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> You can save a healthy retirement by putting a portion of your salaries in a savings account in your local credit union. You must be joking. My credit union

• runarberg 6y ago
  No I’m not joking, nor am I harming my future. I don’t have to make an optimal amount of growth on my savings to afford my retirement. There is no harm in owning less money then if I had used them to swindle more workers out of their profits on the open markets. In fact, every dollar you make as a result of not working is a dollar somebody else worked for and didn’t get. You are harming workers by earning money on the stock markets.
  • Alupis 6y ago
    You do understand where the "interest" comes from on your savings account right? The bank doesn't just invent it... And largely speaking, when you make money on the stock market it comes from a multitude of sources, including the hedge funds you seem to despise. Not to mention, just because you made a profit on the market doesn't mean someone was screwed over. The stock is worth whatever it's worth when you sold it. It's an open market... You do seem to have some fundamentals about the stock market, savings account, and finance a little mixed up.
    • runarberg 6y ago
      idk. I simply don’t like the fact that people are gambling with my workplace. And I especially don’t like it when shareholders pocket parts of the profit that I made them without bringing anything of value to the company. I don’t despise hedge funds any more then I despise the stock market as a whole. We don’t need it. In fact I would argue that the existence of the stock market is actively harmful. I would go so far as stating the stock market is partially to blame for the current climate crisis. That is, if it wasn’t for the stock market, perhaps people would have acted sooner and prevented the climate emergency. But fundamentally the stuck market is an idiotic idea. If we didn’t have stock markets, and someone pitch the idea of the first stock market here on HN, I don’t see how any businesses would subject them self to being bought and sold like that.
      • ericd 6y ago
        "And I especially don’t like it when shareholders pocket parts of the profit that I made them without bringing anything of value to the company." Are you trolling? You do realize why those shares are out there, right? Because your company needed money, and those people gave your company their money to get started, grow, hire more people, etc. Is that not bringing something of value?
        • runarberg 6y ago
          IMO no. I would have preferred it if my company would have used less predatory means of getting that money, something like taking a loan or simply saving up part of the profits for any future investments. The people that made the decision to sell the share still pay them selfs plenty of money, the shareholder’s reward is always coming from my paycheck, and I prefer it wouldn’t.
          • Alupis 6y ago
            > And I especially don’t like it when shareholders pocket parts of the profit that I made them without bringing anything of value to the company. > the shareholder’s reward is always coming from my paycheck, and I prefer it wouldn’t. This is just untrue for nearly all public companies. Most companies do not pay dividends... and a stock price going up and being sold by some investor literally has nothing to do with your company. In fact, the stock price is largely irrelevant to your company. It's only relevant to those who own the stock. > I would have preferred it if my company would have used less predatory means of getting that money, something like taking a loan or simply saving up part of the profits for any future investments. Issuing stock is basically a loan that they never have to pay back if they do not want to. They can always buy back their stock if they no longer feel it's worth while being a public company. FWIW, publicly traded companies have earned far more everyday working people comfortable retirements and more, than any single privately-held company.
  • boring_twenties 6y ago
    I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a comment.
    • arthurcolle 6y ago
      +1 for the Charles Babbage reference
    • recursive 6y ago
      If you make money on trades and then spend it on food, it certainly does seem like some kind of magic trick to me. Whatever money you earned must have been lost by someone else. Or does the amount of money increase when stocks go up? Whatever the confusion is, I have it too.
      • boring_twenties 6y ago
        I make something and sell it to you for $5. Tomorrow, you sell it to a third person for $10. Who lost money here?
        • recursive 6y ago
          Excellent question. Really no one I think. I'm definitely wrong about something though. I need to think about it some more to figure out what.
        • recursive 6y ago
          A new interpretation came to overnight, as if in a dream. I don't know what's correct, but here it goes. You and the third person both lost money in some unknown combination. Either you're selling for a lower price, or 3rd is buying for a higher price, or probably both. In the metaphor, this is aggregated across bazillions of transactions, and ignores benefits like supply and demand are generally evened out over time.
          • runarberg 6y ago
  • pb7 6y ago
    Every dollar you make in interest from your savings account at your credit union is $30 that someone had to pay the credit union in interest on their mortgage. You are swindling people out of their hard earned money — people who are struggling to own their home or business — to fund your own retirement.
    • runarberg 6y ago
      Do you honestly believe that these are equivalent? Or are you just arguing in bad faith? I’m gonna assume the former and explain the difference. The interest you are paying when you take out a loan is a) compensating the creditor for money lost because of inflation, and b) paying for a service. The bank/credit union at the same time will at the same time a) compensate for inflation and b) reward savings accounts for injecting money into the bank/credit union. This is fundamentally different from shareholders buying stocks from a business siphoning parts of the profits from the workers to the shareholder. People taking loans need the people that open the saving account, and get something of value (money they need). Workers don’t need the shareholders, and they get nothing in return (except lower salaries). I’m sorry if I sound like I’m talking down to you. It is just that the different is so obvious I don’t know how to explain it differently.
      • pb7 6y ago
        It’s odd to me that you see the mutually beneficial transaction there but not in the stock market. I will state this once as simply as I can: stock market investors are rewarded for funding companies by taking on that risk in hopes that the companies they invest in produce a profit. It is overwhelmingly similar to the process you are describing with your credit union, but in a much more distributed way. > Workers don’t need the shareholders, and they get nothing in return (except lower salaries). There would be no workers if companies didn’t have the capital the needed. So no, the workers very very much need the shareholders. The money has to come from somewhere. No bank is going to bankroll the next Airbnb, Uber, Instacart, DoorDash, etc. Beyond that, the workers aren’t owed a penny more than they agreed to be paid. If public shareholders didn’t exist, the owners would have full ownership which is what happens with small businesses. Nowhere in these circumstances are workers any better off. Profits and losses are not their domain. I’m sorry if I sound like I’m talking down to you. It is just that you are a victim of cognitive dissonance possibly due to your unconscious bias against wealth.