Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 528 posts

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#341

Post by dopeboy »

vkou wrote: post #182
PostOnce wrote: post #166

My 2 cents, some of the reasons America succeeds: (fact) America is a single market with a single language with basically a single set of regulations. Expansion is cheap in America. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to expand to another US city than it does to expand to Norway or New Zealand; but for a company in those countries, expansion is very expensive, expanding requires new laws, regulations, business entiti…

> (fact) Americans are ambitious to a fault. All 350 million of them? And if you mean 'some of them are ambitious', surely you will have to accept that there are people in other countries who also share that property?

OP is pointing out relative differences and more importantly, culture. The very concept of the "American Dream" is proof positive of that.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#342

Post by pasabagi »

PostOnce wrote: post #268
tambourine_man wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will export millions of dollars in products that I produced here, or I will die trying Why? Really. Maybe I’m in a midlife crises but I care about money less and less. I used to get a a lot of satisfaction from the simple fact of seeing the number on my bank account increase. Not so much in the past decade. My computer, phone, speaker, camera and other tech toys are amazing and not that expensive. Great food and…

Let me answer you honestly and in depth: Why? Why not? If I am alive, I may as well make an effort, since I have a finite time to do so. It's fun. It's a challenge. I know a couple of men in their 50s, one is relatively wealthy (some tens of millions of dollars), and I have often seen him on top of a machine with a wrench in his hand at 6am. Sometimes it's 3am. He starts a new company every year or two and adds it to…

Rich people become rich by paying other people less than the value of their labour. Sometimes, that's to the net benefit of the community, since the value of the labour involved is increased by a superior process. Often, that is to the net detriment of the community: for example, a landlord.

The reality is, the impact of a wealthy person is almost always small, and usually negative-on-net. That's why, in the thousands of historical examples of titanic changes brought about by new ideas or state-level policies, we have so few examples of wealthy people changing things for the better.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#343

Post by ghaff »

swexbe wrote: post #317
kevinskii wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent points, but perhaps part of the reason for the price difference is because the US population is much more geographically dispersed, so the infrastructure costs are much higher.

Most people live in metro areas.

It depends how you define metro area. The US census 80% urban has a very broad definition of urban. My 7000 person town with many houses on dozens of acres is classified as urban because it’s within 50 miles of a major city and near some smaller ones.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#344

Post by friend_and_foe »

WalterBright wrote: post #168
PostOnce wrote: post #166

My 2 cents, some of the reasons America succeeds: (fact) America is a single market with a single language with basically a single set of regulations. Expansion is cheap in America. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to expand to another US city than it does to expand to Norway or New Zealand; but for a company in those countries, expansion is very expensive, expanding requires new laws, regulations, business entiti…

Consider Japan: (fact) a single market with a single language (fact) geographically isolated (fact) not much space (fact) burned to the ground in WW2 and yet for a while it was an economic powerhouse on the world stage. Taiwan, Hong Kong and S Korea, similar stories. So what is the common thread? Free markets.

While I agree with you that free markets are a very powerful benefit to any state, you're biased in favor of it being the driver of America's success. America has access to both oceans, which means maritime access to the entire world without being able to be blockaded along the way easily. This is asymmetrical, it doesn't necessarily confer advantage the other way around. It has an absolutely massive population, and unimaginable amounts of diverse resources. These alone make for a very powerful state, no matter what system you have. Now add in that it's populace has more small armaments than every other armed forces in the world combined (including it's own), and the free markets, you get a pretty unbeatable recipe, unless theres another continent nobody knows about lurking around the corner waiting to be discovered.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#345

Post by bugglebeetle »

JohnBooty wrote: post #320
bugglebeetle wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your source for this claim? Something like 80% of Americans live in an urban setting. In no large city that I’ve ever been in can you go a day without seeing homeless people, unless you work from home and order all your food from an app.

Forgive the nitpick, but absolutely nowhere near 80% of Americans are encountering homeless on a regular basis. Homelessness in particular and inequality in general are major problems! I don't mean to sweep that under the rug! However, I don't think it's true that anywhere near a majority of Americans encounter homeless people on a daily basis. Something like 80% of Americans live in an urban setting Yes, for the Cen…

I just looked up the math and this is probably right. It looks like 1 in 3 Americans live in a city of >100K people, which, again, just in my experience, is where you’d be hard pressed to not encounter a homeless person. This however probably skews higher when we factor in things like working age adults vs the total population.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#346

Post by friend_and_foe »

WalterBright wrote: post #209
EduardoBautista wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of underdeveloped countries are free markets as well. China is attempting to show that not even democracy is needed to be prosperous.

> Plenty of underdeveloped countries are free markets as well. Example? And you're right that democracy is not a requirement for free markets, though they usually go together.

Somalia and Yemen are about as free market as it gets.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#347

Post by diordiderot »

WalterBright wrote: post #168
PostOnce wrote: post #166

My 2 cents, some of the reasons America succeeds: (fact) America is a single market with a single language with basically a single set of regulations. Expansion is cheap in America. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to expand to another US city than it does to expand to Norway or New Zealand; but for a company in those countries, expansion is very expensive, expanding requires new laws, regulations, business entiti…

Consider Japan: (fact) a single market with a single language (fact) geographically isolated (fact) not much space (fact) burned to the ground in WW2 and yet for a while it was an economic powerhouse on the world stage. Taiwan, Hong Kong and S Korea, similar stories. So what is the common thread? Free markets.

It's hard to know who's best when you don't play fair

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

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#348

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

anon291 wrote: post #314
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #183

It's true the US knows how to succeed. The top x% is doing really well. The mid is doing well in terms of being able to acquire everything they need to live at a reasonable level. The big question is how do we get the bottom percentage to have a life where they don't have to struggle to find a place to live and making sure they never go hungry? Success can never be success if we have homeless encampments in our citie…

> The big question is how do we get the bottom percentage to have a life where they don't have to struggle to find a place to live and making sure they never go hungry? I'm sorry this sort of thing is ridiculous. Are you European? The vast majority of American cities have multiple organizations attempting to give away food and unable to find takers. Our own church throws away so many pounds of food that we receive fr…

Ok, that may be but hunger and homelessness is still an issue in the US [0]. Why are there so many people living in the streets of the big cities? I live in a large city in the US. I see streets with tents on the sidewalks with people living in them. The failure is drugs, mental health issues, people unable to understand how to work the system, people unable to work, people just unwilling to work and whatever else. Something failed in their lives. We need to deal with them and fix the system so it does not fail again. You can blame the people and criticize them but that has not fixed the problem. We can say it's their fault over and over again but the problem continues. One of the richest countries in the world has a homeless problem of 100s of thousands. It's shameful.

Even from the most selfish point of view, it's a quality of life issue for everyone that lives in the big cities. No one wants to see tents and trash on their streets every day.

[0] https://hunger-report.capitalareafoodbank.org/report-2022/

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#349

Post by friend_and_foe »

swalling wrote: post #173
RestlessMind wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9, on par with Lithuania. That's a great bunch of cherries you picked there. If you are comparing Europe to the US, comparing France and Mississippi is disingenuous. Compare best-to-best or worst-to-worst [1][2]. The worst European countries are Azerbaijan (66.9), Moldova (70.2), Ukraine (71.2). The worst US states are W Virginia (74.8),…

The article itself cherry-picked France and Mississippi to compare income levels, which is why I continued the example. The additional data points are interesting and valuable, though speaking of cherry picking, Azerbaijan somewhat dubiously qualifies as a European country (neither it nor Moldova are part of the EU or Schengen, for instance). Anyway, the fact that the best of US is somewhat worse than the best of EU…

I think the only point in the statement you're referencing is "Americas poorest state is richer than one of the richest countries in Europe."

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#350

Post by switch007 »

Guthur wrote: post #298

It's simple, extortion, theft and murder. Like any Mafia. Read some Michael Hudson and you can start to understand how the empire was built.

This doesn’t fit in to the “hard working”, “ambitious” and “geographical advantages” narrative so will likely be downvoted lol
Post reply on HN