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

761–770 of 1001 posts

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

#761

Post by BirAdam »

dathinab wrote: post #754

Is "Americas's economy" soaring or "Americas top .1%s economy" soaring? Because as someone not from the US it often looks a lot (a very big lot) like that in recent year most economical growth exclusively went to a very small minority of US citizens but not the US as a whole. Like wasn't people economically struggling while the Democrats claiming everything is fine 'cause look economy is growing one of the more belie…

Yeah. The US economy isn’t doing well overall, and it would be worse if the US Dollar weren’t the global reserve. The thing you mention with money going to the top is exactly what one should expect in inflationary monetary policies and large amounts of government spending. It’s also what one should expect in a representative democracy. Money goes first to the banking cartel and the. To those who are politically and/or financially well connected. Period. They enrich themselves and the rest of us pay $6 for a carton of eggs.

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

#762

Post by shaftoe »

pattt wrote: post #755

Different regions play complementary roles in the global economy. The oversimplified description is that the US drives innovation and risk-taking, Europe prioritizes social welfare and sustainability and Asia powers manufacturing. Forcing everyone to compete in the US-style growth race would be disastrous - imagine the burnouts, resource drain and market instability if every country tried to be Silicon Valley. Plus,…

Your model works when every player provides something of value.

What does Europe's self indulgent attitude bring to the international table?

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

#763

Post by smegger001 »

jack_riminton wrote: post #701
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…

The problem is that countries who don't want to compete on the marketisation of everything will lose out eventually. In your example of elderly care, an extended family in Italy may care for their own grandmother (and they'd probably live longer). But the market in Italy isn't so bouyont so the younger generation can't get high paying jobs and move out even if they wanted to. The high spending and marketisation in th…

My ideal world we would pay a reasonable wage to people to take care of their own children and the eldarly relatives. These are real valuable and nessasry jobs that end up being an economic drag on those that can least afford it. So instead of paying a stranger to help grandma do household chores make meals and drive her to her medical appointment why not pay her granddaughter to take care of her instead taking a second job to pay for the assured living facility? Why have both parent work two job and pay for all day daycare when dad can stay at home clean house and watch the kids? We fear population colapse as younger generation put off or decides not to have kids and yet child care cost so much that they cant aford to have kids instead pay people to be parents and nurture and raise children.

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

#764

Post by BirAdam »

jcfrei wrote: post #730

I've given the strength of the US economy a lot of thought recently and it comes down to 8 main reasons. The two obvious ones are: - Liberal labour and corporate laws - abundance of resources (fossil fuels + fertile soil) The other 6: - Low housing prices due to vast land reserves and cheap construction. leaves more capital available to invest into the stock and bond markets - An excellent system of highways. reduces…

I would say that those are solid reasons historically, but I would say that stocks/401k/IRA have spun out of control and driven P/E ratios to stupid levels that are unsustainable. Also, housing prices are no longer affordable for the majority. For example, many people I know bought homes in 2019-2022 and they are now stuck. They could sell and make money, but then they’d be buying roughly an equivalent house to the one they’re in due to rising costs. They could rent, but rents have become extortionate.

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

#765

Post by badmintonbaseba »

skirge wrote: post #671
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…

if you hired care assistant then you have time for some other activities like work which is more profitable than cost of care assistant thus economy has more goods. Life expectancy lowers when young people die, most often in work accidents which is related to low unemployment.

Your argument hinges on my work being more profitable than a care assistants. While that's maybe true, the difference showing in GDP is not the difference of profitability or "value" in our work. What if I'm a care assistant myself? Imagine two care assistants and two scenarios:

1. They are working from Monday to Saturday. They can't take Saturday off, so they hire a care assistant to take care of their grandma on Saturdays, they happen to hire each other.

2. They are working from Monday to Friday. They take care of their own grandma over the weekends.

Scenario 1 adds more to the national GDP.

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

#766

Post by syrjir »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #664
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…

How's that related to the magnificent 7 and then SpaceX/StarLink and the AI revolution (which is nearly virtually only happening in the US: even if there are a few models in France, China, etc. it's a US game)? I don't think you realize what's going on in the EU (failing into a third world continent at an alarming rate) or in China (where "little" cities of 30 million inhabitants are all about tech and feeling like y…

[dead]

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

#767

Post by tarkin2 »

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…

Any metric that most directly relates to military spending ability seems the most pertinent these days. But of course GDP doesn’t relate to quality of life—I don’t think anyone suggested it did but of course many think it should.

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

#768

Post by divan »

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…

If you marry your fitness trainer, GDP goes down :)

There are some good talks of Mariana Mazzucato about it (and questioning of what we consider value in economy) [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzZSdgQB99w

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

#769

Post by immibis »

logicchains wrote: post #631
immibis wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a measure of price level. If I pay $100 for a doctor's visit that's $100 to GDP. If it costs $1000 that's $1000 to GDP. If it "costs" $1000 but that's just to get $100 from insurers who only pay 10% and I only have to pay 10% too? Still $1000 to GDP - I think.

That's incorrect, it's explicitly adjusted for inflation/change in price level, although of course this adjustment isn't perfect.

It's adjusted for CPI, which is probably a flawed measurement of price level, due to things like hedonic adjustments.

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

#770

Post by stetrain »

jasode wrote: post #684
DanielHB wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> much of the US GDP is tied to their suburb-living car-dependent lifestyle. [...] , but it doesn't create value. The "value" is for the citizens that prefer suburbs style living. People who prefer dense city living with mass-transportation and walkable errands like European cities or downtown NYC/Chicago are missing the fact that there's another group of people (possibly the majority) that actually prefer the suburb…

> People who prefer dense city living with mass-transportation and walkable errands like European cities or downtown NYC/Chicago are missing the fact that there's another group of people (possibly the majority) that actually prefer the suburbs. Yes, I know it seems illogical.

Of course. There are also people who enjoy walkable pedestrian and bike friendly places with lots of small local businesses to patronize.

That doesn't require living in a "big dirty city", it really just means making actual towns with dense downtown centers where people can work, live, shop, and dine.

Based on my experience with real estate prices, where townhomes near such thriving downtown developments can cost easily double of one in a suburban neighborhood a 15 minute drive away, the demand for that kind of living currently exceeds supply in many places.

The answer isn't to remove all suburbia and replace it with dense walkability, the answer is to stop preventing the dense walkable development with strict single-family-detached zoning laws, parking minimums, etc. and let the supply of such places increase to meet demand. Nobody will come take your suburban house away from you, they just want to have as much freedom in choosing what they want as you get to choose what you want.

And those that do prefer to live in big cities are just advocating for making those places better. The US has a lot of places that are definitely "city" but are still also car-dependent or at least not as friendly to walking, cycling, and mass transit as they should be. We can improve those without changing your suburban life one bit.

Post reply on HN