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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

#301

Post by deaddodo »

pests wrote: post #296
deaddodo wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "unhealthy state"? Hollywood (the location) has always been skeazy/decrepit location (at least, after the 60s). Hollywood (the idea) is still going fine...other places have just developed their own media output too. One thing getting stronger doesn't mean the other is now sick, unless your only mental model is "defeatism". If anything, the US not being the only media producer in the world has made…

I think you are debating whereas OP was just sharing a memory.

I'm not debating, I'm explaining the inaccuracies of their perspective.

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

#302

Post by Kon5ole »

Being poor is really terrible in the US, being rich is really great. Everybody learns this from day 1 and get reminded of it almost daily.

There are downsides to such a society but it creates a strong incentive to get rich, or at least to never become poor, and thus more economic activity.

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

#303

Post by brink »

DonnyV wrote: post #297
sokoloff wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know plenty of people making $250K/yr or more who are living paycheck to paycheck. At that point, it's not really the company that's the problem...

Here come the "its an individual's problem not a systemic problem" anecdotes. But when you look at all the data....its a systemic problem.

They're not saying that it's not a systemic problem, they're just saying it's not a company problem.

Housing being too expensive is not a company problem for example.

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

#304

Post by saagarjha »

sokoloff wrote: post #274
luizfzs wrote: post #255

But is the majority of the population thriving? It is very misleading (at best) to say the economy is strong when a good chunk of the population live paycheck to paycheck. A handful of companies are thriving, but barely any of its employees.

I know plenty of people making $250K/yr or more who are living paycheck to paycheck. At that point, it's not really the company that's the problem...

Maybe you know too many people who make $250k/year.

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

#305

Post by ricardobayes »

luizfzs wrote: post #255

But is the majority of the population thriving? It is very misleading (at best) to say the economy is strong when a good chunk of the population live paycheck to paycheck. A handful of companies are thriving, but barely any of its employees.

Some of the population is definitely thriving.

Although, does that reflect in higher quality of life? Some statistics say no. The best quality of life is where there is good access to quality healthcare, education, clean air and water, culture, and low crime. When taking into account all the above, somewhat surprisingly, Austria and Switzerland come as top places to live. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_quality_of_life_indices

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

#306

Post by scythe »

greenthrow wrote: post #238
badpun wrote: post #197

Not a single word about shale oil and gas revolution, that started around 15 years ago? The US now has the one of the cheapest energy on earth, and probably the cheapest among the countries that matter. Pour all that cheap gas and oil onto an economy that was already a leader and you get lots of impressive growth.

It's not brought up because this is not the source of the growth whatsoever. It has only served to keep our gasoline and methane costs low compared to the rest of the world. That's nice for people but does not create massive economic growth in the 21st century of the kind being discussed. That is all coming from the tech sector. If you want to talk energy to power the server farms, the growth in energy is happening w…

The price of a kilowatt hour of electricity is not determined by the cheapest power plant operating when you buy it, but by the most expensive. You buy the marginal kilowatt. And solar+wind continues to be a relatively small fraction of the US energy market. The DoE did a report when Biden took office in 2021 and the progressive wave was in full swing:

https://www.energy.gov/fecm/articles/economic-and-national-s...

>Eliminating [fracking]... a ripple effect of severe consequences to the Nation's economy, environment, and geopolitical standing.

Making energy cheaper and the dollar stronger helps all businesses which depend on energy or imports, particularly manufacturing, and US manufacturing output currently exceeds the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined. And all over the thread you'll find people arguing over nominal GDP versus PPP, but what's not in doubt is that the balance of nominal GDP versus PPP is related to the strength of the dollar. Imports are vital to US industry — we thrive on buying less processed inputs from cheaper countries and producing high-value outputs. All of this is affected by the US oil and gas industry.

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

#307

Post by notJim »

sokoloff wrote: post #274
luizfzs wrote: post #255

But is the majority of the population thriving? It is very misleading (at best) to say the economy is strong when a good chunk of the population live paycheck to paycheck. A handful of companies are thriving, but barely any of its employees.

I know plenty of people making $250K/yr or more who are living paycheck to paycheck. At that point, it's not really the company that's the problem...

The living paycheck to paycheck stat is meaningless. It generates headlines, because bad news wins, but if you dig in, even the surveys that ask about this reveal that a large percentage of people living paycheck to paycheck are very financially secure, both objectively, and according to their own assessment. I don't have time right now, but I'd encourage anyone reading this to go find the actual source for this stat and read their full report. Last time I looked, it was freely available.

Many of those people living paycheck to paycheck have a budget where they're saving or investing a significant amount of their money, and accordingly, money feels tight. This is the financially sound way to avoid lifestyle creep, but it doesn't mean you're in a precarious position. Or alternatively, they're paying for really expensive, but optional things like private schooling and expensive cars or vacations.

Obviously some people are struggling, but this paycheck-to-paycheck stat is not an accurate way to quantify that. It's best IMO to look at objective metrics like the poverty rate, or people's objective financial picture (available via surveys.)

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

#308

Post by jltsiren »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #243
roenxi wrote: post #14

This is an interesting take, because it contrasts with GDP PPP [0] which is suggesting that America is in fact being overtaken by its rivals although it has managed to outpace the EU. China is claiming to already be ahead and India is well on track to gain absolute economic ascendancy relative to the US. And I expect that Asia is going to start developing some serious military muscle on the back of that because they…

I've spent a lot of time in a lot of different countries/cities with wildly different economics and I have a very different view of things. PPP in the real world is a bit of a fraud, at least in the way people commonly use it. A lot of things you compare between two countries are in fact very different in reality. You might actually end up paying a lot more in nominal dollars for a lot of things in countries which ar…

This is the common expat mistake. Your cost of living can grow very high, if you try to replicate your old lifestyle in a country that doesn't support it. With the same approach, you can also find that living in the US is 2x to 3x more expensive than in Western Europe. (I personally settled for 2x by making some compromises.)

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

#309

Post by indoordin0saur »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #152
DataDaemon wrote: post #80

You are so lucky to be born in the USA: - Easy to do business - Great economy, high salaries, and funding - English native speaker, so you can speak with everyone and everyone can speak with you The EU is in a deep hole, with socialism and green communism next.

I swear, I’ve been hearing that since 2010. That and big Chinese collapse. It’s like the US just wants everyone else to fail just because they don’t share the same attitude towards life. It’s been almost 15 years. That’s a lot of time! I’m mostly annoyed by the recent “Canada should just become an American state” talks, otherwise I would ignore such takes. Apologies for that.

> Canada should just become an American state

Canada is a really interesting take that I ctrl-f'd hoping I'd find a discussion on. It was doing a great job keeping pace with the US but seems to have really stagnated since the last 8 years or so.

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

#310

Post by gruez »

buffet_overflow wrote: post #293
sangnoir wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But is the majority of the population thriving? Looking at the numbers: low unemployment, strong consumer spending, average income increasing at a rate higher than inflation, I'd say the majority is doing better than most years. They might not feel that way though, and we've been in a continuous vibes-cession since COVID.

> strong consumer spending I’d like to see that plotted against average consumer debt

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CDSP

slightly below pre-pandemic levels, and significantly below 2005-2008 levels.

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