Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record • Hacker News Board

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#421

Post by ericjmorey » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:22 PM UTC

tdehnel wrote: post #322

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No examples needed. You can't adequately define "what you create", because nobody can. Where does your contribution begin, and end? Where does the contribution of your parents, your neighbors, your friends, your society begin, and end? To what extent did you create anything, or was it just a remix? Is everything a remix? Who are you? You have a unified, continuous sense of self, but most contemporary psychology finds…

Oh knock it off. By your logic you can’t even define what a definition is so your whole schtick goes poof. Bad unfalsifiable philosophy like this is why people hate philosophy. You’re just deliberately confusing people and trying to make yourself seem clever by sucking people into this silly definitions game.

This sounds like you're in favor of giving weight to religious arguments in economics. But I doubt that you'd agree with that idea. The fact is that some things cannot be determined with sufficient precision and inclination to be dismissive of this fact creates its own problems.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#422

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:30 PM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #179

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…

I think your point about USA benefiting from a single big market is a strong one. Consider for contrast Canada, also a single language market, also geographically isolated, and sharing many of the inherent benefits of NA that America has. Canada though, not often considered a real economic dynamo in the same way as the USA. Well one big difference is that Canada is a relatively small population spread thin over an en…

[deleted]

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#423

Post by tim333 » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:49 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #401

hnarn wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a strange definition of “facts”. Your first point, “America is a single market” is a fact, and a pretty uncontroversial one. America being “geographically isolated from war” is conjecture. Whether Mexico will invade, or whether Pearl Harbor is part of your definition of “America” is irrelevant, it’s not a fact. America “being able to produce everything” is not a fact and much too vague to ever be a fact. To…

What are the 20 mineral commodities? FWIW, the U.S. would be incredibly hard to invade. It does have a number of geographic advantages that no other country can match (not least of which is the Mississippi River system). Even Pearl Harbor was a hit and run attack. No Japanese troops ever touched shore.

A lot of the hard to invade stuff comes from having a bunch of guns and the world's strongest military. When it was inhabited by Native Americans the Brits, French etc. managed to invade ok.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#424

Post by tim333 » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:54 PM UTC

nethdeco wrote: post #354

nrp wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, among the Asian Tiger economies, their massive growth first unlocked during a period where they were not meaningfully democracies and their governments intervened heavily to pick winners. The proximate success of their economies was export oriented industry, but the industries and the companies within them were more or less hand picked by the ruling regimes. The remarkable thing is that Korea, Taiwan,…

Tell me how Singapore is a democracy ?

They have elections and the government follows the wishes of the people to some extent even if it doesn't change over much https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy_in_Si...

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#425

Post by edgyquant » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:56 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #386

refurb wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not my experience working overseas in a few countries. There are certainly lazy Americans, but I’ve worked in multi-national offices where youd get fired in the US for the type of slacking i saw.

The US doesn't have particularly high GDP per hour worked: https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm Slightly above Sweden and slightly below Denmark and quite a bit less than Ireland.

How is this a response to the comment you replies to?

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#426

Post by edgyquant » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:57 PM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #370

refurb wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not my experience working overseas in a few countries. There are certainly lazy Americans, but I’ve worked in multi-national offices where youd get fired in the US for the type of slacking i saw.

As with anything, it varies. Software engineers in China routinely put in 72 hour weeks (996), and are required to make up holidays using weekends if the holiday falls on a week day. Even “labor day” is made up on a weekend, ironically. The workers’ rights Americans are accustomed to might be viewed as lazy or unambitious in places where working more is the norm. And across the other pond, where many Europeans have g…

Ambitious doesn’t mean works a lot, not sure why you think so. It means they have ambition to make their life/community/family/etc better

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

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Post by tim333 » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 1:58 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #208

awesome_dude wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Japanese directly intervened in their manufacturing companies, and shaped their economy via the Bank of Japan to "rebuild" and grow their economy. They also have a notoriously closed (to outsiders) economy.

Cuba's economy is closed to outsiders. Didn't make them prosperous. They have a state run bank, too. Didn't make them prosperous.

Communism doesn't have a great economic track record.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#428

Post by throwaway173738 » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #289

andrewjl wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what is the common thread? Free markets. Not when it comes to Japan. During the post-war boom era the majority of its largest businesses were conglomerates with interlocking ownership structures that prevented accountability to shareholders. In addition to that a large amount of corporate investment was state-directed by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). It was an effective system (at leas…

This is not as cut and dried as you suggest. https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato...

Cato has a pretty clear pro-market anti-regulation stance so this isn’t a surprising article from them.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#429

Post by chrisco255 » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #423

chrisco255 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the 20 mineral commodities? FWIW, the U.S. would be incredibly hard to invade. It does have a number of geographic advantages that no other country can match (not least of which is the Mississippi River system). Even Pearl Harbor was a hit and run attack. No Japanese troops ever touched shore.

A lot of the hard to invade stuff comes from having a bunch of guns and the world's strongest military. When it was inhabited by Native Americans the Brits, French etc. managed to invade ok.

We didn't have the world's strongest military until WWII, and even then, we had to ramp up to that.

The Brits, Spaniards and French didn't invade, they established colonies. These colonies actively engaged in trade and defense agreements with various native American tribes. At various times different tribes were aligned with one European nation or another, with the most famous example being the French and Indian War, with the Iroquois and Cherokee allying with the British and the Wabanaki, Abenaki, Shawnee, etc allying with the French.

Native American tribes and nations had deep seated rivalries and disputes going back centuries (just as the Europeans did), so there never was any kind of single unified America until the U.S. expanded across the continent.

Notably the British did not succeed in the War of Independence or the War of 1812, despite having a superior military and navy.

Re: Lessons from America’s astonishing economic record

#430

Post by jonahrd » Mon, Apr 17, 2023, 2:15 PM UTC

This is a very 'Economist' article-- looking at macro trends instead of what actual Americans are feeling.

Sure, healthcare has expanded, GDP has risen, even pay has gone up.

But the _cost_ of healthcare has rapidly ballooned, the _cost_ of education, housing, etc has rapidly ballooned.

It's very precarious to live in the US without a healthy savings account. That's why people are saying the economy is shit right now.