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What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?

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Re: What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What multi-trillion dollar social programs? What country are you talking about— I want to live there, sounds a lot better than the pittance we have in the US. Unless you think the Defense Department is a social program.

Also over $4 trillion between CARES Act and the "American Rescue Plan". Do you feel Cared about and Rescued?

I wouldn’t call those true social programs, although the direct payments to taxpayers comes close. The programs you cite were designed to prop up the economy, and they mostly succeeded, albeit highly skewed towards big businesses. It accelerated trends already in place.

Re: What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the systemic problem— the US using Ukraine as a pawn to weaken Russia, means that all those donations will ultimately mean nothing as the country’s infrastructure is reduced to rubble.

You are spreading Putin's propaganda. Russia invaded Ukraine because Putin wants to reconstitute the USSR, with him on top. All the bullshit about NATO is just noise to get people who would otherwise side with the obvious victims to suddenly hem and haw and say, "Well, was Putin provoked? Is this really about the US?" No; you've been suckered. It's about Ukraine, and the people dying there, who won't be in any better…

“Wants to reconstitute the USSR”. LMAO. Ok, thanks. Here’s Putin’s propaganda: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/...

Re: What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?

#353
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the systemic problem— the US using Ukraine as a pawn to weaken Russia, means that all those donations will ultimately mean nothing as the country’s infrastructure is reduced to rubble.

Keep watching Russian TV.

Unfortunately, RT was banned in the freedom-loving USA. But there’s plenty of independent sources if you know where to find them. https://peoplesworld.org/article/pipeline-ploy-how-u-s-natur...

Re: What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reference is possibly to the Green New Deal or to Build Back Better. Both probably qualify as "multi-trillion social programs", but perhaps the former fits the description better.

I wouldn’t call either of those social programs. They’re mostly subsidies for industry, with ancillary tax benefits for the rich and upper middle class. Also hardly “multi-trillion”. After reading the article in full, I assume they were alluding to the PPP and direct stimulus payments to taxpayers that suffered some fraud. Even the 25% fraud cited seems minor, but it certainly could have been administered a lot bette…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal

> social aims like job creation and reducing economic inequality

> the plan could cost between $51–$93 trillion over the next decade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build_Back_Better_Plan

> the largest nationwide public investments in social

> a variety of social policy initiatives

> $1.9 trillion

> $2.3 trillion (which, when combined with the American Families Plan, amounted to $4 trillion in infrastructure spending)

> $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill

Re: What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?

#355
post #308
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with this. COVID + everyone refusing to go back to the office means nobody needs to be in a specific place anymore. I've changed my hiring strategy to cultivate talent elsewhere and pay 1/3 of what is paid in the US.

This is the common logic since outsourcing was invented decades ago. Everyone eventually gets hit with the reality that large time zone and cultural differences lead to so much overhead on project management, not getting what you actually asked for, creative ways to game the metrics, and huge rework/bug fixes, that the 2/3 you saved gets eaten up by dealing with all of that, and anything leftover doesn’t pay for the…

A quick look at a globe can tell you there are a lot cheaper markets in the same/close timezones to the US at least. Culture is obviously more nebulous, but it seems like something the US is better at exporting than any country as well. It's why I've long cautioned people about remote work - the work might end up more remote than they'd like.

Re: What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t call either of those social programs. They’re mostly subsidies for industry, with ancillary tax benefits for the rich and upper middle class. Also hardly “multi-trillion”. After reading the article in full, I assume they were alluding to the PPP and direct stimulus payments to taxpayers that suffered some fraud. Even the 25% fraud cited seems minor, but it certainly could have been administered a lot bette…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal > social aims like job creation and reducing economic inequality > the plan could cost between $51–$93 trillion over the next decade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Build_Back_Better_Plan > the largest nationwide public investments in social > a variety of social policy initiatives > $1.9 trillion > $2.3 trillion (which, when combined with the American Families Plan, amounte…

Last I checked, neither plan ever passed. Nor would they have passed in time to make a difference for the issues raised in the article.

Re: What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?

#357
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the common logic since outsourcing was invented decades ago. Everyone eventually gets hit with the reality that large time zone and cultural differences lead to so much overhead on project management, not getting what you actually asked for, creative ways to game the metrics, and huge rework/bug fixes, that the 2/3 you saved gets eaten up by dealing with all of that, and anything leftover doesn’t pay for the…

A quick look at a globe can tell you there are a lot cheaper markets in the same/close timezones to the US at least. Culture is obviously more nebulous, but it seems like something the US is better at exporting than any country as well. It's why I've long cautioned people about remote work - the work might end up more remote than they'd like.

Yes, Canada, LATAM, New Zealand have compatible time zones with Pacific time.

Re: What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not making a point about population density, but rather changing culture and reducing social trust. Immigrants make their new country more like their home country: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35594

> Immigrants make their new country more like their home country This is a more refined concern than "While slowly turning the country into Bangladesh." There's no reason to believe that Bangladesh will dominate the influx. We're talking changes in immigration policy to make up for a domestic population decline. It would be naive to think that the only change would be "Let's just take more people without constraints.…

> The US has in the past put restrictions on who can immigrate, and continues to have restrictions (whatever moral judgement is attached to them is left for the reader). You can restrict the countries they come from. You can restrict the education levels. You can restrict the number entering. You can restrict how long they need to be here before they can vote. And so on.

That won't help, and possibly makes things worse. For example, I'm part of the high-education, high-income Asian immigrant influx to the U.S. over the last few decades. Our immigration may present a temporary financial boon in industries like medicine and tech. But, as should be obvious, there's cultural risks to importing another society's elites. We bring our elitist attitudes and affinity for top-down administration of society with us. Many Americans would, quite reasonably, say those aren't good things.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have immigration. But more than a quarter of Americans today are immigrants or first-generation children of immigrants. That's a tremendous burden on the country's ability to socialize people into the country's values and principles. And it's a tremendous source of social distress and conflict.

> Moreover, maintaining the current US culture is not entirely desirable. It has its good points and its bad points, but in general, a lack of change tends to become a regression rather than improvement.

Culture changes without foreign influence, though.

Re: What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are spreading Putin's propaganda. Russia invaded Ukraine because Putin wants to reconstitute the USSR, with him on top. All the bullshit about NATO is just noise to get people who would otherwise side with the obvious victims to suddenly hem and haw and say, "Well, was Putin provoked? Is this really about the US?" No; you've been suckered. It's about Ukraine, and the people dying there, who won't be in any better…

“Wants to reconstitute the USSR”. LMAO. Ok, thanks. Here’s Putin’s propaganda: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/...

He literally said he wants to reclaim all lands of Russian empire not just USSR.

Re: What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather say that keeping interest rates down required a continuous artificial intervention into the market for money - the current rate rise seems quite fully driven by reasonable market pressure, not by some artificial intervention.

If the central bank doesn't set a rate, then the interbank rate will drift to zero - because money is near costless to produce and no chance of non-payment because there is only one central bank in a currency and central bank money can't go anywhere else. That doesn't stop the rate for lending to businesses being higher than that because there is a risk of non-payment there. There is more than one commercial bank. Ev…

Wait, that's not how central bank lending works - you seem to equate "not setting a rate" with "setting a rate to 0" and offering limitless lending to commercial banks at that rate - which is a very high level of intervention IMHO; I'd rather equate "not setting a rate" by the central bank reducing its participation in the interbank lending and stopping this injection of 0-rate money, in which case the interbank lending rate will become dominated by the actual market competition, because commercial banks can't arbitrarily produce money.
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