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Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

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Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#81

Post by Cumpiler69 »

sp527 wrote: post #26
grecy wrote: post #13

Make no mistake, the US is a fantastic business. It makes a lot of money, and some people get fantastically rich while others toil for life and hover at the poverty line. With a vastly higher percentage of its citizens in jail than any other developed country, much higher crime and violence than developed countries and many other very bad indicators it is, however, not a good country. It does not provide for or look…

> It does not provide for or look after its citizens in the ways other developed countries do It's worth asking why. > NATO nations have cut back on troops and military hardware since the Cold War. But Europe has cut far deeper than the US. Defense budgets have become a pot that could be raided to fund more pressing priorities, such as treating and caring for aging populations. As a result, much of Europe’s military…

>It's worth asking why.

Because taking care of people is not profitable. Why are people still looking for the answer when it's obvious?

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#82

Post by Cumpiler69 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #49
spiderfarmer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is number one in quality of life and that’s all that matters to me. If we work just hard enough to maintain and maybe even improve it, other countries can do their pissing contest.

Quality of life is the result of economic prosperity. If the economy falls behind then quality of life will follow at some point. In fact quality of life is already not so great and decreasing.

>If the economy falls behind then quality of life will follow at some point.

If only Europeans would accept this truth and wake up that something has to change yesterday.

What's happening to Greece is just the mining canary for what's gonna happen in much of the rest of EU later, if there's no preventive change of course.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#83

Post by ConspiracyFact »

ms30 wrote: post #73
spiderfarmer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is number one in quality of life and that’s all that matters to me. If we work just hard enough to maintain and maybe even improve it, other countries can do their pissing contest.

Declining/Aging Population becomes the issue. Solutions will probably come from Biology/Nature. Human Quality of life seems to flip the natural "evolutionary script" wrt to population growth. Shrinking population = shrinking landlords/bankers/labor/traders/military/scientists etc In nature, where there is environmental instability/resource scarcity you see a Quantity over Quality reproductive survival strategy (which…

The “populists” request that their tax dollars go to citizens rather than foreigners and the elites respond with musings about the reproductive strategies employed by ants.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#85

Post by Cumpiler69 »

Jensson wrote: post #66
CalRobert wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Healthcare? FIRE seems much more attainable in the US

> How so? Healthcare? FIRE seems much more attainable in the US Much easier in Europe, go work in Switzerland or some high paying country then go retire in a low cost area with healthcare.

If it's so easy why isn't everyone in Europe doing this life hack?

Could it be that moving to a place with high salaries means that job market is more competitive with higher bar to entry, with more stress, and CoL and housing is proportionally higher so once you factor in housing, healthcare, childcare expenses etc you realize that unless you scored some FANG job that pays orders of magnitude more than the local median, you're more or less at the same wealth point as in the lower CoL locations?

Feels like the solution is to find the place when you can earn more than the median there and not just blindly move to the most expensive places in the world hoping that will make you rich.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#86

Post by hackeraccount »

shiroiushi wrote: post #19
CalRobert wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Healthcare? FIRE seems much more attainable in the US

Housing and healthcare costs are insane. When you're older, you need a lot more healthcare (and you won't have that nice insurance plan you had at your big company job when you were working), and housing keeps getting more expensive, which is a problem if you're on a fixed income. You could move to much cheaper locales (i.e. rural areas), but those are "healthcare deserts" where there's no competent doctors left and…

Depends upon how much older you mean - at 65 in the U.S. you get Medicare which is not that bad.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#87

Post by dtquad »

pg314 wrote: post #77
roncesvalles wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PPP is an increasingly irrelevant notion in a globalized, digital, and immigration-friendly world. An iPhone or a Toyota Corolla costs the same in the US as it does in China. There is no remarkable arbitrage with real estate either - you're paying for the location and everything that comes with it. There is no secret city where the rent is low, there are plenty of well-paying jobs, you enjoy freedom of speech and can…

> An iPhone or a Toyota Corolla costs the same in the US as it does in China. A maxed out iPhone costs RMB 13999 in China, which is about USD 1925. The same iPhone costs USD 1599 in the US. In Brazil it costs the equivalent of USD 2565. PPP is still very much relevant.

Each country has their own misleading way of calculating PPP. Some probably include the iPhone price.

PPP is useless misleading nonsense.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#88

Post by tossandthrow »

WalterBright wrote: post #44
thomassmith65 wrote: post #22

That's an excellent summary of the economic state of the world. This excerpt is depressing... The challenge for other advanced economies is not just replicating America’s dynamism. It is to do so while retaining their cherished social safeguards. For all its economic power, the US has the largest income inequality in the G7, coupled with the lowest life expectancy and the highest housing costs, according to the OECD.…

> endure unstable employment conditions It's also correspondingly easier to get another job. In Europe, making it hard to fire people means it becomes equivalently harder to get a job in the first place.

While it sounds great to add some zero-sum game to it, it is not entirely precise.

> For all its economic power, the US has the largest income inequality in the G7.

Had the job market been a zero-sum game like you propose, then the income inequality would not have been so dire in the US.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#89

Post by tossandthrow »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #20

This has been the case for decades now. The US economy is much more dynamic than Europe's and the US government is actually more willing to intervene (and can afford it because of US dollar). In Europe it is austerity and general less support for economy-boosting policies.

There are a lot of perspectives. Eg. that the US due to it geopolitical situation hasn't seen any real adverse events in the past century. Ie. privileged on the risk side.

As other people also mention: The US' growth seems to be debt driven, which will also have to halt at some point.

However, it would not seem like it is US dynanisism that is the reason for the current success of the country - especially taken into account that it is a small subset (eg. the magnificent 7) and very high valuations that drive the current success.

All in all, my personal view is that there is significant risk in the US market currently - thus also high returns. But I do think that it is safer to harbour some money outside of the US.

Personally, I am happy to have US stocks in my portfolio, I am also happy not to live there.

Re: Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

#90

Post by tossandthrow »

dlcarrier wrote: post #65
rich_sasha wrote: post #48

One thing this article doesn't touch on is the soaring government debt, which is now really quite big: 120%, and IIRC if you add municipal debt, it's more like 140%. That is high. It also seems like much of the recent growth has been fueled by this debt. It's unclear how this is going to unwind. America can afford, apparently, to run their deficit hot, but not forever and without limit. So at some point they have to…

My theory is that other countries' trade is so closely tied to the US Dollar that when the Federal Reserve prints money it's not just diluting the US Dollar but all currencies. The US is effectively taxing the world, to pay for its own spending. As evidence that the US Dollar plays a large enough role for this to be the case, half of the banks bailed out in the TARP program were foreign to the US ( https://www.europe…

It seems like other people also buy into this. Eg. Trump.

I also think that the USD is currently under attack as the reserve currency and running these deficits is a way to protect its position.

We will see in a couple of years how things play out.

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