• 2Password2Remember [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    14 days ago

    the word “economy” at this point has two completely separate meanings. when regular people use it, they mean the cost of housing, groceries and gas, as well as the job market. when the word “economy” is used in the press, however, it means “the stock market and the rate of return on real estate investments.” these two ideas do not overlap at all, really, so I think we need to coin new terms to describe them

    Death to America

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      14 days ago

      They describe two sides of the same thing. Stocks and real estate are doing well because they come at the expense of everyone else who owns no capital. It’s proletariat vs. the bourgeois and their relationship to the means of production.

      • 2Password2Remember [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        14 days ago

        true, that’s a good point. i do think that when regular people use the word economy, though, they aren’t really thinking about things like student debt/education costs, healthcare costs, taxpayer money being wasted on arms manufacturing, etc., which all contribute to the profits reaped by the bourgeoisie. most people conceive of those issues as “politics” and therefore separate from what they think of as “the economy”, IMO, so what we’ve really got is three meanings under the same word:

        1. the two sides of the coin you mentioned, i.e., the marxist understanding of the economy

        2. the stocks and real estate side of the coin, i.e., the graph of rich people’s feelings that liberal propagandists are thinking of when they talk about the economy in newspapers

        3. a subsection of the cost of living side of the coin, i.e., rent, groceries, gas and the job market, which is what the other 95-99% of people mean when they use the word economy

        Death to America