Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Dollar Is Dead

mathmeetsmoney.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 367 posts

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#201

Post by [deleted] »

nostromo wrote: post #53
Workaccount2 wrote: post #29

The country is getting forced by markets into realizing pain for overspending, and only congress can manage this pain. Manage the pain, not remove it is key here. Manage it. Conrgess is totally inept and ridiculously politicized, so it's unlikely they will do anything except make the problem worse. That leaves only the natural fall out of refusing to acknowledge a financial injury before going out on the field to pla…

The issue is that all governments are in roughly the same situation, so there is no alternative other than maybe gold. The US doesn't need to be great or even good, it just needs to be better than the alternatives. The issues facing China and the EU make America's spending problem look mild. (And I agree by the way: America has a massive spending problem.)

[deleted]

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#202

Post by Luker88 »

teamweightloss wrote: post #193
Luker88 wrote: post #116

I am reading the book from Ray Dalio, "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order". This article seems a little reductive in its analysis, but this is actually a huge topic. I have not finished the book yet, I don't claim to understand all its implications, but I really like it because it analyzes many empires over the centuries, and tries to track multiple determinants for all of them (also a lot of pretty…

>Dalio analysis agrees that today China power is rising and the USA is weakening Ray Dalio knows nothing. US just put tariffs on every other country in the world. And threatened China with 145% tariffs to get them to come to the table and open up Chinese market even more, even though China is in its own Great Depression right now.

Underestimate your enemy at your own peril, I guess.

Recognizing that China is much stronger than 10y ago does not mean supporting it.

Recognizing that the advantage the USA has is getting thinner does not mean liking it.

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#203

Post by nwatson »

xg15 wrote: post #126
nostromo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has repeatedly tried to soak the rich, and the results are always the same: the rich move their wealth somewhere else and you end up breaking even or even reducing your tax revenue. France: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/31/france-drops-7... UK: https://obr.uk/box/effect-of-the-additional-rate-of-income-t... Sweden: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/course/seimAEJ17wealth.pdf It's interesting to note…

The corrolay of this would be that as soon as money enters a "rich-only" ecosystem, it's essentially gone forever for the wider population. I don't see how this would be a desirable outcome.

It creates rich-people dollars and poor-people dollars. The poor people can still afford a buy a few necessities because rich-people money is tied up in useless vain endeavors, at least to some extent. If rich were to direct all their purchasing power toward real goods they could drive up the prices and make it unaffordable for regular people. As happens with the housing market to some extent.

Edit: unautocorrect

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#204

Post by tim333 »

I don't buy the dollar being dead.

His main arguments are the politics are messy and there's a lot of debt. Such things have been true in the past over its 200 year plus history and yet it goes on. The US remains the world superpower and the center for its most valuable companies and the leader in new tech like AI. Things will go on.

The British Pound has existed since about the year 600, we had 250% debt to GDP after WW2 and all sorts of chaos over the years but the currency continues. Such things don't die easily.

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#205

Post by jrs235 »

NotGMan wrote: post #160
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "overspending." There is only undertaxing. The debt is literally just the accumulated difference between spending and taxation. If extreme wealth was taxed, the debt would be zero. The point isn't even to "pay for spending" but to enforce a functional social contract, and to limit the political and democratic distortions created by extreme inequality. "Markets" should not have a veto on policy in a democr…

You think that Bezos and Musk have billions in their own personal bank account? So what do you mean be "extreme wealth"? Companies? Dividend payouts? House? Yachts? I agree that luxury items that are out of reach of the middle class (eg sport cars etc...) should be taxed highly, but a toy that a rich person can buy vs a rich person investing money into his own or other companies is a problem if you want to tax that s…

Paper wealth used as collateral for loans should be taxed as income (or capital gains).

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#206

Post by ethbr1 »

stock_toaster wrote: post #184
nostromo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has repeatedly tried to soak the rich, and the results are always the same: the rich move their wealth somewhere else and you end up breaking even or even reducing your tax revenue. France: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/31/france-drops-7... UK: https://obr.uk/box/effect-of-the-additional-rate-of-income-t... Sweden: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/course/seimAEJ17wealth.pdf It's interesting to note…

> Europe has repeatedly tried to soak the rich, and the results are always the same: the rich move their wealth somewhere else and you end up breaking even or even reducing your tax revenue. Why can't they tax something that _cant_ be moved elsewhere, like property ownership?

> Why can't they tax something that _cant_ be moved elsewhere, like property ownership?

1. Because any tax has to be politically palatable to voters, so therefore needs to exclusively target non-voters.

2. Because even if the above is satisfied, there are a large number of voters whose livelihoods are catering to non-voters.

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#207

Post by bawana »

Why isnt Brazil being considered as an alternative? If they get their act together with Argentina, Chile, and Mexico to form a 'SouthAmerican Union', they could survive and thrive.

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#208

Post by ethbr1 »

nwatson wrote: post #203
xg15 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corrolay of this would be that as soon as money enters a "rich-only" ecosystem, it's essentially gone forever for the wider population. I don't see how this would be a desirable outcome.

It creates rich-people dollars and poor-people dollars. The poor people can still afford a buy a few necessities because rich-people money is tied up in useless vain endeavors, at least to some extent. If rich were to direct all their purchasing power toward real goods they could drive up the prices and make it unaffordable for regular people. As happens with the housing market to some extent. Edit: unautocorrect

> As happens with the housing market to some extent.

As happens in any market with limited supply, which generally means desirable land and luxury goods.

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#209

Post by [deleted] »

tim333 wrote: post #204

I don't buy the dollar being dead. His main arguments are the politics are messy and there's a lot of debt. Such things have been true in the past over its 200 year plus history and yet it goes on. The US remains the world superpower and the center for its most valuable companies and the leader in new tech like AI. Things will go on. The British Pound has existed since about the year 600, we had 250% debt to GDP afte…

[deleted]

Re: The Dollar Is Dead

#210

Post by ethbr1 »

stego-tech wrote: post #188
marcosdumay wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your links are 2 about speculation on how business will react, and one real paper that discovers that rich people lie more to avoid taxes when your tax rate increases. Nothing at all supports that "the rich move their wealth somewhere else"

That's because, as a singular planetary species, that story is a myth. The rich only maintain wealth by exploiting people against each other, thus deterring actions against the rich who likely caused the issue in the first place. Lack of housing because it's a profitable investment class that rises in value due to lack of supply? Obviously it's the fault of NIMBYs alone and not political policy pushed by lobbying gro…

The way to resolve it would be to form a first-world block and negotiate equal terms for treating extreme wealth.

Penalized by group action against defectors.

Which is to say something like this should come from the WTO, or not at all.

Anything less has too great incentives for defection.

Post reply on HN