151–160 of 249 posts
- MacroVoices Podcast[0]
- The Market Huddle podcast[1]
Lyn has been a guest on the Market Huddle (so you can hear her talk through this article) and Stephanie Kelton has been interviewed on MacroVoices.
[0]: https://www.macrovoices.com/
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTNgTBKATr18Z7kR32rKOBw
Earlier quoted context omitted.
haha, typical HN sentiment. Don't me wrong, studying in-demand tech skills is great, but it's hardly a scalable solution.
> it's hardly a scalable solution Isn't enabling and educating the population the original scalable solution to low growth?
You're not going to get much growth if all you do is educate people. You also need to give them something to do, and that requires a national investment strategy.
This is exactly the difference between the insanely productive post-war economy, which developed and then commoditised electronics and computing, and the modern lazy bullshit job economy which is built on financialised gambling-at-scale and ad tech rather than game-changing creative invention.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inflation is a tax on interest-bearing, interest-indexed, or financial instruments; loans, bonds, debt, and insurance claims (policies are priced in uninflated currency, claims are paid in inflated currency, see the 1980s liability insurance crisis triggered by high inflation, though blamed on much else). Wage-earners, and fixed-income households if inflation indexed are largely untouched by inflation.
Sure, but I don't see how wage-earners are untouched by inflation?
Wage-earners see wages increase with inflation. Possible slight lag, but effectively little.
Cash savings of course devalue.
Asset holdings (real estate, equities) appreciate with inflation.
Debts are reduced -- values fall as money is diluted (the gain side of banks' loss).
The fundamental issue with this article is that the inflation number is a lie. Housing costs are the key cost for every consumer but are excluded from CPI. Western countries have been running fiscal deficits consistently for decades, QE and low interest rates for 10 years. Yet for academics and central bankers the only answer to growth is more debt. Low interest rates benefit only the asset rich. They deprive everyon…
Another thing that bugs me: many countries are taking "tech improvements" in inflation. For example: suppose a TV costs 2x now than what it did 10 years ago, but it is also twice the size, for many countries this means 0% of inflation. Problem is, you can't buy the old stuff. For example, are cars now much faster, safer, etc... than cars of 1950? Yes. But, if you are buying your first car, you can't buy one from 1950…
The fundamental issue with this article is that the inflation number is a lie. Housing costs are the key cost for every consumer but are excluded from CPI. Western countries have been running fiscal deficits consistently for decades, QE and low interest rates for 10 years. Yet for academics and central bankers the only answer to growth is more debt. Low interest rates benefit only the asset rich. They deprive everyon…
> the inflation number is a lie It is also a lie to say there is a single inflation number. There are CPIs calculated including regional food, energy and real estate prices [1]. For policy makers, varying interest rates according to Syrian politics and Midwestern crop yields is too fine-grained. But to suggest the data are hidden is false. [1] https://www.bls.gov/regions/new-york-new-jersey/news-release...
Americans especially should be worried about their income security at 45+ years of age, when health insurance premiums become $12k to $14k per year per person plus $15k oop max, in today’s money (who knows what it will be 20 years in the future).
If you lose your source of income that comes with employer subsidized health insurance in that 45 to 65 year range before you get to Medicare, and you have a medical problem, all of your assets might be in play since the sky is the limit when it comes to healthcare costs. Not to mention you will have lost ability to learn income if you are having to take care of yourself or your spouse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right, I had misunderstood you. We can be more efficient with our ressources, what I had in mind was the total ressource consumption/extraction. Any efficiency we gain is largely offset by the rebound effect in our current system of production, i.e the GDP grows faster than the ressource intensity can catch up with. And of course, the data has to be world-wide since the economy is globalized [1]. [1]: https:/…
> efficiency we gain is largely offset by the rebound effect in our current system of production, i.e the GDP grows faster than the ressource intensity can catch up with We agree on this. But nothing requires the base resource load to increase. That's my point. Blaming capitalism for our ecological problem is a cop out. It makes it sound like we have to re-engineer our civilization to escape resource over-use. We don…
And again the data we have shows that GPD is positively correlated with energy consumption. I take your point that it does not have to be this way though, let's just say I am not convinced.
>Blaming capitalism for our ecological problem is a cop out.
Ok I deserved that, it is true that blaming capitalism is a bit of my go to card. But to be fair lets not act like our system of production has no impact on how we consume ressources. You have a point though: ressource over-use is not strictly a problem of capitalism, a thing to keep in mind for the proponent of the fully automated luxury communism utopia.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the inflation number is a lie It is also a lie to say there is a single inflation number. There are CPIs calculated including regional food, energy and real estate prices [1]. For policy makers, varying interest rates according to Syrian politics and Midwestern crop yields is too fine-grained. But to suggest the data are hidden is false. [1] https://www.bls.gov/regions/new-york-new-jersey/news-release...
What none of the inflation statistics capture is volatility, or the feeling of volatility. Wages can go up 5% per year, but if you think you have a decent chance of losing your income and not being able to get it back in your working years, you will need to act more conservatively. Americans especially should be worried about their income security at 45+ years of age, when health insurance premiums become $12k to $14…
Because that’s a totally different thing? It’s not like nobody measures it.
We don’t criticise the kilogram for not telling us if it’s going to rain tomorrow.
The fundamental issue with this article is that the inflation number is a lie. Housing costs are the key cost for every consumer but are excluded from CPI. Western countries have been running fiscal deficits consistently for decades, QE and low interest rates for 10 years. Yet for academics and central bankers the only answer to growth is more debt. Low interest rates benefit only the asset rich. They deprive everyon…
And the only way you see it in full is when you are self-employed. If you have employer-sponsored health insurance, some part of the increase is covered by the company - at the expense of your salary increase or bonus, of course.
If they print money to build new roads, bridges, (clean) power plants, schools -> good. If they print money to put in stocks and real estate -> bad. The one thing creates real value and enables more real value creation in the future. The other one has no effect on the real economy and wages. Driving real estate prices is even bad: at some point, no real economic strategy (aka. business model) is able to sustain the n…
Good as far as it goes. But the USA is full of roads that the local county can barely afford to plow, much less maintain. Japan built lots of bridges to nowhere trying to keep the money-machine going. A bridge is only valuable if the use-value exceeds the creation-cost. And those opportunities are more scarce now after a century of building.
The fundamental issue with this article is that the inflation number is a lie. Housing costs are the key cost for every consumer but are excluded from CPI. Western countries have been running fiscal deficits consistently for decades, QE and low interest rates for 10 years. Yet for academics and central bankers the only answer to growth is more debt. Low interest rates benefit only the asset rich. They deprive everyon…
Another thing that bugs me: many countries are taking "tech improvements" in inflation. For example: suppose a TV costs 2x now than what it did 10 years ago, but it is also twice the size, for many countries this means 0% of inflation. Problem is, you can't buy the old stuff. For example, are cars now much faster, safer, etc... than cars of 1950? Yes. But, if you are buying your first car, you can't buy one from 1950…