#Shockingly simple math for plus

The divergence between the fate of finance and that of society was writ even larger by the events of 2020. After an initial shock to asset prices in March 2020, financial markets swiftly recovered, and it was labour markets and wages where the devastating force of the global recession was felt.

#Shockingly simple math for plus

The additional crisis of the coronavirus pandemic is unprecedented in its social impact, but saw a repeat of exceptional interventions to prop up the financial system, plus support for the ‘real’ economy that often went directly to shareholders (Brenner 2020). While populist electoral breakthroughs have some relation to economic resentments (Magni 2017), none has yet translated into a coherent alternative economic order.

The system has become morally discredited, without being significantly challenged by an alternative. Inequality continues to rise, and status anxieties and resentments with it (Piketty 2014, Payne 2017). It devours the social fabric in which it is embedded (Streeck 2017) and has come to depend on exceptional forms of state and central bank intervention to be sustained (Davies 2013, Gane 2015). Normative justifications for this regime have been fraying. Hovering over this extended crisis is the larger existential one of global environmental threats that could render our current model of civilisation unviable by the end of this century. These include rising household indebtedness wage stagnation deflating economic demand, de-skilling of employment accompanied by a slump in productivity growth, and rising asset prices. The policy responses to the global financial crisis succeeded in avoiding a more severe collapse of the capitalist order, but perpetuated and exacerbated many of the structural conditions that preceded it. Using semi-structured interviews with leading FIRE advocates and analysis of books and blog content, this paper assesses the ambivalent moral economy of FIRE, to understand how and why individuals seek this unusual relationship to capitalism, that pursues the status of rentier through the strategic rejection of materialism. At the same time, this freedom is predicated on passive investment in the stock market and reliance on financial techniques for representing the future. Freedom comes to consist not only in independence from the labour market, but also from materialism, consumerism, and consumer debt. While it shares certain features in common with other ‘financial independence’ ideologies and self-help communities, one thing that distinguishes it is the emphasis on frugality.

The Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) community consists of individuals each personally dedicated to reducing consumption, so as to build up financial surpluses that are eventually adequate to live off.