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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

#321

Post by DonnyV »

sangnoir wrote: post #291
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.

> 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.

Family needs to make $107,700 a year to own a home.

Apartment in a moderate-cost area is about $70,000-$100,000/year.

Median salary in the US is $59,300

What considered poverty level in the US for: 1 person: $15,060 2 people: $20,440 3 people: $25,820 4 people: $31,200

According to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, around 50% of Americans make $70,000 or more annually.

That means about 50% of the US can not afford a place to live.

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

#322

Post by benreesman »

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.

Asset prices are extremely high. When politicians or business journalists say “the economy is doing well” they mean asset prices. The stock market is high on a number of metrics, which is great if you own a bunch of equities. Housing prices are soaring, which is great if you own real estate.

Food, housing, energy, healthcare, education. Real wage growth and job security measured against the prices and durations of those things. That’s what matters to people who don’t own significant real assets, those are the things that can get extremely bad (someone tries to murder the CEO of United Healthcare on the street bad) without showing up in the numbers you see in the press.

Simon Kuznets himself, the inventor of GDP as a metric sternly cautioned policymakers about treating it as a summary statistic.

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

#323

Post by francisofascii »

deaddodo wrote: post #282
HellDunkel wrote: post #263

When younger, i often thought about moving to the US because it offered so many amazing and creative places to work. Most of these places seem to have gone completely or are in a somewhat unhealthy state (hollywood, video games). Boring tech companies took over and often times they stared with just a website - for gods sake- this is so lame! I‘m so happy i didnt go back then- I think it would have depressed me to exp…

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 took "unhealthy state" to mean a toxic work culture, with long hours and low pay. If you work as a low level actor/writer, you have to audition all the time and are about to get replaced by AI.

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

#324

Post by webdood90 »

sangnoir wrote: post #291
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.

> 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.

> low unemployment

I feel that this is pretty well established as a misleading metric https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0609/what-the-un...

> strong consumer spending

how does this track against consumer debt?

> average income increasing at a rate higher than inflation

but has it caught up? https://www.bankrate.com/banking/federal-reserve/wage-to-inf...

> I'd say the majority is doing better than most years

most years being the past 2 or 3? because I feel like we were all doing a lot better before 2020

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

#325

Post by NikolaNovak »

DonnyV wrote: post #321
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.

Family needs to make $107,700 a year to own a home. Apartment in a moderate-cost area is about $70,000-$100,000/year. Median salary in the US is $59,300 What considered poverty level in the US for: 1 person: $15,060 2 people: $20,440 3 people: $25,820 4 people: $31,200 According to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, around 50% of Americans make $70,000 or more annually. That means about 50% of the US can not af…

I'm misinterpreting something here:

"Apartment in a moderate-cost area is about $70,000-$100,000/year."

Are we saying apartment rental is between 5 and 8 thousand dollars a month? What is the definition of this moderate cost area??

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

#326

Post by umvi »

DonnyV wrote: post #315
ajross wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a good chunk of the population live paycheck to paycheck. Is that not true in other economies? Was that not true at some (mythical?) point in the past? What number, specifically, would you like to see before you're willing to declare "The Economy is Good"? Basically the point you made is an example of the Economics of Vibes. It's non-falsifiable and allows you to justify any position you want. We're about to start…

Family needs to make $107,700 a year to own a home. Apartment in a moderate-cost area is about $70,000-$100,000/year. Median salary in the US is $59,300 What considered poverty level in the US for: 1 person: $15,060 2 people: $20,440 3 people: $25,820 4 people: $31,200 According to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, around 50% of Americans make $70,000 or more annually. That means about 50% of the US can not af…

> That means about 50% of the US can not afford a place to live.

No, at best the conclusion is that 50% of the US can not afford to own a home. But not owning a home != homelessness. Renting still exist. Roommates still exist. There's a house in my neighborhood that has 3 (El Salvadorian, I believe) families living inside of it, and they are contributing 3x income to make it work (this depends on zoning laws though).

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

#327

Post by ptmcc »

notJim wrote: post #307
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...

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…

I love seeing this in those periodic ragebait articles about how a family earning 400k+ is "paycheck to paycheck" after maxing out their retirement accounts, paying for private schools and vacations, mortgage on a $2m house, car notes on two newer luxury cars, etc. etc.

"After long term saving and paying for my indulgent lifestyle, I just don't have anything left at the end of the month!"

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

#328

Post by ragnese »

notJim wrote: post #307
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...

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…

I find it pretty egregious that someone who is saving/investing a chunk of every paycheck could be considered to be "living paycheck-to-paycheck." I feel like the most obvious definition most of us would assume is that nearly 100% of your paycheck gets spent on goods and services, and/or bills and debts, before your next paycheck.

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

#329

Post by Aurornis »

amrocha wrote: post #157
naming_the_user wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a huge generalization to me. The US, UK, EU and realistically most developed countries I would say have fairly similar quality of life within margin of error. I've travelled a fair amount and everywhere is basically the same. For an individual it's really going to come down to lifestyle and what you prefer. Some people like urban living and walkability, if that's you then you probably want Japan or ol…

[flagged]

> The USA is a horrible country to anyone looking in from the outside.

When I was at a multinational corporation we had people from our EU and Asia offices fly out to the United States for a couple weeks at a time (their choice).

We'd go out to lunch every day and some of us would have them over for dinner at our houses to get to know them.

Many of them were young and had developed their idea of the US from Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok. They'd show up thinking they were walking into a hellscape of a country because that's what they saw on Reddit.

It was a rite of passage for all of them to slowly realize that the US in person is different than the US according to Reddit or TikTok.

One example that came up frequently was minimum wage. Reddit talks about the federal minimum wage all the time as if Americans everywhere are making minimum wage. We'd have to explain that our state minimum wage was significantly higher than the federal minimum wage. We'd also explain that it's basically impossible to find a job paying that minimum wage right now because even the post office and local fast food places were hiring at higher wages.

The list went on and on. I remember several coworkers who went from thinking the US was a horrible country to asking us to sponsor their moves to the US.

> No one would actively choose to live there if it wasn’t for high salaries in certain fields.

That's a chronically online take, but it's completely wrong. Immigration demand to the United States is extremely high, even for jobs that don't pay high salaries.

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

#330

Post by nec4b »

makk wrote: post #290
eduction wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article: "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. Market competition is limited and millions of workers endure unstable employment conditions." That's pretty stark. But the U.S. outperformance on GDP growth and productivity growth is very real over the last 5-15 years especialy and has…

3. Can the US endure at all when the current path feels unsustainable for most of its citizens?

Millions voting with their feet don't think that.
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