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The Boomcession: Why Americans Hate What Looks Like an Economic Boom

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Re: The Boomcession: Why Americans Hate What Looks Like an Economic Boom

#21

>There’s an item in the personal consumer expenditure data called Financial services furnished without payment (107), on which Americans are going to spend roughly $600 billion this year, or $2k per person. That’s not a small amount, and it’s also growing very quickly. So what is this item? Basically, it’s “free” checking. When you keep your savings in a bank, and that bank pays you much less than the market rate of…

My home insurance jumped from $600 a year to $2300 a year from 2019 - 2025. A big boost for consumer spending indexes, but I feel really ripped off. (I shopped around last year and every company was charging the same amount)

Re: The Boomcession: Why Americans Hate What Looks Like an Economic Boom

#22

I really enjoyed reading this. it jives very well with my sentiment. When you go to a grocery store and see the stacks of sodas and chips while our country has an obesity epidemic, you need to wonder if the sale of these products should count towards or against our economic wellbeing. If products can have positive value, surely products can have negative value as well. In an absurd way, if you were obese and bought a…

The example he gave of GDP metrics going up when banks underpay interest on savings was wild. “Wow, these customers are effectively paying billions to the banks by accepting low interest rates, they must be receiving so much value in return!!”

I have a rolodex of quirky contrarian facts I like to whip out at dinner parties and this one is definitely a new one I'm adding to the stack. I'm still shocked at the mental gymnastics needed to make it sound rational, but from an economist's perspective it's the "rational actor" argument. "Surely they must love the service, why else would someone settle for less?"
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