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

Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 297 posts

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

#231

Post by lm28469 »

baxtr wrote: post #71
lm28469 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's utter trash, it was good when we had industry focused economies instead of service focused ones. Everybody mocked Russia for having the same gdp as Spain. As it turns out your economy is much stronger when it's focused on heavy industries, steel, mining, oil, &c. Than when it is focused on tourism and other services One produces value, the other generates money, when shits hit the fan you need energy, the drunk…

Oh yes sorry, I forgot that Russia is super successful in Ukraine and Europe is on the brink of collapse because it ran out of energy!

That's not my point at all

Do you think Spain would fair better than Russia against Ukraine ?

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

#233

Post by lm28469 »

graemep wrote: post #228
Earw0rm wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends if you look at Spain in isolation. On its own? Sure. (Although to be fair to Spain, they've invested heavily in solar and high-value agriculture in recent years). But seen as part of a system with Germany and perhaps the UK (no longer part of the EU, but was better for both when they were), it's a valuable part of quality-of-life in the overall economic bloc. Where would you rather live? Spain, easy. Who woul…

> Who would win in a war? Russia, easy. Really? Russia has not even done all that well against Ukraine, a much smaller economy. What sort of war? I agree Spain could not successfully invade Russia, on the other hand Russia could not invade Spain either. No working aircraft carriers so their air force would be operating from very distant bases (even if they were allowed to pass over the countries in between), limits o…

> Really?

Spain army's is 1/10th of Ukraine's and basically haven't been in anything close to a war in decades, so yes, really and easily lmao.

Ukraine alone produces more military drones per month than the entire EU per year btw.

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

#234

Post by roenxi »

bojan wrote: post #156
roenxi wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Progress in India is due to policy in India. The idea that India can handwave it's successes and failures on external forces might have been well justified in 1955, but in this century they get to choose. Best hope for the anti-Modi-policy crowd is maybe it isn't Modi's policies specifically. In fact, in the vast majority of cases (including North America, South America, Europe, East Asia, India & South-East Asia) pr…

> Progress in India is due to policy in India. This is an extremely bold claim. Always was, but especially in today's world it is. I am not saying that Modi's policies are bad, what I am trying to say is that he is basically playing the game on the easy mode. He has access to the unprecedentely dynamic and resilient global economy _and_ he has access to cheap Russian resources Europe doesn't want to buy anymore. All…

Russia wasn't the group that stopped selling oil to the Europeans, the Europeans refused to take it and have a military policy of arming people to blow up the means of transporting that oil to Europe. They're very proud of not using Russian oil. Modi could have joined in with that, he had a lot of people asking him too. Doing nothing (if he did nothing, again - I have no idea about the details of Indian policy) is a rather decisive policy given the pressure the Europeans have been putting on people.

The world has been in easy mode for 70 years now. Any government can choose to sit back and let people get wealthy. It is literally so easy that even the communists figured it out.

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

#235

Post by shlant »

coldtea wrote: post #164
baxtr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s not perfect but probably the best we have. People forgot or simply don’t realize how much worse life was just a couple of decades ago (in terms of nutrition, access to knowledge, clean water, material wealth).

People forgot or simply don't realize how much better life was just 3-4 decades ago (in terms of nutrition, access to knowledge, clean water, material wealth, housing costs, tuition costs, healthcare costs, jobs). In advanced western countries that is. If you compare Nigeria from 2000 to Nigeria today, sure, maybe...

> People forgot or simply don't realize how much better life was just 3-4 decades ago

Are you just saying this thinking no one will ask you to back it up with data? Care to quantify what "so much better" actually means?

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

#236

Post by epolanski »

zmgsabst wrote: post #221
epolanski wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re using top line numbers to make that assertion, but gains are not evenly distributed. There’s prolific ink spilled on the failures of technocratic managerialism over the past 40 years as gain become decoupled — and particularly over the past decade as the breakdown has reached critical mass.

Then post these scientific papers on the failures of technocratic managerialism.

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

#237

Post by Rastonbury »

baxtr wrote: post #31
p0pularopinion wrote: post #16

I find the S&P500 to be interesting as a demonstration for currency risk. Denoted in US, it went up ~18% or so. For me as an EUR investor, it went up just 4.6% when accounting for the loss of the USD. Comparing that to indicies that usually do not perform that well, Euro Stoxx 50 is up ~22% and MSCI Emerging Markets ~21%.

I noticed this as well. I haven’t found a good cure for this other than diversifying globally.

There is no 'cure' per se as a non-US investor currency risk is just something to accept (or swap return for a hedge but then it ends up being a wash mostly), for example if you invest in a World equities ETF, it's a bit pointless to be hedging exposure to all the currencies. Even if you decide to slant away from the US, it's likely a majority of non-US large caps have USD exposures.

It's more a psychological thing, you see absolute USD return and think you could've made that but there's not the actual return, your actual return is post conversion, if you'd have hedged you wouldn't have that abosulte return either, so you've never had it.

Additionally, if you're like most people and investing regularly or DCA-ing from now on you can buy at lower USD

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

#238

Post by epolanski »

dgb23 wrote: post #208
epolanski wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The financial markets collapsed in 2007/2008 and survived because of government intervention.

I well remember what happened in 2008 (caused by government's deregulation by the way, not "technocratic managerialist", whatever it means).

Despite the severity of what happened, jobs rapidly recovered and were around the same pre-financial crisis levels (and well above US averages) in a matter of few years and workers earnings were at or above 2008 levels (inflation adjusted) by 2016.

All in all, as severe 2008 was, I don't see how free market economy made it more, rather than less severe. It's at best an opinion.

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

#239

Post by epolanski »

Retric wrote: post #226
epolanski wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy "into a market" by investing in a ETF following the MSCI EM or SP500. In any case not sure what's your point about single stock companies in a discussion about market indexes.

> You can buy "into a market" by investing in a ETF following the MSCI EM or SP500. Nope. A more accurate description is saying you’re buying into a specific subset of a Market by buying shares of specific companies. Hand waving them as if they are the same thing doesn’t actually make them the same thing. The MSCI EM, SP500, etc etc are simply a collection of public companies not the market of a given country. Which…

You keep being out of topic.

This thread is about indexes and it started by a user stating that emerging markets indexes have been in line or outpaced global and even most of the advanced economies ones.

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

#240

Post by ernst_klim »

BrenBarn wrote: post #9

Do not mistake economic indicators such as GDP or "growth" for meaningful measures of economic health.

> meaningful measures of economic health

As someone who lived in a handful of countries with GDP per capita ranging from $3k to $70k I must say that GDP is a great proxy of the QoL and median citizen wealth. Not the only one and not the perfectly correlated one, but a very good one.

Post reply on HN