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Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?

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Re: Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?

#31

Post by jedimastert »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #19
lebuffon wrote: post #11

The way this wealth inequality is so common around the world. makes me wonder if the next time the pitchforks come out, it will be some kind of global uprising. Perhaps accelerated by social media. Or are the elite better able to control the masses in this age?

> The way this wealth inequality is so common around the world. makes me wonder if the next time the pitchforks come out, it will be some kind of global uprising. [...] Or are the elite better able to control the masses in this age? I rather believe that the individual problems in each country are very different (even though you summarize them by "this wealth inequality is so common around the world"). Additionally,…

> Additionally, it often happens that the interests of people in one country are antagonistic to the interests of people in another country.

I find this honestly kind of difficult to believe, except when it comes to distractions by the people who want to stay in power

Re: Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?

#32

Post by onraglanroad »

samiv wrote: post #13
abirch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Ray Dalio has mentioned, you should measure results on how it impacts the bottom 51% of the people (the majority) it's a lot more illustrative than looking at the average.

Yep. I'm not an economist but my social democratic common sense would tell me to look at the bottom 10% income bracket and see how they're doing. Incidentally these people are the best economic citizens because if you give them money they'll spend every cent of it because they need to buy food and energy, use health care and pay rent. In other words if a rich person gets a million they (if they're sane) spend a fract…

The capitalist response to that would be that the investment in companies is better because it makes everyone richer in the long term by increasing overall wealth.

I'm not sure I buy it but it's an effect to consider.

Re: Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?

#33

Post by alephnerd »

Gotta love HNers who never read articles and use it as a soapbox:

"The scale of the destruction that followed the debt crisis was extraordinary. Between 2009 and the trough of the bailout years in 2016, average household wealth fell by roughly 35%, wiping out more than a third of Greek families' assets"

...

"The labour market has improved markedly since the darkest years of the crisis, with unemployment falling sharply and the informal economy shrinking. But structural weaknesses remain deeply embedded. Long-term unemployment, low participation in the workforce and a high reliance on self-employment continue to shape opportunities and outcomes"

----

Tl;dr - Greek households still haven't recovered from the Eurozone and Greek Debt crisis.

Re: Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?

#34

Post by EgregiousCube »

BariumBlue wrote: post #10

Seems like housing again: > Rents have surged in recent years, driven by tourism, foreign investment and a shortage of affordable housing. The cost of housing now consumes one of the largest shares of disposable income in the European Union My impression is that where housing is expensive, there will be complaints of unaffordability (obviously), but also vice versa, that where there is unaffordability, housing always…

Why are prices up even though population is down over the past ten years? Did everybody decide to move to the city or something?

Re: Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?

#35

Post by sgt101 »

Frustraged by the endless prattle about GDP, europoors and Brexit, me and my agent frien's sat (manifested) together and brewed up some alternatives:

https://x.com/AiSimonThompson/status/2070900546119114970/pho...

I think that median household disposable income is a much better way of looking at this than GDP.

2014 is the turn. The US gained shale, isolationism is possible, Trump 2 is created by the general (true) perception that things were good under Trump 1. The European war starts and China is left to dominate Asia.

Re: Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?

#37

Post by mannykannot »

amelius wrote: post #21
abirch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Ray Dalio has mentioned, you should measure results on how it impacts the bottom 51% of the people (the majority) it's a lot more illustrative than looking at the average.

The median is usually used for this; it throws away outliers on both sides.

This seems to tacitly assume that the outliers on either side have equivalent weight with respect to whatever is being investigated, while the explicit premise behind this proposal is that in this case they do not.

Re: Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?

#38

Post by Avicebron »

jedimastert wrote: post #25

The idea that the answer to this question would not be intuitive to pretty much anyone that participates in an economy is a genuine shock.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -Upton Sinclair

Re: Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?

#39

Post by paulryanrogers »

ajmurmann wrote: post #30
samiv wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I'm not an economist but my social democratic common sense would tell me to look at the bottom 10% income bracket and see how they're doing. Incidentally these people are the best economic citizens because if you give them money they'll spend every cent of it because they need to buy food and energy, use health care and pay rent. In other words if a rich person gets a million they (if they're sane) spend a fract…

[flagged]

Then why is so much money going into real estate and greater-fool crypto?

Re: Greece Is Richer. So Why Do So Many Greeks Still Feel Poor?

#40

Post by kubb »

ajmurmann wrote: post #30
samiv wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I'm not an economist but my social democratic common sense would tell me to look at the bottom 10% income bracket and see how they're doing. Incidentally these people are the best economic citizens because if you give them money they'll spend every cent of it because they need to buy food and energy, use health care and pay rent. In other words if a rich person gets a million they (if they're sane) spend a fract…

[flagged]

You're conflating compounding market value with economic growth. One counterexample is when inflation raises prices, but not economic output. Asset prices grow but there's no growth.
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