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Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2016
- zappo2938 9y agoWhat happens when the US needs to start paying off the trillions in debt? I remember the last time things were good. It stopped being good quite rapidly. I don't know much about monetary and economic policy but I'm optimistically cautious. I can't imagine the US borrowing several trillion dollars to keep credit from freezing again.
- malandrew 9y agoMy understanding is that most US debt is held by US citizens or US organizations.
- xiphias 9y agoAnd the Chinese government which is building a massive army for totally unknown reasons /s
- Clubber 9y agoThe wonderful thing about owing so much debt is it really makes the financial incentive for war against you that much lower for your lenders.
- Clubber 9y agoYes, as opposed to intra-governmental debt. Also of the public debt, the breakdown is: As of September 2014, foreigners owned $6.06 trillion of U.S. debt, or approximately 47% of the debt held by the public of $12.8 trillion and 34% of the total debt of $17.8 trillion.[42] The largest holders were China, Japan, Belgium, the Caribbean banking centers, and oil exporters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St...
- tootie 9y agoWe pay off our debt constantly.
- itissid 9y agoWith debt it depends who the debt is owed to. US owes a lot to other govts. Greece owed it to bond buying private firms. China's debt is owed by the people and local corporations to the local bank. And debt is typically a problem when recession strikes.
- devrandomguy 9y agoA CEO once told me, "If you owe someone $1 million, then they own you. If you owe someone $1 billion, then you own them." I think that the orgs who are owed by US are primarily concerned with maintaining the status quo, rather than gutting the golden goose.
- bluthru 9y agoWe're still using real money to pay interest on our debt, yes?
- jbarciauskas 9y agoReal money that we print, yes. Edit: Since this was down voted, I want to be clear: this is not snark. This was meant as a very real commentary on how important it is that we have the ability to inflate our way out of debt. It's critical to understanding the power dynamics at play here.
- taysic 9y agoI don’t see why you’re getting downvoted. This is a good question I don’t know the answer to. Id also like to know what the consequences are of the gov buying back bonds with quantitative easing... which at the very least to me seems to pump value into these bonds that aren’t a really there - esp if the buyback is because the government is not equipped to pay them back.
- hidenotslide 9y agoTldr: Government debt isn't like household debt. If anything you should be worried about growing deficits outside recessions, and even that just leads to some inflation. There is no need to pay off the debt, as long as it grows slower than the economy it is shrinking in real terms. Furthermore it serves an important purpose as a "risk-free" investment of US dollars and as a tool for monetary policy through open market operations. In fact there isn't enough outstanding debt for the second role, which is why during the financial crisis the Fed expanded its balance sheet to include mortgage backed securities. Finally any country with its own currency can't really default on payments, except in a technical sense like the "debt ceiling". Instead if the government continues to run expanding deficits then inflation will rise and smooth things out, statistically reducing the debt. Think of it as everyone who owns dollars pays off a bit of their share of the debt. Severe inflation like in the 1970's or worse is clearly harmful, but deflation is more harmful than moderate inflation. We have been running below policy maker goals of about 2% inflation for a while, despite the cries from deficit hawks that massive inflation is right around the corner due to QE.
- everheardofc 9y agoAs long as it's not foreign debt and the country in question is not dependent on imports then it doesn't matter. They can always just borrow more.
- selanki 9y agoAll Hail Trump !!!
- McBlorker 9y agoI'm curious: is anyone at a point where they're pulling out of equities at all? I feel like things are getting a bit too good to be true in the markets. The Shiller P/E ratio is at a 2nd-time high - the only other higher time being the dot-com boom and bust: multpl.com/shiller-pe/
- alistproducer2 9y agoWhy would you. Everyone is so in the money already, who cares if you get a 10% down day when you're up 100% yoy? Put another way, everyone is playing with the houses money so why not risk it?
- mcguire 9y agoAlright. It's past my bedtime. I'm folding. Anyone want to buy my shares? :-)
- tehlike 9y agoPotentially melt up before melt down.
- baron816 9y agoTrying to time the market is a well known suboptimal strategy. Just leave your money and try not to worry about it.
- rmrm 9y agoMy issue with this line of thought, is that while completely true, it also doesn't mean a whole lot. It is completely dependent on it being the US stock market. And during a period for that stock market that had a number of incredibly important items go it's way. Its not backfitting because it happened, but we only find it meaningful because we happened to have been here during it. For any number of reasons, including just how the universe works, that doesn't mean anything going forward.
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- alistproducer2 9y agoFor context, the survey covers 2015-16. The gains are from the last administration.
- vacri 9y agoThe first year of someone's term is very rarely affected by their policies. My particular pet hate is when politicians start bragging about how their policies are responsible for good economic news when they're still in the first three months. Truth is that economies change slowly, and politicians have much less control over it than we all like to believe.
- ekianjo 9y ago> Truth is that economies change slowly, and politicians have much less control over it than we all like to believe. I dont know why you are being downvoted, this is a very sensible comment. Changes in society are slow and progressive, except in very specific circumstances.
- rdtsc 9y agoI think in general you're right, but with a some exceptions. Like say it depends on what part of economy we are talking about. If inflation, GDP numbers and so on, then those move slower. But stock market can react pretty quickly it seems. For example it can react to getting a hint of a possibly changing regulatory environments. A crashing or rapidly rising stock market will affect the economy quite a bit, especially if it is sustained long enough. War can change things, disasters, foreign economic threats (say a trade war with a major superpower). Those can have rapid effects as well.
- vacri 9y agoWell, disasters and foreign economic threats aren't due to a politician's policy, and the regulatory environment usually doesn't change straight away (that requires legislation, not just a policy manifesto). War is a rare event as well, and it doesn't necessarily affect the wider economy - the war in Iraq and Afghanistan hasn't affected the US economy much, which quite happily went through a boom time in the early years of the war, then crashed for reasons unrelated to the war. Of course, the economy of Iraq got soundly fucked by war, but that wasn't due to the economic policies of the politician in charge.
- mattbgates 9y agoMy bank account says, "That was a lie."
- 0xbear 9y agoYour bank account says “find a better job”. In today’s job market there’s really no excuse for anyone who can understand at least half the news posted on this site to make less than six figures.
- acchow 9y agoYou're getting downvoted to hell. I think you should flip the tone: Everyone in this booming economy should either go around interviewing and getting job offers until they are satisfied or start their own business. There's not much sense in complaining about your situation if you've done neither of those.
- SapphireSun 9y agoWhat about all the people that have no interest or ability to code? What happens when everyone does code? Wages collapse.
- Consultant32452 9y agoThe idea that you should have an interest in what you do for money is a new one and I think fairly unhealthy. It's part of the reason why we have so many young people with degrees in underwater basketweaving who can't find work in their majors. We're in the midst of an insane sociological revolution regarding "ability." 100 years ago it didn't matter if you had a 140 IQ because you were just out plowing the field the same as your neighbor. For the first time in the history of mankind general cognitive ability is the biggest factor in your ability to acquire resources. Unfortunately that's largely biological in nature. You can reduce IQ pretty easily with poor nutrition, abuse, etc. But it's really hard to raise IQ meaningfully. Life is already difficult for well meaning, hard working people with low cognitive ability, and I think it's only going to get worse. In the meantime, high cognitive ability people will be doing well, whether they're coding or doing other brainy work.
- electrograv 9y agoHow is "all time high" income surprising, given that inflation essentially guarantees perpetually increasing dollar amounts of everything?
- baron816 9y ago> The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that real median household income Real means the numbers are adjusted for inflation.
- learc83 9y agoLooks like they are adjusting for inflation. I didn't have time to dig to deep but they are reporting real income, which should be inflation adjusted.
- jdavis703 9y agoThe increase is measured in "real terms" which means things like CPI are taken in to account. Further this number does decrease, for example during the last recession, so household median income is not directly correlated with inflation -- especially in this era of low inflation (compared to the mid-to-late 20th century inflation) that we've been in for a while.
- electrograv 9y agoThanks for the explanation! For a layperson like myself in this field, this was not immediately obvious from the qualifier "real".
- 11thEarlOfMar 9y agoSide note: The 5.8% decline in poverty is not explicitly stated. Per the report, the number of persons in poverty dropped by 2.5 million to 40.6 million. I added the 2.5 million back to 40.6 million to get the 2015 number, then divided it back into 2.5 million to get the 5.8% YoY decline from 2015 - 2016: 2.5 / (40.6 + 2.5) = 5.8%
- stevenmays 9y agoI wonder why the title of this post got changed from "US Median Household Income +3.2% to All-Time High..."
- grzm 9y agoThe title was changed to the actual title of the document. HN discourages editorializing titles. > "…please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- chiefalchemist 9y agoAs I understand it, the measurement for poverty is unreasonably low. That the better rule of thumb is the number of citizens below 2x the traditional poverty income levels. This data is over-aggregated.