161–164 of 164 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is QE a market distortion? Is all monetary policy a market distortion? If we used a gold standard is that not a market distortion? If the price of gold changes drastically due to gold mines closing/opening changing interest rates is that a market distortion?
QE is a market distortion because it consists of orders intended primarily to manipulate prices.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah not really. It depends on a lot more context than just number of skilled people unable to find employment. If I became the best person in the world at playing Pac-Man, but couldn’t find a job as a professional Pac-Man player, it would be ridiculous to say I was underemployed. The only situation I would find it reasonable to describe underemployment as a problem is when people who’s skills were marketable at the…
> If I became the best person in the world at playing Pac-Man, but couldn’t find a job as a professional Pac-Man player, it would be ridiculous to say I was underemployed. It would be ridiculous, because we're not talking about one person with a fringe occupation as a strawman, we're talking about large groups of normal people facing systemic problems.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That I can believe, but it seems a bit double-speaky to call it a savings glut, right? My untutored intuition tells me that its a glut of savings in a small number of people's hands. People who don't have a glut of savings, or even significant debt, which is a lot of people, can probably think of a lot of good uses for that money. Assuming this sketch is accurate, the problem is too much money in the hands of too few…
Can they though? What do you have in mind when you say they can think of good uses for the money? The savings we are talking about here are really "funds looking for yield", in fact must be because Western monetary policy punishes cash saving through inflation. And finding great investments at scale is definitely hard. I doubt you know lots of people who can do it. Bear in mind by this definition houses and corporate…
The framing of the problem as a "savings glut" reflects this fundamentally wealth and investment oriented way of thinking about economics.
Is it because say unemployment has proven to be a strange concept these days with "underemployment" being a larger concern? Perhaps they were simply predicting the wrong thing / things that don't seem as relevant.
The US non-farm payrolls report does include average hourly earnings and average hours worked per week but for some reason it's not as widely reported. IMO the multiple of those 2 values and participation rate are much more meaningful than the total number of jobs added or removed. The average hourly earnings has been hovering around a 3% YoY increase for years now: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/average-…