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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

#171

Post by epolanski »

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…

The Eurozone isn't a failure at all, and as a Polish person it annoys me that we have zloty and not Euro, it's very inconvenient when trying to do business beyond polish borders. It impacts me every month and creates quite some bureaucracy.

In any case where the European union keeps failing is that it keeps not focusing on creating as many common rules and regulations across the EU, so, yet again, scaling your french business beyond your borders, or bulgarian one, is always very difficult.

Most countries in Europe are ridden by pointless nationalism on so many matters when our biggest issue is creating a strong internal market in Europe, but our biggest economies are still manufacturing and exporting ones, with little focus on the strengthening of our internal markets.

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

#172

Post by mlrtime »

embedding-shape wrote: post #139
xvedejas wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on whether you're planning on holding it in currency or using the currency to buy other things. Does the cost of material goods and services mostly stay the same in EUR, or does it somewhat follow the S&P? If more the latter, then converting to EUR is just a very temporary exchange and its nominal amount doesn't exactly matter.

> Does the cost of material goods and services mostly stay the same in EUR, or does it somewhat follow the S&P? I don't understand this question, are you asking if material goods and services in Europe, which uses EUR, "somewhat" follows the S&P, a US stock market index?

If you have to hold USD to buy and sell USD products (as a European) it doesn't make sense to compare your SPY position vs EURUSD because you have to use those USD to buy something or pay some debt.

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

#173

Post by jdasdf »

Nursie wrote: post #124
jdasdf wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People wonder where all the money is going and there's no particularly good answer. The answer is welfare. That is the original sin of all of this, and the one people refuse to acknowledge. You need to let people fail.

That's about 25% of UK government spending. 33% if you include pensions. The UK does have an issue with a lowering number of people in productive work and ever more on various kinds of disability payout, it's true, but this - > You need to let people fail. Doesn't really follow.

As per the UK government for 2026-2027 9.2 Chart D.2: Public sector spending 2026-27:

Social protection - 400 b

personal social services - 54b

health - 294b

Education - 145b

industry agriculture and employment - 51b

housing and environment - 51 billion

That accounts for roughly 70% of public sector spending, not 33%.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2025-docum...

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

#174

Post by Mountain_Skies »

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.

An investor friend once told me that the US needs to always be in debt because treasuries give investors a risk-free place to park their money between investments. The sense of entitlement was astounding.

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

#175

Post by epolanski »

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?

I think 2008+ if anything shows that free market economies indeed are resilient to threats even in the worst times.

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

#176

Post by mlrtime »

ciconia wrote: post #62
miroljub wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That logic is flawed. The end value and ROI for S&P500 is the same regardless of the currency used to display it. It's the same as complaining that the temperature increased more in Fahrenheit than in Celsius. EDIT: The total value is the same regardless of the fluctuations of currencies used to represent the value. Those are two independent issues. Currencies fluctuate even if you keep them in checking accounts with…

This analogy is flawed. The conversion formula between Fahrenheit and Celsius is fixed. Not so for currencies.

They are two separate issues, you don't look at the returns on SPY vs every currency.

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

#177

Post by p-e-w »

Epa095 wrote: post #158
p-e-w wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wow, now that you pointed this out, that interpretation actually makes far more sense than the “correct” one.

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

#178

Post by epolanski »

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’…

This is all so vague.

We come from decades if not a century of spectacular growth and yet "technocratic managerialists have failed", what, where, how?

The United States comes out of 25 years of unprecedented growth, in spite of two major economical recessions and has outpaced the majority of advanced economies.

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

#180

Post by mlrtime »

compsciphd wrote: post #103
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.

yes, but could one also argue that due to currency weakening, the S&P's growth can simply be due to the weakened currency? If I can say something has an "absolute" value of X, but I denominate it in USD, which is normally 1:1 to X, then it's value in USD in X. but if USD drops to being worth half an X, but its absolute value hasn't changed, it will now appear to be worth 2X in USD. so why can't one argue, if the doll…

Because the SP500 is a better indicator of the market than USD. Also if you look at the global dollar index, it is right at par historically.

The companies in the 500 are mostly global companies, if the USD shrunk so much they would either be losing money, or it doesn't matter because the US market is so strong it dwarfs the others.

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