Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 1001 posts

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

#441

Post by RajT88 »

layer8 wrote: post #336
RajT88 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has the highest disposable income per capital out of the whole world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per... For all the workers are living paycheck to paycheck, they are sitting on a gigantic monetizable pile of money. Consider this: the most popular languages in YouTube videos are English and Spanish. And did you ever notice how most videos, when they talk about units, talk about Dol…

> English and Spanish Part of the causality is the other way around: The largest language communities attract the most monetization. Europe being compartmented into 24+ languages is one reason that it’s harder to monetize.

See, that occurred to me, but the Units thing makes me think it is not as big as you would think.

Most of the English speaking world runs partly or fully on Metric.

...and there are many Australian YouTubers who talk about prices in US Dollars.

Once you notice this, it is hard to ignore the per capita disposable income argument. The disparity is wild when you run the numbers.

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

#442

Post by kelnos »

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.

This view is always super weird to me; aside from ~2008-2020, the current interest rates should still be considered pretty reasonable. And remember that rates were also on their way up pre-pandemic, but got slammed back down to 0% once the pandemic hit. (I mention this bit to counter the belief among many that our current rate situation is solely due to poor management of pandemic response.)

And -- this is certainly a bit of a gamble -- but I know people who have taken on higher rate mortgages now with the expectation they'll be able to refinance within a few years at a lower rate. That's certainly more expensive even in the meantime than having a lower-rate loan to start, and there's always the risk that rates don't actually come down, but it's an option for many (admittedly not all).

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

#443

Post by epistasis »

webdood90 wrote: post #324
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.

> 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…

Well the facts don't care about your feelings. A lot of people seem to want to feel bad about the economy and are searching high and low for reasons to feel that way.

Most of it comes down to politics:

https://www.fisherinvestments.com/en-us/insights/market-comm...

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

#444

Post by kelnos »

webdood90 wrote: post #324
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.

> 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…

> how does this track against consumer debt?

It tracks pretty much as one would expect had the pandemic not happened, following a well-established longer-term trend: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCLACBW027SBOG

> I feel like we were all doing a lot better before 2020

There we go again, going by "feelings" rather than the data.

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

#445

Post by zeroonetwothree »

0xBDB wrote: post #248
DrBazza wrote: post #207

These articles also gloss over the US market is 400m English speakers with one set of legislation, more or less. Europe is 20+ languages and 20+ sets of legislation. That’s a colossal advantage. And any clicks and mortar business gets the benefit of absurdly cheap shipping costs compared to Europe.

Business law is a state issue in the U.S. The reason that the U.S. has one set of legislation (more or less) is that 50 states (well, 49) have voluntarily adopted the Uniform Commercial Code. There is absolutely nothing stopping Europe from doing the same or similar except lack of political will.

We also have the “dormant commerce clause” as a key protection. Europe doesn’t have anything like that AFAIK

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

#446

Post by bpt3 »

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...

The time when a large portion of low wage workers were unemployed due to a pandemic? Probably not a great data point to use as your baseline.

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

#447

Post by newhotelowner »

nightski wrote: post #269
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.

We need to differentiate living paycheck to paycheck out of necessity vs. choice. It might be surprising but there are a lot of people who choose to do so because why save when you could die tomorrow.

my employees have no problem doordashing Chipotle or tim Horton or Starbucks.

It's 5 mins of driving. It's also not having any financial sense.

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

#448

Post by mmmBacon »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #309
tokioyoyo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trudeau has been PM for the last 9 of those 8 years. Do you think his policies are at least partly responsible?

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

#449

Post by govg »

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…

Renting a 2b2b in the middle of Manhattan probably costs 100k a year, but that is very far from a "moderate-cost area".

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

#450

Post by kelnos »

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…

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

That doesn't even pass a minimum-effort sniff test. I live in one of the most expensive cities in the country, and I'm in your quoted range for a 4-bedroom condo.

My sibling lives in a more affordable, but desirable, area and spends a little less than half of what I spend a year, for a single-family home with a good-sized yard that's more than twice the size of my condo. (And they bought last year when interest rates were high.)

Your own stats don't even make sense. You claim it costs $70k-$100k/yr for housing, but that to afford a home, a family needs to make $107k/yr? That doesn't make sense. If housing costs that much, that family needs to make north of $200k/yr to afford it.

Where are you getting this information?

Post reply on HN