The rich world needs higher real wage growth • Hacker News Board

Re: The rich world needs higher real wage growth

#121

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

extralego wrote: post #111

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You probably lost a great bartender and taco server I would have never tried the pastrami taco if it hadn’t been for her! > Why not discuss it with her? She’s campaigning. Not sure distractions would help. In any case, these sorts of proposals benefit from specificity. Next steps are doing homework and proposing specific rule changes.

If only that was all that stood in her way. Let’s not take pastrami tacos for granted.

> Let’s not take pastrami tacos for granted

They’re actually a brilliant fusion of American Hispanic and American Jewish traditions. As it happens, her district has prominent populations of each.

Re: The rich world needs higher real wage growth

#122

Post by jessaustin » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #63

Nokinside wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you are really rich, consumption becomes tedious. If someone has $100M income after taxes, they might invest $50M reducing the ROI of the capital in economy during the economic boom when there is enough capital and cheap credit already. What to do with the remaining $50 million? It's hard to eat, travel or use services to spend $50 million per year. It's possible, but it takes some real effort. Helicopter ride e…

They are tanking about the rich middle class west (ie you and me) not euro trash millionaires and trustafarians on made in Chelsea :-) Also if you did suddenly get 50mil say you invest for the long term 50% the balance gives you an income And that's not assuming you don't spend 10-15 mill or so on a really nice house or two one in London and one in the country.

Those houses wouldn't be your worst investments...

Re: The rich world needs higher real wage growth

#123

Post by pembrook » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #85

dalbasal wrote: post #56

This article really demonstrates how meaningless most economics reporting is, it's nearly as bad as markets/finance reporting. Oil is $75, about average over the last decade. It has almost nothing to do with employment, wage growth or GDP except inasmuch as all major economic measures affect eachother. A year ago oil prices were low, did that mean the opposite of this article (whatever that is) was true? This kind of…

This article really demonstrates how meaningless most economics reporting is, it's nearly as bad as markets/finance reporting. The problem is not with the reporting, it’s with the field. Economics is pseudoscience. It has all the trappings but none of the explanatory or predictive abilities. So you get articles like these that use a lot of jargon pretending like they’re making a strong case, but there’s no strong con…

Economics is not pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is essential oils being marketed as medicine.

Economics is a social science, just like anthropology, archaeology, history, linguistics, political science, psychology, sociology, etc. etc.

It's never going to be something with Laws of Gravity or the like, because humans are never wholly predictable or rational creatures. But that doesn't mean we can't come up with models that explain markets a majority of the time, in a macro sense.

Why do you think central bank policy has been able to prevent a depression from occurring over the last 90 years, when in the past they were a regular occurrence? That's economics in action. Just because it lacks the certainty of computer science doesn't mean you can throw out the baby with the bath water.

Re: The rich world needs higher real wage growth

#124

Post by saas_co_de » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #56

This article really demonstrates how meaningless most economics reporting is, it's nearly as bad as markets/finance reporting. Oil is $75, about average over the last decade. It has almost nothing to do with employment, wage growth or GDP except inasmuch as all major economic measures affect eachother. A year ago oil prices were low, did that mean the opposite of this article (whatever that is) was true? This kind of…

Economist is not economics reporting. It is political advocacy.

Re: The rich world needs higher real wage growth

#125

Post by closeparen » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #20

closeparen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone in dense areas is the only sustainable settlement pattern. The energy alone needed to maintain existing levels of sprawl cannot go on much longer.

I hear this a lot. But the fact remains that it is significantly more expensive to live in a dense urban area. Until the claimed efficiency improvement can be translated to an actual day-to-day cost improvement, people will continue to live where their dollars go farther.

The land that can be used as "dense urban area" is strictly upper-bounded by zoning, precisely because it is so economically efficient: a few suburban homeowners cannot hope to compete financially with the ~400 potential high-rise condo owners vying to live on the same block, so instead they fight (and generally win) in the public-policy arena.

For the efficiency factor to overcome the desirability factor, we would have to actually issue the building permits to allow thriving urban areas to overtake some of their surrounding lower-density neighborhoods.

We've decided as a society that this is unacceptable, so urban areas will probably maintain their premium indefinitely. In a sense you're right. But only for self-inflicted public policy reasons.

Re: The rich world needs higher real wage growth

#126

Post by Aeolos » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #90

dalbasal wrote: post #56

This article really demonstrates how meaningless most economics reporting is, it's nearly as bad as markets/finance reporting. Oil is $75, about average over the last decade. It has almost nothing to do with employment, wage growth or GDP except inasmuch as all major economic measures affect eachother. A year ago oil prices were low, did that mean the opposite of this article (whatever that is) was true? This kind of…

Someone's gotta explain to me what "structural changes in the economy" means. Does it mean that the economy is like a big building and we added another floor? Is the economy now like one of those whacky nu-architecture prizewinning buildings that are shaped like giant globs of play-do? Or is it one of those phrases that can be used to mean absolutely anything at all?

> Or is it one of those phrases that can be used to mean absolutely anything at all?

The meaning depends a bit on the political orientation of whoever is uttering the phrase. In the neoliberal nomenclature presently used throughout Europe, "structural changes" are an euphemism for cuts to public spending (healthcare, social security, pensions, services), reduction of worker rights and wage depression.

For example, France is currently undergoing "structural changes". Ireland, Spain, Greece underwent "structural changes" as a response to the global economic crisis of 2008.

Re: The rich world needs higher real wage growth

#127

Post by closeparen » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

saas_co_de wrote: post #54

closeparen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone in dense areas is the only sustainable settlement pattern. The energy alone needed to maintain existing levels of sprawl cannot go on much longer.

This is so wildly off base it is not even funny. The most sustainable forms of life is decentralized subsistence hunting and gathering or small scale farming. When civilization collapses, which it does and will, that is the only form of human life that survives. Cities rise up through political power and exploitation of the rural areas around them but they are a graveyard. Just a matter of time.

>The most sustainable forms of life is decentralized subsistence hunting and gathering or small scale farming

i.e. staying within the radius you can traverse on foot. Our oldest villages may be small, but they are unthinkably dense compared to midcentury American suburbia.

Re: The rich world needs higher real wage growth

#128

Post by naravara » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #56

This article really demonstrates how meaningless most economics reporting is, it's nearly as bad as markets/finance reporting. Oil is $75, about average over the last decade. It has almost nothing to do with employment, wage growth or GDP except inasmuch as all major economic measures affect eachother. A year ago oil prices were low, did that mean the opposite of this article (whatever that is) was true? This kind of…

This is pretty routine with the Economist. The anonymous bylines obscure the fact that most of their writers are fresh out of college economic majors with little to no real-world experience. When all you have is undergraduate level economics models and no experience to anchor it to how business actually works or decisions actually gets made, then you’re going to have vague, overgeneralized gobbledygook for analysis.

Re: The rich world needs higher real wage growth

#129

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #56

This article really demonstrates how meaningless most economics reporting is, it's nearly as bad as markets/finance reporting. Oil is $75, about average over the last decade. It has almost nothing to do with employment, wage growth or GDP except inasmuch as all major economic measures affect eachother. A year ago oil prices were low, did that mean the opposite of this article (whatever that is) was true? This kind of…

[deleted]

Re: The rich world needs higher real wage growth

#130

Post by walshemj » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #122

walshemj wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are tanking about the rich middle class west (ie you and me) not euro trash millionaires and trustafarians on made in Chelsea :-) Also if you did suddenly get 50mil say you invest for the long term 50% the balance gives you an income And that's not assuming you don't spend 10-15 mill or so on a really nice house or two one in London and one in the country.

Those houses wouldn't be your worst investments...

If I had done that 15 /20 years ago yes :-) the post Brexit / Trump stock market crash maybe not.