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U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

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Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#91

Post by mrep »

Covzire wrote: post #33
threeseed wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is news about this today. McConnell is demanding that the Democrats work with Republicans to cut entitlement programs. Even though they control all three branches and are the ones who passed the very expensive tax cuts.

Isn't it too early to say what the cost of the tax cuts were? If the Republicans are right, they'll spur enough economic growth to be a net gain across the board in both new economic activity (wealth). I don't know if there's a proper name for it, but I'd much prefer a dollar spent in the private sector so the government doesn't have to spend two just to accomplish the same thing.

Don't know why you are getting downvoted since you are right, it is called the Laffer curve [0]. Granted, most evidence shows the maximum tax revenue rate to be closer to 70% so it is highly unlikely that these tax cuts will increase revenue.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#92

Post by okonomiyaki3000 »

geofft wrote: post #21

Is it just me or has the HN front page been more overtly political in the last few days? This is #1, some fear-mongering about China from Bloomberg is #2 (as if we forgot their technical fear-mongering about China the other day), and both of the stories are mainstream news (explicitly discouraged in the Guidelines) and have no particular "hacker" angle, except insofar as many hackers participate in the world economy…

News about the economy is only political if you dislike the current administration and hope to blame them for all economic bad news while finding ways to avoid crediting them for any good news or the exact opposite of that. If you look at economic news as just facts about the current situation avoid forming strong opinions about which policies may or may not have brought that situation about, you won't see such things as political issues. You'll also probably be better positioned to make the most out of whatever economic climate you find yourself in.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#93

Post by nostrademons »

kbenson wrote: post #77
DoreenMichele wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are now 5 million visitors a year. So it's not really shocking that more "mainstream" stuff does better these days than it might have done back in the day. I tend to feel like I have no idea whatsoever what will do well here. I sometimes decline to post some article because I think it's not HN worthy, only to see it on the front page later. I sometimes get accused of posting political pieces when, to my mind, t…

> I sometimes get accused of posting political pieces when, to my mind, they are interesting for sociological reasons. As politics has become more contentious in recent years, both parties have staked out more and more things as "theirs", which promotes people seeing information that is for or against (or even just about , and confirmation bias does the rest) one of these areas as being political. There's likely also…

> both parties have staked out more and more things as "theirs"

As someone who identifies as a relatively apolitical moderate, this has gotten ridiculous in recent years. I mean, whoever thought that "social justice", "science", "reality-based", "clean air", or "international relations" would be identified as partisan liberal issues, or "freedom of speech", "strong economy", or "life" could be partisan conservative issues?

Even more strangely, both sides have claimed "rule of law", and yet it seems to mean completely opposite things depending on who says it.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#94

Post by kbenson »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #85
kbenson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sometimes get accused of posting political pieces when, to my mind, they are interesting for sociological reasons. As politics has become more contentious in recent years, both parties have staked out more and more things as "theirs", which promotes people seeing information that is for or against (or even just about , and confirmation bias does the rest) one of these areas as being political. There's likely also…

Well, I posted a tweet recently about the difficulties facing (some?) Native Americans in registering to vote. I hesitated to post it knowing it was clearly a political subject. But my interest was in how it was a kind of "bug" in the political system. Most likely, the two things were not specifically intended to disenfranchise Native voters. Neither taken alone is malicious. Taken together, the outcome is de facto d…

> I've largely given up on predicting what works here. I have essentially zero ability to do that.

That's part of what makes it fun, at least when it's general randomness that pulls really interesting people into the discussion :)

> Most likely, the two things were not specifically intended to disenfranchise Native voters. Neither taken alone is malicious. Taken together, the outcome is de facto disenfranchisement.

I think that would have been an interesting discussion, if it could have avoided devolving into political tribalism. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether it could have. I will say it's interesting to be early in a submission that slightly contentious and to help or see some early comments steered or redirected usefully, and see an article that spent a few minutes flagged come back to life.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#95

Post by NTDF9 »

tanderson92 wrote: post #61
NTDF9 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But their GDP hasn't been growing much either. They've been fighting deflation (or non-wage inflation) for a long long time. I'm not sure a deflation is good for us.

It doesn't follow that the deflation has been due to the deficit.

> It doesn't follow that the deflation has been due to the deficit.

It's obvious to the economic world. That's the reason BOJ keeps buying Japanese stocks and bonds (to keep asset prices high when others have stopped buying) and Japanese people have stopped investing in Nikkei (because holding cash == increasing value)

That's also the reason Japan (notoriously closed society) is admitting defeat and letting in immigrants to work.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#96

Post by kbenson »

nostrademons wrote: post #93
kbenson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sometimes get accused of posting political pieces when, to my mind, they are interesting for sociological reasons. As politics has become more contentious in recent years, both parties have staked out more and more things as "theirs", which promotes people seeing information that is for or against (or even just about , and confirmation bias does the rest) one of these areas as being political. There's likely also…

> both parties have staked out more and more things as "theirs" As someone who identifies as a relatively apolitical moderate, this has gotten ridiculous in recent years. I mean, whoever thought that "social justice", "science", "reality-based", "clean air", or "international relations" would be identified as partisan liberal issues, or "freedom of speech", "strong economy", or "life" could be partisan conservative i…

Definitely. I'm left more and more with feeling like I was happily walking around the center of a party chatting with people, and next thing I know, I look up and the majority of people have rushed the walls, leaving me milling about with with a few other people just as surprised as me.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#97

Post by tanderson92 »

NTDF9 wrote: post #95
tanderson92 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't follow that the deflation has been due to the deficit.

> It doesn't follow that the deflation has been due to the deficit. It's obvious to the economic world. That's the reason BOJ keeps buying Japanese stocks and bonds (to keep asset prices high when others have stopped buying) and Japanese people have stopped investing in Nikkei (because holding cash == increasing value) That's also the reason Japan (notoriously closed society) is admitting defeat and letting in immigr…

It’s convenient for deficit hawks that they can simultaneously blame deficits for deflation in Japan and fear monger about hyperinflation in the US.

Your comment also doesn’t link the deficit to the deflation, only speculates on the effects of and policy response to that deflation.

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#98

Post by tfehring »

Covzire wrote: post #33
threeseed wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is news about this today. McConnell is demanding that the Democrats work with Republicans to cut entitlement programs. Even though they control all three branches and are the ones who passed the very expensive tax cuts.

Isn't it too early to say what the cost of the tax cuts were? If the Republicans are right, they'll spur enough economic growth to be a net gain across the board in both new economic activity (wealth). I don't know if there's a proper name for it, but I'd much prefer a dollar spent in the private sector so the government doesn't have to spend two just to accomplish the same thing.

>I'd much prefer a dollar spent in the private sector so the government doesn't have to spend two just to accomplish the same thing.

This is a false equivalence because the government and the private sector spend money on very different things. If the tax cuts end up being funded by reductions in entitlement spending, for example, the private sector won't funnel money into Social Security and Medicare to offset those reductions.

>If the Republicans are right, they'll spur enough economic growth to be a net gain across the board in both new economic activity (wealth)

CBO projections imply that the nearly all of the long-term gains from the tax cuts will flow to foreign investors [0], so it certainly won't be a net gain for the US as a whole.

[0] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2018/05/10/cbo-estim...

Re: U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade

#100

Post by DoreenMichele »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #82
DoreenMichele wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you mean by that. I participate on Reddit. I experience HN and Reddit as completely different animals. I see them as very extremely an apples to oranges comparison.

Perhaps my comment was the prime example ]= What I meant is: Three years ago, HackerNews seemed (to me) to be a forum for intellectuals to discuss things business/tech-y. Opinions were mostly well thought out. When they weren't, they were challenged (thanks for calling me out [= ). Now it just seems like the break-room banter. A lot of sensationalist articles seem to make the front page. A lot of purely comedic comme…

Hacker News is a single entity. Reddit is a conglomeration of sub forums, each with their own interests, rules and moderators.

Reddit is a very cosmopolitan environment. It's like a big city, where you can participate in different social groups and there can be overlap in members, but it isn't guaranteed. Your behavior on one sub forum can impact your reputation on another, but it isn't the same as a situation where you deal with the same moderators and same group of people all the time for everything.

I don't hang on "the front page" of Reddit. I have a few niche interests I dabble in a bit over there.

I occasionally consider writing a blog post to talk about some of the differences between forums of various formats that I've experienced. It's more than I care to try to catalog in a comment here.

But when you say "HN is like Reddit," that doesn't even parse for me. Because it's like "So, exactly what part of Reddit are you comparing it to?" It strikes me as a six blind men and the elephant scenario.

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