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New threat to the economy: Americans are saving like it's the 1980s

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Re: New threat to the economy: Americans are saving like it's the 1980s

#41

Post by [deleted] »

michaelbrave wrote: post #38
Fjolsvith wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds exactly like what's happening in America today. Bring jobs back to the country, which elevates wages due to low unemployment, high worker demand. Bring manufacturing back to the country, which causes better products by them being designed closer to the people who would consume/use them.

This is the opposite of what's happening in America today. Wages have not elevated in decades, there is an odd inflation that is only needs specific (food, housing, education), even the manufacturing that comes back to the country is usually automated so there are very little jobs brought by it.

[deleted]

Re: New threat to the economy: Americans are saving like it's the 1980s

#42

Post by mrscottson »

411111111111111 wrote: post #16
bobthepanda wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demand doesn't necessarily have to be US demand, though. For the past few decades US consumer demand has done a lot of heavy lifting for the global economy. Why can't more of this come from other big markets like Germany or China?

The only product the USA produces inside its borders that's actually in demand globally is culture (movies, tv shows etc).

You forgot the USA's top major export...the dollar.

Re: New threat to the economy: Americans are saving like it's the 1980s

#43

Post by Fjolsvith »

michaelbrave wrote: post #38
Fjolsvith wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds exactly like what's happening in America today. Bring jobs back to the country, which elevates wages due to low unemployment, high worker demand. Bring manufacturing back to the country, which causes better products by them being designed closer to the people who would consume/use them.

This is the opposite of what's happening in America today. Wages have not elevated in decades, there is an odd inflation that is only needs specific (food, housing, education), even the manufacturing that comes back to the country is usually automated so there are very little jobs brought by it.

The median income for 2018 was up for the second year in a row. 2017 marked the first year since 2007 that median income in the U.S. rose. [1]

1. https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/what-average-i...

Re: New threat to the economy: Americans are saving like it's the 1980s

#44

Post by mrscottson »

082349872349872 wrote: post #26
bobthepanda wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demand doesn't necessarily have to be US demand, though. For the past few decades US consumer demand has done a lot of heavy lifting for the global economy. Why can't more of this come from other big markets like Germany or China?

If you want germans and chinese to import your production, you'll need to raise standards to meet theirs. For pork, this has already started happening: Hormel, JBS, and Tyson are no longer taking ractopamine-dosed hogs, even though they're still legal to sell to US consumers.

Chlorinated chicken is banned in many countries like the UK also..., we have to step up our food and food prep regulations to compete in those lucrative markets.

Re: New threat to the economy: Americans are saving like it's the 1980s

#45

Post by bobthepanda »

082349872349872 wrote: post #26
bobthepanda wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demand doesn't necessarily have to be US demand, though. For the past few decades US consumer demand has done a lot of heavy lifting for the global economy. Why can't more of this come from other big markets like Germany or China?

If you want germans and chinese to import your production, you'll need to raise standards to meet theirs. For pork, this has already started happening: Hormel, JBS, and Tyson are no longer taking ractopamine-dosed hogs, even though they're still legal to sell to US consumers.

To be quite clear, I'm not saying that only US goods need to be bought by Germans and Chinese. Those consumers are generally thrifty overall relative to their share of the global economy, and a global economy based on one country's consumer demand is simply not going to be a healthy one.

High German savings was one of the things that led to the Euro crisis, since you cannot simultaneously run trade surpluses with all your neighbors and then be surprised when they are running deficits as a result. In the same vein, Chinese over-saving has led to a domestic property bubble that is a house of cards waiting to fall apart once people can invest their savings in something that isn't an apartment.

As far as your point about global goods, I don't think that China, a place where hundreds of thousands of infants were poisoned due to illegal substitutions in baby formula, and people get told to look for reused "gutter oil" in street food, has a leg to stand on when it comes to food safety.

Re: New threat to the economy: Americans are saving like it's the 1980s

#46

Post by bobthepanda »

conductr wrote: post #35
jeltz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No as some liberal/socialist agenda but as a way to reach full employment again. You know that this is bascially the same reason socialists are in favor of shorter working weeks, right? Their "socialist agenda" is virtually the same as your reasoning.

I made that comment more so because normally our extremely polarized bipartisanship would prevent these types of changes from being made. Even if someone like Bernie was president, no way his agendas make through legislative branch. This depression will test our country’s ability to rally and cross political lines for the good of the people the way we have in the past. Something that previously was far left may seem…

The trick is framing. Simply frame it as "put America back to work" and "making it easy to work" and you sidestep most of the red scare trigger words.

Part of the decline of the American left in formerly blue collar areas, IMO, is simply that it has become more academic and less attempts at sloganeering or actually doing work to reach out to disaffected people; polls keep revealing that Americans actually like the nitty gritty of the policies but that the marketing of it sucks.

Re: New threat to the economy: Americans are saving like it's the 1980s

#47

Post by digitaltrees »

Fjolsvith wrote: post #43
michaelbrave wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the opposite of what's happening in America today. Wages have not elevated in decades, there is an odd inflation that is only needs specific (food, housing, education), even the manufacturing that comes back to the country is usually automated so there are very little jobs brought by it.

The median income for 2018 was up for the second year in a row. 2017 marked the first year since 2007 that median income in the U.S. rose. [1] 1. https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/what-average-i...

Two problems with this analysis and data. 1. These gains aren’t enough to undo the decoupling of wages from productivity that has resulted in real wage stagnation. (See here https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ ), 2. These wage increases haven’t exceeded inflation so actual household spending power has decreased in real terms. Basically consumers have less ability to spend because more profit is being captured. The problem is this profit capture (i.e. the spread between productivity and wages) is good for companies in the short term but damaging in the long term as the market shrinks due to decreased demand. After a thirty year trend of this dynamic America is reaching a brick wall where consumers will be tapped out and growth will stagnate.

Re: New threat to the economy: Americans are saving like it's the 1980s

#48

Post by digitaltrees »

On balance this is a good thing but any trend taken too far is a problem.

That being said the time to safe is when the economy is good not in the heart of a crisis. It’s sad that human cognition is so short sided and blind to long term risk. It’s sad that 20 year olds ignore retirement and lose compound interest and then scramble to save in their 50s.

Re: New threat to the economy: Americans are saving like it's the 1980s

#49

Post by teilo »

austincheney wrote: post #12
Nasrudith wrote: post #3

Even with the macroeconomic effects as valid the mode of thinking is so painfully backwards and entitled in so many ways. 1. The job of the producers is to produce what the consumers want, not the consumers to accept whatever they want to produce! It is not a birthright to guaranteed profit from whatever they want to produce being sold. That has never existed. It brings to mind every idiot CEo of a business which fai…

> The job of the producers is to produce what the consumers want, not the consumers to accept whatever they want to produce! But that is the current general practice of software, especially online interconnected software, to force acceptable product preferences to the consumer without regard for consumer demand or competition. Developers typically dictate the choice of architecture and framework and then specify acce…

No one forces you to buy or use software. How is software different than any other product? It's engineered a certain way, and offered to customers, who either buy it or do not.

Companies who develop products without regard for consumer demand or the competition are eventually unemployed. They may have a defacto monopoly for a time, but it inevitably ends.

Competition is not only real, but fierce in software, as anyone in corporate IT management will tell you. Because my damn phone never stops ringing with hungry software salescritters vying for my attention.

Re: New threat to the economy: Americans are saving like it's the 1980s

#50

Post by Fjolsvith »

digitaltrees wrote: post #47
Fjolsvith wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median income for 2018 was up for the second year in a row. 2017 marked the first year since 2007 that median income in the U.S. rose. [1] 1. https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/what-average-i...

Two problems with this analysis and data. 1. These gains aren’t enough to undo the decoupling of wages from productivity that has resulted in real wage stagnation. (See here https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ ), 2. These wage increases haven’t exceeded inflation so actual household spending power has decreased in real terms. Basically consumers have less ability to spend because more profit is being captured.…

The point is that the last two years is a change over the last 30.
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