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Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success

economist.com

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Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success

#111

Post by tonyedgecombe »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #27
BrenBarn wrote: post #9

Do not mistake economic indicators such as GDP or "growth" for meaningful measures of economic health.

It is an indicator and it's not totally non-meaningful. But GDP growth, when it's at the price of increasing the public debt and inflation, is no real growth. Instead of looking at the US, let's look at what used to be a relevant ally... In the eurozone, for example, politicians are hiding the lack of growth behind a growing mountain of public debt and the GDP growth ain't even beating inflation since the 2008 crisis…

GDP growth figures are adjusted for inflation.

Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success

#113

Post by matwood »

rwmj wrote: post #76
dranudin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The roi is unfortunately not the same if you earn your money in euros and need to pay your taxes in euros. At one point one has to do a forex trade and that will be a loss for the euro investor

Only if you convert it at a loss and are unable to wait for USD to recover. If (and it is, admittedly, a big assumption) we assume that USD and EUR are broadly stable currencies over the long term, then short term changes in the ratio don't matter for long term investors. You're buying a share of productive capacity, the currency it is listed in doesn't matter.

The USD and EURO being nearly on par was the exception. And given the current admins stated goals, I’m not sure we’re going to see the USD strengthen anytime soon. In fact, it’s more likely to get weaker.

Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success

#114

Post by jacquesm »

Animats wrote: post #94

Protectionism is failing to revive manufacturing Yes. The rare earths situation is embarrassing. This has been a political football for years now, but the efforts to fix it aren't working very well. First, you need a mine site and a mine. The US has a big one at Mountain Pass, California, and it's producing. But in the past twenty years, it's gone bankrupt twice and has been through three owners, because there were a…

Do you have a view on the patent situation around this?

Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success

#115

Post by jacquesm »

Nursie wrote: post #53
zmgsabst wrote: post #24

Populism is best understood as the general public asserting elites have “broken the deal” that legitimizes their rule — and the public withdrawing their assent from the regime. They are correct that the technocratic managerialists on the past century have failed — and failed in a way damaging to the state/nation. (For US and EU at least.) In so far as we’re all discussing that (and have been for several years), they’…

Agreed. I am not a supporter of Nigel Farage and his many different parties in the UK ('Reform' just being the latest incarnation), and I don't believe his policies offer any real answers. But what the rise of Reform does show us is the utter disillusionment with the mainstream parties of the UK, who have spent the last several decades afraid to make meaningful changes. They tell people they can't have what they want…

It shows you that, but it also shows you the success of propaganda.

Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success

#116

Post by sehansen »

huhkerrf wrote: post #78
djtango wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simpson's paradox does allow for the possibility that nutrition, access to knowledge, clean water and material wealth has improved in the aggregate while it getting worse for subpopulations. A lot of people in the world are angry and one of the things that fuels this anger is the "gaslighting" that the data shows their lives are better while their lived reality is the opposite. Don't forget that Millennials are the f…

> Don't forget that Millennials are the first generation to be poorer than their parents in a long time... This is simply not true. At some point, we do need to rely on data other than "lived experience," which compares one's quality of life at 22 to someone's quality of life at 50. "Younger Americans (millennials and Gen Zers) owned $1.23 for every $1 of wealth owned by Gen Xers at the same age." "Younger Americans…

That's mean wealth, not median wealth. Mean millenial wealth at 34[0] is $345,000 and median millenial wealth at 38[1] is $130,000. Given that inequality has been rising steadily in the US over the past 30 years, the mean and median wealth of Gen Xers and boomers were almost certainly closer to each other than for millenials.

0: your source has mean at 34 in 2025, https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2025/june/the-state-of... 1: the best I could find was median at 38 in 2022: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/feb/millennia...

Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success

#117

Post by jacquesm »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #101

I hate Trump, but this piece doesn't seem to prove or argue anything at all. It's basically free market fanaticism, it says that economic metrics are good in spite of protectionism and not because of it because how could it be otherwise? Invisible hand, etc. It's totally begging the question. If the free market economy is so resilient to threats, why didn't it thrive also in 2008?

That's a good question. So, 2008 was a major problem and financial institutions brought that on themselves. But that's - fortunately, even though there were significant knock on effects - limited to one very important slice of the market, not unlike say when Enron went bust or when the .com bust happened. The rest of the free market is what pulled us out of those things.

Free markets are on balance a good thing, assuming a level playing field and regulations to curb externalization and monopolization as well as cartel forming.

Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success

#118

Post by epolanski »

swexbe wrote: post #98
p0pularopinion wrote: post #16

I find the S&P500 to be interesting as a demonstration for currency risk. Denoted in US, it went up ~18% or so. For me as an EUR investor, it went up just 4.6% when accounting for the loss of the USD. Comparing that to indicies that usually do not perform that well, Euro Stoxx 50 is up ~22% and MSCI Emerging Markets ~21%.

> indicies that usually do not perform that well MSCI EM has outperformed MSCI US since it's inception in 2001 if you look at total return.

Small caps and emerging markets in the long run should outpace advanced high cap markets as they have more room to grow.

There's also some other interesting aspects of emerging markets specifically: they never went more than 4.5 years before recovering from a crash to ath, whereas it took the SP500 12 years and EU 600 index 14 to recover from the 2000 one.

Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success

#119

Post by Nursie »

cal_dent wrote: post #92
Nursie wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I am not a supporter of Nigel Farage and his many different parties in the UK ('Reform' just being the latest incarnation), and I don't believe his policies offer any real answers. But what the rise of Reform does show us is the utter disillusionment with the mainstream parties of the UK, who have spent the last several decades afraid to make meaningful changes. They tell people they can't have what they want…

While I sympathise and agree with the point, it’s easiest to blame political parties but the electorate are also to blame. They simply want to have their cake and eat it too. Plenty of times post-GFC where parties have tried or proposed much needed reform only for the voters, gerrymandered by the press, to throw their toys out of the pram. Theresa May’s “demantia tax”, Starmer’s winter fuel allowance for example. Sad…

> Starmer’s winter fuel allowance for example.

To me this is a prime example of the problem - they were really just fucking around at the edges anyway. It wasn't any sort of major reform. That old scene from Futurama often springs to mind -

"I say that your 3% Titanium tax goes too far!"

"And I say that your 3% Titanium tax doesn't go too far enough!"

I do agree the press are complicit though.

Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success

#120

Post by tonyedgecombe »

zmgsabst wrote: post #29
layman51 wrote: post #10

Well in the U.S., a majority of households are invested in the stock market via 401(k)’s. When their investments do well, the average Joe will give the incumbent president the credit.

Only if there’s a net increase in their well-being. If their 401k is up, but so is cost of living and job prospects are down, most families are not invested enough to view that as a positive.

Some people prefer to believe the media they consume over their lived reality.

My parents fall into this trap, they keep telling me things have never been so bad yet they live materially better lives than their own parents and their children.

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