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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

#151

Post by agobineau »

hahahahhaah wrote: post #104
baxtr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed this as well. I haven’t found a good cure for this other than diversifying globally.

Everyone wants to park some money and have other people work hard to increase the real value of said parked money. Not everyone can win big. Storing value is actually pretty amazing thing and that it can be profitable is magic. Of course the environment and poorest pays some of the free lunch.

it really depends on whether or not there is a global capital shortage. this is very easy to do when the economy requires much more capital than is available. and in the inverse, it is self explanatory

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

#152

Post by epolanski »

Retric wrote: post #141
epolanski wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google etc may be a US based company, but they can leverage emerging markets just fine. Not sure what are you trying to say.

You’re buying stock in a company not a market, and a company doesn’t need to be based in a country to profit from that country. Plenty of companies listed on foreign exchanges make the majority of their money from the US market etc.

You can buy "into a market" by investing in a ETF following the MSCI EM or SP500. In any case not sure what's your point about single stock companies in a discussion about market indexes.

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

#153

Post by vladms »

lnsru wrote: post #47
baxtr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s not perfect but probably the best we have. People forgot or simply don’t realize how much worse life was just a couple of decades ago (in terms of nutrition, access to knowledge, clean water, material wealth).

The question is where. Couple decades ago rent in Munich was like 3x lower. While salaries were insignificantly lower with overall lower living cost. Couple decades ago Germany had electronics industry. Now it’s gone. More industries are following. Couple decades ago there were rather isolated Yugoslav Wars. Now it’s introduction into WW3 with active war in Ukraine and hybrid attacks everywhere in Europe. It depends…

Renting for me generally sounds like a bad deal. On the same period the stock grew even more (ex: S&P x4.5 from 2000). So, if you want to say that if you lived 30 years ago in Munich AND did not save anything you would have lived better, I will have to answer that it was just delaying the issue of not being able to save - the ones that were able to save (maybe not living in Munich, maybe other ways), might at some point come and buy something in Munich. Accumulating wealth too much into some hands was the issue decades ago and remains an issue today. Just that decades ago people might not have been aware...

The electronics industries of a couple decades ago were producing stuff that are incomparable to what we have today. Taking that into account, I would say today is "better".

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

#154

Post by consp »

vladms wrote: post #153
lnsru wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is where. Couple decades ago rent in Munich was like 3x lower. While salaries were insignificantly lower with overall lower living cost. Couple decades ago Germany had electronics industry. Now it’s gone. More industries are following. Couple decades ago there were rather isolated Yugoslav Wars. Now it’s introduction into WW3 with active war in Ukraine and hybrid attacks everywhere in Europe. It depends…

Renting for me generally sounds like a bad deal. On the same period the stock grew even more (ex: S&P x4.5 from 2000). So, if you want to say that if you lived 30 years ago in Munich AND did not save anything you would have lived better, I will have to answer that it was just delaying the issue of not being able to save - the ones that were able to save (maybe not living in Munich, maybe other ways), might at some po…

> Renting for me generally sounds like a bad deal.

It always is but not everyone has the option of buying. It takes investment and not everyone's parents are wealthy.

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

#155

Post by rwmj »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #136
rwmj wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's reasonable to assume they're broadly stable, but being broadly stable doesn't mean a drop will "recover". There's no specific ratio that the currencies are being pushed to. Permanent changes in the baseline can and do happen. > You're buying a share of productive capacity, the currency it is listed in doesn't matter. But I don't own a fixed percentage of production, I own a fixed number of shares and the number…

> But I don't own a fixed percentage of production, I own a fixed number of shares and the number of shares can change. If the number of shares doubles, then my investment is worth half as much.

How is that related to currency changes? That can happen anyway regardless of the currency.

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

#156

Post by bojan »

roenxi wrote: post #93
bojan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That progress in India comes as an excuse to weaken their democratic institutions. The fallacy is that Modi is to praise - the progress comes mostly because of enormously positive global trends developed in the past decades, the ones that are now being threatened. > Couple decades ago there were rather isolated Yugoslav Wars. A bit of nuance, they ended in 1999, however the whole thing is still influencing Europe neg…

Progress in India is due to policy in India. The idea that India can handwave it's successes and failures on external forces might have been well justified in 1955, but in this century they get to choose. Best hope for the anti-Modi-policy crowd is maybe it isn't Modi's policies specifically. In fact, in the vast majority of cases (including North America, South America, Europe, East Asia, India & South-East Asia) pr…

> Progress in India is due to policy in India.

This is an extremely bold claim. Always was, but especially in today's world it is. I am not saying that Modi's policies are bad, what I am trying to say is that he is basically playing the game on the easy mode. He has access to the unprecedentely dynamic and resilient global economy _and_ he has access to cheap Russian resources Europe doesn't want to buy anymore. All Modi needs to do is not do anything really stupid - the economy will perform well unless clubbed to the head.

And that is all fine, and I am genuinely happy for India. My problem is that Modi is using that easily achieved success to erode democratic institutions - and that will become a problem in the long-term, as it always historically has, everywhere.

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

#157

Post by consp »

jacquesm wrote: post #117
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, assu…

So you are arguing for a regulated market, not a free one. Heavy anti-trust legislation and enforcement is needed for a healthy economy. This might lower the year-over-year stock raise but at least keeps the negative excesses somewhat in check (monopolization, power concentration, rent-seeking).

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

#158

Post by Epa095 »

p-e-w wrote: post #140
Epa095 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT: I enjoyed seeing a dictionary-correct use of the term 'begging the question' in the wild :-)

What other uses are there? I only know the phrase as a synonym for “assuming the conclusion”, i.e., a type of circular reasoning.

People often use it instead of 'raises the question'. E.g "There was very little fallout to the Y2K bug, which begs the question: was the Y2K crisis real and well handled or not really a crisis at all?"

E.g https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%22begs+the+question%22

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

#159

Post by epolanski »

baxtr wrote: post #34
BrenBarn wrote: post #9

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

I think it’s not perfect but probably the best we have. People forgot or simply don’t realize how much worse life was just a couple of decades ago (in terms of nutrition, access to knowledge, clean water, material wealth).

It hasn't been the best for a long time, and economist have long proposed alternatives, but gdp and gdp per capita seem to be the easiest to calculate and convey.
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