I wrote an article nearly a year ago. Before the election, before tariffs, when the job market was just starting to fall apart, I felt dread about what I felt was coming. I didn’t publish it because I like everything I write to have some sort of positive spin or silver lining. This article didn’t have that. It sat in my drafts.
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In this article, I talked about the cycle of endless growth, the harm that mentality brought, and how I felt like it was coming to an end. We have chased this endless growth model in business for a long time, but in the last decade or two, we paired it with a short-term focus that catered to maximizing profit for investor cycles and the private equity playbook. This leads to illogical and damaging decisions if maintaining long-term stability were the aim. I wrote about how this instability and short-term thinking were crashing the job market and how it would affect consumer spending, thus reducing demand, creating a downward spiral that our modern economy may not be able to recover from. Really dark stuff.
Now, I have been looking for work for nearly a year, so I am watching this all play out with a heightened sense of awareness and vulnerability. This job market is definitely different from what it has been in my 20 years of being employed. Not just employees, but simply people on the Average or lower end of wealth distribution are actively being shown how they aren’t needed and don’t matter if the choice is between them and a dollar. That feeling was always there, but it has become impossible to ignore.
Things Are Not Looking Good
I revisited this article just the day before I saw reports that Amazon, Target, and UPS are not only resisting the predictable peak-season hiring, but actively laying people off going into the holidays. At the same time, some of the largest manufacturers of cardboard boxes, the unsung heroes of the internet shopping age, are reporting the biggest decline in growth in nearly a decade. Holiday volume tends to count for about 20% of retail sales each year, packed into 30 days or so, yet everyone is betting against the holidays this year.
My grim projection is starting to come true. Increased prices for the sake of maximizing profits (or offsetting tariffs, which wasn’t on my bingo card) have led to lower demand. Less demand means fewer jobs. Fewer jobs mean even lower demand. With demand so low, investors demand higher margins, thus raising prices or lowering quality. The standoff of this generation is just in Washington; it is between the population and Wall Street.
The New Better
There is no short-term positive outlook. I have said it before, we are entering a stage of increased discomfort and personal responsibility when it comes to our spending. Things that we once thought of as basics are going to become luxuries. Downsizing will be an inevitable requirement for many people as our dollars stretch far less and we have fewer of them. Things are going to get worse before they get better.
I believe “better” will look much different, though. Better, this time, won’t mean an increase in prosperity with more money and more stuff. It will look like the mother of all corrections, where the population has to accept a decrease in the standard of living. I think this time it stays. The system that financed luxury upgrades will all but collapse. Consumer spending will fall and maintain lower levels than those experienced in our lifetime. After a period of not being able to afford tons of consumerist crap, we will realize that these things actually didn’t add to our lives, and we will lose the appetite for them.
The Uncomfortable Transition
I don’t think things will magically become affordable again. People and markets don’t generally like to go backwards. The housing market can’t withstand a major reduction in value across the board, and the cost of food and other necessities likely doesn’t have room to fall. What will change, though, is the things people decide to spend their money on. When money gets tight in a way that you can feel it and you know that things are not going to get better, it actually changes you. When you run out of credit, you are forced to take pay cuts, and the cost of your necessities doesn’t relent, you must reconcile with the sustainability of your lifestyle.
This hardship has a silver lining. It necessitates humanity. Not the kind of humanity you find in a GoFundMe or surge in foodbank contributions, but the kind of humanity that looks like communal dinners, carpooling, and sharing of skills. Hardship on a large scale removes division and promotes cooperation. It can cause us to lose hope in the government and economy and turn to those close to us for tangible support. Giving up on saviors reminds us of the power we possess. Clearly, no one is coming to save us, but we still need proof. That proof will, unfortunately, come from extended periods of unsupported struggle.
I am not rooting for this collapse. I still feel like we could avoid this regression, but it would have to come in the form of regulation and enforcement of policies specifically designed to support the lower and middle classes. Not the talk, or the trickle-down theories, the group-specific targeted relief, nor the bailouts of big businesses whose failure means investor discomfort. Real, citizen-focused policy administration brought about by good people who want to alleviate human suffering, even if it is at the expense of financial gain and growth. Not socialism, communism, or capitalism: human. Sadly, as much as it seems intuitive how to turn things around for the better, there is no sign of it happening. Therefore, we must plan for the worst and take some responsibility for our own well-being.
A Path Forward
We can do it! We can own our own trajectory. It won’t look like what we see as success today or have had for the last 50 years. It will look like success from a century ago. Success will come from identifying and striving towards an attainable level of enough. Enough food, resources, work, money, and stuff. Success won’t look like an accumulation of luxuries and comfort. It won’t look like having more than your neighbors. It won’t look like escaping into TV, social media, and video games. It will look like food on the table, a roof over your head, strong relationships, and a close support system. The things that are actual necessities.
On one hand, I hope I am wrong about the direction of everything. Maybe it will turn around, and we can resume our journey towards a Laissez-faire capitalist utopia, scaling productivity and profitability to infinite and beyond. Maybe someone has a plan, and it just hasn’t revealed itself. Perhaps we will all be ok. If I were honest, the idea of reverting to a more communal society sounds better. Moving back to a place with simpler systems and aims sounds more manageable and healthier. Sure, things may not be as comfortable, but I can’t escape the idea that with the perspective of a tighter belt, we could dispose of the comfort-driven division and pain that is around us. What would mental health look like if feeding ourselves resurfaced as the most important thing? What kind of change would that spur in our leadership as thousands of stomachs grumbled in concert?
This isn’t at all a wish or prescription of suffering; in today’s world, there is no logical reason for anyone to go hungry or be homeless, yet here we are. It is more of a question of “what does optimal deprivation look like today?” We clearly have forgotten. It is a sincere wish that more would consider the path we are barrelling toward and how they are contributing to it. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that bad times are here and worse times are coming. In that position, we can either try to grab up what we can and weather the famine alone with our greed, or we can build ways to protect our communities in hopes we all make it through together.
So, no. I don’t have a lot of hope for the economy for years to come. What I do have hope for is humanity and our power as individuals and the power of populations with shared suffering and goals. Not as a political statement, but a general assessment. Full bellies don’t revolt; hungry ones do. People aren’t willing to give up a good life for change, but when they have nothing to lose, they risk it all to make life worthwhile. If you force people to do with less, they will realize they never needed more to begin with. This is where we are, the turning point of empty bellies and the quest for purpose.
Look after each other. The holidays will be different this year.
Reid Pierpoint