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Federal Reserve raises rates by 0.75%

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Re: Federal Reserve raises rates by 0.75%

#471

Post by plorg »

TheBlight wrote: post #397
hypersoar wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't we expect people who work in cities to be able to live dignified lives in those cities? There are always going to be janitors, home care providers, baristas, grocery store employees, etc. Our daily lives depend upon them. It's insane to me that we have a system that requires those people to exist but barely pays them enough to afford to live.

If workers couldn't afford to live close to those cities they'd move somewhere else. Those cities would then experience a shortage of workers. Wages would have to rise to attract new workers. Costs to everyone else in those cities would have to rise in order to accommodate this. If non-workers could no longer afford these costs they would have to sell their homes and move out. This would increase supply and bring the…

Assume a frictionless turtle.

Re: Federal Reserve raises rates by 0.75%

#472

Post by scoofy »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #433
scoofy wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree with all of this, though, i think two of the points may see counter-intuitive outcomes: >* Housing bubble. Near zero central bank/bank interest rates has inflated a housing bubble. Higher interest rates will decrease housing prices since fewer buyers will be able to afford higher interest mortages. Ehh... we should expect this, but supply may meet demand, instead of the other way around. We could se…

“ We could see an unprecedented ramp down in the already unprecedentedly low inventory.” What do you mean by this?

Rate lock-in homeowners refusing to sell because they're sustainable at current mortgage, but they'd be effectively underwater if they move.

Thus, supply of housing declines to stabilize price because it matches stable demand.

Re: Federal Reserve raises rates by 0.75%

#473

Post by vgeek »

ugl wrote: post #419
bombcar wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The railway heyday in the US was famous for this, extremely high wages at the time, but company town, company store, and miles and miles from anywhere. Few were able to come out the other end much better off. You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store

Coal also. Lead to things like Blair mountain[0], where poison gas bombs from WWI were dropped on American workers, in America. There's four boxes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

Thank you. Most people haven't heard of this (even in KY/WV), which is odd, being one of the few instances where the military was used against citizens, helping illustrate that labor is to remain docile when abused.

There are a handful of regional books detailing the mine wars (Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields, The WV Coal Wars/more elementary and Robert Shogan's The Battle of Blair Mountain) that are worth checking out. PBS (American Experience?) also had a 2 hour special a few years back that focused on WV and Mother Jones that was worth watching.

Re: Federal Reserve raises rates by 0.75%

#474

Post by millimeterman »

ericns wrote: post #445
coryfklein wrote: post #430

If you've come here for informed commentary on economics, so far it seems the comments section is about par for the course by internet standards. If you're looking for informed professional analysis, I highly recommend the Inside Economics podcast by Moody's Analytics[0]. They post at least once per week and they often discuss recession odds, they break down the causes of inflation, and regularly host industry expert…

Hmmm, Moody's where do I remember that name from? Oh ya here it is - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/14/moodys-864m... Economics is the lies told by some middle class assholes with a degree and/or credential that get paid just enough by upper class assholes to trick low class rubes.

> Economics is the lies told by some middle class assholes with a degree and/or credential that get paid just enough by upper class assholes to trick low class rubes.

Why does nonsense like this get parroted so much? Economics is as much a science as any other social science. Which is to say that it's certainly imperfect and is subject to social problems surrounding science (e.g. the replication crisis), but it's still very much a science. Obviously it's an evolving field with many areas of disagreement among experts, but what science isn't? Plenty of economic principles/models have strong predictive power and broad consensus from economists.

As for your (apparent) critique, economics currently isn't very good at long-term (especially macroeconomic) forecasting. But then science isn't great at predicting weather or earthquakes long term, yet we don't dismiss those fields as lies propagated by the elite. This isn't a defense of Moody's or anything - they may well have ignored the risks of mortgage-backed securities for financial gain, and I can't speak to the accuracy of their podcast.

But your argument seems no different than claims that because pharmaceutical companies have lied and caused harm in the name of profits, the entire field of medicine is nothing but lies and propaganda and we should throw it out and switch to curing cancer with juice cleanses.

Re: Federal Reserve raises rates by 0.75%

#475

Post by twblalock »

brandall10 wrote: post #441
TheBlight wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't view housing as an investment. I look at it as I need a place to live. If I make money on it after I'm done living there then that's great.

If that's the case, why not just rent?

Some non-investment reasons: stability, locking in your cost of living for many years, the ability to remodel your home to make it look the way you want it to, and no risk of being forced to move because the home you live in gets sold and the buyer wants to live in it themselves.

In Japan, houses generally depreciate over time, yet the home ownership rate is still 60% because the other benefits of home ownership are so attractive.

If you know you want to live in a particular area for a long time, and you can afford it, home ownership is usually an attractive move.

Re: Federal Reserve raises rates by 0.75%

#476

Post by kthejoker2 »

ren_engineer wrote: post #455
treis wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on. Asia didn't invent the iPhone. They're not leading the self driving car race. The internet runs on AWS/Azure/GCloud not any Asian provider. Asia is making incremental improvements on products invented in the West. They're not the ones inventing classes of devices or breaking new ground.

>Asia didn't invent the iPhone They didn't invent it, but they make probably 90% of the hardware components

"make", but who owns the patents

Re: Federal Reserve raises rates by 0.75%

#477

Post by QuarterReptile »

hgomersall wrote: post #359
QuarterReptile wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow your parallelism. But yeah, you'd probably have to raise taxes to climb out of the hole we've dug. Or you could go for MMT (sticking your head in the hole.)

I would infer from your comment that you don't understand what MMT is. If you do, perhaps you could clarify how it involves sticking your head in a hole?

Sure, I'll clarify. Do you have objections to it as laid out on Wikipedia? If you have something that you think more accurately delineates its tenets, I'll address that instead.

I will give you a full answer once we've agreed on a concise explanation of it that you stand by, but the short version is that it mistakes effect for cause and assumes stability in various factors while undermining the bases for that very stability.

Re: Federal Reserve raises rates by 0.75%

#478

Post by ac29 »

thehappypm wrote: post #467
eftychis wrote: post #248

Savings are low. We have supply issues -- just not enough stuff, including food, even if you had all the money in the world. It is a joke now that people complained about babyfood and government said it will give money; only to get a reply of: no there just isn't any baby food delivered. Increasing rates will likely have the opposite result. The goal of the Fed is to break the backs of people with low means. I am not…

Aren’t savings like historically high

Note any more: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVE

And the rate is lower than trend as well: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

Re: Federal Reserve raises rates by 0.75%

#479

Post by twblalock »

cyanydeez wrote: post #450
jmyeet wrote: post #251

The returns that capital demands (and the government obliges to) are ultimately unsustainable. That's the core problem here. Rising wages? There has been no meaningful real increase in wages in 40 years despite a massive increase in productivity. Profits keep going up and up. The expectations for profits keep going up. The problem here is that the people who make companies possible don't get to share in the proceeds…

Last budget and tax cut was 2017.the real solution is to tax wxcess wealth and force wealth creators to pay for society

Wealth creators already do pay for society. Where do you think most of the tax money comes from? The top 1% of taxpayers pay almost half the taxes.

Re: Federal Reserve raises rates by 0.75%

#480

Post by no_wizard »

notch656a wrote: post #317
TheBlight wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What we're allowing to happen here through investors buying up housing stock (and jacking up the prices), second homes, AirBnB and so on has reached the point of being a human rights violation IMHO. There are plenty of affordable places to live. People just don't want to move there. Buying a house in a hip U.S. city/suburb isn't a human right.

I can buy a plot of dirt for maybe $10k near a city with lots of jobs in my state. The problem is actually building something requires following codes and building regulations. A simple adobe house is doable by hands by a family with the occasional help from extended family or friends. But government say "bad" and I need permits, even if it's on a 5 acre plot with zero chance of any structural failure spreading to a…

I don't think its onerous safety regulations that limit affordable housing. Its a well documented phenomenon that housing policy is driven to protect past buyers over future ones (NIMBY, using zoning laws to limit density of housing, minimal acreage in cities etc).

A combination of loosening up zoning laws around residential buildings and a land value tax would do lots to facilitate affordable housing, but nobody wants to disrupt current homeowners on behalf of renters and future buyers

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