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The Demoralization is just Beginning

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Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#101

Post by hot_gril »

lxgr wrote: post #96
hot_gril wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The monetary policy we have coerces people into passive investing, creating bubbles. When rates are low, you see bogus "tech" plays like wifi water dispensers, that's the scam the author means. Also makes taxes weird, e.g. why capital gains aren't the same as income (today USD ≠ past USD). Gold standard is wasteful though; Fed could just keep a steady money supply instead. But it's our scam. The Fed isn't only diluti…

Yes, inflation incentivizes spending and/or investments, and (in moderation) that's generally a very good thing. The only other alternative that doesn't create incredibly bleak incentives for anyone that doesn't inherit wealth would be wealth and estate taxes, but good luck getting either passed or reformed.

I don't see why the economy benefits long-term from people spending/investing only to get the money off their hands. Especially when it gets parked in things like gold and real estate just cause those supplies are sorta fixed.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#102

Post by harimau777 »

ikiris wrote: post #78
jazzyjackson wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's deferring to experts, but whether economists are experts at anything is a hot debate.

It's only a debate if you reject the very principals of science. I realize we're getting there for a lot of people, but merely disbelieving in science is not a refutal of it. This ignores so called Austrian economists however, who are just flat out lying to either themselves or everyone else depending on the person.

I think the problem might be that it's difficult to perform experiments in economics due to the size of the thing being measured and the fact that the people making up the economy generally aren't going to be alright with you performing experiments on them.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#103

Post by crooked-v »

roenxi wrote: post #21
jfengel wrote: post #6

For his solutions: "Brain drain" is what we had been doing for the past 80 years or so. It worked great. We're specifically driving people away now. "Gold standard" is an idea every sane economist rejected decades ago.

> "Gold standard" is an idea every sane economist rejected decades ago. I don't think any sane economists have ever "rejected" the gold standard, it is known to work. Pretty much any empire ever founded was built on a gold standard. The US jumped away from it because they were going to go bankrupt and picked a system that put the pain off until a later date. Now, 50 years later, they appear to have lost the title of…

> Pretty much any empire ever founded was built on a gold standard

...because they didn't have the social and technological methods, as well as centralization of force, needed to make a fiat currency work.

The gold standard was never a great idea. It was just more functional and efficient than what came before it because the gold supply was usually inherently limited by how fast the mines could produce the stuff.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#104

Post by nextworddev »

Incipient wrote: post #79
nextworddev wrote: post #53

He is pretty clueless about a few things, namely 1) China inflated an even bigger asset bubble in the form of real estate and they are using dumping and aggressive trade to keep afloat, and 2)the regime can be ended in a few months without importing food since it’s not self sufficient in terms of food supply

China owns a lot of food generation overseas, so while they may "import" it, they effectively own it.

Doesn’t really work that way

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#105

Post by lxgr »

hot_gril wrote: post #101
lxgr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, inflation incentivizes spending and/or investments, and (in moderation) that's generally a very good thing. The only other alternative that doesn't create incredibly bleak incentives for anyone that doesn't inherit wealth would be wealth and estate taxes, but good luck getting either passed or reformed.

I don't see why the economy benefits long-term from people spending/investing only to get the money off their hands. Especially when it gets parked in things like gold and real estate just cause those supplies are sorta fixed.

Asset bubbles are indeed a sign of monetary and fiscal dysfunction, but so are hoarding and excessive wealth accumulation.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#106

Post by janalsncm »

paxys wrote: post #48
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“there is more to an economy than manufacturing” Not really, no. If China cut off the US, for any reason, who gets hurt more? Who has a bigger house of cards to collapse? Who will have a harder time rebuilding? If the next leader is bolder than Xi, and is of the same kind that once killed tens of millions of people, losing an arm and a leg to behead an enemy might be a viable strategy.

> Not really, no. If China cut off the US, for any reason, who gets hurt more? China gets hurt more. They are an export economy. US will face some temporary pain, sure, but other countries build stuff as well. Meanwhile what does China do with all the materials piling up, millions out of jobs and a half a trillion dollar hole in their economy?

Exports are a little under 20% of China’s GDP. For reference, they are a bit over 10% of US GDP.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#107

Post by trhway »

lxgr wrote: post #100
trhway wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would this elite talent be that productive there like it is here? I don't think so. I think moving talent to the most productive environment is the win for the civilization as a whole.

Only if there's something flowing back that amounts to more than crumbs falling off the edge of the table, i.e. ownership of what these talented people help build, not just salaries/remittances. Silicon Valley is actually pretty good at that, compared to e.g. academia in the US.

Technological and scientific progress flows back spreading around the world like the tide rising all boats.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#109

Post by rayiner »

rat87 wrote: post #72
rayiner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brain-draining the world is really the key to cementing American Hegemony in a post-Cold War world. Why should we want that instead of an orderly, well-governed democracy? Do you think people in Sweden or Denmark are upset their countries aren't hegemons? And what would that do to the country? Do you really think that, say, the top 5% of India and China (100 million people) would do better maintaining a democracy t…

India despite flaws is a democracy same as the US. It's a very different country then China. Plenty of immigrants from tyrannical countries are as if not more committed to democracy as those born here And just because someone was born in China or India it doesn't make them any less American then someone born in Iowa. Their children might be born in Iowa

Democracy isn't created by intentions or "commitment," but rather the culture of the people, their attitudes, and mental processes. An Iowan born in Iowa to Iowan parents who were born to Iowan parents is steeped from birth in a culture that is very different from someone born in India or China--or even the American-born children of Indians and Chinese immigrants.

Immigrants may become legally American overnight, but they don't become culturally American overnight. Cultural attitudes are extrmely durable (https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...). My mom has lived here for 36 years, and she's still a low-social-trust south asian who has distinctly south asian views on credentialism, education, social hierarchy, etc. Are those attitudes compatible with the kind of egalitarian, self-governed democracy Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about? I am skeptical that's true at scale.

Even having grown up here, my cultural attitudes are very different--and again, distinctly south asian--compared to my wife's (whose family has been here since the early 1700s). If you took 1,000 people like my wife and put them on an island, you'd recreate America--including the parts of America I find perplexing and frustrating. I'm not persuaded that if you took 1,000 people like me and put them on an island you'd recreate America.

Re: The Demoralization is just Beginning

#110

Post by hot_gril »

nextworddev wrote: post #53

He is pretty clueless about a few things, namely 1) China inflated an even bigger asset bubble in the form of real estate and they are using dumping and aggressive trade to keep afloat, and 2)the regime can be ended in a few months without importing food since it’s not self sufficient in terms of food supply

The article does a good chunk of fear mongering, so it's hard to take the stats at face value.

I want to know more details about that US vs China trade map. I've seen it before, and first off, it's not "primary trading partners" as the author said, it's the larger of the two. Like a country that trades 95% with its neighbors, 3% with China, 2% with US is red on that map. And idk if this is $ value traded in either direction or what.

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