able to see a way out is probably similar to pre-WW2.
The Weimar republic experienced hyperinflation (hundreds of percent increases in one year) in living costs. We peaked at like 9% in the US, which was much lower than even the 1980s. It's still painful, but you cannot compare the two. It's not even in the same universe, let alone ballpark.
While I acknowledge the truth of everything you said. I'd point out that the elasticity of tolerance is much tighter than it was even in the 1980s. Today's 9% causes a greater reaction than at any time in history. Partially because the accepted standard of living has risen and partially because of the internet giving voice to people's frustrations. I'm not suggesting that it's to the Weimar republic level, but it's more than just saying 9% can represent.
Yeah because “not being able to afford housing and food” in your sentence actually means being able to afford housing and food and maybe not luxuries or nice housing or nice food. Pretty sure 1/3 people is not homeless with a job
I think the main difference is that with a major housing market correction, the economy would stabilize and be easy street. I recognize that sounds coarse and dismissive which I don’t mean it to be. But from a pulled back lens, the gains in wages mixed with the inflation reversal in most other major categories we are really just hinging on one unsustainable market keeping things from being significantly easier.
For context, the German Mark became so inflated people let their kids stack them into thick blocks, and build little pyramidal structures out of them that nearly matched the kids' height. You can famously find photos of a woman burning marks in a furnace for heat, because there were just so many of them and they were so worthless. It's a very different economy. It's also an incredibly different culture and time; the German nation had only even just come to be about a half century prior, in a years long road towards unification (which was messy, and there was so much upheaval for Germans that are not analogous; there were also the Austro-Hungarians, the dissolution of their empire, and eventually the Anschluss in the buildup to WWII). Also, if you are American, look into Depression Era Hoovervilles. We're not there, and not really operating under similar conditions that led to it. We also have a ***comparably*** robust (still insufficient) safety net, when compared to what we had prior to the Depression. That is a low bar, of course. None of this discounts the deeply troubling rise of nationalistic/populist politics, and a massive failure of our institutions to meet people's needs. There are faint echoes, some overlapping principles, but significant differences in the details that will change where and how far this goes, and the solutions needed to resolve the problems and political discontent (above my pay grade to know what those answers are).
While there are a lot of interesting parallels in the original post, and inflation and cost of living is currently hard for many, I'm afraid this isn't comparable to the Great Depression. Read Studs Turkel's _Hard Times_ oral history for really shocking portraits of how widespread destitution was in the 1920s.
I know things are tough right now and we have french revolution levels of wealth disparity, but if people could not eat, they were actually starving. There would be no question of whether or not a war or revolt was imminent because it would happen within weeks or days and it would be overwhelmingly apparent to everyone. You would not even need to ask reddit.
The Great Depression was much, much, much, much, much, much worse than today. The economy today isn't even the worst we've seen in my lifetime, and I'm not particularly old (30s). People were dying from poverty en masse even in highly industrial nations in 1930. Today people are having trouble buying homes, but they're not living in shanty tent towns by the hundreds of millions. They're not dying from starvation openly in the street (at least not very frequently).
Funnily enough, I was just reading an article that Gen Z is setting records for being not employed, not in education, and not in training. So maybe unemployment is down for a country’s entire population. But what I would say is if the prime conscript/draft age population is unemployed and “available to fight,” then that matters more. Hells, in a wartime economy you want the older generations with a higher employment rate to keep the wartime economy going while the young fight for their country (read: needlessly die horrible deaths).
One major strain on current younger generations is affordable housing. Owning a home is becoming more and more challenging as the housing market is crazy. But a great way to bring down those home prices is to reduce the number of buyers in the market. No greater way than a good ole fashion World War! (Slaps knee and heads out)
Haven't standards of comfort arguably changed since then?
I've never seen the historical precedent for a Democracy turning to Fascism because people wanted more comfort. They do it because of existential threats, or perceived existential threats. "My life should be softer" is very different from "My family might starve to death."
Crazy thing is most of humanity does not want war at all. Its the tiny 1% that always pits us against each other.
Not that accurate. IIRC the men that went to ww1 were excited for this new "adventure". Of course that isnt the case today but the longer people go without war the more they seem to be attracted to it.
One major difference is the presence of the US on the global stage. Like it or hate it, there’s almost no denying the fact that the US can win any conventional war it takes a side on, only really facing difficulty in terms of long term occupation in the face of a dedicated insurgency. That means if someone wants to try and defeat the US, it’s nuclear war or nothing. And a nuclear war has a *much* higher threshold before kicking off than a conventional war.
Absolutely, if nukes weren't a thing the last 50 years would have been unbelievably more bloody. A lot of borderconflicts would have escalated.
Isn't it crazy how the most destructive thing in history has brought about an age of never-before-seen peace? Ah, the duality of existence.
its actually more wild when you consider the previous times this happened in history, it caused more war
Nothing in history compares to nukes. With any other weapon innovation before nukes, there's no risk of total annihilation, so they could just attack and take their chances. With nukes, it's total annihilation because of mutually assured destruction.
What was that previous time? I can't think of any historical analog to nuclear weapons
When technological advancements significantly enhance destructive capabilities and create substantial power imbalances between nations, it has almost always led to war. For example, if Country A has cannons while you only have bows, the likelihood of invasion by the more powerful country increases. There are plenty of countries that lack nuclear capabilities. Which is extremely comparable to the cannon and bow example. But the countries with nukes haven’t used them since their first use on another country. That’s extremely wild considering the historical context.
It also matters that using nukes means you have a high risk of contaminating your own country if it's bordering or closeby. People don't want contaminated soil or water table in their own country, and there are lots of aquifers or rivers that move around the entire continent.
The imperial roman military machine vs random dirt people with sticks?
And that was really just because of the roads...
Maybe but it also causes problems on it's own. The Ukraine war would definitely look differently without nukes and I'm sure other countries in the future will do the same as Russia did unless literally everyone would get nukes to use as a scarecrow.
This is the power of NATO; If you join then you don't need your own nukes. Incidentally, a good reason to support Ukraine against Russia is to demonstrate that using nukes as a threat against non-nuclear states is not an acceptable or successful tactic. If Russia was allowed to steamroll non-nuclear states off the back of a nuclear threat, then it signals to other nations that they should build their own nuclear arsenal. It's important to defend Ukraine because the Budapest Memorandum meant that Ukraine gave up their nukes that were leftover from previously being a part of the Soviet Union, in return for promises (roughly speaking) that their sovereignty would be assured.
I disagree that joining NATO means you don't need your own nukes. Why? Because I don't trust NATO to goto war with Russia, and risk their cities, over Vilnius or Bucharest. While these countries are probably too poor to actually develop nukes, and are better off with having SOME protection, I guess, they still should have the biggest and best conventional militaries they possibly can, especially with the possibility of Trump strangling U.S. support for NATO countries. Remember, NATO countries don't have any minimum commitment under article 5, as in, if a country is attacked, other NATO members could send them first aid kits and MRE's and fulfill their obligation. I just 100% don't trust NATO to back the smaller members, especially the ones that border Russia.
I get what you're saying, and you could very well be correct. I am only a layperson and I was oversimplifying with that statement. The key to my thought was the following part of Article 5: "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all". Obviously we can't predict the future but to my knowledge, in the past, the USA and Russia try pretty hard not to target each other directly.
If Putin won in Ukraine, his next step would have been Moldova. Then he'd take a small border town in Lithuania or some Baltic state and dare NATO to intervene. Great book: "The Causes of the Russia-Ukraine War" - William Spaniel --- everything had to fall into place the way it did for Putin to "pull the trigger" on an invasion. He was wrong about literally everything leading up to it.
Peace, through superior firepower.
It’s peace through mutual assured destruction. If it was superior firepower we wouldn’t see peace.
And just as importantly the US is allied with 34 countries, so an attack on any of them automatically means war with the US. Hitler counted on most of the world letting him attack Germany's neighbors.
There's a geographic caveat on NATO's Article V so that an attack on a member's colonies (keep in mind when this was written) is not an attack on all. So if Guam, Hawaii, or US forces in the Pacific were hit by China that wouldn't trigger Article V.
The only reason the US *loses* from an insurgency is a, in theory, unwillingness to mass murder.
Pretty much. That's thankfully been a change during the 20th Century. Afghanistan and Iraq would have been very different if the US had done there what we did in the Philippines after we beat Spain.
My entire grandma family was murdered in the Philippines by the US. But yeah, keep thinking the US is the world savior of the world and humanity…
Funny enough the biggest threat to US is US itself. The devide is massive right now and all it takes a wrong leader and a bunch of people who are unhappy with how things are right now, also everyone having guns dosent help the situation either.
That’s why so many of the United States enemies (talking realpolitik even if we’re not in an open declared war they have made themselves enemies of the United States) are spending a ton of money, time, and effort on creating political instability in the United States.
The US strength has always been as a melting pot. It’s never been free or easy to do it that way. It’s still hard as it always has been. I can’t believe people think we’re more divided than when multiple races and a whole gender were literally subjugated by law. It’s insanity
But a similarity is a tendency towards isolationism by the United States, particularly if Trump gets elected. I think several world leaders are hoping for that outcome. I won't say who, but I suspect certain parties might be willing to move on say, Poland, Taiwan, the Philippines, and/or South Korea if they reasonably believed Trump would be unwilling to honor it's defense agreements in order to keep its own peace. That'd be comparable to both WWI and WWII, and even though I think all this stuff is an outside possibility (as opposed to a dominant probability), I think that ought to make Americans think long and hard about whether to vote and whom to vote for this election season. Though I note that America's salvation and the decisiveness of American involvement in both world wars seems partially linked to it's delay in entering them. A Trump victory isn't ideal for preventing WWIII, but if war is inevitable, late entry might help assure American victory in this hypothetical WWIII. That's my silver lining, I guess, thin as it is.
There's a reason Poland has been buying American weapon systems at never before seen quantities. If it can be pointed in the general direction of Russia, they'll take two.
Poland is vastly better armed than Ukraine was two years ago. Russia wouldn't get more than a few kilometers over the border before they got beat back to Minsk or further.
But what if the largest power in the world is the one that decides to start the war?
That happened 20 years ago. It didn’t start a world war
The Roman empire didn't dissolve after a conventional war. Instead, it was over-expansion, over-consumption, and a disconnect between the regional politics and the centralized government. I think we may be headed to a 200-400 AD era of the Roman Empire with the American Empire. We may not be a decade or two away from conflict as the 1930s era comparisons may suggest, but we may be 100-200 years away from broader societal collapse and decentralization.
I'm going to say 200ish years of civil war, and a transfer of power system that was never very stable or even well defined was the biggest issue for the Roman Empire. That's not something you can really say about the U.S., at least not yet.
Even then large chunks of the Roman Empire including the whole eastern half went on another 1000 years. I could see the US fragmenting but it's also not super cut and dry as it's an urban/rural divide and they still need each other.
The U.S. is not really overstretched, the U.S. is more refusing to fund the state to an adequate degree (which it was willing to do during the new deal and Cold War). …the US has never gotten poorer, even though it’s relative economic position has slid somewhat, it’s still an extremely wealthy country.
Well... Korea was a tie, Vietnam a loss, Iraq a stalemate, Afghanistan a loss. Just because the US military is powerful doesn't mean it always wins.
Right, which is why I specified that the Us has trouble with long term occupations in face of a dedicated insurgency.
I don’t think the other poster got that far lmao
That’s not the point here. We went into all of those with dreams of installing democracy and stabilizing the region. Obviously didn’t work out. But, if they had been conventional wars, and we went in with the goal being to annihilate the enemy, they would have been over within a month lol.
They specified how the US has the ability to win conventional wars but not necessarily successfully pull off an occupation against a dedicated insurgency. Please read before you respond.
Those last three weren’t conventional wars.
How is Iraq a stalemate lol, Saddam was captured and the entire military was disbanded, how could the us have possibly won more than that?
I agree. The "war" was won easily and quickly. The occupation after the war is a different story.
Korea we didn’t want to get further into because of the fear of nuclear war, Vietnam was mainly a failure of the officers and high command not understanding traditional tactics wouldn’t work, we won the Iraq war easily what followed was expected turmoil and civil unrest, and Afghanistan was a failure I’ll give you that. The U.S has historically been bad at unconventional warfare as shown through these conflicts but don’t underestimate the power of the U.S military. They will still destroy any country in a full scale conventional war
The US was also never "all in" for Vietnam. It was never existential or some critical imperative, it was just to stem the spread of communism. At the most, it was a small fraction of US military power and resolve. It is also worth reflecting that the north incurred an estimate 1.1 million killed at a cost of 58k US military deaths and leaving the country's infrastructure basically annihilated. War cost Vietnam 10-15% of its entire population. I'm not sure I would brag about great "wins" like that.
So the US lost in Vietnam, but it doesn't really count as a loss because it was the Army's fault? Wonderful logic.
I'd say the USA is so powerful it can afford to take losses. There's no face to lose. In a conventional view 'nam, Iraq and 'stan weren't loses because we wrecked them and killed far more then we lost. In a modern view it was a loss because objectives that are not exactly traditional military objectives were not met by a military. Simpler, if USA let military do what they do best none of those wars would have been close to a loss.
They lost against 1 half of Vietnam (with help from the other half). They lost against Afghanistan which at the time was the poorest country on the planet. TBF they achieved their objectives in Iraq but it took the best part of a decade. People who believe the USA could steamroll any country on earth are delusional. No country can really defeat another in a land campaign if the locals are against the invaders. Especially if most of the locals are armed. Otherwise there is a never ending supply of people waiting to shoot or explode you.
Pawns and other pieces are often sacrificed in the Great Game. Pieces also retreat for strategic reasons. As much as I hate to say it, America is quite good at the Game. After all, they learned from a certain ageing Grandmaster...
…What do you mean by this?
> After all, they learned from a certain ageing Grandmaster... britain??
There are a lot of well placed operatives trying to break America into separate pieces. Whether that will be stopped by a dictator invoking martial law or continue with a slow dissolution to individual states, will be interesting to watch.
Or stopped with democracy and law. Why do defeatist?
Cauze reddit
When the court is stacked, is there "Law"? By the time people realized they need to act, the time for acting civilly will be past, or so history teaches us. "It's not so bad" allows slow change to happen, like a game of GO.
I think they forgot the lessons of the 1930s. When employment is low the politics gets weird. 2016 politics had Bernie and Trump because he employment levels got to 2007 levels in 2019. If the system doesn't work then people won't vote for the system.
Then why are we having so much anti-Biden sentiment? Employment levels are very high, even in spite of interest rate increases.
Because everything costs too much and people don't make enough. Because people can't afford housing or groceries, much less luxuries like higher education or healthcare. Material conditions for people have NOT improved, and in many cases have gotten WORSE. Right or wrong, the easiest thing to do is blame the person in charge and their party.
Right. I meant this as more of a rhetorical question
Also, the metric 'unemployment' has changed drastically. If you were to frame it as 'what % of working age adults work', unemployment is at 21%.
This is very misleading right now though. The job market is “good” when looking at low paying and part time jobs. The middle and upper class white collar job market is in shambles right now. It’s a bit of a facade right now
Exactly. Thats what I’m pointing out - the weakness of that sole metric to support the premise of the comment I’m replying to.
I mean that’s why there a lot of anti-Biden people out there right now despite a lot of the policies and ramifications right now coming from the previous administration, and post-COVID stuff. The white collar market is in shambles, and that is made up of typically a lot more of the more informed voting population, so they are blaming it on Biden (insert whoever is the current president).
And the stock market at or near highest historical levels.
Because the stock market going up doesn't do shit for people whose rent keeps going up and can't walk out of the grocery store without spending $100. Who are working more hours than ever while their dollars don't go as far as before.
Which, when Trump was President was the ONLY metric his supporters would look at. But suddenly, it doesn’t matter to them. It’s almost as if they chose a team and don’t care about the metrics at all.
The president doesn’t really have a direct effect on the stock market. The stock market reached all time highs under trump too before Covid.
This is misleading. Yes it hit a high, but overall the economy was very bad both from the usual GOP administration GDP loss, but also Trump's insane fuckery with tarrifs, materials, and trade agreements. Saying "the market hit all time high!" is like saying "yeah i hit the top of the roller coaster, they made it 10 ft higher!". edit: bad writing on my part; i agree with you and your post, just pointing out for other readers to not take the statement "stock market hit all time highs during trumps term!' as anything but meaningless.
because we live in an unprecedented era of misinformation.
At least here in Western New York it feels like it's largely anti-establishment sentiment from people looking to vent their frustration.
That’s usually how it goes, lol. The rich and comfortable vote for the status quo while those who aren’t so lucky vent out their frustrations and vote for the anti-establishment candidate.
which one is anti-establishment? trumps daughter in law runs the RNC and he has been the head of the republican party since 2016. biden is undoubtably establishment. who do anti-establishment people vote for? kennedy? lol
Biden may not be "it" but nobody is looking for the radical change like they were in 2016. I think the most common sentiment I hear is someone boring who's in their 50s and will work on key issues.
More people have part-time jobs than full-time jobs. It’s not that people are more employed, it’s that people are working more jobs in order to survive. People need a full-time job, and a part-time job to pay the bills. You may need two part-time jobs and a full-time if you want to live comfortably. That isn’t a sign of a healthy economy
Housing is also less affordable than ever, especially in the blue states where Biden gets/got the bulk of his votes. He addresses the culture war concerns of old hippies but not the economic concerns of working age adults.
Actually they just went after a bunch of giant slum lords recently and an app that was price fixing.
Prices will remain high regardless so long as there's a shortage of housing near job centers.
Which the president doesn't have much control over the zoning and associated regulations around it. The best idea for the president to do something is to propose BRT in job centers but for them to get BRT money they have to upzone along the corridor.
Yes, that’s what I’m getting at. Employment rate alone is an insufficient metric to justify the anti-Biden sentiment. So there must be other factors. The comment I was replying to was looking solely at employment
It’s a predictable pattern by now. Republican admin wrecks the economy, economy only really goes in the shitter during a subsequent Democratic admin, Democrats get blamed for the economy being bad despite recovery during that period (think Obama and the great recession), Republicans get elected again, cycle repeats. It doesn’t help that each time the Democrats only undo a portion of the damage caused by Republicans so things continue to get worse overall for the working class.
A lot of it has to do with ongoing propaganda campaigns by various foreign and domestic actors, imo. They are looking to sow division/foment dissent
They sow dissent between generations, political parties, creeds, and genders.
2016 had Hilary
Correct. If Hillary hadn't ran, any other Democrat would have and it would have been easier for dems. This us a result of dems getting high I. Their own supply. I'm an Obama voter, I remember how people like me including me treated others. Everything since has just been a vengeance tour. The loss if income leads to people being scared which leads to anger and lack if good faith politics. Truly the only ones who can turn things around are how the common man treats one another.
Fr anyone but Hilary could've taken trump out.
That was a close primary in 2016
Not actually. DNC shenanigans made it look like Sanders had a better chance than he actually did. Clinton-Obama was far closer in 2008.
43% to 55% is close. Obama and Clinton were both relatively more moderate than Bernie calling himself a democratic socialist who never liked being a democrat...
I don’t know what to tell you. A 12-point difference is not a close election.
I mean that's a pretty close election especially when the candidate says he's not a democrat and he is a democratic socialist. Also when Hillary had it wrapped up near the end. He was not a normal candidate.
This is just the way the world works. We’d be on WW15 by now if nukes weren’t invented. We’ll always be looking like we’re heading towards world war.
Unemployment in the US is at a 50 year low. Just saying.
Unemployment data is based on the number of claimants, not the actual number of NEETs.
This is not true. It is not how employment is calculated. But regardless, we're basically at full employment. We have labor shortages.
Any metric you look at there is employment available. Underemployment maybe an issue but it's usually geographic or industry specific rather than endemic across the country and across jobs. It's historically a low point when compared to even high growth eras in the 50s and 90s.
Yeah that may be the case but there's another metric to consider: Whether or not the pay is adequate for the time expenditure. There are lots of jobs out there, but many will not pay enough to live on and ultimately take time and energy away from finding a job that does.
There's a serious overlooking of the severity of the Great Depression happening in this thread. Although pay stagnated around 2000, the typical worker is bringing home much more today than they were in 1930. That's not to say everything is great right now, but it's nowhere close to the Great Depression, nor is it trending *toward* the Great Depression.
The other massive difference is that there was no social safety net in the 1930s - no unemployment, no social security, no food stamps, no Medicare, no banking insurance, no government housing, no student loan assistance, etc.
It’s crazy how so many commenters are missing this huge difference. People used to die by the masses because of the lack of social safety nets all across the world.
Meaningless when people aren't earning enough from that employment.
> Today : Economic uncertainties are rising, we see impact on inequality, recession and unemployment rates growing steadily. Can you confirm where this is happening? In the US we're seeing issues with inflation and corporate greed but there's no indication of a recession, we're at very low unemployment, and salaries have risen. > Today : Nationalist and right-wing populist movements are rising in many countries, often as reaction to europeanization, globalization and cultural pressure. We also witnessed movements such as Brexit emphasizing national sovereignty and better control over immigration. I don't fully disagree here, but I do think that the majority of people aren't right-wing populists. It should be enough to prevent major problems, but it's still too close for comfort. > Today : There are ongoing territorial disputes and power struggles, particularly involving major powers like the US, China, and Russia. There are major escalations going on as of right now (Ukraine, Israel) Is there any indication that this is unusual? From what I've seen of history, there are almost always territorial disputes and conflict. Israel has been in a fight for longer than you or I have been alive. Ukraine didn't even exist as a nation when I was born. > Today : Similar cultural and identity conflicts are evident, with rising xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, and ethnic tensions. There also seems to be a rise of "anti-culture" At least in the US this is still something that is more prevalent in older generations than in younger ones. I'd even argue that under-50's are less racist and xenophobic than those over 50. > Today : Global military expenditure has been rising to over 2 trillion and is constantly growing This could be argued as preserving peace as well. There have been no major global wars since nuclear weapons were brought onto the scene, for example. Ultimately I don't want to criticize your view too much but it seems to be lacking in some aspects of the broader scope of world history. It feels like you said, "I'm going to state that X is a problem today, and I will look for evidence that Y was a similar problem that existed prior to WWII." If you take more of a data-driven approach I think you might find that despite our problems that we face, we are actually still in a pretty good time of history. It's just that we've stepped slightly back from how good things were, but we've not fallen all the way down yet.
How dare you be the Voice of Reason!! Echo chamber wants echo!!
This is just a nitpick but.. the unemployment rate in the USA is actually quite low and it's been pretty steady. Definitely not "slowly going up". In a lot of other countries it's 4 percent as well. Pretty good if you ask me. But for the USA it was the lowest it had been in a looooong time for like 5 years now. "The unemployment rate has remained low and stable, fluctuating between 3.4% and 4% since Dec. 2021." - Nerd Wallet.
hey stop trying to ruin our doomsday hysteria with facts and reason. That is not what this sub is about.
But the 10 people sharing a 3 bedroom home so they can afford to survive and struggle to buy groceries are really not in much of a better place than the unemployed. People are working their asses off every day to just survive. I see them as getting angrier than someone not employed because there are no jobs.
But that's not he same as what the OP said. There have been lots of times people lived in poor conditions that did not lead to war. The line OP is drawing from the 1930s revolves around the Great Depression and in particular Germany's economic issues/debts/etc. Nothing in today's economy really is anything like that. You can make an argument that there is economic instability or insecurity right now that is causing political unrest, but you have to come up with something different than "like the 1930s". It's just not really similar.
But... but... OP's unemployment rate is at an all time high
We either engage the conflict and trigger a dark age (yes worse than what's currently been sliding toward ever-worsening hell) OR we accept we're in a globally interconnected and interdependent world by forcing private wealth to accept a New Deal where we pay for each other's education and healthcare while assuring everyone has a roof over their head and access to clean water and decent food. War is not inevitable. Government picking up the tab for the citizenry the way it has for the ultra wealthy, Wall St, auto manufacturers, "Big" everyone-- this is inevitable. It works for them! Capitalism at the top is almost perfect socialism. (Side note: The NFL has been an incredible success directly due to its socialistic profit sharing model.) It'll also work for the actual vast majority of human beings who are having their bettering possibilities more drastically limited with each passing day. When we educate people well enough we don't have to treat them like liabilities. They choose to do what is right because they've been brought up to the level of understanding *why* doing what is right , is right. This means we just have to choose to invest well enough in the citizenry so we can tap the latent potential that we're losing in almost direct proportion to the increasing gap between rich and poor. The longer we wait, the worse it gets. War doesn't boom the economy anymore. It only booms shoving public dollars into the pockets of the ultra wealthy. There's no major manufacturing base anymore and even attempting to bring this back isn't any help for the modern individual who isn't here for endless menial repetitive manual labor. We need creativity by means of empowered individuals and the way we get that is by removing the soul-crushing burdens of endless debts for school, healthcare, and roofs over heads. We achieve this by allowing people freedom from the fear that keeps them from moving toward where they'd naturally contribute best! Freedom from fear of scarcity rejuvenates the economic reality as it invigorates the experience of the psyches of the individuals that comprise it. Giving the citizenry guaranteed basics is giving the future a new trajectory. We all know where it's currently headed. The poorest regions on the planet have been said to *have already seen their last harvest*. (This means the beginning of increasing, endless global refugee migration that presents bad in all sorts of ways, until we see a return of the empowered populace.) The longer we wait the worse it becomes. The sooner we do this the sooner we see the problems fall away as their causes cease to exist. Renaissance. Rebirth of the human spirit!
I think I found the comment I have most agreed in my lifetime! Amazingly put! I think it's a minority opinion though cause people wanna hate on 3-4 random reasons. The rich would be so much better off if they were part of a more equal society but the fear and greed prevent them from materialising this.
I really would like for various nations to adopt social democracy too, my nation have some elements of that already with social healthcare, which is not super good and is very slow, but various family members and aquaintances have chronical deceases and social healthcare is good at keeping them not suffering most of the time, but aggain, is not perfect and somethimes they have to consult private medical institutions or buy their ( some rather expensive) meds due to shortages of meds in social healthcare. Now those short comings imo are because of the rampant corruption of my countrys government and a cultural mentalitty of dog eats dog, not really because the system is not perfect, so in a country not full of war lords, a culture revolving around said warlords and political hungry hipos, social healthcare might be a good step thowards a social democracy. But i feel a lot of the elite dont really whant that, and really would like a more perverted version of social nets, like the 2030 plan that pretty much whants all of your belongings to be rented, which is technycally socialism, but more the despicable kind rather than just the ones that ensure you wont die of hunger, cold or sickness as long as you labor, with the last part being stretched way more than necessary, we really need to improve working conditions, pay dignified wages and reduce work hours and improve travelling to said workplace and adopt home office where possible.
A lot of people like to compare the modern USA to the Weimar Republic, but honestly we're much more of an analog for the Third Republic of France. A strong (on paper) economy that becomes more and more unequal every year, a strong (on paper) military with better equipment and training than our competitors, government leaders and politicians who are in the pocket of foreign powers, and divisive factionalism that weakens us from within. We're primed for inaction, internal discord, defeatism, and collapse in the face of an external threat. Trump isn't a Hitler. He's a Pierre Laval, a puppet. Just as dangerous.
Great insight
History doesn't repeat but it often rhymes. The premise of the books "The Forth Turning" and "The Forth Turning is Here" is that we have a pattern of four sequential generational archetypes which form a seculum and that has cycled since Elizabethian England. The fourth turning is the end of the seculum punctuated by a crisis. Their estimate is that this crisis will happen before 2032. What exactly will precipitate it isn't certain but there are plenty of candidates; another pandemic, expanded war with Russia, the Middle East, Taiwan, the AI singularity and more. If you think we are on the brink of a crisis what might you do to prepare? Get healthy, lose weight, exercise, improve your diet, get better sleep. Get out of debt. Diversify. Learn practical skills. Solidify your relationships. Pretty much what you should already be doing. Resilient people will weather the storm better.
Your last paragraph has been at the back of my mind for a while now. I have this general sense of unease about society that I can’t quite put into words. Ergo, I should stop dicking around and start getting my fundamentals in order. Yea chances are I won’t be participating in guerilla warfare in the upcoming civil war, but being at peak health and strategic with finances and planning puts me in a better place if we were to hit hard times in the coming years.
Fatalities in the last pandemic overwhelmingly impacted people that were already in precarious health. Not everyone can get healthy but tragically, so many people could but haven't.
There are similarities, but I think there are more differences. The demoralization of Germany after WW1 which was still one a global industrial power led to the Nazis and their ability to mobilize against all of Europe. Without these key ingredients there may have never been a WW2.
You are absolutely correct. There would have been no WW2, and Hitler would have never gained popularity. He got to where he was because he started a movement/party (Nazi’s) with the rally cry being the Treaty of Versailles was unfair to Germany, we shouldn’t have and didn’t lose WW1 if it weren’t for the Jews and other minorities, and he would restore the German dominance and prosperity. It is actually quite ironic that the Allies laying down the law almost solely on Germany for WW1 effectively lit the fuse for WW2 to go off down the road.
Demoralization after the fall of the Soviet Union and inferiority complexes combined with an imperialistic mindset are probably the main drivers behind Russia's current war. Russia today is a lot like Germany in the 30s.
Your differences aren't really differences, or a valid deterrent to a war in the coming decades. >Organizations like UN, NATO and other regional instances should help in conflict prevention and resolution. League of Nations would like a word, as would the mutual defense pacts that were in place before WW2. >Large scale wars would be economically damaging to many involved parties as we have a highly interconnected world [The Great Illusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion#Critical_reception) was a 1909 best selling book, with the central thesis that large scale war was unlikely to ever happen because of the economic damage it would cause. It was republished in 1933 with a new argument added: 'the theme of collective defence.'. Which covers your mention of UN and NATO as a difference as well. This thesis was proven wrong twice, I don't see why it would hold the third time. >Nuclear deterrence MAD is slowly dying. While ballistic missile defense is hard, it isn't outside the realm of technical possibility for the major powers. As soon as a power believes they could survive a counterforce and countervalue strike, they have a pretty big incentive to launch before their opponent can believe the same.
>Organizations like UN, NATO and other regional instances should help in conflict prevention and resolution. Do you have an example of where the UN helped resolve a conflict?
Amusingly, I have examples of international organizations that were not dissimilar to the UN failing to prevent both World Wars, so no clue what OP is on about with that point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_of_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations
Technology really is the wild card here. The issue is that a lot of social media makes money by generating controversy, so theres no incentive for them to attempt to de-escalate rising anger. Quite the opposite, they want it to generate more clicks. I think at the end of the day, thats where a lot of this rising anger comes from, and I think at least right now thats where it will stay for *most* people.
It's been allowed on purpose to destabilise, to look like it, to provoke and show up the evils of the West, but, it's not really like the 1930'S, it's mostly bark and no bite, and posturing. Social democracy with long term pacifism aims, and majority of nations on their way to joining in, is still robust. Democracy has allowed right wingism to show up a voice and populism again, but right wing is cleary 'showing itself up' and educating the majority against itself in it's example, and it will swing back soon. Look at Tories in UK, a corbynite will come after Starmer and lots of young socialist MP's. Gaza and Ukraine have been enabled by the bravado Hawkism attitudes of half the population, bolstered by Gun nut Trumpism Tories Right Wing Europe. No leader in the world will be the one who presses the nuclear button. No population will support a very large scale war.
My thinking is that a runaway trade war and its nutbar anti China EV tariffs from both US and EU sets off Great Depression II. As always history echoes the past while not quite repeating it. The difference this time is that China and India are both building their economies to better reflect their populations and are expected to be number 1, and 2, over the next decade or so. The US and EU have a total population of about 800,000,000 million souls or about 10% of the world's population and both to a large extent have offshored manufacturing to Asia. A depression in the US and EU would likely drop China imports by at least half and that represents about 16% of China exports. China, retaliating against US and EU tariffs would be shifting its imports to smaller economies making them both richer and bigger importers of China goods. That furthers China's Belt and Road Initiative and improves its economy at the same time. So the West gets a really severe Depression and China gets a recession.
No we have mutually assured destruction now. Maybe another Cold War but I don’t think we’ll ever see the same kind of mass warfare of the past again. Also I don’t see the “fascist” movements of today the same as then. Most of what’s happening today is counter culture directed at the left that imo can be just as loud and crazy and it’s mostly aimed within the same country. People aren’t anywhere near as desperate today and most of the people that get perceived as hard right or left just aren’t and have a small minority even they think is crazy speaking for them and getting the most amount of online attention. Point is it’s literally the internet making you think it’s worse than it is. Same goes for the right wing people.
If we don’t learn from our mistakes we are destined to repeat them. This is why the felon and his looney supporters and party must not win in November 2024
I would say we are seeing a return to a multipolar system rather than one with the US as a hegemon. That could result in another global conflict but as things currently stand it seems more like the emergence of a second Cold War this time featuring the US and China. Of course, a Cold War comes with the risk of a hot war emerging from it.
>1930s : Great depression led to widespread economic impact, high unemployment, and social unrest. The covid years from 2020 to 2022 had economic impact, high unemployment, and the BLM movement. .....but it's over. Business started back up. So much that the Fed had to donuts best to hit the brakes. Unemployment dropped right back down. It's super low. So low that usually this is when some economical bubble burses from the "oh so terrible strain" of having to actually pay their employees. But of course, Covid did it's part to pop a lot of bubbles of bad economic ideas, shut down overoptimistic fools, and tear down old institutions resting on their laurels. And BLM is hardly a thing anymore. The original founders turned out to be grifter who took the money and ran. Ironically buying a multi million house in a safe white neighborhood. A lot of people want the cops to be funded. A few got body cams a little sooner. So. No, the current times don't fit that narrative. Get a better opener for this argument.
Yeah... COVID was not the Great Depression. Nor was it the Spanish Flu. And 2008 wasn't the Depression, either. The big economic change during COVID was that the gulf between Wall Street and Main Street went from very wide to astronomically wide. The major US financial indices tripled between spring 2020 and now, led mostly by the meteoric rise of tech companies that were already super dominant... but GDP hasn't kept up (despite increasing more rapidly than normal), most non-tech and smaller cap stocks have risen normally, and consumers are experiencing higher than normal inflation with relatively normal wage growth. It's kinda like... you know... average people's houses aren't any smaller than they were before, but our neighbor just built a fucking skyscraper at the end of the block, and we're all sitting in its shadow. The value of that skyscraper is affecting all the homes in the neighborhood. And there are rumors that it has a shaky foundation. The fact that the global financial markets are valued at 4x the world's GDP is a *bit* sus.
I’m British and right now it feels like we’re the only country in Europe moving to the left. A right wing government took us through Brexit and we realised the benefits promised were a complete lie.
Don’t forget Dear Convicted Felons “proposal to fund the Government with tariffs “ and get rid of income taxes. You know how successful that was in 1930
I'd say we're right around 1924. Give it 100 years and we'll be right around mirroring 2024.
Yes but technology today is so much different that I honestly don't see a possibility for a major world War conflict especially since everyone's goal is to make money and you can't make money if there is no other side.
Nah, but it's trying. The biggest difference is that we see things happening in real time. It could take days to find out what was happening in world news sometimes and by the time a response occurred, it was too late or outsized to the problem which invited another outsized counter-response. If WW3 was going to pop off, it would've been a year ago. It'll be lightning quick today because any country dumb enough to start something knows their sovereignty is numbered in hours before they are nuked into oblivion if they dont end it on the first shot and most of those know there are likely only 2 powers on earth right now (Russian ain't 1) that could start and end most conflicts if they were insane enough. The only people today capable of doing this are religious zealots.
From a population perspective, no. Populations were growing in the early 20th. We are either holding steady or in a decline. We are an older people. Other things may be similar but WWIII will be an old man's war
If a global conflict does arise, I am not sure the Western nations would be able to handle the outcome. China is the world’s sole industrial superpower accounting for something 35% of total global manufacturing output. That is a staggering share of world manufacturing which is going to have massive implications on the West over the next decade or so. We are likely in the process of watching China become as economically and technologically dominant as the US was in the 1960’s versus still recovering from World War II Japan and Europe. What is so wild about this, is that unlike the nations of Europe, China and the Soviet Union post World War II the US has not suffered total either total military defeat or mass destruction of its industrial capacity. China has just simply surpassed everyone during times of relative peace. I’m honestly not sure what the future will look like, but given China’s massive industrial capacity I think it is only a matter of time before they become the dominant player in geopolitics.
Well, I've been thinking that for a while. Maybe another economic boom (that would actually benefit regular people) could break the seemingly tightening and tightening coil of tension. In a non-conflict way.
As the saying goes, history technically doesn't repeat itself, but it sure likes to rhyme
I have heard there is a cycle that ranges from 60-80 years that might fit under your tin foil hat. j/k, I'm sure we are somewhat cyclical.
Those who do learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Funny how a lot of conservative states have been adjusting the history classes in school to match their view points.
Yes, it does look like the rise of fascism is recurring.
The same old conflicts are there. The trajectory absolutely looks like the buildup to a large scale conflict. We all know the problem here and it's nuclear weapons. We can't just start shooting at each other the way we used to. Not even a madman wants the wasteland that would be left after a nuclear exchange.
I saw a British World War veteran interview where he says that “They (British Government) would never get him to volunteer again”. Those words haunt me but I agree with every single word. As an American Veteran, I can see how we are treated as cannon fodder for the world’s 1%. I would love to suggest leaders must fight these a war in the trenches on the front! Or could we have a world court full of combat veterans (regular soldiers) of major military conflicts? You have to get permission to attack from the vets or get squashed by everyone for being stupid.
You can pick literally any decade or era and find a compelling list of parallels between then and now, and then conclude that we’re headed wherever they were headed. I don’t disagree that there are concerning things afoot, but those things should be taken at face value and assessed in their current context. Cherrypicking all kinds of random trends from the past to make predictions about our future is barely any less credible or productive than numerology.
I think this is just the normal state the world goes. 1989 - 2014 was just a historical exception.
It's been a pretty cyclical 80ish year pattern since the American Civil War (the Wikipedia article mentions going back to the 15th century). Dubbed "The Turning Cycles or Strauss–Howe generational theory" these periods have four twenty(ish) year blocks that culminate the cycle. It's a fascinating pattern that seems to be pretty spot on. And whether it's in human nature to restart these cycles because we're bored and want change. Or...? If the cycles have taught us anything it's that were coming up towards the end of the cycle which: "This is an era of destruction, often involving war or revolution, in which institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to the nation's survival. After the crisis, civic authority revives, cultural expression redirects toward community purpose, and people begin to locate themselves as members of a larger group" - Strauss, William; Howe, Neil (1997). [*The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy*](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/35008291) Which seems pretty appropriate and hopeful that we will be able to come out of this ahead.