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Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

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Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#331

Post by majormajor »

benSaiyen wrote: post #279
torginus wrote: post #84

I feel like there's some credibility to 'this time it's different' The US economy depends on the country's position of world hegemon - the US dollar is the world's main reserve currency, the US enforces international order and trade rules via its military strength, it dominates technology and culture through 'US defaultism'. I dont think AI even factors in to this. The US economy is priced for global reach - if it ma…

Simple solution; raise taxes. Been saying that will be the outcome eventually as the olds continue to die and the youth feel zero obligation to senile pants shitters and corpses. GenZ fucking hates Boomers and a whole lot of GenX (that insurance CEO? GenX. Epipen price hiking CEO? GenX. Whole lot of tech CEOs of note? Yup, GenX) Generations beyond Z will never experience Boomers and 1900s American life. They won't ca…

"Soak the rich" laws were passed around a hundred years ago in the US in response to obscene wealth; worked out pretty well for a long time before they got rolled back and we got a new round of oligarchs.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#332

Post by shimman »

twoodfin wrote: post #322
themafia wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to eat them. You just have to erect significant barriers to hoarding wealth, particularly in off shore devices, and you have to create constant pressure to ensure that stored wealth is best re-invested in the economy at large. These aren't even hard problems. Until you meet someone in Congress. Then it suddenly seems hopeless.

ensure that stored wealth is best re-invested in the economy at large Pretty sure the vast, vast bulk of wealth held by the richest US households is indeed “reinvested in the economy at large”. Where do you think it is instead?

Supporting companies that profit off of misery, reduce human meaningfulness, those that innovate the surveillance state; why is it so hard to support policies like giving US school children free breakfast + lunch, medicare for all, public housing, universal childcare, federally mandated paid time off, universal higher education + vocational training, and a public jobs program (all things that have 70-90% voter approval across party lines; the new deal coalition literally had control of both houses of Congress for nearly 60 years unabated)? Programs that would literally unleash hundreds of trillions in monetary + societal benefits, why should the US population care about the wealth of the few compared to what we can do to provide meaningful lives collectively?

The idea that less than 100 people in the country have some sort of mandated right from the devil to dictate the direction of technology in our country should fill every single decent human being with disgust.

We must correct this. The fact that several hyper scale data centers could provide US school children free lunches + breakfast for a year should be the first immediate sign that something is deeply wrong with our country.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#333

Post by theendisney »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #256
torginus wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm less and less inclined to believe in capitalism and money as a concept - we've long past moved the concept of money as universal barter, and into strange and speculative theories about how things ought to be valued, with the most valuable things either emerging from immediately unclear value propositions (impossibly valued companies, high-paid jobs that seemingly dont contribute to society) or artifici…

A bottle of water in the desert and a bottle of water in your fridge don't have the same value.

We are hoarding money to buy many bottles. The chinese are making and filling it while drilling wells that dont seem financally viable. They spoiled their entire bottle buying budget on that? What dumb communist central planners.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#334

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

torginus wrote: post #213
ahartmetz wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese economy is indisputably strong and real, but rumor has it that its reported growth numbers have been inflated in the last couple of years. And why wouldn't they be - there is an autocratic government whose justification is that what they are doing is increasing economic success. No success is not an option.

Personally I'm less and less inclined to believe in capitalism and money as a concept - we've long past moved the concept of money as universal barter, and into strange and speculative theories about how things ought to be valued, with the most valuable things either emerging from immediately unclear value propositions (impossibly valued companies, high-paid jobs that seemingly dont contribute to society) or artifici…

Economists account for the divergence you're describing with a concept known as "purchasing power parity", which does indeed result in a 2x adjustment in Chinese wealth. The intuition is that market exchange rates combine a number of things beyond the purchasing power of comparable goods. For example, if you have a 30 year horizon it makes perfect sense to trade 1 car worth of RMB for 0.5 cars worth of GBP: with the GBP, you can buy a government bond at 5.29% instead of 2.26%, and even with no reinvestment you end up with 1.794 cars worth of GBP vs. 1.678 cars worth of RMB.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#335

Post by shimman »

SchwKatze wrote: post #8

I'm kinda new into economy crashes, was a kid in 2008, is there a way to protect of it?

Yes, you either marry into extreme wealth or hope that luck doesn't strike you into generational poverty. Anyone saying anything different is lying too you.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#336

Post by shimman »

lvl155 wrote: post #50

Software sector basically got cut in half just on Claude Code. You have to wonder what is next. I don’t think loss in economics is 1:1 with replacement so it’s not zero sum. Production doesn’t necessarily go up. In fact, net output is going to go down if you think about all the B2B lost too. Whoever comes into power next better start thinking about universal income fast. We are gonna get there sooner than expected.

Why do people keep espousing such bullshit. Anthropic has terrible subscriber numbers, they are absolutely no where near profitability, a 100k people buying a product that struggles to sell itself is NOT the win you think it is.

If any of these tools did 10% of what their proponents claim they would become trillion dollar companies overnight and not you know... struggle so hard selling the amazing elixirs and perpetual labor machines.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#337

Post by pfannkuchen »

themafia wrote: post #294
red-iron-pine wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can couch it in tech metaphors but there is a clear path forward and it involves eating a certain class of people

You don't have to eat them. You just have to erect significant barriers to hoarding wealth, particularly in off shore devices, and you have to create constant pressure to ensure that stored wealth is best re-invested in the economy at large. These aren't even hard problems. Until you meet someone in Congress. Then it suddenly seems hopeless.

Isn’t hoarded wealth a no-op? It just reduces the supply of whatever they are hoarding.

Would the people benefit from redistributing the things they are hoarding? Corporate stock that pays little to no dividends, mainly? It’s not like they are hoarding wheat. I don’t really get what people think will happen if we redistribute the stored wealth.

All wealth is, is a claim to direct labor and materials, the magnitude of which is relative to the total amount of wealth competing to direct those at present. If some portion of the wealth is locked away, the labor and materials are still being deployed, just the total pool of wealth competing to direct them is smaller than it would be otherwise. Unlocking wealth does not actually bring more stuff into existence.

Now, it could redirect labor and materials used to built yachts or luxury homes into more practical goods. But my impression is that the labor and materials used for those things are minuscule compared to the overall economy, and most of the wealth of the very wealthy is not actually used for those sorts of things.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#338

Post by jacquesm »

SllX wrote: post #152
torginus wrote: post #84

I feel like there's some credibility to 'this time it's different' The US economy depends on the country's position of world hegemon - the US dollar is the world's main reserve currency, the US enforces international order and trade rules via its military strength, it dominates technology and culture through 'US defaultism'. I dont think AI even factors in to this. The US economy is priced for global reach - if it ma…

> Should the US become an unfriendly power to the rest of the western world, it will find the demand for its currency plummeting, which I don't want to outline is a big issue. Right now this is much more of a maybe, possibly, eventually, over a long enough time horizon. As of the end of 2025, USD still made up 57% of foreign reserves vs 20% for the Euro and 3% for the Chinese renminbi. Nearly all commodities are stil…

The end of 2026 was remarkably different to the world of today, and it that's logical it is - checks calendar - already 31 days ago. Now imagine another year of this.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#339

Post by pinkmuffinere »

yomismoaqui wrote: post #160

If you predict a crash every month and it happens after 2 years... can we call you a visionary?

I know the question is tongue-in-cheek, but I think it’s a fascinating question, so I’ll take it seriously. If you predict the crash and it happens two years later, i think you basically cannot profit off that guess, so I’d say no. Although i haven’t provided data for the two-year claim, there certainly exists some period N for which the prediction no longer pays off, given a fixed drop. But if you can predict it 6 months in advance, you probably could profit! I think a certain amount of annoying repetition is fine for profitability.

Re: Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon

#340

Post by jacquesm »

phkahler wrote: post #245
torginus wrote: post #84

I feel like there's some credibility to 'this time it's different' The US economy depends on the country's position of world hegemon - the US dollar is the world's main reserve currency, the US enforces international order and trade rules via its military strength, it dominates technology and culture through 'US defaultism'. I dont think AI even factors in to this. The US economy is priced for global reach - if it ma…

The dollar is going down in value right now. Thats the plan. It makes foreign goods more expensive and exports more affordable to other countries. Meanwhile it should have less inflationary pressure on domestically produced stuff like housing. I dont know if this is going to work or collapse. If it does work IMO they still need to reduce the debt - current actions are because we are backed into a corner, so that need…

There is no plan. There is just chaos.
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