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Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success
81–90 of 297 posts
Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success
#82Do not mistake economic indicators such as GDP or "growth" for meaningful measures of economic health.
GDP as a concept, and "growth" and "inflation" figures, remind me of that line from HBO's Chernobyl: "They gave them the propaganda number".
Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success
#83When the conclusions don't match your predictions, examine your priors.
Do not "do not mistake..." ...
Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you can demonstrate that there is in fact an AI bubble, that is simply begging the question. Notice how the term “housing bubble” is used much less frequently today than 10 years ago? That’s because that so-called bubble has been ballooning in size for three decades now, and almost nobody still believes that it will “burst” in any meaningful sense. The Dotcom bubble was in many ways an outlier.
> That’s because that so-called bubble has been ballooning in size for three decades now, and almost nobody still believes that it will “burst” in any meaningful sense. That's because Boomers live far longer than prior generations thanks to medical advances. The housing bubble will collapse (at least outside of the megalopolises) once the Boomers finally start to die en masse due to their over-representation in demog…
Well, that rent and the debts incurred to finance consumption is also keeping the profits up and thus stonks valuations
Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success
#85Do not mistake a year on year profit for a resilient global economy.
Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success
#86Do not mistake economic indicators such as GDP or "growth" for meaningful measures of economic health.
It is an indicator and it's not totally non-meaningful. But GDP growth, when it's at the price of increasing the public debt and inflation, is no real growth. Instead of looking at the US, let's look at what used to be a relevant ally... In the eurozone, for example, politicians are hiding the lack of growth behind a growing mountain of public debt and the GDP growth ain't even beating inflation since the 2008 crisis…
Yeah but it wasn’t the unelected bureaucrats that fucked the EU. It was the German attitude towards debt and the redistribution of surplus. The Eurogroup sheepishly followed whatever Austerity fever dream of Schauble, tanked the Greek economy to teach every other Med country a lesson and by doing so, crippled any chance of post 2009 recovery
Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes sense if you're looking at it from the perspective of a European investor. e.g. You start with 1000 EUR, convert and buy into an S&P500 fund, wait a year, sell and convert back to EUR. Celsius and Fahrenheit doesn't work as an analogy because the rate does not change over time as it does with currencies.
I think it depends on whether you're planning on holding it in currency or using the currency to buy other things. Does the cost of material goods and services mostly stay the same in EUR, or does it somewhat follow the S&P? If more the latter, then converting to EUR is just a very temporary exchange and its nominal amount doesn't exactly matter.
I mean, for retail investors outside the US, the question you're asking boils down to „does purchasing power parity follow popular US domestic market indices?“, to which the answer is a resounding no.
There may be some offset for goods imported from the US, but that's a minority of consumer goods globally, and even then, the purchase currency will usually still be the local fiat, and then the attractiveness of the US index fund still has to be weighed against the performance of non-US-based indices in that same local currency as opportunity cost.
Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s not perfect but probably the best we have. People forgot or simply don’t realize how much worse life was just a couple of decades ago (in terms of nutrition, access to knowledge, clean water, material wealth).
It's utter trash, it was good when we had industry focused economies instead of service focused ones. Everybody mocked Russia for having the same gdp as Spain. As it turns out your economy is much stronger when it's focused on heavy industries, steel, mining, oil, &c. Than when it is focused on tourism and other services One produces value, the other generates money, when shits hit the fan you need energy, the drunk…
Russia is fighting the war exactly how I would expect an economy of that size to fight a war. Slow attrition coming from an inability to overwhelm their enemy decisively and fast.
How exactly is their economy "strong"? By what measure? You cannot really eat tanks, that is what made life in the Soviet Union unsatisfactory as well.
Current price of Ural oil is some 9 dollars above their breakeven costs. As the classic says, not great, not terrible.
Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Simpson's paradox does allow for the possibility that nutrition, access to knowledge, clean water and material wealth has improved in the aggregate while it getting worse for subpopulations. A lot of people in the world are angry and one of the things that fuels this anger is the "gaslighting" that the data shows their lives are better while their lived reality is the opposite. Don't forget that Millennials are the f…
> Don't forget that Millennials are the first generation to be poorer than their parents in a long time... This is simply not true. At some point, we do need to rely on data other than "lived experience," which compares one's quality of life at 22 to someone's quality of life at 50. "Younger Americans (millennials and Gen Zers) owned $1.23 for every $1 of wealth owned by Gen Xers at the same age." "Younger Americans…
If they ever want to own a house they won't need just 23% or 35% more wealth, but more like 200% and 1000% respectively. You do need to start at lived experience to know which data to look at.
Re: Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success
#90Do not mistake economic indicators such as GDP or "growth" for meaningful measures of economic health.
It is an indicator and it's not totally non-meaningful. But GDP growth, when it's at the price of increasing the public debt and inflation, is no real growth. Instead of looking at the US, let's look at what used to be a relevant ally... In the eurozone, for example, politicians are hiding the lack of growth behind a growing mountain of public debt and the GDP growth ain't even beating inflation since the 2008 crisis…
Share of the world's GDP is a flawed metric. It tells us we're getting a smaller slice, but it doesn't tell us if the pie grew or shrunk. If the EU grew by 50% while India and China became 200% richer, then on paper the share of the world's GDP would be dramatically lower, while everyone would be better off.
I don't disagree with the sentiment you expressed at all though.