this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2026
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[–] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 34 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (4 children)

Already, most of the economic growth comes from the purchases of the wealthy.

Normal people aren't profitable enough to sell to anymore. We're being positioned not as consumers but as slave labor.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

Yes but if your business is creating anything other than luxury prodcuts, this makes 0 sense.

What do they think is going to happen when half the population can not reliably purchase basic food?

They're either not thinking, delusionally insane, or just full-on planning on creating mass societal collapse/upheaval.

Like sure, if the plan is... create a mass culling event... that they think they will... come out on top of...

Well I guess best of luck with that.

Historically?

Doesn't tend to work out so well for them.

You can squeeze people a lot and they'll delude themselves into thinking its fair... but too far?

Months where decades happen.

[–] Seleni@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

They expect those people to starve (‘and decrease the surplus population’) or accept company scrip for ‘cheaper’ food, thus recreating large-scale chattel slavery.

[–] matlag@sh.itjust.works 9 points 17 hours ago

In France, already 10% of the population depends on food-banks. In 2023, the largest non-profit providing meals and distributing food sent a distress call saying they were close to bankrupcy as the number of people in need is going up fast while donors have less and less to give being themselves crunched.

France's richest family, the Arnault, largely responsible for turbo-charging the trickle up trend in the country by buying political influence, rescued them by making a big donation.

The leader of the non-profit, who had been vocal about impoverishment of the population and growing inequalities because of the oligarchs, cannot say anything anymore: now he can't keep going without these oligarchs good will.

That's the plan. It's being executed right in front of us, in the open.

[–] gh0stcassette@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 18 hours ago

I don't think there is much of a coherent plan tbh. I think they think they're moving towards Curtis Yarvin style techno-feudalism, but Yarvin is an idiot and so are the oligarchs pushing for that. They have been lulled into complacency by the status quo their predecessors engineered to make revolutionary movements unlikely to gain traction (basic social safety net, reasonably affordable food, a general sense that the state represented the people even though in reality it's been captured by capital for some time, etc.) while undermining the elements of that status quo that weren't already collapsing.

It's madness. They think they can just do whatever they want and people won't resist, while systematically dismantling everything that stopped people from resisting. This will not go how they think it will. Thankfully they're mostly surrounded by sycophants who tell them all their dogshit ideas are genius actually, it's like Putin in Ukraine. They will overplay their hand due to false encouragement from their subordinates, and it will be what destroys them.

[–] ByteJunk@lemmy.world 10 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

That's just ridiculous, unless you're including stuff like stock, real estate or other investments as "purchases".

There's only so much bread and milk and books and sofas and cars that a wealthy household needs to purchase, and sure they will outspent other households in terms of cost per item, but not nearly enough to offset the sheer difference in volume.

Tldr, bullshit.

[–] Jaycifer@piefed.social 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

According the Bureau of Economic Analysis, that may not necessarily be the case. Agriculture and retail trade, the stuff you mention laypeople purchasing, contributed nothing to less than nothing toward economic growth in the first quarter of 2026. Cars and maybe sofas fall into the durable goods manufacturing category which was the fourth highest contributor.

The top three contributions came from information, the federal government, and professional/scientific/technical services. I don't spend a lot of time keeping up with the finances of those sectors and I'm not an economist so take my words with a couple grains of salt, but to me those things mean an increase in data centers, federal spending (and my guess is not on things useful to a layperson), and services that often end up being business to business transactions.

Obviously there is a place today for companies to sell to the masses, but the comment you responded to was discussing economic growth, and at least to my eyes it looks like most of the growth is indeed going to sectors primarily controlled or benefited from by the wealthy while sectors supported by the masses either contributed less or shrank the most out of any sector in the case of retail trade.

If that trend continues long-term because of a decreasing population then I think that's fine, but if it continues due to a lack of investment because of low profitability, then I think there will be (more) issues.

[–] ByteJunk@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Excellent site for backing up my claim, thanks you.

Consumer spending, as measured by Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis], accounts for 68% of the GDP.

Top 3 items:

  1. Housing (33.4% of budget): rent, mortgage interests, property taxes, water, electricity, internet, appliances, furniture.

  2. Transportation (17.0%), heavily influenced by commuting habits: cars, fuel.

  3. Food (12.9% of budget), includes groceries and food away from home (restaurants)

  4. Insurance, Pensions, & Healthcare (20.4% combined)

  5. "Discretionary", everything else: clothing, entertainment, education (!), ...

That's a rather interesting breakdown, and a few items surprised me a lot. In any case, and more to the point I was replying, the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey gives this breakdown:

  • The Top 20% (Highest Income Quintile): Accounts for roughly 35% to 38% of total consumption.

  • The Middle 60% (Middle Class): Accounts for roughly 53% of spendingg

  • The Bottom 20% (Lowest Income Quintile): Accounts for roughly 9% of spending.

It seems like this survey, since it's based on questionnaires, tends to underreport luxury goods, so in reality it might be skewed more towards the top 20% than what's presented there.

Even if that's the case, surely it's nowhere near the point of "not being profitable to sell to normal people", as was said.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 8 points 21 hours ago (4 children)

Got any stats on that? Seems implausible that the global top 0.1% or whatever are doing 1000x more economic activity than the average of the 99.9%. With their companies, sure, but they consist of many ordinary people.

[–] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago

I grabbed the first result, but you can find the same information from whatever source you like - it was big news:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-10-earners-drive-nearly-191500198.html

The top ten percent drive half of all consumer spending. The corporations and the rich no longer see the bottom 90% as a profitable market - they see them as a resource and a liability.

When you realize it's not incidental, but the actual plan, it all makes sense.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 7 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Probably hyperbole on mycodesucks, but the whole AI bullshit alone generated over USD 1 trillion dollars in GDP. USA's GDP in 2024 was a bit under 30 trillion. Having like 8 companies account for 1/30 of the ENTIRE MONEY SPENT of a country is absolutely nuts, as well as a good reminder of how disconnected to reality GDP alone is.

[–] 13igTyme@piefed.social 5 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Is it really generating money if it's a company spending money it doesn't have on another company to then pay the original company to provide what was originally promised as a service/product?

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 1 points 15 hours ago

Factually speaking, only the debt is "generating" money, since the entire concept of bank loans reside in their capacity of lending more than they actually have and charging interest back.

Regarding nvidia and the companies it is giving money to so they buy its chips, lots of legal loopholes make it count as "totally real investment". That's why I said the thing generated said money in GDP, which has little connection to reality.

[–] Rothe@piefed.social 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

A bit exaggerated, but 70% of OpenAIs revenue is from a handful of enterprise customers. The other tech giants, spearheaded by Nvidia, are shifting their entire business model towards enterprise customers, which is largely why consumergrade hardware is incredibly expensive if not directly unobtainable.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 1 points 18 hours ago

But what are those companies doing with what they're buying in order to generate their revenue? Ultimately there has to be something that does something useful or enjoyable in and of itself (like food, or a video game), rather than something which is just instrumental for something else. And those useful/enjoyable things will only be profitable if you can sell them to a decent number of people.

You can replace your gamer consumers with corporate customers only if those corporate customers have someone to sell to.

[–] AmyAye@nord.pub 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

They are probably counting all the exchange of funny money on the stock market and things like the xircular AI buying (Microsoft invests a zillion dollars in OpenAI who then uses that zillion dollars to buy Azure compute cycles from Microsoft).

[–] bedwyr@piefed.ca 1 points 19 hours ago

The majority of economic growth these last few years, I've been told by multiple sources on social media that I deemed credible, has been data center build out bullshit.