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30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

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Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#71

Post by insane_dreamer »

treis wrote: post #12

It's hard to put thoughts into the right words but the world she wants exists. They're not writing for substack or flying around to conferences. They're out there living their lives without being so unrelentingly negative. I dunno I just see so much cool shit in the world today. I see Waymo cars driving themselves around. LLMs are still wildly revolutionary. My TV is the tits. There's so much good happening but there…

> I dunno I just see so much cool shit in the world today. I see Waymo cars driving themselves around. LLMs are still wildly revolutionary. My TV is the tits.

None of these have anything to do with the prosperity - or lack of it - of the average American.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#72

Post by bigbadfeline »

ajross wrote: post #62
quantummagic wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring how easy it is for statistics to be misleading, let alone outright lies, the official statistics are rather mute on the topic of economic distribution. It doesn't matter how well an economy is doing, if the majority of wealth is accruing to a small minority.

> the official statistics are rather mute on the topic of economic distribution They actually aren't. Median income is measured as a median for a reason. Poverty line statistics are taken at the low end. Local CPI and price data is taken and reported. And all of those numbers are, indeed, getting better and not worse. I repeat this everywhere this subject comes up, but the real reason things look like they're getting…

> I mean, it's true they can't afford homes easily! Neither could minorities in the sixties, but we don't talk about that part.

So you favor a race to the bottom, but you want a single race to go to the bottom faster than the others in order to become more like minorities in the sixties.

That kind of morbid attitudes is why Pareto developed his notion of optimality and efficiency.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#73

Post by reactordev »

mlsu wrote: post #40
reactordev wrote: post #6

Two words: “subscription fees” It’s the silent suck on the wallets that get you. Everyone budgets for food, shelter, but very little attention is paid to the dailies, the subs, the fees, the lattes.

No. It's not the subscriptions or lattes. Those are markets that have real competition. It's the sectors of the economy that have become consolidated. Food, insurance, banking, healthcare. There is very little competition in those markets and prices are artificially high because huge conglomerates manage to siphon off a larger and larger stake, while preventing small players from offering an alternative either throug…

Health Insurance is the ultimate subscription…

All of these things are true.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#74

Post by reactordev »

landryraccoon wrote: post #64
reactordev wrote: post #6

Two words: “subscription fees” It’s the silent suck on the wallets that get you. Everyone budgets for food, shelter, but very little attention is paid to the dailies, the subs, the fees, the lattes.

Are you counting rent as a subscription fee? If yes, then conceptually we're on the same page, if no, then I think this is wildly off base. If rent is not a subscription fee, then you're probably talking about virtual goods like entertainment and games. I think consumers get a ton of value from digital entertainment and media, the problem is that literally everything else in the physical world feels like it's getting…

Rent is a subscription. A mortgage is not. We’re on the same page.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#75

Post by ajross »

bigbadfeline wrote: post #72
ajross wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the official statistics are rather mute on the topic of economic distribution They actually aren't. Median income is measured as a median for a reason. Poverty line statistics are taken at the low end. Local CPI and price data is taken and reported. And all of those numbers are, indeed, getting better and not worse. I repeat this everywhere this subject comes up, but the real reason things look like they're getting…

> I mean, it's true they can't afford homes easily! Neither could minorities in the sixties , but we don't talk about that part. So you favor a race to the bottom, but you want a single race to go to the bottom faster than the others in order to become more like minorities in the sixties . That kind of morbid attitudes is why Pareto developed his notion of optimality and efficiency.

To be clear: I don't "favor" anything. I was making a point about the demographic that is upset, and a connection as to why. Social policy is hard, but things don't get better by perpetuating inequality. Surely you agree with that part?

Groypers (to continue to wave the label as a broad brush) aren't actually poorer than their compatriots. They're not even poorer than their ancestors, really. They're mad because everyone else is doing so much better than their ancestors.

Again, when you see someone cite a statistic that "You used to be able to afford a home with one working class income", you're being fed a line. That wasn't ever possible (until the last two or three decades) unless that income was being paid to a white man.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#76

Post by conception »

qaq wrote: post #36
conception wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.dcfpi.org/all/how-wealthy-households-use-a-buy-b... Yes they can get at that wealth, tax free at that!

Again to do what? at scale there are many physical constraints. You can't take physical resources used to create a 500M yacht and build 100 apartment buildings. Those crazy valuations exist in part because none really tries to convert any significant portion of that paper wealth into physical things.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. What does it matter the actual physical atoms? A mole of gold costs more than a mole of carbon. How much you can “deploy” with 500m differs.

Maybe you’re trying to say if they actually liquidated their wealth to spend any sufficient fraction their paper wealth would disappear but that’s the point of pulling out the value without liquidating.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#77

Post by qaq »

conception wrote: post #76
qaq wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again to do what? at scale there are many physical constraints. You can't take physical resources used to create a 500M yacht and build 100 apartment buildings. Those crazy valuations exist in part because none really tries to convert any significant portion of that paper wealth into physical things.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. What does it matter the actual physical atoms? A mole of gold costs more than a mole of carbon. How much you can “deploy” with 500m differs. Maybe you’re trying to say if they actually liquidated their wealth to spend any sufficient fraction their paper wealth would disappear but that’s the point of pulling out the value without liquidating.

I am saying people imaging that significant portion of paper wealth could be converted into tangible things for regular people like housing, infra etc.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#78

Post by Jensson »

naijaboiler wrote: post #69
blindriver wrote: post #44

You can summarize it like this: People WITH ASSETS (real estate, stocks, businesses, etc) have done incredibly well since Obama. Real estate has skyrocketed and mortgage rates dropped to 2%. The stock market has gone up 10x, but some stocks like nVidia has gone up 100x. People WITHOUT ASSETS have been fucked. The prices have all inflated, rents have skyrocketed and food has skyrocketed but they have nothing except th…

That’s exactly and inherently what capitalism is. Rate of return on capital is higher than rate of return on labor. The people with capital continue to pull ahead. And in America, we now decided to compound this by not taxing and undertaking capital. Which then allows those with capital to transfer some of their capital to political power that then accrues even more advantage to capital owners

When capital is vastly more valued than labor then its an asset bubble that will pop. Labor is the actual economy, capital is a make believe economy, when corrections happens its that capital loses all their bubble money not that labor catches up to that imaginary world.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#79

Post by Jensson »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #57
delichon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sending IP packets to you from a computer I bought from one billionaire, built by another billionaire, with an operating system made by another billionaire, over satellites built by yet another billionaire, through a web forum written by another billionaire. These people made billions by capturing a fraction of the value they created. The market is not a zero sum game.

This weird 'hero narrative' that the CEO class build all the things needs to die. Those billionaires would be nothing without standing on the shoulders of the workers.

You are right, which is why the workers get so much more than the CEO. Basically no CEO makes more money than his workers combined, he adds a small percentage of the value so he gets a small percentage of the revenue. In a typical company most revenue goes to workers, then a smaller part to leaders for organizing the workers and payback to investors who invested in the equipment for the workers.

If you don't pay leaders to organize or investors for equipment then workers wont have organization or equipment and will be much less productive, it is better this way. This makes workers richer under capitalism than any other economic system tried.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#80

Post by [deleted] »

ModernMech wrote: post #53
delichon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sending IP packets to you from a computer I bought from one billionaire, built by another billionaire, with an operating system made by another billionaire, over satellites built by yet another billionaire, through a web forum written by another billionaire. These people made billions by capturing a fraction of the value they created. The market is not a zero sum game.

> built by another billionaire, with an operating system made by another billionaire, over satellites built by yet another billionaire, through a web forum written by another billionaire Billionaires did not build any operating systems or computers or launch any satellites or write any web pages you are using. Workers built those things while billionaires watched. Linux is a testament to how much we don't need billio…

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