141–150 of 168 posts
Nobody cares anymore. People are working, resources are being extracted, created and traded, economies are rolling. Money is there to facilitate that, but on its own it's pretty much worthless. Just wish inequality wasn't so fucking huge.
Inequality is not necessarily a bad thing. http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who cares though? Do you really want to keep something like the same pieces of furniture your whole life? Sounds depressing. People like buying new stuff.
If it's nice and in good condition, then yes. Nothing "depressing" about that. Even if tastes change, styles usually come back around, hence why good century- or MCM furniture is so sought after as antiques/vintage. It's to be seen if laminate or pressed fibre board furniture will stand the test of time, even if it comes back into style in 25 years. HDPE might last longer, as long as it doesn't discolour or crack.
We moved from a tiny condo to a house this summer. Rented a Home Depot van and ran around picking up free/extremely cheap solid wood furniture! Pieces that cost many thousands new, you can get for $50 or some other token amount. And then you keep it for years, decades, whatever.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most rich people don’t have all their wealth in cold hard cash. They have assets. You can’t force rich people to sell their assets. And if you did, it would crash the economy.
No sane person is sitting on mountains of cash.
Another figure I like to focus on it's public spending as percentage of GDP. In 2020, the U.S. government has spent 46.18% of the total GPD. Which means almost half of every economic activities in the U.S. were directly spent by the government. I think it's a more interesting number than debt or taxation as you can immediately see how much the government controls the economy whereas debt and taxation are just technic…
Even for Fiscal Year 2021 (which ends tomorrow), we won't have solid GDP numbers for a while, so that's at best speculative, and higher than most projections I’ve seen (most of which are down several points from 2020, which was a little below that.)
If the reference is to calendar year 2021 (which is the most natural unqualified reference), its even more speculative, as there is a day more than a full quarter of the year left.
> Which means almost half of every economic activities in the U.S. were directly spent by the government.
No, it doesn't. While GDP is the most common current measure of economy size, and may vary in proportion to total economic activity, it by design does not capture all economic activity. GDP measures end-purchaser value of production, not total economic activity. Lots of economic activity is (for instance) resale, which doesn't matter to GDP.
Nobody cares anymore. People are working, resources are being extracted, created and traded, economies are rolling. Money is there to facilitate that, but on its own it's pretty much worthless. Just wish inequality wasn't so fucking huge.
Inequality seems like a meaningless metric. It's not a good measure of a society's well being. For example, let's assume a country of 10 where 9 people have $1 million and 1 person has $100 trillion. The inequality is massive but everyone has a great standard of living.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would it default? It has USD (fiat it controls) denominated debt, it can literally pay any debt through monitory expansion.
Not that it would, it just a thought experiment. Hyperinflation and passing the tax via watering down the money supply to the foreign investors is essential the same as default right?
It's a misleading way of calculating the number, since it refers to all of the future debt obligations, including Social Security out many decades -- but also ignoring the fact that we'll be collecting taxes all that time. It's a bit like concluding that you're a million dollars in debt because you are going to need to buy food for the rest of your life. I suppose it's true -- it is something you need to plan for. Bu…
The situation is not ideal, but it isn't cataclysmic:
> The authors of the most recent report even took their calculations out to the year 2095. At that point, they estimate payroll taxes should still be able to cover 74% of payouts to Social Security recipients.
* https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/09/can-young-people-st...
The report in question:
* https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2021/tr2021.pdf
Two possible solutions (non-exhaustive): increase pay cheque contributions, use general revenues to make up the shortfall.
It's a misleading way of calculating the number, since it refers to all of the future debt obligations, including Social Security out many decades -- but also ignoring the fact that we'll be collecting taxes all that time. It's a bit like concluding that you're a million dollars in debt because you are going to need to buy food for the rest of your life. I suppose it's true -- it is something you need to plan for. Bu…
> The meaningful number is 2033, the year Social Security is projected to run out of money. This comment is excellent, except for one clarification: "Social Security" is not going to run out of money. The "Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund" will run out of money in 2033 (the disability insurance fund is solvent until 2057). After this happens -- and assuming no action by Congress -- Social Security will stil…
78% actually. See Figure II.D2:
* https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2021/tr2021.pdf
It falls to 74% by 2095.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The meaningful number is 2033, the year Social Security is projected to run out of money. This is the year the trust fund runs out of money, at which point Social Security won't be able to meet its full obligations, only what it can cover with current payroll taxes. Social Security can't run out of money unless the taxes that support it are eliminated. "Social Security won't be available for you Gen X'ers" is misle…
That's correct: the trust fund runs out and it won't be able to meet the full obligation. It will be able to meet partial obligations, though there's no law specifying how. This isn't GenX complaining that Social Security should go away. That was GenX complaining that Boomers spent the 80s spending extravagantly through the federal government, and racking up enormous debts, while patting themselves on the back for be…
The Silent Generation was politically dominant in the 1980s.
Boomer political dominance was more a 90s and later thing, and the first decade of that was something of a period of relative fiscal responsibility.
> We still expect to receive less Social Security than our forebears, and there's practically nothing we can do about it.
Wel, demographically, yes, there's little GenX alone can do about it. It’s pretty trivially fixable, though.
Another figure I like to focus on it's public spending as percentage of GDP. In 2020, the U.S. government has spent 46.18% of the total GPD. Which means almost half of every economic activities in the U.S. were directly spent by the government. I think it's a more interesting number than debt or taxation as you can immediately see how much the government controls the economy whereas debt and taxation are just technic…
> In 2021, the U.S. government has spent 46.18% of the total GPD. Even for Fiscal Year 2021 (which ends tomorrow), we won't have solid GDP numbers for a while, so that's at best speculative, and higher than most projections I’ve seen (most of which are down several points from 2020, which was a little below that.) If the reference is to calendar year 2021 (which is the most natural unqualified reference), its even mo…
Sorry meant 2020. The number is from wikipedia and is not speculative as far as I know: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governm...
> Lots of economic activity is (…) resale, which doesn’t matter to GDP.
The government reported expenses don’t included internal resale as well. GDP and public spending will go to infinite if it does, I fail seeing why it’s relevant here?