Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

741–750 of 898 posts

Re: Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?

#741

Post by celticninja »

shawnz wrote: post #344
celticninja wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what technology and infrastructure was funded by the rich? I think you mean funded by the tax payer, rich and poor alike, but the poor pay a higher percentage of income in tax.

> the poor pay a higher percentage of income in tax They certainly don't pay a higher absolute dollar value of the total taxes received by the government though.

and your point is what? paying a higher percentage of their income makes life harder for them, than it does for the rich paying a higher dollar value but lower percentage of total income.

Re: Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?

#742

Post by mcv »

Natsu wrote: post #668
tsimionescu wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about ripping Wal-Mart apart and replacing it with what existed before - many different shops, each owned by a local person, and many different logsitics networks, each also owned by someone in the area? People on the right often claim to be for the free market and for small, decentralized government, but then turn around and love big, centrally planned conglomerates,just as long as they are owned by share-holder…

> How about ripping Wal-Mart apart and replacing it with what existed before - many different shops, each owned by a local person, and many different logsitics networks, each also owned by someone in the area? You underestimate, vastly, just what they've done to their supply chain, distribution network and logistics to make it that efficient and therefore cheap for their customers. It's part of the reason people swit…

Those supply chains may be efficient and cheaper, but due to their massive cnetralisation and optimisation, they're also more vulnerable. Just yesterday there was a discussion here on food supply chains and how small-scale local supply chains were more robust in the face of the current crisis.

Re: Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?

#743

Post by globular-toast »

mancerayder wrote: post #240
d_burfoot wrote: post #178

I work at a big tech company. One of the big realizations we've made is that WFH is not killing our productivity - it may actually be increasing it. If that is widely true, it has huge implications, and points towards an enormous amount of value that can be unlocked, by allowing professionals to work wherever they want (presumably in lower CoL locales). This article indicates that the housing crisis costs the US econ…

I don't know. I work in tech and almost everyone I know is finding themselves less productive and can't wait to get back to the office. Maybe because most of us live in an apartments and not magestic houses with woods or lakes behind them, and the feeling of being trapped indoors is neither healthy nor pushes one to work more effectively. My PC is in my living room and I'm on it, in the same seat, at the same desk, u…

Then move somewhere that has a proper home office. You can live anywhere now.

Re: Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?

#744

Post by taneq »

zwappt wrote: post #652
xtiansimon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Faith in humanity: buy stocks. No faith in humanity: buy gold. Speaking to a friend who bought stocks recently, they said, "I'm bullish on America." I might say if you are the opposite of bullish, then buy gold. And if you have no faith in humanity, buy a survivalist bunker.

The survivalist bunker idea is so stupid for the kind of people I see investing in them. These are Silicon Valley guys with $10+m in the bank but have never even been in a fistfight. If the shit truly hits the fan they are going to be very quickly relieved of their nice bunkers by a few Bud Light drinking boys 2 years removed from their Army deployment.

That's why the bunkers are in the mountains of New Zealand with some serious physical security. Your Bud Light boys are going to be duking it out with the rest of the riffraff in the suburbs while the bunker owners are going to be on a private jet.

Re: Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?

#745

Post by itsuart »

Redoubts wrote: post #661
eanzenberg wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get rid of the wealthy and enjoy becoming the USSR?

You mean go from a peasant nation to first (object,man,woman,space station) in space?

Yeah, the one that begun with bloodbath of the Civil War, purges, forced collectivization, continued through disastrous wars and GULAGs only to die 80 years later with social degeneration of unprecedented levels. That one USSR, yes.

Re: Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?

#746

Post by taneq »

catalogia wrote: post #321
jjoonathan wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the threat model is packs of desperate people looking to take your stuff, not bombs.

Being underground won't help much if your assailants decide to smoke you out. To stop that you'd need to shoot back or have a very robust and well designed fortification, with air filtration and redundant hidden vents. If you were committed to fighting back, an above ground fortification made out of reinforced concrete would be easier/cheaper to construct and would probably give you a better view of your surroundings…

> If you were committed to fighting back, an above ground fortification made out of reinforced concrete would be easier/cheaper to construct and would probably give you a better view of your surroundings. You'll also need several people you trust living there with you, so you could keep lookouts stationed around the clock and cover for each other.

A castle. You're describing a castle. :)

Re: Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?

#747

Post by celticninja »

malandrew wrote: post #609
celticninja wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what technology and infrastructure was funded by the rich? I think you mean funded by the tax payer, rich and poor alike, but the poor pay a higher percentage of income in tax.

> I think you mean funded by the tax payer, rich and poor alike The rich pay disproportionately a lot more. Most technology is funded by the rich either directly or through the majority of the taxes they pay. 97% of taxes are paid by the top 50%.

>The rich pay disproportionately a lot more.

And so they should.

the top 50% has a lower band of $41k annual income in the US. they are not rich, in many places they would struggle to support a family on that.

>The top 1 percent of American earners pay almost 40 percent of all federal income taxes. That’s more than the bottom 90 percent pay combined

that fact should not be celebrated as how generous the top 1% are but rather how unequal the system is that this can be the case.

Re: Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?

#748

Post by mcv »

Redoubts wrote: post #661
eanzenberg wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get rid of the wealthy and enjoy becoming the USSR?

You mean go from a peasant nation to first (object,man,woman,space station) in space?

This is something a lot of people forget: Russia before the revolution was not a modern, industrialised nation, it was a country still half stuck in the middle ages. I don't want to defend the atrocities and oppression of the Soviet system, but it has been very effective at industrialising a backwards peasant country.

(In fact, Marx considered Russia the least likely candidate for a communist revolution; it would start in England or Germany.)

Re: Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?

#749

Post by expialidocious »

annexrichmond wrote: post #674
expialidocious wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're Canadian and you think you have this beat, you're wrong. https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries

This is a naive way to interpret the situation -- it doesn't even account for testing rate or death rate.

What's naive is to complacently and condescendingly assume that Canada is handling this any better. It doesn't look that way from my province.

Re: Why is the stock market rallying when the economy is so bad?

#750

Post by mcv »

pyuser583 wrote: post #627
marcusverus wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advocates of big government love these metrics that have been put through the academic ringer, so-as to spit out whatever tortured output is expected. Why look at this kind of esoteric figure at all? Why not look at, you know, real numbers? Spending as percentage of GDP: Denmark - 52% of GDP Norway - 55% of GDP Finland - 53% of GDP Sweden - 50% of GDP Iceland - 42% of GDP Average - 50.5% USA - 22% of GDP What does al…

The US poverty rate is very misleading. It’s not the percent of people in poverty. It’s the percentage of people below a level of income at which not being impoverished is impossible.

Yeah, my impression is that the US has far more real poverty than Scandinavia, so I really wonder what the basis for these numbers is.
Post reply on HN