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It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

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Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#281

Post by ajsnigrutin »

arthur5005 wrote: post #68

What this doesn’t really address is the why? Yeah there’s more money floating around, so perhaps more people want to spend it, but why? Most people aren’t getting materially more stuff or even need that much more stuff, consumption’s already god damn conspicuous. Maybe everyone can afford a jet ski all of a sudden? No, the stims didn’t really do /that/ kind of wealth expansion. To me, this still looks like the bullwh…

Covid lockdowns have a a lot to do with that too.

People used to spent their money in restaurants, bars, cinemas, theaters, parties, festivals, massages, hairdressers, and a bunch of other services. If you add lockdowns, many things happen:

* people have leftover money, that they instead spend on "things"... and since they're used to using less services, this is also true for some time after the lockdowns

* If you're stuck at home, you'll buy stuff that makes that nice... a better tv, a game console,...

* Some lockdown policies directly affect your 'need for stuff' - school from home? Kids need their own PCs, you need to buy a scanner and a printer for them,...

* People working from home also have more free time, and decide to do the long delayed house work and projects - so people buy more construction materials (also people want houses outside of cities, because it's nicer to be there during lockdowns), so prices of that go up too

* and last but not least, manufacturers fuck up their orders, don't have stock buffers, and fail horribly

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#282

Post by GekkePrutser »

Guthur wrote: post #96
RC_ITR wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What everyone is going to have a real hard time wrapping their head around for the next few years: We built a highly efficient economy for a set of behaviors. A shock happened that caused a lot people to change their behaviors (probably for a long time, since they've had 2 years of 'practice'). Our economy, which was built for those old behaviors (living in cities, riding public transit, eating at restaurants, travel…

I just don't get why everyone maintains JIT manufacturing is bad, it's one of the many reasons we can have such reasonably low cost goods, its efficient.

It also eliminated deep discounts of old stock. A lot of people would have relied on that kind of thing to be able to afford something.

Still, I think for the environment it's a win, not producing anything that's not needed. But in the end most of it would get sold anyway at a discount.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#283

Post by sputr »

nostrebored wrote: post #260
throwaway894345 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathize with this, but if climate experts are to believed, we’ve stalled to the point where we have perhaps a decade to get emissions under control in order to meet targets, and most countries haven’t even begun to make significant changes. At some point there will be pain. The question is, “do we want a little pain now or a lot of pain down the road?”. And to be clear, “wearing a coat inside during winter” may…

Why in the hell would you believe climate experts? The entire argument is poorly done forecasting for a system we don’t understand. The claims are unfalsifiable. It has all of the hallmarks of a scientific fad. When once again the modeling is inaccurate and the claims about temperature change impacts aren’t realized, this will be used as _more proof_.

Poe's law.

It's hard to believe real non-troll people who would write such things still exist.

So, please tell me, honestly, are you trolling?

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#284

Post by dablweb »

RC_ITR wrote: post #209
rsj_hn wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Natural gas extremely expensive? Let me introduce you to renewables, which btw are getting better and better every year. Shutting down a natural gas pipeline that people depend upon just before winter, and then lecturing them about solar panels is not a good look. Artificially increasing the price of natural gas causes famines, it causes food and fertilizer to be more expensive, and it makes it hard for people to h…

Woah, what are you honestly on about? You can claim that the US is artificially raising natural gas prices, but the exact opposite is true. By chance of circumstance, we've historically underbuilt LNG processing facilities and that is isolating the US market from the rest of the world, so we have some of the lowest natural gas prices in the world right now. Please take your uninformed takes and cringey political rall…

I think they make a decent point, and contributed to this conversation. Calm down.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#285

Post by EdwardDiego »

throwawaygh wrote: post #61
hammock wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the opposite.

GP quote suggests on-time retirement (65+) while OP suggests not just not-retirement-age but actually prime-earning-age. Those seem pretty opposite to me? Anyways, raising a kid with two earners is too damn hard. That's what's really going on.

Yep, it's a bit crazy how most Western school systems I'm aware of are still designed like it's the 80s and every household has a parent at home full-time.

E.g., school finishes early afternoon, large amounts of school holidays that dramatically exceed the annual leave entitlements of two parents combined, etc.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#286

Post by 1_player »

nostrebored wrote: post #266
throwaway210222 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why in the hell would you believe climate experts? a) because we don't have a spare planet, and b) we kind of like our children. Like Russian roulette, its the risk of being wrong that changes the decision making paradigm from the one you use for 'should I buy bitcoin'.

Your mistake is weighing superstition vs tangible harm. Eliminating fossil fuels will condemn large swathes of the living population to true poverty and kill many more. How do you think things like hospitals in the developing world run? And the infrastructure that lets them be created to begin with? The idea that we should eliminate fossil fuels is truly a privileged take.

> The idea that we should eliminate fossil fuels is truly a privileged take.

It is, and it's our only option. It's the reason nobody is doing a lot to combat climate change: because it'll require a lot of tears, effort and money, and nobody wants or can afford to spend them.

At the end, it's always the poor that have to pay. It's always been like that. Doesn't make climate change any less real.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#287

Post by lwouis »

surrealize wrote: post #37

Demand growth is what we want. Our economy has been largely demand-limited for a while. Demand growth boosts GDP growth. Corporations are sitting on huge piles of cash, so they're not investment-limited. Any labor market tightness raises wages, which have been mostly stagnant for a long time (until very recently). Wage growth is also good. If wage growth squeezes profits, then that's also good from a wealth inequalit…

Personally, I don't want any more growth. Infinite growth is not sustainable. Developed countries are way past what's necessary for a good life.

I'd like to advocate for a slow controlled de-growth so we can reach climate agreement goals, and sustain humankind for a few more centuries, in decent living conditions.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#288

Post by 1_player »

nitrogen wrote: post #247
88913527 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If hair clippers become mildly more difficult to procure over a 2-year window of an 80 year lifespan, all-in-all the efficiency seems to be worth it. I get 78 years of low prices for goods are that are useful to my everyday existence, but not critically vital and to which there are reasonable substitutes, if I need something in a pinch.

Human experience simply cannot be averaged over large spans of times while ignoring the extremes. Dipping into the red means permanent damage. Imagine applying this line of thinking to your bank account -- "sure I spent $500k in two years on fast cars and fancy bars, but averaged over 80 years of paying small amounts of interest, the bank should be glad to make the sacrifice of stability in favor of efficiency."

"Sure I spent $500k in two years, but I've been in the positive and saving for 80 years".

The pandemic was just a blip on the radar, a period of adjustment we still don't understand fully economically, but it was not a Great Depression as it lasted only a couple months and affected just a part of the population (layoffs, but with goverment safety nets)

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#289

Post by rand49an »

nostrebored wrote: post #266
throwaway210222 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why in the hell would you believe climate experts? a) because we don't have a spare planet, and b) we kind of like our children. Like Russian roulette, its the risk of being wrong that changes the decision making paradigm from the one you use for 'should I buy bitcoin'.

Your mistake is weighing superstition vs tangible harm. Eliminating fossil fuels will condemn large swathes of the living population to true poverty and kill many more. How do you think things like hospitals in the developing world run? And the infrastructure that lets them be created to begin with? The idea that we should eliminate fossil fuels is truly a privileged take.

So because removing fossil fuels will be difficult to do, we shouldn't try and we should instead bury our head in the sand about the very real problems that lay ahead of us?

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#290

Post by pjerem »

Freskis wrote: post #262
throwaway894345 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathize with this, but if climate experts are to believed, we’ve stalled to the point where we have perhaps a decade to get emissions under control in order to meet targets, and most countries haven’t even begun to make significant changes. At some point there will be pain. The question is, “do we want a little pain now or a lot of pain down the road?”. And to be clear, “wearing a coat inside during winter” may…

"we have perhaps a decade to get emissions under control" Every year we're told it's our absolute last chance. Environmental brinkmanship hasn't work and the tune needs to be changed. Literally no economies are planning for mass famine or wars because no-one actually believes that is going to happen, except religious cults.

Because every year IS our absolute last chance. Each emitted ton is there "forever" (at least for multiple centuries). Climate change can be stopped (like, paused indefinitely) but can't be reversed.

You are right that there is no absolute deadline. Now we are stuck with our hotter summers "forever". But we are not yet stuck with what comes next.

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