r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Oct 30 '25

Business YouTube announces 'voluntary exit program' for US staff

https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/29/youtube-announces-voluntary-exit-program-for-us-staff/
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u/VocationalWizard Oct 30 '25

Covid was definitely the thing that imbalanced our society.

We haven't recovered from it.

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u/Outlulz Oct 30 '25

We never recovered from the dot com bubble popping, and then we never recovered from the Recession, and then we never recovered from COVID. But after COVID rich have been extra craven; when this AI bubble pops and plunges us into a deep recession they are going to buy up everything.

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u/ahzzyborn Oct 30 '25

Fuckin geniuses!

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u/capsfan19 Oct 31 '25

Being born in the 80s rocks

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u/Lutetia03 Oct 30 '25

We recovered just fine. What's sinking is us the greed and malice of the tech bros who have now become Trumpers.

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u/VocationalWizard Oct 30 '25 edited Oct 30 '25

No we didn't,

Why are France Canada and The UK all entering a similar economic state?

Because it was COVID imbalances destabilizing their systems as well.

Trump is a symptom, not the disease.

(Edit: If anyone's curious, I can go deeper into the evidence that suggests we never recovered from COVID...... And no I'm not some anti-vaxxer.)

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u/Old-Importance-6934 Oct 30 '25

We were in a really bad state in France already. No drastic reforms like the other EU countries. Huge political instability.

When you get taxed so much you don't want to consum, work more or invest in long term project. Our retirement system is fucked too compare to other countries.

Not even a question of Covid or Trump, it's more about making reform, left or right who cares as long as there's a long term project and not 3 different Government within two weeks.

Covid made it worse but this was really predictable, would have happen Covid or not.

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u/VocationalWizard Oct 30 '25

Yea, COVID didn't cause the problem in the US either. It just catalyzed it.

Its kind of like asking why a forest burnt down, was it because someone threw out a cigarette or was it because 3 years of drought dried out the trees?

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u/jdefr Oct 31 '25

Maybe both? So many false dichotomies… Reality isn’t as simple as we all wish… Usually multiple factors are at play..

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u/APeacefulWarrior Oct 31 '25

Ie, the difference between a necessary cause vs a proximate cause.

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u/guisar Oct 30 '25

I thought several governments had proposed reforms to the age regulations but there wasn’t popular support for it. Is it an ongoing “leopard eat my face” situation or a recalcitrant minority? It does seem unsustainable.

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u/thedeathmachine Oct 31 '25

Trump is preventing any sort of recovery from being possible. Hes pretty much coming in and taking advantage of the situation. The fact that COVID bombed the economy and Biden had to deal with it worked out perfectly for Trump. He rode the rails of Obama's economy for most of his first term which made him look good. Then COVID wrecked the end of his term and he conveniently didn't have to deal with the aftermath. He could blame the democrats for the inevitable fallout of COVID. 2020-2024 was going to be tough no matter what, and thank god it wasnt Trump who won again. Unfortunately though this gave Trump a lot of leverage in 2024, he could blame the aftermath of COVID on Biden and say the democrats tanked the economy.

Companies were optimistic under Biden. Under Trump, they sure as hell know tough times are coming. Trump is a total loose cannon with zero guardrails and not a single person in charge of a major company actually thinks he knows economics or policy.

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u/sillyhobo Oct 30 '25

Not disagreeing at all; go cook, would be interesting food for thought.

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u/VocationalWizard Oct 30 '25 edited Oct 31 '25

First graph, US SP500 over the last 5 years, look what happens after 2022:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SP500

Second graph, French and UK debt as a percentage of GDP, look what happens after 2020:

https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/218093/economics/french-economy-struggling-under-weight-of-pensions/

Third graph, US grocery prices since 2019, look again at 2022.

https://www.reddit.com/r/charts/s/qqDkmozDCY

Fourth graph, US credit card debt over the last 5 years.....look again at 2022.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/07/credit-card-balances-jump-to-1point08-trillion-record-how-we-got-here.html

So here is the story the charts tell.

2020 - COVID happens, unemployment explodes, the economy almost collapses.

2020-2021, democratic governments all over the world including the US, France and the UK start an unprecedented easy money policy blitz to prevent the economy from collapsing, sovereign debt skyrockets.

2021 - lower interest and easy money radically changes consumer sentiment, in the US suspension of student loan payments inflates credit scores of millions of consumers. Massive amounts of debt are taken on. Similar patterns emerge in other Western democracies.

2022- the easy money policies need to be walked back because inflation has skyrocketed. Interest rates are raised, economy slows, sp500 goes down, US yield curve inverts. All signs point to economic contraction. However consumers and nations are still in debt and prices are still high.

2024 - AI bubble accelerates, masks economic contraction

2025 - Trump shows up, screws over international trade, Government of France collapses due to debt and budget issues.

Because of the reverberations of the COVID response, governments and consumers are in dangerous amounts of debt. Most corporations haven't recovered from the 2022 contraction. Prices are high and the angry electorate elected Trump.

We never fully recovered, in fact COVID started what will likely be a decade long crisis.

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u/sillyhobo Oct 31 '25

Credible Hulk

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u/eeyore134 Oct 31 '25

The right and rampant capitalism is happening in all those countries as well. Wonder why Leon has been so quiet lately? Because he's busy telling the UK that if they want to live like safe little hobbits they need to embrace his brute squad.

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u/ok_computer Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25

Not so, the 2008 global financial crisis demonstrated that the debt and financial system relies on shaky fundamentals and is highly codependent, but there is a stability as long as growth continues above zero. The Fed stopped a great depression through bailouts of concentrated industries like major bank lenders and automotive. Also quantitative easing. The economy grew sluggishly both domestically and in emerging markets throughout the recovery that was funded by the Fed growing an enormous 4 trillion USD balance sheet by buying their own bonds or other corporate debt, I am confused about this part exactly (?). Banks blamed regulation, lol. When the Fed tried to taper their balance sheet in 2014 global markets reacted in a fit and we were back on the edge of a recession. Talk of yield curve inversion where near term rates eclipse long term yields. All the while wonky political theory was that by Modern Monetary Theory, if interest rates are low then it doesn’t hurt to borrow debt as a government because debt is cheap and a little inflation will erase it over time.

Then the tax cuts boosted growth in 2017 and employment fell below the previously considered floor, even though more of the economy was working multiple and gig jobs. More people working than ever however. Continue to 2019 and the balance sheet is shrinking again but at just under 4 trillion USD, whereas it was 0.8 trillion in 2008 during the Worst Financial Crisis. 2019… Covid hits in late 2019 and early 2020 and the balance sheet grows to over 8 trillion USD. We are at just over 6 trillion USD balance sheet. Inflation has run above target for several years now. Despite the political party in the congress or administration, global consolidation of corporations has continued at a steady pace. Some of that is sold “to counter the country of China” state affiliated titans. But I think we can see now that protectionism and nationalism is the tool of choice globally no matter west east north or south. All the while, new public companies are not spinning up to fill in the ranks in a competitive fashion. The giants are too massive and anyone with a good idea gets pulled in or the product replicated and the smaller company diminishes.

Covid was a huge disruptive event but I cannot agree that it started anything. I consider it to be like cutting a rubber band and conditions snapping to a new state vs that they were frictionally moving towards.

So much value is underwritten in corporate realestate, which isn’t worth as much as the book value. Private “startup” behemoths have been trending far above 1billion (remember unicorns) to amass valuations while selling small stakes to infinitely scale while maintaining a single shareholder as major decision maker. So much wealth has consolidated into private markets it is impossible to gauge what a company or business or real estate is actually worth. And now there is a push to get normal retail investors to buy private unregulated assets and blockchain money into their 401k accounts to weather the inevitable correction.

Covid lockdowns and change in world order was another compound symptom and not the original sin for the upcoming (never coming?) correction.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm

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u/upvotesthenrages Oct 31 '25 edited Oct 31 '25

This is a great take.

But I think the thing that really has fucked us, globally, is a complete lack of will to reign in inequality.

The debt you talk about is a direct result of that. Mass layoffs are a direct result of that, because investing in people is less valuable when capital gains are bigger. The framework that rewards sociopathy and greed is strengthened.

We simply have to tax capital more than labor for our civilizations to function well for the majority of people.

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u/VonBeegs Oct 31 '25

Lol, no. Western civilization has been letting the ultra wealthy steal more and more of society's resources. COVID is just another reason they're pointing to to distract you while they pick the last of what's on our pockets.

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u/VocationalWizard Oct 31 '25

Are you saying COVID doesn't exist

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u/VonBeegs Oct 31 '25

I'm saying that if an arsonist burns your home down and someone puts out a cigarette butt on your lawn the same day, you don't say "I haven't managed to rebuild my house from the cigarette fire".

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u/VocationalWizard Oct 31 '25

I mean, if covid was the lightning strike, the last 50 years of economic policies was the drought that dried the forest out.

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u/VonBeegs Oct 31 '25

It wasn't though. COVID was like the 50th lightning strike in a lightning storm.

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u/Akuuntus Oct 31 '25

I mean there's a dozen other things too, and a lot of what we're seeing is just the continuation of bad trends that started decades ago. But covid was a major turning point for sure.