41–50 of 122 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
practically free indeed, vs the practically have to pay for keeping my savings on a savings account... shrugs in discontent (tax is higher on my savings then the interest i get, for those that didn't understand)
pretty sure you're not paying any tax on the money in your savings account (beyond income tax in the year in which it was earned)
Meh to almost everything here except maybe housing. Corporate debt is high because DEBT IS STILL CHEAP (fed is changing that). Of course they're going to borrow fuckloads of money, it's practically free by some measures! The indexing "bubble" is actually a correction for a lack of value from active funds. I don't expect the correction to be corrected. The cryptocurrency bubble is tiny. 65 billion? That's a rounding e…
The housing bit interests me but I can't take it seriously when they're pointing at the single most irrationally priced area in the nation to make the overall situation look similar. Yes, if you want to live in SF you can expect to pay utterly idiotic amounts. But that's pretty much isolated to SF.
The real issue is that the big cities like Toronto are the economic centers of the region. When they pop, everything else will be in trouble too.
The reason? Too much capital, not enough growth to invest in because demand isn't growing. Demand isn't growing because 60% of the population is barely scraping by. How do you increase demand? Roll back the tax cuts to the wealthy who have nowhere to put that money except into speculation and bubbles. Redistribute it back to the working class in the form of tax cuts, credits, higher minimum wage, and social programs.…
The reason? Too much capital, not enough growth to invest in because demand isn't growing. Demand isn't growing because 60% of the population is barely scraping by. How do you increase demand? Roll back the tax cuts to the wealthy who have nowhere to put that money except into speculation and bubbles. Redistribute it back to the working class in the form of tax cuts, credits, higher minimum wage, and social programs.…
The problem with giving people more money to stimulate demand for those things is that it only solves half of the problem. Healthcare is limited by the supply of doctors so no matter how much government subsidizes it, the amount of people who can be seen by the constant number of doctors will be the same. In practice, this means the price will increase every time you try to give people more money for healthcare.
Housing is similar in that even if you give people money for new houses, everyone wants their house to be in a nice location and there are only so many houses that can fit in a constant amount of desirable real estate.
Without reforms to medical school and medical residency programs, healthcare might never be affordable. Without reforms to zoning laws, housing might never be affordable.
Without at least allowing for an increase to the supply of nice things, increasing the demand of nice things won't be very helpful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry for being short on content, but I wish, more people would really go deeper into theory and open their eyes on the things around them and realize, that capitalism is an extremely aggressive beast that has sucked up everything, that is not itself. Three days ago, I wondered (time and again) about all the fuzz about this site called facebook - within ten years it took something, that was not really exploited (…
There are several issues to be aware of with the way society and technology is evolving for sure, but when you just shout "wake up sheeple!" and offer nothing but hand waving, you are not contributing much in that regard.
All I ask for is to be more conscious about these, sometimes subtle, sometimes less so - things.
If it helps you, here's a simple framework of mine to develop some kind of directional feeling for technology: If it helps to lessen the power of a single entity it's perfect, if it enables you to do new things it's good, otherwise, it might only be a distraction.
Linux and free software is perfect, it is free and a huge enabler for all kinds of things - even for businesses. Bittorrent is good, because it is a huge enabler and took power off content distributors. Raspberry Pi is perfect, because it puts computing into a lot of hands. AWS is only good, because it is an enabler, but it actually feeds a single entity - so that's bad. Cryptocurrencies in theory are perfect, since they take power off single large entities - but they are not robust yet. Solar power is perfect, because it can a human make independent of a single large entity.
So, it is somewhat simple: There are things that liberate you - you as a person and let's you voluntarily choose to cooperate and there are things that lock you in - facebooks walled garden, adtech in general, where information asymmetry only grows - and many other things, that only make sense in the capitalist framework (in however shiny colors you want to paint its advantages).
Maybe that's a start?
I have no great difficulty believing we're due for another pop, but the only one of these that I find remotely alarming is the auto loan one. The rest seem to be one of: utterly irrelevant (number of cryptocurrencies in circulation?), lacking any frame of reference, or readily attributable to the economy still not being really recovered from the 2008 crisis.
I'm not concerned. Auto loans are inherently secured - they just repo your car. And unlike houses, auto prices are not drastically over valued.
That is not counting the systemic risk from regulation e.g. my diesel car is has lost considerable value and there is a non zero risk that I may not be allowed to drive to the city center in two years. The used car market for diesel cars tanked in Germany.
The widespread adoption of electric vehicles makes calculating the remaining value of a car difficult for any period beyond 5 years. When the buyers fully understand that and factor that into discounting future values the regional used car markets will move a step down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
practically free indeed, vs the practically have to pay for keeping my savings on a savings account... shrugs in discontent (tax is higher on my savings then the interest i get, for those that didn't understand)
You have to pay tax on your savings? What country are you in?
The government then makes up that you must be at least getting 4% (up to 9% if you have up to 1M) interest, and it wants 30% of that interest of anything over that 21K EUR limit.
Meanwhile the current interest at banks is anywhere from 0.05% to 1% here (most major banks are around 0.2%).
I have no great difficulty believing we're due for another pop, but the only one of these that I find remotely alarming is the auto loan one. The rest seem to be one of: utterly irrelevant (number of cryptocurrencies in circulation?), lacking any frame of reference, or readily attributable to the economy still not being really recovered from the 2008 crisis.
I'm not concerned. Auto loans are inherently secured - they just repo your car. And unlike houses, auto prices are not drastically over valued.
The reason? Too much capital, not enough growth to invest in because demand isn't growing. Demand isn't growing because 60% of the population is barely scraping by. How do you increase demand? Roll back the tax cuts to the wealthy who have nowhere to put that money except into speculation and bubbles. Redistribute it back to the working class in the form of tax cuts, credits, higher minimum wage, and social programs.…
when you put funny money in the market, tech booms, paper assets boom and investment in hard industry becomes less appealing. the investment in tech has failed to rise all boats. its only raising boats for some very select geographies, and perhaps that could have been changed if tech developed differently (less monopolies), but it didnt.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have to pay tax on your savings? What country are you in?
Not the parent comment but in the Netherlands where I live you have to pay tax on your savings once it exceeds about 21K EUR. The government then makes up that you must be at least getting 4% (up to 9% if you have up to 1M) interest, and it wants 30% of that interest of anything over that 21K EUR limit. Meanwhile the current interest at banks is anywhere from 0.05% to 1% here (most major banks are around 0.2%).
As a general principle taxing personal investment income should be taxes at least the same amount as labor income. Taxing labor has more negative externalities than taxing investment income.
