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There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

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Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#31

Post by benjohnson »

diamondhandle wrote: post #26

Our job in life is to engage in value creation. When money is decoupled from value creation, your long-term bet is that it will lose its value, as value creation is what actually matters in the “real” world. This is also why “crypto” (the asset class, not technology) is so corrosive, because it makes people who have done approximately nothing to create value in society, but who’ve enjoyed a massive boost in monetary…

Your great advices pays dividends much further down the road too - focusing on work and creating value is also good for your children. Sadly, there’s been many children that took decades to get out of their entitled mindset caused by easy money from their parents or the government.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#32

Post by tim333 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #21
paulpauper wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then how come the US economy boomed after 2009 in spite of unprecedented stimulus and other programs. Not saying that the programs caused the expansion, but it did not seem to hurt it either. Everyone who said that the printing would cause inflation, a repeat crisis, recession, or other problems, were wrong.

Doesn't something feel wrong about the post 2008 "boom"? Theoretically the economy is doing great but you have constant social upheaval, a generation where many are still living with their parents, and the need for constant central bank stimulus in the form of cheap credit. I sometimes wonder if we've managed to mask the real state of the economy by pumping the metrics to make it look like it's fine.

Things are kind of distorted from what would be fair. The near zero interest rates have lead to high property prices which has made owners rich and renters poor in a rather arbitrary manner.

It's like the governments are trying to control a lot of variables with only a couple of levers.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#33

Post by makomk »

paulpauper wrote: post #11

>If crisis had opened the door to a new way of thinking about money, the checks closed the door on the old: Gone was an understanding of money as a scarce, quasi-natural resource to be managed disinterestedly by apolitical experts. The question was: What was replacing it? Would MMT’s chartalist view of money as a tool of state power prevail? (The undeniable success of the pandemic cash drop seemed to be a point in it…

Remember, CPI is just the average of a particular basket of goods weighted in a particular way - it doesn't necessarily represent the real levels of inflation people will see. I know for example that here in the UK, the low figures were the result of price increases in things people were actually buying like food, computers, cars, holiday stays when we weren't locked down, etc being counterbalanced by lower increases or even decreases in things they weren't buying as much anymore like clothes. (Our better news sources went out their way to explain this.) So the average person would have seen rather higher inflation than the CPI and RPI would suggest.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#35

Post by mam2 »

diamondhandle wrote: post #26

Our job in life is to engage in value creation. When money is decoupled from value creation, your long-term bet is that it will lose its value, as value creation is what actually matters in the “real” world. This is also why “crypto” (the asset class, not technology) is so corrosive, because it makes people who have done approximately nothing to create value in society, but who’ve enjoyed a massive boost in monetary…

There is no justice in the world. You seem to be strugglinh with this idea :(

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#36

Post by roenxi »

AlexandrB wrote: post #21
paulpauper wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then how come the US economy boomed after 2009 in spite of unprecedented stimulus and other programs. Not saying that the programs caused the expansion, but it did not seem to hurt it either. Everyone who said that the printing would cause inflation, a repeat crisis, recession, or other problems, were wrong.

Doesn't something feel wrong about the post 2008 "boom"? Theoretically the economy is doing great but you have constant social upheaval, a generation where many are still living with their parents, and the need for constant central bank stimulus in the form of cheap credit. I sometimes wonder if we've managed to mask the real state of the economy by pumping the metrics to make it look like it's fine.

Add to that the collapse in wage growth and the conspicuous difference in the rate of improvement in Asia vs in America.

The World Bank says [0] the US GDP per capita has more than doubled since 1996. In real terms. Computers have been a big boost, but it seems a tough sell that the US population has actually seen a real doubling in that time. That is saying a dude with a house in 1996 is a dude with 2 houses now. Is that arguably true? Where is the stuff?

[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#37

Post by rufus_foreman »

tcbawo wrote: post #8

Money is stored wealth, the ability to buy goods and services in the future. The problem seems to be that we live in a time of societal upheaval. The future of stored wealth becomes cloudier and more uncertain the further you go out in time. So, what is the best place to store wealth? Will my wealth be eroded by inflation? Will the companies I invest in become obsolete by technology or market-manipulating nation stat…

>> The problem seems to be that we live in a time of societal upheaval

What time wasn't a time of societal upheaval? The Great Depression? World War 2? The Cold War? The Sixties? Stagflation? The Reagan era? The Clinton era? Post-9/11? Trump?

Markets climb a wall of worry.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#38

Post by gruez »

newsclues wrote: post #20
jfengel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, no, I haven't. My groceries are the same. My electric bill is stable. The watch I'm replacing today is the same price today as ten years ago when I got its predecessor. I don't know if it's because I buy different things from you, or if I live in a different place from you, or what. But my andecdote is that no, I'm not paying more for stuff than a year ago.

Odd that some people don’t notice things like this... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkflation Do you actually track spending or just don’t notice?

>Do you actually track spending or just don’t notice?

Do you? The BLS does, and their inflation numbers for food is 3.5% YOY.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/cpi/

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#39

Post by the_gipsy »

benjohnson wrote: post #31
diamondhandle wrote: post #26

Our job in life is to engage in value creation. When money is decoupled from value creation, your long-term bet is that it will lose its value, as value creation is what actually matters in the “real” world. This is also why “crypto” (the asset class, not technology) is so corrosive, because it makes people who have done approximately nothing to create value in society, but who’ve enjoyed a massive boost in monetary…

Your great advices pays dividends much further down the road too - focusing on work and creating value is also good for your children. Sadly, there’s been many children that took decades to get out of their entitled mindset caused by easy money from their parents or the government.

Culture is the best inheritance you can give your children.

Re: There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble

#40

Post by Mattasher »

diamondhandle wrote: post #26

Our job in life is to engage in value creation. When money is decoupled from value creation, your long-term bet is that it will lose its value, as value creation is what actually matters in the “real” world. This is also why “crypto” (the asset class, not technology) is so corrosive, because it makes people who have done approximately nothing to create value in society, but who’ve enjoyed a massive boost in monetary…

I agree with your last statement, but I think you are mixing cause and effect. Crypto is exploding because our system is already corroded. Starting with the creation of the Fed, and tracing through endless money printing and complex financial instruments which let well-connected companies and politicians create paper wealth out of nothing, we've decoupled money from value.

Savings pay no interest, manual labor doesn't scale, but rent seeking and financial games get many people riches in no time.

What are the incentives in this kind of a system, and where are the safe harbors for storing value? And if you can't in value creation, your safest bet may be to gamble.

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