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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

#431

Post by DoingIsLearning »

bpt3 wrote: post #414
UncleOxidant wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the EU also have a robust legal framework?

Yes, and it is generally hostile towards wealth generators. And then they wonder why nearly every economic metric has been stagnant for decades at this point...

Pointing to EU law/regilations is just platitudes people keep repeating online.

Biggest barriers to business in the EU is risk averse Investors and Banking sector, lack of significant VC funding players, and Government spending strangled by Austerity policies.

The US spends a lot of money to make even more money.

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

#432

Post by zeroonetwothree »

thuanao wrote: post #394
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #201

Tech is the problem. The internet is global (or perhaps two or three regions), and winner takes all - so global value creation is being experienced everywhere, but being monetised in the US stock market. Take tech out of the equation and the US is pretty much on par with EU, and China and India are just burning the coal for everyone else.

If you remove non-industrial and financial activity from US GDP, the economic picture is bleak. US and G7 have been steadily deindustrializing while BRICS have been doing the opposite. US GDP is misleading in the sense that it increasingly includes a large portion of economic activity that isn't actually producing tangible wealth.

That’s not how a global economy works (comparative advantage etc).

An analogy would be that if you remove employment activity from my household finances then our economic picture is bleak.

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

#433

Post by bpt3 »

atoav wrote: post #372
bpt3 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I know zero homeless people. Anecdotal observations are meaningless with respect to a multi-trillion dollar economy with hundreds of millions of participants.

What are you talking about? Anecdotal evidence alone is worthless, but paired with statistical evidence it isn't. And we have that evidence. Also: you "not knowing" a homeless person is itself anecdotal and not only that: it is actually worse than the evidence you attacked. The critiqued evidence is about how many of X a person sees. That isn't perfect, as it depends and how observant that person is and how much they…

> What are you talking about?

I'm talking about how an individual experience is irrelevant when talking about the entire US economy.

> Anecdotal evidence alone is worthless, but paired with statistical evidence it isn't. And we have that evidence.

I guess? But only because you've paired something worthless with something that isn't and then focused only on the portion that isn't worthless.

> Also: you "not knowing" a homeless person is itself anecdotal and not only that: it is actually worse than the evidence you attacked.

Whoosh.

> The critiqued evidence is about how many of X a person sees. That isn't perfect, as it depends and how observant that person is and how much they go out (and where). Your counter of "not knowing" is by magnitudes worse, since on top of the previous flaws your number now also depends on how sociable you are towards homeless people (given the sentiment displayed I guess: not at all).

Again, whoosh.

> So not only is your criticism wrong, you are actually at fault of the very method you critizised — only to a much higher degree.

Whoosh!

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

#434

Post by zeroonetwothree »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #240
nradov wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that a "problem"? What is preventing other countries from building tech winners? The USA isn't launching missiles to destroy the next foreign Nvidia or Meta competitor.

You could just as well ask what is preventing every other state in the US from building tech winners.

Nothing, but having the world’s largest free trade and migrations zone means that it’s not economically efficient. Centralising industries produces large benefits in efficiency and hiring. We only don’t see it as much on a global scale because of trade and migration restrictions.

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

#435

Post by epolanski »

Because America has the right mix of ingredients of greed, capital, culture, know-how, regulations, etc to thrive in the age of IT and finance.

Those who replicate the formula may not have the ingredients and those who do have the ingredients use different formulas.

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

#436

Post by trgn »

keybored wrote: post #339
majormajor wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about the US is that it's very unevenly distributed. So it depends on what you'd be doing and how much money you'd be making / already have. If you have a professional-class job the US is often the best place in the world to be for illness. You'll have a fairly high salary (especially comparing globally) and an insurance plan with an out of pocket max that is probably 10-15k per year (or much less, for most…

> The thing about the US is that it's very unevenly distributed. So it depends on what you'd be doing and how much money you'd be making / already have. The Veil of Ignorance, anyone? Even invented by an American. People here need to consider the state of a society without spending 80% of the bytes on the what-if of being a 135+ IQ individual with a passion that coincides with the work tasks of amazingly successful m…

I live in flyover country and people like their Healthcare here just fine and you don't need 6fig salary

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

#437

Post by epistasis »

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.

More of the economy is thriving than ever before.

>50% of the population has enough cash savings for three months of expenses

The median amount of cash in bank account is $8k

The median US household networth is $193k.

Further, the wage increases in recent years have happened mostly at the lower end of the income scale, not at the top!

When polled, the US population is very happy about their own economic situation, yet still believes that we are in some sort of terrible economic downturn.

IMHO, the reason for this disconnect is housing. We haven't built enough, it's made people very unhappy, and restrictive zoning prevents fixing it. The housing theory of everything could even extend to the current political situation in South Korea...

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

#438

Post by forgetfreeman »

bbqfog wrote: post #387
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.

Looking at the numbers the interest rate is almost 7% making most things very unaffordable for people who can't buy things like houses and cars with cash. Until that number dramatically goes down, regular people will suffer.

Maybe. the 15% interest rates in the 80s made a lot of working class families a shitload of money due to the magic of compound interest.

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

#439

Post by epistasis »

TeaBrain wrote: post #424
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.

Real wages (adjusted for inflation) have fallen since November 2020. https://www.statista.com/chart/32428/inflation-and-wage-grow...

But choose 2019 or 2021 as the base and wages have kept pace with or exceeded inflation:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/has-pay-kept-up-with-infl...

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

#440

Post by throwawayq3423 »

saagarjha wrote: post #304
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...

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

Live in one of the handful of world class cites, 250k goes fast.
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