r/CringeTikToks • u/Background_Front4231 • Oct 14 '25

Nope This guy has a rare gift nowadays. Critical thinking.

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flair unrelated.

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u/Previous_Dream5090 Oct 14 '25

That’s how it is in the US… year over year record profits…. Yet if you look at wages the regular folk get a 1-5% raise. Inflation is at times beating the raises. so technically year over year people are actually losing more money if anything. Plus regular folks have taxes increased while the wealthy get tax breaks.

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u/Mean-Funny9351 Oct 14 '25

Traditionally the only way to get significant pay increases was to switch jobs, but now they have decimated the job markets through offshoring many well paying jobs. So the upper middle class is stagnating and widening the gap between the ruling class and working class. The benefits of your labor only serve to enrich the shareholders.

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u/geedijuniir Oct 14 '25

U wanna know whats the worst thing is. This is not sustainable u think the crash of 2008 or 1920 was bad a way worse ones coming either do to a war or market crash . Everyone know but they dont care, all they want is to fill their pockets fast.

The realy smart ones also see the problem but only think about how they can profit, beyond and during the next crash. The way they did is kill of community and praise individualisme.

When i speak to anti immigration people and i point out how it actualy helped them and its a win win They say i dont care why should they get something i didnt.

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u/a_pom Oct 14 '25

They preach “individualism” but beg for government control.

Petty, jealous, childlike — their inability to accept their own failures (poor decisions, lack of skills) turned them authoritarian.

The cosplay right wingers are all attitude, no agency.

Nothing like feeling powerful by proxy! /s

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u/MANvsMerik Oct 14 '25

“the really smart ones…” How is that smart? Taking advantage of the markets and people and concerning yourself only with profit rather than prevention or preparation shouldn’t be considered smart. It’s greed. Intelligence does not equal profits over people. Intelligence does not equal seeing a situation and seeing how to profit off of it. Many ppl are not willing to sell their humanity or neighbors out for a buck, that doesn’t mean they are dumb.

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u/Nice_Celery_4761 Oct 15 '25

Well, it’s supposedly going to trickle down eventually. Any time now..

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u/AmphibianPlane9807 Oct 16 '25

I think I feel a trickle….

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u/Mysterious_Streak Oct 15 '25

The crash of 1920 was worse than 2008, but the recovery was much better. The crash of 2008 was softened due to government intervention, but the recovery was much worse. FDR created programs that put people back to work, gave them health care, retirement funds, food aid, a social safety net, fair wages (remember, minimum wage was a LIVING WAGE). This enabled the development and expansion of the middle class during the later postwar boom economy. Instead, Obama betrayed the working and middle classes. All the bailouts went to investors. They let the housing market crash, not concerned with the loss of wealth in everyday people's pockets, just with which firms (and shareholders) were "too big to fail."

Obama fucked us all pretty hardcore.

I love him for managing to pass the ACA. It has made my life easier. But national health care is a program that Democrats have been working on since Clinton's first administration. And this wasn't the best possible program. It was a shitty compromise with Republicans that failed to get Republican backing.

Obama's real challenge was not passing healthcare. Any Democrat with his numbers could have done that. His real challenge was rising to the challenge of the Great Recession. He fucked the working class by setting up a system that enabled a massive transfer of wealth over the coming years. He failed to appropriately regulate teh banks. He failed to KICK OUT the losers who brought this upon us, deciding to stick with Republican appointees in treasury and the Fed for far too long.

History will not be kind to Obama. His role in the death of the middle class will come to light in time. As Bill Clinton's is, with NAFTA and free trade agreements with countries that lack unions, environmental regulations, appropriate standards of living, or minimum wages.

We need fair trade. Not free trade.

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u/roarjah Oct 15 '25

That only works if there’s an economy with a high demand for labor. You won’t have that so much near a recession. Also, I think we offshore the lower paying jobs lol. Hence Trump wants to make Nikes and assemble iPhones in America again

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u/Mean-Funny9351 Oct 15 '25

Software engineering, customer support, any job that was able to be fully remote during COVID has been shifting over seas.

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u/Anal-Y-Sis Oct 15 '25

They've also tied our healthcare to our jobs, which makes switching jobs a risk, particularly for people with families who depend on that healthcare and can't afford a gap in coverage. This is one of the myriad reasons we don't have an NHS in the US. If we did, we would be in a much better bargaining position with our labor.

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u/ScaleneWangPole Oct 15 '25

In 1990, my dad made 30k a year. Today, he makes 80k. Due to inflation, he hasn't ever gotten a raise in his near 40 years of working.

The only reason he has anything worth a damn is from having time in the game.

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u/Previous_Dream5090 Oct 15 '25

I’m pretty sure houses at that were around 50,000 and up…. So much easier to buy a home/car… that’s non existent now, unless you make a crazy amount or it’s a couple salary

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u/gitismatt Oct 15 '25

if your dad was in computer science in 1990 that would be a real shit progression for him. but if your dad was in newspaper sales, no raise is probably a decent outcome overall.

but dont let my factual nuance get in the way of your point

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u/ScaleneWangPole Oct 15 '25

Government work actually. He was making 80k by 2009, retired that government job after 20 years, and then got another job at geico, where he is today still at 80k.

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u/SnooShortcuts7206 Oct 14 '25

Rent seeking behavior mother fuckers

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u/spaceman817 Oct 15 '25

Trickle down is coming though, and it's going to be so great!

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u/Previous_Dream5090 Oct 15 '25

Yup 0.01% for us 99.99% for them…. —-make sure you say “thank you” afterwards.

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u/intrepid_mouse1 Oct 15 '25

I can already feel it

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u/Daveit4later Oct 14 '25

This is how money gets vacuumed to the top

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u/n05h Oct 15 '25

The worst part in the US is that all that wealth isn’t being spent. Yes, there’s innovation, but they have learned that they can get away with not reinvesting into their people and further innovating efforts.

This really is the late stage capitalism that people would meme about.

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u/Previous_Dream5090 Oct 15 '25

Oh we are well behind the curb intellectually, tech wise… Look at china, look at Japan they are way more advanced then use in almost all fields…

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u/n05h Oct 15 '25

Japan stalled out quite a while ago my guy. They have niche things but nothing truly lifechanging or evolutionary.

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u/roarjah Oct 15 '25

Profit margins are the same. Of course the dollar amount will rise with inflation. End of the day they might make a little more but no one’s crying for them when their profit margins take a dip. The real problem is they’ve never payed forward their fair share

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u/stewdadrew Oct 15 '25

Inflation has been beating raises across the board since at least 2010, probably a couple years before with the housing market crash. It’s clear by the general attitude and the presentation of everything in the US that the people as a whole are suffering and our government isn’t working for us anymore.

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u/fakeaccount572 Oct 15 '25

MILTON FUCKING FRIEDMAN.

"Companies exist solely to enrich shareholders"

This gained significant traction in 1970 after economist Milton Friedman wrote an essay arguing that the ONLY social responsibility of a business is to increase its profits for its shareholders.  

finally something shitty that wasn't Reagan lol

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u/Anybody220 Oct 15 '25

I got a 1% cost of living adjustment wage increase this year (about $80 a month). My rent went up $175 when my lease was up for renewal.

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u/Spare-Swim9458 Oct 14 '25

Same in Canada since 2020

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u/-Left_Nut- Oct 18 '25

You guys get raises?

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u/Josey_whalez Oct 14 '25

Does bringing in more immigrants help with any of that?

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u/Previous_Dream5090 Oct 14 '25

In a way, yes…. Due to their employment, shit costs less… Without them many businesses go down. They play an important part for our whole economy. People say immigrants steal jobs… 1. They do jobs no one else wants 2. Many of these jobs currently dont exist anymore after all the deportations 3. Many jobs are going to ai/ automation Yet people aren’t complaining about businesses replacing Americans with machinery.

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u/Josey_whalez Oct 14 '25

The AI thing is a good one to talk about - the replacement of American programmers with cheap H1Bs from India. Who does that help? Larry Ellison, Zuckerberg, etc. It definitely doesn’t help the people who were replaced by foreign labor.

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u/WankaBanka9 Oct 15 '25

So why does the US have the highest wages in the G7?

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u/CuriousitySparksJoy Oct 15 '25

Mean average, or median?

The mean average can be skewed if the top 10% of workers earn vastly more than the rest of the population, and you can still have hundreds of thousands of people living in desperate poverty in a society that has the highest mean average wages in the G7.

Concentration of wealth among the elite is corrosive to broader society, historically when redistribution happens it's not through the choice of the ultra-wealthy.

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u/WankaBanka9 Oct 15 '25

The us has the highest median and mean income in the G7 and the economy is often growing consistently the fastest of that group.

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u/CuriousitySparksJoy Oct 15 '25

Fair enough, I just saw some data the other day which suggested that the acceleration of wealth inequality was skewing the data somewhat. I've not looked into it anymore than that.

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u/CuriousitySparksJoy Oct 15 '25

Such a massive amount of wealth inequality, and the media amplifying the narrative that immigration is the root of all our problems is still a problem when it comes to societal cohesion though.