I'm Starting to Think That American Capitalism Might Be Kind of Evil

Maybe a system that requires the impoverishment of millions to right itself is slightly flawed.

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Here’s a fun little economic update that landed on Friday from the good people at CBS News:

It’s morning in America, people! CBS is saying this because, last week, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell told reporters that the Fed will continue raising interest rates in an effort to curb inflation—something which he admitted would cause some “softening of labor market conditions.” In case you were wondering, that is banker-speak for “the people who oversee the economy will ensure that many, many, many people will lose their jobs.”

From CNN (emphasis mine):

The Fed's latest economic projections, released Wednesday alongside a massive third consecutive interest rate hike of 75 basis points, show that the central bank is expecting the nation's unemployment rate to grow to 4.4% next year -- up from August's 3.7% — and potentially as high as 5%. Assuming no change in the labor force, that would mean around 1.2 million more people will be unemployed. At the high end of the Fed's range, at 5%, that would be 2.2 million more unemployed.

Yes, that’s millions with an m. Now, I will freely admit that I’m not a Krugmanesque economic super-genius (though he says some weird shit too—nobody’s perfect). So chalk it up to ignorance about the mystical beauty of the inner workings of American capitalism that, confronted with this news, I am left to wonder whether maybe, just maybe, a system that requires the deliberately engineered impoverishment of millions of people in order to right itself might have some flaws at its core—might even be, y’know, kind of evil.