181–190 of 276 posts
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> Technologists live in a world of negative unemployment Just wait until you turn 50...
Do you have any recommendations for someone earlier in their career (<50 yo) to avoid or minimize ageism? Go into management? Be prepared to pick a new career?
Unemployment drops during an expansion, then rises heading into a recession. It turns out you can quantify this relationship as a recession predictor: > According to LaVorgna, since 1948, the economy has always entered or been in a recession when the unemployment rate increases 50 basis points (or 0.50 percentage point) from its trailing cyclical low. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/20/a-recession-indicator-with-a... Ta…
Add in the bad monetary policy that has Fortune 500 companies borrowing money at 0% to buyback stocks. Then the Democrats are going to want to rollback the Trump tax cuts and that will be the beginning. However, I think we need a bad recession or pop to bring things back to normal instead of just easing the pressure slightly. Otherwise the real crash will be even bigger.
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Definitely no. The popularity of 401k plans and as such makes the fortunes of many middle class Americans directly tied to gyrations of Wall Street.
The median 401k balance for 40-49 year olds is $36,000 [0]. These are adults who, for the most part, have never had access to pensions, only to 401k plans. They are about midway between entering the workforce and retirement. They, as a group, are nowhere near prepared to retire. Ever. A booming stock market is irrelevant to most Americans. [0]: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/the-average-401...
That article also says that the average isn't a useful measure, but I feel it likely is more useful than stated as everyone has a capped contribution amount. There are some outlying scenarios where you can contribute more, but those are far from typical.
It seems there are a bunch of ways to fudge these numbers- I have a roth and a standard 401k- these are likely counted as 2 separate accounts, thus painting a much bleaker picture of my overall financial health.
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Look at interest rates. The cost of borrowing matters more than the amount borrowed.
I can only assume you are talking about hard asset based debt... What if there is no collateral, or hard assets? Like the majority of consumer debt? Or corporate debt?
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So you truncate my sentence, call me an idiot and cite nothing to back your assertion?. Oh-Kay buddy. Debt requires a payment to the holder. Regardless of the interest rate, if the debtor cannot make the payment, the rate of interest is fully irrelevant. If the holder cannot collect, the value of the debt and the borrowed assets value decrease.
> That's an interesting assertion and frankly, crazy. That's your quote. If you understood debt even at the level of a freshman in an econ 101 course or hell, if you've ever taken out a loan, you wouldn't have written it. My assertion is as basic as saying the sky is blue. Want a citation for that? Hint. Debt is used to purchase assets. Assets have utility. Depreciation is a thing. If utility is more than the cost of…
This is true for corporate loans, but in case of federal budget most of the money borrowed are spent on things like healthcare, pensions, food stamps, etc. which aren't exactly profit-bringing assets.
lets parse this out: "U.S. job openings post biggest drop in more than four years" becomes post biggest drop in more than " becomes post in more than " becomes " "
I recall seeing job opening changes regularly cited in the news for pretty much as long as I've been an adult (around 40 years)...it was probably cited before that too but I didn't pay much attention to the news when I was a kid.
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Most news organizations are biased one way or another. About 90% of reporters are left of center, that probably also applies to Reuters. They do keep the spin to a minimum, I’ll give them that.
What amazes me is how easy it is for people to be radicalized by watching a single news source. My parents have literally been radicalized from normal moderate folks to "crazy conspiracy people" by watching Fox News and, I suspect, this is a broadly true statement amongst a very large swath of the elderly population.
Though better yet is to not watch the news at all. Really, it's just entertainment and a major source of stress with little upside. They're not informing so much as misinforming.
If you don't believe that, well... neither does the side you think is wrong. If you think you're more intelligent than they are, well, again, they think the same of you.
Try going without the news for a couple weeks and see how you feel. Take note of your stress levels and day to day life. Another experiment you can do is to watch the news (objectively as possible) from 2 months or 2 years ago and see how much actually ended up being relevant.
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> That's an interesting assertion and frankly, crazy. That's your quote. If you understood debt even at the level of a freshman in an econ 101 course or hell, if you've ever taken out a loan, you wouldn't have written it. My assertion is as basic as saying the sky is blue. Want a citation for that? Hint. Debt is used to purchase assets. Assets have utility. Depreciation is a thing. If utility is more than the cost of…
>> Hint. Debt is used to purchase assets. This is true for corporate loans, but in case of federal budget most of the money borrowed are spent on things like healthcare, pensions, food stamps, etc. which aren't exactly profit-bringing assets.
Unemployment drops during an expansion, then rises heading into a recession. It turns out you can quantify this relationship as a recession predictor: > According to LaVorgna, since 1948, the economy has always entered or been in a recession when the unemployment rate increases 50 basis points (or 0.50 percentage point) from its trailing cyclical low. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/20/a-recession-indicator-with-a... Ta…
Add in the bad monetary policy that has Fortune 500 companies borrowing money at 0% to buyback stocks. Then the Democrats are going to want to rollback the Trump tax cuts and that will be the beginning. However, I think we need a bad recession or pop to bring things back to normal instead of just easing the pressure slightly. Otherwise the real crash will be even bigger.
I think we've been juicing the economy for many years so when we have a recession it could be more severe than typical because we've been propping up the economy. We have 0% interest rates in many countries, so the actual economic growth absent that should be much lower. We foolishly had big tax cuts aimed at wealthy people with the trump tax cuts, so when we have a recession and need to counter that with more stimulus spending we'll be facing an increasing budget deficit. if we cancel the billionaire/millionaire trump/republican tax plan it will serve as another negative stimulus on the economy. Just like the us has been reducing the power of its democratic institutions the last few years, we've been borrowing from tomorrow (with unnecessary tax cuts).
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... and there are many many HR departments going on a hunt for these people that got laid off
Is any tech worker seriously that desirable still that they are being hounded immediately after getting fired? I entered college in 2004 and transferred out of software engineering, feeling that developer/engineer jobs would quickly become the auto mechanic of the 21st century and wages at the grunt level would fall in line. I also didn't feel fulfilled with sitting at a computer all day. Fast forward to now, and whi…
> Is any tech worker seriously that desirable still that they are being hounded immediately after getting fired?
In the 25+ years people have been paying me to do what I do, I've been able to find a new position quite rapidly, once I decided to move on.
In fact, it's gotten easier over time. The last time I switched jobs, away from a startup that in my judgement didn't have good prospects, in six weeks, I had five competing offers, two from 'FAANG' companies.
I'm not some kind of 'rock star': far from it. I usually work more slowly than most of my peers.
Having said all that, I know that nothing last forever, and the blind fortune that brought me a specific set of skills and personality traits will move on.