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WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)

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Re: WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)

#151

Post by eropple »

treeman79 wrote: post #80
bryanlarsen wrote: post #25

The author obviously wants you to believe that it was the abandonment of the gold standard, but there are several other theories that have more credence with mainstream economists. The early 70's was the start of a horrible period of stagflation: stagnation coupled with inflation. Some do blame the loss of the gold standard, but the leading theory is the OPEC oil crisis. Others blame market regulations, the EPA was p…

People always underestimate the cost of regulations. Even when good, the cost is big. Health care is a good example. Keeping patient data private is a good thing. However it’s also absolutely crushing in its impact in the industry. Tiny projects can take months or years. HIPPA terrifies so many IT people. Driving away top developers.

Hi. "Top developer" (if that can be really quantified in the way you mean, I almost certainly qualify) here.

What keeps me from returning to the medical space is not trusting other people to take privacy and data security (not HIPAA and definitely not HIPPA) seriously enough. I don't feel sufficiently aligned with the decisions of any medical company I've worked for to compromise my ethics for them.

The asks HIPAA makes are minimal, largely reasonable where they exist, and are more about responsibility and management than anything a "top developer" has to care about.

Re: WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)

#152

Post by neutronicus »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #25

The author obviously wants you to believe that it was the abandonment of the gold standard, but there are several other theories that have more credence with mainstream economists. The early 70's was the start of a horrible period of stagflation: stagnation coupled with inflation. Some do blame the loss of the gold standard, but the leading theory is the OPEC oil crisis. Others blame market regulations, the EPA was p…

> we could see energy prices decline at a rate reminiscent of Moore's law.

Please do not base your vision of the future on exponentially-growing energy consumption

Re: WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)

#153

Post by swalsh »

wyldfire wrote: post #22

Some of these graphs are laughable and are candidates for "Spurious Correlations" [1]. Childhood obesity is not due to the US getting rid of the gold standard. [1] http://archive.is/9VFmh

So many aspects of our lives can potentially be linked back to the economy. Not really trying to make the argument that it is directly related, but income and obesity are highly correlated. Cheap calories often are bad calories. If going off the gold standard impacted the distribution of wealth. It might be plausible that could impact obesity.

* again, not aruging for or against the correlation. Just pointing out that it is hardly laughable.

Re: WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)

#154

Post by throwaway2048 »

justinzollars wrote: post #146
bryanlarsen wrote: post #25

The author obviously wants you to believe that it was the abandonment of the gold standard, but there are several other theories that have more credence with mainstream economists. The early 70's was the start of a horrible period of stagflation: stagnation coupled with inflation. Some do blame the loss of the gold standard, but the leading theory is the OPEC oil crisis. Others blame market regulations, the EPA was p…

> "... more credence with mainstream economists" Do you follow main stream economists today? Ray Dalio (Bridgewater), Jeffrey Gundlach (Double Line), Raoul Pal (Real Vision), and Warren Buffet (Berkshire) have made very big bets for Gold and Gold stocks because our currency is being debased at a rate we have never seen.

none of those people are economists, and that is in no meaningful way a statement on bretton woods

Re: WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)

#155

Post by [deleted] »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #25

The author obviously wants you to believe that it was the abandonment of the gold standard, but there are several other theories that have more credence with mainstream economists. The early 70's was the start of a horrible period of stagflation: stagnation coupled with inflation. Some do blame the loss of the gold standard, but the leading theory is the OPEC oil crisis. Others blame market regulations, the EPA was p…

[deleted]

Re: WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)

#156

Post by Afforess »

justinzollars wrote: post #146
bryanlarsen wrote: post #25

The author obviously wants you to believe that it was the abandonment of the gold standard, but there are several other theories that have more credence with mainstream economists. The early 70's was the start of a horrible period of stagflation: stagnation coupled with inflation. Some do blame the loss of the gold standard, but the leading theory is the OPEC oil crisis. Others blame market regulations, the EPA was p…

> "... more credence with mainstream economists" Do you follow main stream economists today? Ray Dalio (Bridgewater), Jeffrey Gundlach (Double Line), Raoul Pal (Real Vision), and Warren Buffet (Berkshire) have made very big bets for Gold and Gold stocks because our currency is being debased at a rate we have never seen.

> our currency is being debased at a rate we have never seen.

Looks at $1 gasoline. Looks at $2 eggs. Looks at $3 gallon of milk. Debased. Sure thing. (Maybe gasoline is an unfair example, but essential good prices are largely unchanged in the last decade. The point stands)

Re: WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)

#157

Post by bpt3 »

driverdan wrote: post #97
rtkwe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at economic graphs is hard because it’s laggy. The problems that lead to 2008 were a gradual accumulation through the preceding 10-20 years.

That's true which is why this is not how you present that data. This feels like it was created by a technical trader who was looking for signals without an understanding of the underlying data.

It was created by a business with an obvious agenda (and therefore an obvious conclusion they'd like you to draw).

Re: WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)

#158

Post by AndrewKemendo »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #25

The author obviously wants you to believe that it was the abandonment of the gold standard, but there are several other theories that have more credence with mainstream economists. The early 70's was the start of a horrible period of stagflation: stagnation coupled with inflation. Some do blame the loss of the gold standard, but the leading theory is the OPEC oil crisis. Others blame market regulations, the EPA was p…

I find the great decoupling fascinating and I don't think it gets enough study. There are a couple other things that I think contributed:

The massive increase of women joining the labor market in the US just after 1970 largely as a consequence of the widespread adoption of oral contraceptives in the young population. [1]

The People's Republic Of China was formally admitted to the UN in 1971, and following that in 1972 Nixon visited - effectively opening China as an actual labor market.

Edit: I think one of the major takeaways should be that, changes in worldwide monetary policy allowed for pent up demand for globalization to be realized and that accelerated shifts from onshore to offshore manufacturing. Basically it allowed the US to stop building, and start buying.

[1] https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2624453/Goldin_P...

Re: WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)

#159

Post by jasonhansel »

justinzollars wrote: post #146
bryanlarsen wrote: post #25

The author obviously wants you to believe that it was the abandonment of the gold standard, but there are several other theories that have more credence with mainstream economists. The early 70's was the start of a horrible period of stagflation: stagnation coupled with inflation. Some do blame the loss of the gold standard, but the leading theory is the OPEC oil crisis. Others blame market regulations, the EPA was p…

> "... more credence with mainstream economists" Do you follow main stream economists today? Ray Dalio (Bridgewater), Jeffrey Gundlach (Double Line), Raoul Pal (Real Vision), and Warren Buffet (Berkshire) have made very big bets for Gold and Gold stocks because our currency is being debased at a rate we have never seen.

Those are investors, not economists.

Also: the Forbes article about Buffett buying one gold-related stock notes that: "Mr. Buffett is not a fan of gold as an investment. " (Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertberger/2020/08/28/warren-... )

Re: WTF Happened in 1971? (2019)

#160

Post by taffer »

wheelie_boy wrote: post #19

Reminds me of https://tylervigen.com/old-version.html Especially some of those graphs about stuff like childhood obesity. It would be nice if all problems in a society had a single, simple cause (bad people doing stuff!) and a single, simple solution (stop 'em!), but the world is a complex place I did notice that the people hawking bitcoin didn't include any graphs about climate change..

Essentially, this website wants to make you believe that going off the gold standard (which only existed on paper at the time) is the root cause of all the bad things in the world. All documented by cherry-picked numbers and shoehorned graphs. And now we are supposed to buy Bitcoin to make everything better.

It is crazy that this wacky stuff is upvoted on HN.

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