Thought this was an interesting analysis, though I think it needs to be taken with a bit of a grain of salt (I think it’s power is what is qualitatively describes rather than precise numbers, and I think the author might even agree with me).

I’m always on the lookout to see it quantified how much the average American benefits from imperialism. My guy says if the US was unable to exert hegemony, the US would experience at least what Russia experienced in the 90s. These numbers align with that; and this is only talking about dollar hegemony and not, for example, the US using military pressure, sanctions, or other methods for extracting cheaper resources and goods from the global south.

That said, I’m not sure you can just run a regression and get your answer. I don’t see how you can isolate the US losing dollar hegemony without it then creating an uncountable number of secondary effects. All this stuff is deeply interconnected. But that said, I think this does a good job of highlighted at least in a qualitative sense just how much Americans benefit from dollar hegemony, and how losing that would be huge problem for the US economy.

  • panned_cakes [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    I like how I have two mentions rn, one person calling the guy I’m posting a patsoc, and the other person telling me baristas are the labor aristocracy. yarly Migrant workers are also forced to live many persons to a house or rely on unstable living situations from employers who hold them hostage and don’t let them get a car (remember the infamous Jia Tolentino debacle where it turned out her parents were holding underpaid Filipino teachers hostage practically to fill No Child Left Behind quotas?) in order to circumvent the massive rents issue. American workers who don’t forgo basic needs and have to rely on minimum wage can’t start a family. I’m not saying there isn’t an immense privilege for many in being born in the US it’s just not as cut and dry as unequal exchange makes it out to be without accounting for debts and rents and other expenses from that lack of social services. There is a demarcation between workers who passively benefit from being in the US to reap the benefits of cheaper treats from the same people who make them indentured wage slaves, and those who are working at industries which can still collect on being at the top of the global value chain.

    I don’t know why you stop at homeless people considering they can spend they spare dollars further at the gas station as long as suppliers decide not to make bread cost $7.99 at the place they have access to

    • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      and the other person telling me baristas are the labor aristocracy.

      I’m sorry, what?

      I don’t know why you stop at homeless people

      I don’t.

      • panned_cakes [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        Okay well you told me it was an absurd statement to depict homelessness in the imperial core as being easier than in the periphery using this logic, so feel free to tell me how I led myself astray or idk just write me off as a loon

        • CarmineCatboy2 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          Because you’re talking about homeless people. The discussion there isn’t about how much a worker is being exploited or the purchasing power of currency. It’s about wether the country has safety nets at all and how brutal the police is. Not to mention weather conditions.

                  • panned_cakes [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                    5 months ago

                    I’m not trying to distort the actual situation, it is just that the aforementioned divide between workers who passively benefit from being in the US to reap the benefits of cheaper treats from the same people who make them indentured wage slaves, and those who are working at industries which can still collect on being at the top of the global value chain -that’s what helps determine where organizing is actually going to be effective. This is for instance why the tech or cybersecurity union isn’t going to do anything even if they took off but the service worker unions have been exploding.

                  • panned_cakes [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                    5 months ago

                    Upper percentile workers in these industries have benefits coming directly from their employer (making them blase about universal healthcare), have enough money to be comfortable and can still drown everything out with consumption and isolation for them and any family they want, a retirement package that gives them the imaginary class position of being an investor, and their mortage gives them the imaginary class position of being a real estate magnate. I think it’s pretty easy to notice how people like this treat those in a real precarious positon more shittily even though they should have solidarity with their issues and they often have this hostile pride about working in labor aristocracy industries especially military that makes them take out all workplace issues on other people to avoid blaming the job. Buy into weird management cults like Amazon, that’s really stuff you’ve go to have a reason to buy into. Nobody doing catering there believes that shit. But get onto the higher end of tech workers and all kinds of marketing and other indecipherable positions, they start to. Company liquor cabinet is too open.