Why America's economy is soaring ahead of its rivals • Hacker News Board

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

#641

Post by Guthur » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 9:27 AM UTC

hunglee2 wrote: post #590

GDP is a measure of the marketisation of society. If I go visit my grandma over the weekend, my activities do not register on GDP. If I hire a care assistant for $800 per day to do so, that's $800 to national GDP. The encroachment of the market into society correlates with record levels of mental and physical health crisis. US life expectancy has declined over the past three years, even as 'the economy' has surged ah…

And if you borrow that money is even better because they just created the money for you to add to the GDP, and now it will have lots of sweet service fees and interest in top of that.

And on a side note because US dollars are the reserve currency and only created in one country they can go shopping around hovering up every asset and resource.

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

#642

Post by vasco » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 9:31 AM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #623

hunglee2 wrote: post #590

GDP is a measure of the marketisation of society. If I go visit my grandma over the weekend, my activities do not register on GDP. If I hire a care assistant for $800 per day to do so, that's $800 to national GDP. The encroachment of the market into society correlates with record levels of mental and physical health crisis. US life expectancy has declined over the past three years, even as 'the economy' has surged ah…

Seriously, just looking at the examples of "stagnated and failing economies" like Japan should be a give away that this measure is total BS. In Germany a life saving brain surgery creates 5K USD of economic activity and the same surgery creates 500K USD of economic activity in the USA. True story, a YouTuber I'm following recently had her mother operated in Germany and then again in the USA and she made a video about…

> I'm worried because I don't believe in(goodness of?) revolutions

That's strange, revolutions have been the some of the most acute moments that improved things for the world population and brought rights to the common people. I'd definitely not want to live through one because it sucks for those during it, but it's great for those that come after.

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

#643

Post by DanielHB » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 9:32 AM UTC

hunglee2 wrote: post #590

GDP is a measure of the marketisation of society. If I go visit my grandma over the weekend, my activities do not register on GDP. If I hire a care assistant for $800 per day to do so, that's $800 to national GDP. The encroachment of the market into society correlates with record levels of mental and physical health crisis. US life expectancy has declined over the past three years, even as 'the economy' has surged ah…

I was thinking the same thing the other day. Like how much of the US GDP is tied to their suburb-living car-dependent lifestyle. What percentage of the GDP is all that infrastructure (sewage, heating, power plants, power transmission, car production, road maintenance)?

Sure that create jobs, especially lower-skilled jobs which are important for society. But at the same time they didn't really need to exist. It feels like much like defense spending, it create jobs, but it doesn't create value.

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

#644

Post by sajithdilshan » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 9:32 AM UTC

pelorat wrote: post #632

Us Europeans are more 'detached' from the economy than people are in the USA. We basically coast along. We don't live on credit, but debit, and most people have zero investments outside their house. We're content and risk adverse and don't care much for the stock market (even though many people's pensions are tied to it). In places where higher education is cheap, or even sometimes free (like Sweden), there's less pr…

This is so true. I’m a software engineer in Berlin, and I’m from Sri Lanka. It amazes me how many young people are still pursuing bachelor’s or master’s degrees in business management or related fields instead of specializing in STEM fields, where they’d have a better chance of securing a high-paying job and making a meaningful impact. It seems like everyone wants to work for big four audit firms, but they often end up doing poorly paid internships in companies unrelated to their higher studies field.

As you mentioned, the EU single market is just another bureaucratic monster. If you want to expand your business to other countries, you’ll need to apply for passporting. Then, if you ever want to provide services related to local taxes, you’ll have to have a physical office registered in the respective country. Each country also has its own nationalistic preferences regarding which services and products they use. For example, the French tend to prefer French companies over any other company that provides the same product, or even a better version from another European country.

In essence, the EU is simply a massive tax burden on European citizens, benefiting only a handful of countries within the continent.

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

#645

Post by lifeplusplus » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 9:34 AM UTC

Housing and rent say otherwise

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

#646

Post by vasco » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 9:34 AM UTC

_1tem wrote: post #588

If you go to the doctor with a problem and get a blood test and they say that everything looks fine, but you don’t feel fine, then you don’t say: “well the numbers are right, I should feel fine”. Rather you try to find what the numbers aren’t capturing, because you know something is wrong. Same with the economy. The perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election, and perc…

> perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive as demonstrated by the last election

How does the election tell you anything about the economy? Are you injecting a bunch of your reasons why you think people voted for X or Y or is there a factual argument behind that sentence?

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

#647

Post by mrtksn » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 9:37 AM UTC

vasco wrote: post #642

mrtksn wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, just looking at the examples of "stagnated and failing economies" like Japan should be a give away that this measure is total BS. In Germany a life saving brain surgery creates 5K USD of economic activity and the same surgery creates 500K USD of economic activity in the USA. True story, a YouTuber I'm following recently had her mother operated in Germany and then again in the USA and she made a video about…

> I'm worried because I don't believe in(goodness of?) revolutions That's strange, revolutions have been the some of the most acute moments that improved things for the world population and brought rights to the common people. I'd definitely not want to live through one because it sucks for those during it, but it's great for those that come after.

I'm yet to see a revolution that improves anything. They certainly destroy a lot and change who's the elite though.

Any benefit, IMHO, comes purely from starting over. Any revolution benefit can be achieved through debt purge, elevating those in precarious state and break any fast feedback loops that led us to that point.

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

#648

Post by pmb » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 9:39 AM UTC

pelorat wrote: post #632

Us Europeans are more 'detached' from the economy than people are in the USA. We basically coast along. We don't live on credit, but debit, and most people have zero investments outside their house. We're content and risk adverse and don't care much for the stock market (even though many people's pensions are tied to it). In places where higher education is cheap, or even sometimes free (like Sweden), there's less pr…

> The EU single market is largely a myth from the perspective of wanting to start a successful company that can compete internationally. It's not any easier now than it was before the EU existed.

[citation needed] because I think this is extremely false.

It is easy to underestimate the pain caused by having all the pre-euro currencies and pre-EU tax laws (yes there was the Schengen zone and EEC, but the EU uniformity helps a lot) and pre-EU borders.

Source: me, who is a middle-aged American founding a tech startup in the EU and visited Europe many times before the EU existed.

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

#649

Post by kergonath » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 9:41 AM UTC

vasco wrote: post #642

mrtksn wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, just looking at the examples of "stagnated and failing economies" like Japan should be a give away that this measure is total BS. In Germany a life saving brain surgery creates 5K USD of economic activity and the same surgery creates 500K USD of economic activity in the USA. True story, a YouTuber I'm following recently had her mother operated in Germany and then again in the USA and she made a video about…

> I'm worried because I don't believe in(goodness of?) revolutions That's strange, revolutions have been the some of the most acute moments that improved things for the world population and brought rights to the common people. I'd definitely not want to live through one because it sucks for those during it, but it's great for those that come after.

> I'd definitely not want to live through one because it sucks for those during it, but it's great for those that come after.

Well, sometimes… Sometimes it ends up in a brutal dictatorship until the next revolution, which may or may not end up improving things.

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

#650

Post by DanielHB » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 9:47 AM UTC

KennyBlanken wrote: post #555

sriram_malhar wrote: post #545

I like Vinod Khosla's take (on Twitter): Stop measuring GDP and instead measure the total income of the bottom 50% of the population and optimize policy for that. Additions and exits from this group can also be tracked. We get what we measure. Will this raise income inequality?

It's not just income. Corporate America has turned "prey upon the poor" into a science. Nobody really cares about protecting the poor from that sort of thing. So they'll have to deal with BS like, say, getting paid via a debit card, whose bank charges fees for nearly anything. Then there are the astronomical credit card rates/fees. There are no limits on credit card APRs. Even government has been highly optimized for…

The "prey upon the poor" is just as bad, if not worse, in Brazil. Growing up there you don't really realize, but after living abroad for a while it is painfully obvious.

Just a small example, stores that sell anything >30 USD don't put the real price of goods when they advertise them. They always put "x12 {REAL_PRICE/12}" (show the price of the installment, while putting how many installments really small)

I had a data scientist friend who worked at a bank optimizing how much credit he could give out to people (while staying legal with the regulations). Like his goal was to get people to get more credit (usually credit card). My Bank app constantly bombard me with notifications about taking loans and getting credit cards.

This friend was not the most moral person I ever met and even him was disgusted after a few years working there, he was making a ton of money but he left anyway.