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Ask HN: It seems like everyone is getting rich?
51–60 of 112 posts
Re: Ask HN: It seems like everyone is getting rich?
#52For every transaction, there is typically a winner and a loser. The winners brag, and the losers keep quiet.
In sales, you're looking for a (perceived) win-win situation. In that situation, both sides get to brag about their good deal. One of them perhaps later regrets their decision, but they won't send a press release about that.
And so we hear two positive stories, and no negative.
Re: Ask HN: It seems like everyone is getting rich?
#53If it is any consolation, we will probably experience massive inflation in the next 20-30 years. Those with primarily financial (and not physical) assets will be hardest hit. At some point the economic wizardry will hit the fan. But on a less depressing note, I suggest paying less attention to the areas where people are “getting rich.” Money isn’t the measure of true value and you will rarely find a correlation betwe…
It's not the rich getting richer, it's monopolists getting richer at the expense of non monopolists. When the strongest monopoly of all, money, ceases to be a monopoly through negative interest rates or inflation then the monopolists simply flee into the next best thing. There isn't just a debt cycle, there is also a land bubble cycle because land is the second most powerful monopoly.
Monopolists not only includes the rich but also average home owners whose land is appreciating absurdly quickly. The problem isn't with negative interest rates or inflation because those merely break the monopoly power of money.
Re: Ask HN: It seems like everyone is getting rich?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two points... First, high inflation is good for holders of some financial assets (e.g. stocks) and bad for others (bonds). It's good for existing borrowers and bad for existing lenders. It's good for those in debt and bad for those who saved cash. Essentially, high inflation punishes financial frugality and rewards financial speculation. Second, massive inflation-caused economic collapse is highly unlikely in any dev…
I’m not basing my prediction on the doomsayers, more on general decline of the Western world overall. There are too many issues piling up and to my mind, this will eventually cause some serious economic problems. But I’m not an economist, so I don’t take my word for it. My broader point is simply that the rich today are succeeding in a system which might not be stable in a few decades.
>There are too many issues piling up and to my mind, this will eventually cause some serious economic problems. But I’m not an economist, so I don’t take my word for it.
It's the opposite. There half a dozen extremely serious economic problems at the root of the system that were papered over during the WW2 rebuilding of the economy (because growth is easy if you start from nothing) and all the things you worry about are merely their symptoms.
Re: Ask HN: It seems like everyone is getting rich?
#55You're experiencing a classic case of selection bias. You're much more likely to hear about the person that got rich trading crypto rather than the person that lost a lot of money trading crypto.
This isn't just selection bias. At this point you can buy random crypto/stocks/real estate almost blindly and just hold onto it and see its value appreciate more every day. There are occasional dips but on average there's a massive upwards trend.
Re: Ask HN: It seems like everyone is getting rich?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
The western world is better off by almost all socio-economic metrics than a half century ago. And hugely better off than a century ago. You actually are basing your predictions on doomsayers. Oh, and debt levels are high because rates and inflation is low.
No, I’m basing my predictions on a thorough study of history and the phases of civilizations. There are several deep cultural and structural problems with both the US and the EU, and I find it difficult to not see this continuing. And as far as I know, millennials are economically worse off than their boomer parents.
There are a bunch of reasons but lets start with a big one.
People get richer but they optimize their tax burden. Remember, debt creates money. There is always enough money in the economy to repay all debts. Interest merely circulates a few times between bank and debtor which may require some inflation but not hyperinflation. There might not be enough tax revenue when those with enough money stop paying them. This causes an excessive tax burden on the working upper class, the middle class and below while Gates and Jeff Bezos earn money off of the appreciation of land which has a much lower tax burden.
People started measuring their wealth through the monopoly of land. Since land is in finite supply inefficient land use and speculation have become profitable because there is an underlying economic rent to be extorted out of people living on or near the land. Governments spend millions or billions on infrastructure only to see untaxed land values go up.
Work piling. Either you get a job or not. The threat of unemployment causes desperation and extreme competition for low skilled jobs while employers start demanding degrees for all the "good jobs" which are locked behind other forms of monopolies like college education and medical licensing. If work was shared among people then we could have a shorter working week like all those economists talking about a 15 hour work week (ok it would be 30 hours or more but still). This is especially pronounced because low skill workers not only compete with other Americans, they also compete with every low skill worker around the world. You need an unfair moat to compete in such a world.
Re: Ask HN: It seems like everyone is getting rich?
#57If it is any consolation, we will probably experience massive inflation in the next 20-30 years. Those with primarily financial (and not physical) assets will be hardest hit. At some point the economic wizardry will hit the fan. But on a less depressing note, I suggest paying less attention to the areas where people are “getting rich.” Money isn’t the measure of true value and you will rarely find a correlation betwe…
Worried about this. I hear that a loaf of bread will be 20 dollars and I see it happening. Is there anything I can do to prepare for this? Such as investing in more stocks, index funds,etc? I feel like my income isn't matching the rate of inflation.
I honestly don't understand what is hard to comprehend about this. No food -> famine -> hyperinflation of food prices as sellers take every dollar you have.
The question is, how is that scenario supposed to happen and even if it did, why not just invest into farms? Is the government going to repossess all the land off the "white colonialists" and give it to native americans? If yes then the country didn't fall because of hyperinflation, hyperinflation was the symptom like every other country where the problems happened first and then the symptoms came.
Re: Ask HN: It seems like everyone is getting rich?
#58I had the dot com boom pass me by, saw many become rich, while I worked on ATG Dynamo based e-Commerce sites. I had the Web 2.0 boom pass me by, I remained a cog in the wheel, again saw many folks get ahead.
Was it distracting or mildly discouraging? Sure.
I finally jumped onto the touchscreen and app boom, lost a lot of time and money, but sharpened my development skills.
I have seen multiple booms where closed-networks of folks and insiders make huge money leaving the vast majority out.
I do my thing based on my capabilities and networking skills. Sucks to be an introvert on the autism spectrum. I have learnt to not be impressed by the highlight-reel of folks that is heavily curated. If you dig deep, you will learn the insider stories of the superficially happy-family folks and the ones with the latest cars.
Each of us have our own miseries, even the ones with money. Especially the ones with boat-loads of money.
Re: Ask HN: It seems like everyone is getting rich?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
as someone who is always happy to see your comments: you are interested to me, not because you are poor but because of what you achieve while being poor. (And if I could choose I'd rather w7sh you were not poor.)
Yeah, I'm a nega-millionaire. The millions my little family should have spent on medical care and didn't is, on the one hand, better than the path I should have been doomed to. On the other hand, I still can't pay my bills and the absence of millions of dollars worth of medical care and an early death falls under "absence of evidence" or some garbage. It does nothing to give me credibility. It's a nice little headfuc…
If that net worth consists of land it isn't worthy of praise at all until it is taxed according to its monopoly power.
The Germans would say "Ownership has its responsibilities".
Re: Ask HN: It seems like everyone is getting rich?
#60I am no economist, but from what I understood, what’s happening is that central banks have been pumping cash into the economies since the 2009 crisis. They were starting to end this when covid happened, so they reverted course and kept pumping. What happens when the money supply is high is that banks can then grant cheap loans to people or institutions who are solvable. So they give loans to already rich entities who…
The problem is that fixed supply money (combined with legal tender) is effectively a monopoly just like land. When you increase the supply or lower interest rates into negative territory it boosts the profits of other monopolies like land. You now get a debt cycle followed by a land cycle since money and land (rented for shelter) are needed to survive in society. The answer is obviously a tax on land values.