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Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

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Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#191

Post by pessimizer »

apsec112 wrote: post #101
Spooky23 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two Americas, the one that HN folks inhabit and the underclass. The former is doing great. The latter has grown and shifted. I grew up in a rural community that was in the process of unraveling from a prosperous farming and light industrial area to a rural slum. There are zero operational farms in that area today. The one I worked for as a teen was in continuous operation since the Dutch colonial period. Th…

Since 2016, real (inflation-adjusted) wages have risen quickly for people in the bottom quartile, while for upper-income workers they've been stagnant. Obviously, most people on HN are still better off than manual laborers, but the gap has narrowed substantially (a big reversal from 1995-2015) and that's a good thing. https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...

This is a bad interpretation of events, and an intentional ignoring of wealth gains.

> Since 2016, real (inflation-adjusted) wages have risen quickly for people in the bottom quartile

This "quick" wage growth, as you point out with your image, is on the order of 1 or 2% for the past few years, and was massacred by recent inflation i.e. if raising the minimum wage raised your standard of living, you've almost exactly kept up with inflation.

Meanwhile, wealth amongst people who hold investments, a group that often includes upper-income workers, has massively increased during that time. The S&P has had a 130% adjusted return since 2016. The share of wealth held by the top 10% is as high or higher than it was in 2016.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#192

Post by paulmd »

paulmd wrote: post #167
Spooky23 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two Americas, the one that HN folks inhabit and the underclass. The former is doing great. The latter has grown and shifted. I grew up in a rural community that was in the process of unraveling from a prosperous farming and light industrial area to a rural slum. There are zero operational farms in that area today. The one I worked for as a teen was in continuous operation since the Dutch colonial period. Th…

When the proverbial one-horse town/single-industry company town has the single-industry leave town, what exactly do you want anyone to do about it? We already shovel in far more tax dollars maintaining infrastructure for a handful of remaining occupants even when the economic activity no longer justifies the spend. What further burden, exactly, do you think the rest of the world owes ex-rural communities that have de…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaFkXsdr0mk

(incidentally, this flow over the base of the dam is new, looks like since 2018 (it normally goes through culverts at the base) and the dam likely won't survive much longer, some of the supports have already broken loose and the water flow is eroding the concrete, probably quite rapidly given the age/neglect...)

https://www.mininggazette.com/news/features/2020/08/survivin...

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#193

Post by ryandrake »

ghaff wrote: post #131
nequo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are two Americas, the one that HN folks inhabit and the underclass. > The former is doing great. This is at odds with what I've been hearing on HN and in adjacent places. For a year or two now, people have been saying that finding a job in tech has become much harder. Some say that it hasn't been this bad in a decade. Some say it hasn't been this bad since the dotcom bubble burst.

Generalizations are always only somewhat true. But what you're probably seeing is a reaction to the end of a period when, assuming at least a pulse and some vague familiarity with computers (and maybe some ability to navigate tech interviews), you could walk out of a job on Friday and have multiple offers within a week. This was basically never the norm with most professional jobs that could take months of job-huntin…

> you could walk out of a job on Friday and have multiple offers within a week. This was basically never the norm with most professional jobs that could take months of job-hunting with no guarantee of a higher salary or not needing to move.

This was never really the -norm- in tech either. Yes, a small number of very talented, very well-connected software engineers with well-known schools or companies on their resume, could probably leave a job one week and have multiple offers next week, but come on... This has never really been the experience of the vast majority of tech workers.

Sure, if you survey Stanford graduates, working in a hot domain, in top companies Silicon Valley, you're going to conclude that getting jobs has always been easy "in tech."

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#194

Post by hehdhdjehehegwv »

spicyusername wrote: post #6

I very much agree with the premise that economists unduly focus on a few metrics of dubious quality - labor force participation, personal consumption expenditures, market capitalization, wage growth, etc - and overfit them to construct a coherent narrative about the "strength" of the economy and what the experience of living in that economy must be like. There's a story right now being peddled by all the talking head…

My theory is the pandemic exposed the bear minimum people will accept and society won’t collapse.

Companies learned the true baseline of what they can get away with and we’re in a new permanent reality of everything sucking right up to the exact line where it would collapse of it sucked more.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#195

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #189
Spooky23 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two Americas, the one that HN folks inhabit and the underclass. The former is doing great. The latter has grown and shifted. I grew up in a rural community that was in the process of unraveling from a prosperous farming and light industrial area to a rural slum. There are zero operational farms in that area today. The one I worked for as a teen was in continuous operation since the Dutch colonial period. Th…

> That’s an example of why the nihilism of MAGA is so appealing. The world is collapsing around many people. And this is what I don't get about current US politics. MAGA = Republicans. The Republican party is the party of generational wealth transfer. The Republican party is the party of elite businessmen lording over the working class. The Republican party is the party of all the economic forces that are unraveling…

[deleted]

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#196

Post by chasebank »

silverquiet wrote: post #11
spicyusername wrote: post #6

I very much agree with the premise that economists unduly focus on a few metrics of dubious quality - labor force participation, personal consumption expenditures, market capitalization, wage growth, etc - and overfit them to construct a coherent narrative about the "strength" of the economy and what the experience of living in that economy must be like. There's a story right now being peddled by all the talking head…

I agree with much of this and I'll add one of my biggest stressors - opaque pricing. One of the biggest "innovations" in the US in the last decade or so seems to be to add as many hidden fees as possible to every service imaginable. Obviously it's hardly a new idea; I'm sure that human nature being what it is, they had to deal with it in Mesopotamia. But it makes budgeting very difficult; I suppose it's like living i…

Recently, I've seen this bleed into our local housing rental market. They'll advertise some amount for the house, then will say the attached garage is extra per month, and moving most if not all utilities to tenant responsibility.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#197

Post by Joel_Mckay »

CPLX wrote: post #187
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #108

removed due to obligatory disclosure liability

> Despite the botfly score of an 83% LLM poorly auto-generated article Can you explain what this comment means? This article is the personal writing of Matt Stoller, the most prominent writer on issues of monopoly and anti-trust. What do you think it is?

removed due to obligatory disclosure liability

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#198

Post by Izkata »

gruez wrote: post #173
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote would be saying that some individual over on 4th Street feels that things aren't that great. "Consumer sentiment" (or whatever name) is actually a statistic. So now you're at two statistics, one that measures economic activity in jobs and output, and the other that measures peoples' intuitive feel of the economy. I think the gap between them might be that peoples' confidence was shaken by inflation reignitin…

But polls show that around of population are flat out wrong on certain objective measures, like GDP, the S&P 500 index, and the unemployment rate[1]. If they can't get basic factual questions right, why should we put much stock in their "intuitive feel of the economy"? [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/22/poll...

That's exactly the point - there's some sort of disconnect and people just want to say "they're wrong" instead of trying to figure out why people feel that way.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#199

Post by ncallaway »

ryandrake wrote: post #189
Spooky23 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two Americas, the one that HN folks inhabit and the underclass. The former is doing great. The latter has grown and shifted. I grew up in a rural community that was in the process of unraveling from a prosperous farming and light industrial area to a rural slum. There are zero operational farms in that area today. The one I worked for as a teen was in continuous operation since the Dutch colonial period. Th…

> That’s an example of why the nihilism of MAGA is so appealing. The world is collapsing around many people. And this is what I don't get about current US politics. MAGA = Republicans. The Republican party is the party of generational wealth transfer. The Republican party is the party of elite businessmen lording over the working class. The Republican party is the party of all the economic forces that are unraveling…

The people implementing the economic destruction are promising a silver bullet to instantly fix everything.

The people who promise modest, incremental improvement are much less appealing in that environment.

Re: Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us

#200

Post by portaouflop »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #143
GiorgioG wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dispute the charge with your bank - you did not get what you paid for, and it's not on you to chase them down and waste your time. If/when enough people do this, they'll get their shit together.

You know that companies will eventually wise up and start taking you to small claims court for trying to do this small time subversiveness. AI will make stuff like this possible, and individualized resistance like this can and will be snuffed out once and for all.

Why should you continue to be a customer with these companies in that case?

Sounds like learned helplessness to me

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