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

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

#971

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 10:57 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #925

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…

> UK [..] realistically most developed countries Its also really uneven. It contained in 2016 6 of the lowest GDP per captia regions of the entire EU. However we should of course treat GDP as a suspect measure of living standards. Whilst those people living in those areas will tend to have curtail life chances, they did at the time have access to _good_ healthcare and housing (in certain circumstances)

[deleted]

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

#972

Post by immibis » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 11:39 PM UTC

slifin wrote: post #803

The US dollar is the world's reserve currency So countries keep huge stores of dollars in their reserves because they need it for trade Then what happens is the US starts the money printer to pay for US government services This inflates the dollar and means that everyone who holds the dollar has lost value Including Americans who are paid for their labour with dollars and do not own assets So wealthy Americans/compan…

The incoming president wants to end the trade deficit, which is the same as ending world reserve currency status.

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

#973

Post by Projectiboga » Thu, Dec 05, 2024, 11:59 PM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #936

commandlinefan wrote: post #877

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to put words in your mouth, but this comment seems to imply that politicians successfully painted a negative picture of the economy that didn't reflect reality and used that to win the last election. While I wouldn't put that past them, why was it successful this time and not every time? Nobody even tried to pretend the economy was bad when Clinton, Bush or Obama were up for re-election, because it obviously wasn…

When high gas prices are over, they go back down to being relatively low. When high inflation is over, prices don't go back down, they just increase at a more reasonable rate going forward. But they'll still feel high for at least a few years as people mentally adjust.

Gas is around the lowest it will ever be going forward. The extra energy to pump and refine oil has been and will continue to increase.

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

#974

Post by paulryanrogers » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 12:01 AM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #857

_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…

When you see a headline GDP growth figure, remember that this number does apply equally to all people. The US and its economy is vast, like all 50 countries of Europe put together. Recently, we are seeing that middle class and below really suffered in the last few years from high inflation, but the economic groups above fared much better. Also, new immigrants (usually unskilled) are doing better than natives. To be c…

> Also, new immigrants (usually unskilled) are doing better than natives

Is this true in the US?

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

#975

Post by throwaway2037 » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 12:47 AM UTC

massysett wrote: post #787

crazygringo wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really matter if all you're doing is measuring the relative change in GDP though, and the amount of activity that doesn't register on GDP isn't increasing. In other words, if you assume non-GDP activity is constant, then GDP does genuinely and accurately reflect economic growth. Indeed, this is one reason why economists recommend GDP as a useful measure of growth in a country year-over-year, but not for…

> Now, if you think that a massive social transformation is underway of non-GDP-registering activities to GDP-registering activities -- e.g. people used to care for their grandmas, now all those people have gotten jobs to pay for care assistants to do it instead -- then yes GDP will show "false growth" in productivity. But that really doesn't seem to be a major factor. But isn't that the issue? Before: one working-ag…

    > Before: one working-age person in the household worked part time, or did not work at all.

Economists call this unpaid (usually, emotional) labor.

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

#976

Post by yencabulator » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 12:52 AM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #877

matthewdgreen wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the economy is good. But according to polling, many folks who said the economy was "poor" before the November election now believe it's doing great. All in a very partisan fashion, of course: https://jabberwocking.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/blog_mi...

Not to put words in your mouth, but this comment seems to imply that politicians successfully painted a negative picture of the economy that didn't reflect reality and used that to win the last election. While I wouldn't put that past them, why was it successful this time and not every time? Nobody even tried to pretend the economy was bad when Clinton, Bush or Obama were up for re-election, because it obviously wasn…

"How the US Economy Is Doing Depends on Your Politics" says that the trend started in late 90s: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-21/consumer-...

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

#977

Post by throwaway2037 » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 1:14 AM UTC

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…

    > and they'd probably live longer

Is there evidence for this? In wealthy, developed European countries, I would bet in the southern ones, they are less likely to live in elderly homes, and vice versa with northern ones. I guess that this trend is more about culture than ability to pay.

    > skews the game

What does this mean?

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

#978

Post by throwaway2037 » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 1:19 AM UTC

ak_111 wrote: post #705

jack_riminton wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You highlight and try and predict the eventual problems of non-marketisation but you don't seem and try and do the same to the eventual problems of marketisation. These things are difficult to predict, but already for example we notice some problems with ultra-marketisation in the UK where house prices are now 10-12x average annual salary (it used to average 6-8x for the last two decades), and all the social strife t…

About the "nursing shortage" in the UK: The solution is simple, pay fair salaries from the NHS. This would probably required higher taxes to better fund the NHS, but good luck with that in the current UK political environment. Instead, the UK has decided to pay poor nursing salaries and import cheap labour from poor countries. Is this a win? I doubt it.

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

#979

Post by throwaway2037 » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 1:28 AM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #711

jack_riminton wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The problem is that countries who don't want to compete on the marketisation of everything will lose out eventually. It goes both ways though, when shit hits the fan if your economy is based on airbnb and food delivery you're fucked. Look at Russia, half the GDP of Germany but twice the steel production, 4 times the wheat production, 1st producer of fertilizer, huge amount of gas, &c. They had roughly the same mili…

Germany is much richer than Russia because their economy adds much more value to raw inputs. Their industry produces much more refined, valuable goods. For example, before the idiotic invasion of Ukraine, Germany imported huge amounts of Russian gas, that was used by industry to created refined, valuable goods.

Also, it is weird that you chose to comment about the German military. First, due to WW2 era agreements, they are severely limited in how they can deploy their military. Japan is similar. Also, Germany spent 50B EUR last year on their military, and that is set to rise by another 10-20B EUR this year with some extra, one-off spending. These are not small numbers!

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

#980

Post by throwaway2037 » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 1:38 AM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #974

throwaway2037 wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you see a headline GDP growth figure, remember that this number does apply equally to all people. The US and its economy is vast, like all 50 countries of Europe put together. Recently, we are seeing that middle class and below really suffered in the last few years from high inflation, but the economic groups above fared much better. Also, new immigrants (usually unskilled) are doing better than natives. To be c…

> Also, new immigrants (usually unskilled) are doing better than natives Is this true in the US?

Yes, it has been widely discussed by economists in the last few years.

https://www.npr.org/2024/10/04/nx-s1-5140039/labor-market-jo...

    > Friday's report shows 150,000 people joined or re-joined the workforce last month. Much of this growth is driven by immigration. The foreign-born workforce has grown rapidly over the last year, adding 1.4 million workers, while the native-born workforce shrank by nearly 600,000 workers.