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More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

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Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#231

Post by linkregister »

moe3 wrote: post #199
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even read CPI information from the link you posted? Literally every page is riddled with opaque reference to arbitrarily defined values and modifiers inserted by the FED. >In calculating the index, price changes for the various items in each location are aggregated using weights , which represent their importance in the spending of the appropriate population group . What do you think "aggregated using weights…

A mother who has cancer tells the kids what they need to hear. You tell the kids too much, and they grow up thinking there is no point to life. Which is not right or good for them. If you were in her position or the FED's you would do the same.

This is a bizarre conclusion you invented whole-cloth from your tortured parable. It's not even how cancer is disclosed to children! A simple scroll through social media will show images of children "beating cancer" or missing a relative who died of cancer.

The idea that the Federal Reserve lies to the populace to keep them productive is absurd. Every recession has been addressed (eventually) by the Federal Reserve. There have been catastrophic blunders, such as the tightening of credit after the sustained bank failures in 1929-1933, and the vastly too-late raising of interest rates at the height of the housing bubble in 2007.

However, the directors were rightly castigated for their failures; Alan Greenspan is still mocked for failing to address reality. The Fed is blamed as a major cause of the severity of the Great Depression. Yellen et. al. have been criticized for their caution (financial news calls it "dovish" behavior). The Federal Reserve have every motivation to tell it like it is, lest they end up like Alan Greenspan.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#232

Post by quuquuquu »

bmcusick wrote: post #13
quuquuquu wrote: post #2

>unemployment is low Yes, but many people have been designsted as "having stopped looking for work", which means the statistic doesn't count them. Additionally, those who are employed perhaps are underemployed, working as an Uber driver or bartender or chipotle or etc. >the economy has improved For the top 6% of Americans that are millionaires, it absolutely has improved. Most of their income is from capital gains, d…

This, exactly. I don't know why you're getting down-votes. It's indisputable that both (1) the economy improving on average and (2) the distribution of those gains is highly skewed to the right-side of the income/wealth table. Stories based on average numbers lose a great deal of the details that matter.

Completely agree, especially when the USA has nearly 330 million people!

Last year according to credit Suisse, the median wealth of the typical American actually /decreased/! And if I remember correctly, it was by quite a sizeable chunk, from 49,000 usd to 45,000 usd.

And the median excludes children, so it is adults only.

I have all the statistics in the world to back up what I'm saying, but even more important for me is anecdotal stuff that inspires me to dig deeper.

When you see the sheer number of young kids working chipotle or retail; when you see the demographics of uber drivers vs big 5 software engineers; when you realize that so much of the wealth in the US is old money that continues to centralize, pool, and grow (much like gravity);

when you realize all that, at the very least, it makes you say "hmmm... I need to rethink and dig deeper into this topic on my own".

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#234

Post by Godel_unicode »

CaptSpify wrote: post #217
nkozyra wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We treat digital goods the same as physical goods I'm struggling to see the impact this has on economic reality. Could you expound?

sorry if this is a bit ranty: We should be able to freely sharing digital media as virtual-goods are immediate to duplicate. Instead we've created artificial barriers (drm, paywalls, streaming services, etc). The only reason these barriers are allowed, is a dying industry is trying to stay relevant. The economic impact of the media industry loss would be great, and the media industry does still have a place in our sy…

The value in the music industry has never been in the duplication (or do you really think CDs cost $20 to make while AOL was simultaneously giving them away??). The value is, and always has been, in the talent of the people making the music. DRM is that industry trying to ensure that people who create amazing content are still interested in doing so.

You are essentially arguing that we should let everyone steal since stealing is easy.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#235

Post by linkregister »

candiodari wrote: post #181
linkregister wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an interesting anecdote, delivered with lots of confidence. However, despite the just-so manner you delivered it, I don't see a compelling argument. For starters, the CPI isn't calculated in an opaque manner; it's explained here: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf . The costs that are increasing for most Americans are housing, healthcare, and education costs. Yet over 40% of American households own…

> The directors of the Federal Reserve, if they had some secret interest in tricking everyone, wouldn't be flatly admitting they consider why inflation isn't hitting targets a "mystery." [2] So you're saying these people with all the humility required to announce they have solved economic crises for at least a lifetime [1] wouldn't lie or deceive themselves ? I wouldn't make that point. Seems unlikely that hubris lik…

Your argument about the so-called certainty of the Fed Chair and the other directors is disingenuous and not supported by the links you provided.

Link #1: She talks back this assertion in the very next sentence! She says she is probably exaggerating, but she has good reason to think there won't be another major crash of that magnitude, provided there are [list of conditions]. Furthermore, she at no point takes credit for this achievement during the interview.

Link #2: Yellen gets asked why she doesn't raise rates all the time. Far from unwarranted certainty, she admits that she expected the economy to to better, doesn't know why it hasn't, and has therefore revised predictions of when the rates will be raised! Any consumer of financial news over the past 4 years should be familiar with this. The fact you omit this is highly disingenuous.

The very last link summarizes my position pretty well. The experts, who admit that things can be a "mystery," change their minds and models based off of reality. Is that not humble enough for you?

I am curious why you continue to vigorously assert a view that you have failed to demonstrate. What is your personal connection to this, and why do you pursue it?

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#236

Post by brokencode »

CaptSpify wrote: post #217
nkozyra wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We treat digital goods the same as physical goods I'm struggling to see the impact this has on economic reality. Could you expound?

sorry if this is a bit ranty: We should be able to freely sharing digital media as virtual-goods are immediate to duplicate. Instead we've created artificial barriers (drm, paywalls, streaming services, etc). The only reason these barriers are allowed, is a dying industry is trying to stay relevant. The economic impact of the media industry loss would be great, and the media industry does still have a place in our sy…

How do you envision media companies making money if people don't have to pay for their product once it's produced?

It's not like most people are going to pay Disney ahead of time for the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, even though a lot of people will (inexplicably) pay to see it in theaters.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#237

Post by thephyber »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #229
1_2__4 wrote: post #108

I hate sounding both old and weird but I cannot shake the feeling that much of the claims of economic health and growth in the US is... if not fake (I’m not totally nuts) but not accurate. My most charitable interpretation if I’m right is that we’re using the wrong metrics (possibly intentionally) that give a distorted view of the economy. But I keep hearing employment is great, productivity is great, stock market is…

Official US government "unemployment" rates only include people who are "jobless, looking for a job, and available for work". This means that the graduate who can't find work, gives up, and goes back to his parents' basement is not unemployed. The guy who can't work anymore due to injury or chronic illness, barely surviving on disability, is not unemployed. The man begging for change outside the subway, who doesn't l…

The old U3 vs. U6 argument gets tired quickly. It's not a conspiracy that the government still relies heavily on U3 -- it's just more useful for what the government does and it's more accurate than U6 measurements.

U3 is the official measurement because it has a long history and it's useful for simplifying policy decisions. It's also fairly accurate because it's largely based on unemployment insurance claims forms, which have to be re-filled every 1-2 weeks.

U6 is also an BLS measurement[1] but it not as useful. It contains far more noise and is far harder to get an accurate count (because many of the constituent groups can't be surveyed without random samples). U3 will probably continue to be used as the "official" measurement so long as there are significant tradeoffs to moving to U6.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#238

Post by Godel_unicode »

alphaalpha101 wrote: post #216
shmerl wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's rephrase it. When people can't buy necessities, they aren't doing well.

When people can buy necessities and luxury items but depression is at an all-time high, they aren't doing well either.

I'm curious how you know depression is at an all-time high given it has never really been measured before. Do you really believe people in the US are more depressed now than in the early 19th century, say? Consider that people includes Native Americans and African Americans.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#239

Post by neilwilson »

1_2__4 wrote: post #108

I hate sounding both old and weird but I cannot shake the feeling that much of the claims of economic health and growth in the US is... if not fake (I’m not totally nuts) but not accurate. My most charitable interpretation if I’m right is that we’re using the wrong metrics (possibly intentionally) that give a distorted view of the economy. But I keep hearing employment is great, productivity is great, stock market is…

It's doing great for those who the people that matter think matter.

Eventually somebody will say "let them eat cake" and heads will start ending up on spikes.

It's been the same process throughout history: an aristocracy forms, they become blind to the suffering around them, heads on spikes.

Re: More Americans Are Falling Behind on Student Loans, and Nobody Quite Knows Why

#240

Post by thephyber »

alphaalpha101 wrote: post #216
shmerl wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's rephrase it. When people can't buy necessities, they aren't doing well.

When people can buy necessities and luxury items but depression is at an all-time high, they aren't doing well either.

Theoretically economics could be about "utility", but in practice it's too subjective to measure what different humans value so we measure transactions because those largely use consistent measurable currencies.

It's interesting that economics doesn't usually factor in how much value is created by things that has a transactional value near zero, such as:

  * a housewife maintaining a household,
  * a person who quits work to care for a dependent family member, or
  * open source software.
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