Last night, my emotions were complicated. I studied the current major economic trends in the country and the reasons leading to deflation all night. Money circulates in the financial system but never flows down to the grassroots level. Eventually, there will definitely be a direction for it to flow; I want to find investment opportunities. I was too tired from studying, so I thought I’d watch a video to relax. The first video pushed to me was about a day of daily wages in a factory, featuring mostly older men and women, their clothes soaked with sweat, and the meals provided were at a basic level. It’s highly likely that there are no social insurance benefits. Ironically, not long ago, the central bank issued a statement saying it would shift from preventing “price gouging” to preventing “low-price dumping.” Where do these low-price dumped goods come from? From the demographic dividend.
Everyone talks about the hardships of rural people. In my view, rural areas just have lower income, but the living environment and life experiences are much higher than those of middle-aged and elderly people working away from home. They don’t have to squeeze into dilapidated rental houses or work in noisy, high-temperature, and polluted environments. Although they can’t afford to entertain themselves, there is so much content online now; just scrolling through videos and short dramas makes life pass by. Most of those middle-aged and elderly workers away from home only have their phones for entertainment because their income goes towards paying down their children's home purchase deposits, becoming a grain of sand in the tide of major infrastructure projects. However, do they know that a house sold to them for one million yuan, even including the land, costs only about four hundred thousand to build? The other six hundred thousand is siphoned off by various rent-seeking intermediaries. These intermediaries, besides transferring assets abroad, also purchase real estate in first-tier cities domestically, further driving up housing prices. This is why the income of workers cannot keep up with the rising cost of housing; people’s methods of capital growth are different. But even this real estate is currently considered the best top-down capital distribution method, at least with three layers of capital falling to the grassroots level.
Sometimes I wonder why there is no longer space for major infrastructure projects in the country, yet we continue to engage in them. Previous large-scale infrastructure was at least from nothing to something, from 0 to 80%. Now, tearing down and rebuilding seems like trying to increase from 80% to 85%, yet the costs are higher than going from 0 to 80%. It’s completely a thankless task. The current deflation is because people are afraid to consume; goods are not selling, so factories first engage in price wars and then lay off workers, leading to even more reluctance to consume, forming a death spiral. Why not improve workers’ living standards by subsidizing their social insurance, meal costs, or building dormitories to encourage them to consume?
At the end of the video, the creator worked for five hours and earned 66 yuan, while recently, a certain platform's alpha project only requires a finger tap, and one can earn over ten thousand yuan in a month. I got results in Web3; I know this is the choice of capital, but where does the capital's money come from? Don’t tell me Web3 is foreign; the economy is globally integrated. Those connected individuals and middlemen in the country have siphoned off profits, transferring assets abroad, where the foreign financial system speculates on Web3. They inflate prices together, and when ordinary people's money comes in, they withdraw, seeking the next target, repeating the cycle. I dare not think deeply anymore; it makes me feel that every penny I earn in Web3 is filled with the sweat and blood of domestic workers.