4chan

Yeah, in a lot of ways, it feels like the great recession never truly ended in the sense that people had recovered from it; it feels more like people just got used to it. In the oughts, a lot of the pretenses of cold war capitalism got dropped in favor of a whole hearted embrace of the shallowest (ostensibly; I'm going against my nature and giving Friedman the benefit of the doubt here) possible reading of the Friedman doctrine. Everything turned to "how much cash can we scrape out of this for the investors?" Play places? Cool aesthetics? Fuck you, we need to maximize the resale value of our real estate, shut up, you'll eat our bullshit anyway. Minimum wage hikes? No way! Your burgers will cost $20! Oh, well, I mean, that's going to happen anyway, but at least you guys didn't get raises lmao. You want a truck that just works? Eat shit, idiot, pay us $100,000 for a lifted mini-van in a masculinity-protecting trenchcoat. Need somewhere to stay? Great news, we're going to do nothing to improve the apartment and increase your rent $200/year. Or you could just choose to afford a half million dollar home; the free market is all about choice, after all. Want health insurance? Cool, that'll be half of your income, your boss gets to the carrier for you because it's a free market system all about the freedom of choice, and we're going to personally throw sand in your eyes if you ever actually try to use it. At least you can ~~go swim in the public pool or go enjoy your city's fine taxpayer funded services~~ nope those all got cut permanently in the recession, and now that money's going to paying out for cops fucking up instead.