111–120 of 152 posts
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That is correct. Well documented and the Princeton oligarchy study [0] cemented what left wing authors have pointed out for decades. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746.amp
From the abstract of the paper: > Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... However, it's not correct that "capitalists have taken ov…
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Traditional pensions are fundamentally unsustainable endeavors under modern demographics. You cannot pay decent benefits to a growing retired population while collecting reasonable dues from a shrinking working population. As we've seen, all retirement funds, even the remaining pensions, have largely switched their investments to the stock and bond markets in the vain hope that this fundamental conundrum will be solv…
> You cannot pay decent benefits to a growing retired population while collecting reasonable dues from a shrinking working population How does this jibe with ever-increasing profits?
A traditional pension fund cannot afford that kind of risk without a massive cash buffer and could not have captured that value anyway because it cannot cover its own firm's losses with some other firm's gains. After all, it's not like the same 500 companies are occupying the index as decades ago, and even those that stick there have changed relative positions a lot.
The only thing that could have conceivably replaced traditional pensions and captured all of this value and given it to the workers "fairly" without suppressing the factors that made it possible would have been a sovereign wealth fund run passively but competently by the government, but such a thing is in and of itself a moonshot.
Stock returns grow because that's where people and institutions put their money. If stock return growth slows (assuming they aren't talking only about dividends), that means either there's less money in general or it's being parked elsewhere. Which is it? Or do I misunderstand what stock growth is?
The money doesn't get "parked" in stocks. It's sent to a company, that will use it. Anyway, the idea is approximately right. When there's more money on the economy than stuff to buy, you get inflation, and the extra money gets places to go. Alternatively, yes, the amount of money and the number of time it transacts both change all the time.
So if I sell a share of Microsoft and you end up buying it, market makers get some of that and your broker might too, but I would get most of the money.
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The 401k is an invention that is yet to prove its efficacy. The first 401ks were opened in 1978, so if you were entering the workforce then you’d be retiring this decade! So, we will see if this privatization of pensions really benefits us all or merely enriched a generation of asset managers while absolving the corporate and the government from providing pensions for workers.
I don't have the references on my finger tips, but basically I recall 401ks to be a bad deal for most employees because of mismanagement by the account holder, high fees, ill timed trades, etc. A few 401k (or 403b) holders have done very well, however, if their plans offered low-cost index funds, contributed regularly and avoided moving money around at the wrong time or at all.
I think it's more than "a few". For one thing, many 401k-equivalent funds that government employees can make contributions to are low cost index funds, and there are lots of government employees. For another thing, most 401ks offered by large corporations also offer low cost index funds, which many employees contribute to because they're usually the default that you get if you don't pick something else, and there are lots of employees of large corporations.
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From the abstract of the paper: > Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... However, it's not correct that "capitalists have taken ov…
I’m totally on board with the idea that we were never a valid democracy - and effectively a defacto oligarchy - to begin with
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>Due to the utter hell it's already been for meeting accounting standards they need for their financial disclosures like inventory count of fucking screws in the warehouse needing to be perfect. Surely this is done on a monthly or quarterly basis instead of a daily basis, right? As in, on day X at XX:XX time you count the screws, and call it good? Or is it more detailed than that?
Does it matter? It's a wasteful process, and not the only one that has been introduced into the parent commenter's workflow. In a private company, you can just say "I don't care if we lose 1-cent screws, just order more when we open the last big box of them." You don't ever have to count them, unless you notice that you're spending an awful lot of money on replacing them. In a public company that is legally required…
I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm just wondering how often it has to happen. If it's just a snapshot of inventory on one day and everything pans out, then great. If it's something that has to be tracked 365 days a year because the taxman will audit all 365 of those days, then that's a lot of effort that's being spent on something for seemingly very little benefit.
Very interesting paper. > I show that the decline in interest rates and corporate tax rates over the past three decades accounts for the majority of the period’s exceptional stock market performance. It's interesting that they've shown this to the exclusion of other narratives, mainly frontier markets like semiconductors and software allowing "easy" creation of value. I think this is partially why investors are so ea…
I call bullshit. Tax rates and interest rates certainly help spur investment and expansion of production but it’s hard to look at the world we live in today, with electric cars that can self drive and hand held devices connected to natural language comprehending oracles of knowledge, JIT industries end to end, starships to mars for colonization in mid to late stages, etc, and think “yep the only value is the value th…
Ruelle gives some thoughts on economics but ultimately concludes something like "we don't currently have the tools needed to properly study this subject".
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From the abstract of the paper: > Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli... However, it's not correct that "capitalists have taken ov…
I’m totally on board with the idea that we were never a valid democracy - and effectively a defacto oligarchy - to begin with
We could draw a line from the Magna Carta to the Equal Rights Amendment.
Democracy is a work-in-progress.
I could be mistaken but using the S&P500 index might be slightly problematic in that the companies that compose this index change all the time. This almost guarantees that the index increases in value over time as high performers are added and low performers are removed. There is an upward bias. I don't doubt that overall, on average, much growth has come from a 40 year decline in interest rates and a consistent lowe…
You are correct that even if the US stock market flatlines for the next 20 years, there will be individual companies which do extremely well, and others which die. That's not what this article is about. The article is about average corporate profits in the current-to-the-point-in-time largest US companies. And using the SP500 allows the analysis to be consistent even as the mix of the SP500 changes. And no, changing…