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Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?

economist.com

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Re: Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?

#161

Post by midasuni »

sdenton4 wrote: post #157
spatley wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am starting to doubt that interest rates are the best lever against inflation. Rising prices are supply not meeting demand. It feels like improving productivity would be an equally powerful tool with less human cost. Granted that is a harder thing to control quarter over quarter. Consider this analysis that intetest rates may in some cases raise prices. https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/02/04/do-high-inter..…

Absolutely. The mainstream economists are wringing their hands over full employment and rising wages, the first time in decades that we might see the middle class grow, because production isn't sufficiently meeting demand. We should be producing more stuff - especially housing - instead of trying to keep people from earning more.

We’ve had unaffordable housing in the U.K. for a generation and haven’t built because of nimbys.

Housing costs thus increase to suck all income.

It’s a great way to return to feudalism.

Re: Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?

#162

Post by realjhol »

zamnos wrote: post #78
ceejayoz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one going to work for three years Where did this happen?

I'm not sure about three years, but anywhere the service and entertainment industry was shut down due to Covid. Eg California.

Not due to covid - due to government's hysterical overreaction to covid

Re: Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?

#163

Post by cwp »

metadat wrote: post #105
bluGill wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a high interest rate ecconomy, this is normal interest rates. Rates have been absurdily low for a while so you may not remember it, but history provides a record.

Is the norm really that home loans are unaffordable even to first-time-buyer DINKs with good-to-decent six figure jobs who just want a place to live? (not an investment property) Currently the mortgage rates are the highest ever since 1989. Have you personally already purchased your first home? Without family assistance, it would be absolutely brutal and untenable for my children to enter into in this domain at prese…

I mentioned to my Dad that I was lucky to be able to buy a house for the first time just before rates went up. He told me the story of how he bought his first house in 1977 - the house I grew up in. The rate was 19%, and he was only able to get a loan because he knew a guy who knew a guy at the bank. He had masters degree and a good job, but all the banks turned him down until he found the right strings to pull.

Re: Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?

#164

Post by midasuni »

endisneigh wrote: post #15
mkl95 wrote: post #9

We have gone from a zero interest rate economy to a high interest one within months. Whoever claims to accurately predict what's going to happen in the next few years is talking out of their ass. We know inflation should start decreasing within a year or so, but you cannot predict how millions of people will react to suddenly not being able to afford stuff.

> Whoever claims to accurately predict what's going to happen in the next few years is talking out of their ass. > We know inflation should start decreasing within a year or so Indeed

Inflation is looking at the previous 12 months. We know that inflation in the last few months was lower than that nearly a year ago, thus for inflation not to fall would require it to balloon in the next few months, which seems very unlikely.

Re: Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?

#165

Post by happyjack »

I think the honest reality is that the game is rigged and dependent on a perpetual 7% growth type cycle. We have indebted future generations so much that it's going to crumble or the next 200 years of western civilization will be held to debt service. Millennials in western countries aren't having kids, and are stuck paying student loans (and other debt) while a 2 bedroom home in some suburbs that doesn't have a rotten foundation is $400k.

How does the western world grow 7% (or whatever rate needed after taxes, inflation, and profit) perpetually with stagnating birth rates, lowering carbon footprints, and shrinking real wages?

I'm not sure it can.

Re: Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?

#166

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

boppo1 wrote: post #101
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whoever claims to accurately predict what's going to happen in the next few years is talking out of their ass. That's true regardless of the interest rate situation... > We have gone from a zero interest rate economy to a high interest one within months. IIUC, even the Fed's pretend "Natural Rate of Interest" is higher than current rates - meaning even they seem to believe they're still stimulating the economy some…

How do I calculate real interest rates?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_interest_rate

Re: Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?

#167

Post by IAmGraydon »

spatley wrote: post #119
dd36 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don’t know a single person that didn’t work.

Yeah, we need to stop talking about the pandemic experience like it affected people in any way similarily. Tech worked their fingers to the bone— 50 hour weeks and isolatng heads down grind. Everyone made money but it crushed their souls. Hospitality and entertainment stayed home and starved. Essential workers went in every day under crushing conditions, fear and literal death. We were all subject to one master. But…

Hilarious to think that 50 hour weeks is working your fingers to the bone.

Re: Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?

#168

Post by koudelka »

realjhol wrote: post #162
zamnos wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about three years, but anywhere the service and entertainment industry was shut down due to Covid. Eg California.

Not due to covid - due to government's hysterical overreaction to covid

for the purposes of this conversation, that’s a distinction without a difference

Re: Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?

#169

Post by astrange »

rayiner wrote: post #120

Nobody wants to admit it but Trump’s immigration policies, which Biden continued, actually had the intended effect. Inflation was a predictable consequence of ramping down on the influx of cheap workers, but that’s fine. Americans don’t need cheap stuff as much as they need workers to have bargaining power.

That's Trump's interest rate policies, not his immigration policies. (Biden is continuing both of them by keeping JPowell on the job.)

Immigrants are good for the economy and good for workers. They are your customers! Don't be a Malthusian.

Re: Can the West’s perplexing employment miracle continue?

#170

Post by astrange »

diceduckmonk wrote: post #153

Credibility of the author is out the door when they are using strawman comparisons with Japan (Tokyo) indicative of someone who spent a week there as a tourist and had to shoehorn this experience in. It's like a foreigner traveling to America, and by that I mean LA or NYC, and talk about how fashionable people in SoHo were or how vibrant Time Square is, meanwhile 99% of Americans aren't in this way of life. I'm almos…

> Not having a permanent place to be during the 9-5PM, whether that is school or work, is a badge of shame in Japanese society.

…in some social classes. What are the freeters and retirees doing? Night workers?

> This is one reason why, quantitatively atleast, Japan has one of the lowest productivity rates of developer countries. Everyone has to appear working diligently, regardless if they've past the point of productivity or not.

This has been changing, it's not as true of newer companies and startups.

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