5 ms·

Nobody cares anymore. People are working, resources are being extracted, created and traded, economies are rolling. Money is there to facilitate that, but on it

by bserge 5y ago

Nobody cares anymore. People are working, resources are being extracted, created and traded, economies are rolling. Money is there to facilitate that, but on its own it's pretty much worthless. Just wish inequality wasn't so fucking huge.

TbobbyZ 5y ago
Inequality will keep getting greater till businesses stop sleeping with the government AND the government stops handing out free money. Corporations, and that means executives, got fatter cause they lined their pockets with all that free covid money.
boringg 5y ago
On the inequality front - I just wish the media didn't fan the flames all the time and make it feel like the only thing that matters. If I didn't know how the rest of the world lives I probably wouldn't care as much about it. If I see stories about it all the time and people flaunting their wealth it aggravates me. I also recognize it is a real problem and we can solve it likely through policy/political will power. It in and of itself is not going to solve our problems.
- adventured 5y ago
  It is exceptionally deceptive, particularly in massive economies like the US which produce dramatic scaling outcomes like a Bezos or Gates, an Apple or Netflix or Walmart. China is going to struggle with that same issue persistently. And it's also true that it's pretty clear the US median wealth figure should be higher than it is, considering the vast average wealth figure in the US. The gap between those two numbers should not be as great as it is. And blatantly the bottom 50% of the population should have a lot more wealth than they do at present. Maybe if the US had eg a good universal healthcare system (and no more medical bankruptcies), half of the country wouldn't mind so much that that median vs average wealth gap is what it is. Social contracts are important. You get this, they get that. As it is, the US social contract is not so great these days, compared to other affluent peer nations. The US has a large welfare state and gets a lot less for its spending compared to other peers. If our healthcare costs matched Britain per capita, Medicaid could instantly expand to cover 40-45% of the population for example, at no additional cost.
_red 5y ago
> Just wish inequality wasn't so fucking huge. Printing money leads to greater inequality. Expect more of it.
- mempko 5y ago
  Depends on who gets those flows. It's clear right now it's the rich.
mshanowitz 5y ago
Until money no longer becomes a reliable measure of value and then everything goes to hell. Right now we are benefitting both from the stability of the US Dollar, as well as from the benefits of pumping more and more of it into the system (rising asset prices etc), if they lose the ability to maintain this balancing act it won't be pretty.
bojangleslover 5y ago
Inequality is not necessarily a bad thing. http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html
- pgisatool 5y ago
  Are you really citing a reactionary billionaire claiming that inequality is a good thing? I can't even imagine how sycophantic one would have to be to read all the way through that mess, holy shit.
- bserge 5y ago
  Sure bruh, as long as you are not among the poor.
wallawe 5y ago
Inequality seems like a meaningless metric. It's not a good measure of a society's well being. For example, let's assume a country of 10 where 9 people have $1 million and 1 person has $100 trillion. The inequality is massive but everyone has a great standard of living.
- agentdrtran 5y ago
  that thought experiment is nice but in the real world we have widespread poverty and 1% with more money than any human could ever spend
- sassifrass 5y ago
  That’s not how the Gini coefficient[1] is being calculated. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Without external trade I doubt that 1 million will buy too much.
- bserge 5y ago
  And now let's take a real example where 100 people have a trillion and 100,000,000 people have 10,000. And that's not even the bottom end.
drtz 5y ago
This is a fair point. Treating things like Social Security and Medicare obligations as unfunded debt is akin to me declaring that I have a large amount of debt because I have to pay for food and clothe myself from now until I die. It's money I will pay, most certainly, but it's only an obligation to myself to sustain my life at some reasonable standard. Much like Medicare and Social Security, it will be paid for with money I earn in the future as I live my life.

by bserge 5y ago

TbobbyZ 5y ago

Inequality will keep getting greater till businesses stop sleeping with the government AND the government stops handing out free money. Corporations, and that means executives, got fatter cause they lined their pockets with all that free covid money.

boringg 5y ago

On the inequality front - I just wish the media didn't fan the flames all the time and make it feel like the only thing that matters. If I didn't know how the rest of the world lives I probably wouldn't care as much about it. If I see stories about it all the time and people flaunting their wealth it aggravates me. I also recognize it is a real problem and we can solve it likely through policy/political will power. It in and of itself is not going to solve our problems.

adventured 5y ago
It is exceptionally deceptive, particularly in massive economies like the US which produce dramatic scaling outcomes like a Bezos or Gates, an Apple or Netflix or Walmart. China is going to struggle with that same issue persistently. And it's also true that it's pretty clear the US median wealth figure should be higher than it is, considering the vast average wealth figure in the US. The gap between those two numbers should not be as great as it is. And blatantly the bottom 50% of the population should have a lot more wealth than they do at present. Maybe if the US had eg a good universal healthcare system (and no more medical bankruptcies), half of the country wouldn't mind so much that that median vs average wealth gap is what it is. Social contracts are important. You get this, they get that. As it is, the US social contract is not so great these days, compared to other affluent peer nations. The US has a large welfare state and gets a lot less for its spending compared to other peers. If our healthcare costs matched Britain per capita, Medicaid could instantly expand to cover 40-45% of the population for example, at no additional cost.

_red 5y ago

> Just wish inequality wasn't so fucking huge. Printing money leads to greater inequality. Expect more of it.

mempko 5y ago
Depends on who gets those flows. It's clear right now it's the rich.

mshanowitz 5y ago

Until money no longer becomes a reliable measure of value and then everything goes to hell. Right now we are benefitting both from the stability of the US Dollar, as well as from the benefits of pumping more and more of it into the system (rising asset prices etc), if they lose the ability to maintain this balancing act it won't be pretty.

bojangleslover 5y ago

Inequality is not necessarily a bad thing. http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html

pgisatool 5y ago
Are you really citing a reactionary billionaire claiming that inequality is a good thing? I can't even imagine how sycophantic one would have to be to read all the way through that mess, holy shit.
bserge 5y ago
Sure bruh, as long as you are not among the poor.

wallawe 5y ago

Inequality seems like a meaningless metric. It's not a good measure of a society's well being. For example, let's assume a country of 10 where 9 people have $1 million and 1 person has $100 trillion. The inequality is massive but everyone has a great standard of living.

agentdrtran 5y ago
that thought experiment is nice but in the real world we have widespread poverty and 1% with more money than any human could ever spend
sassifrass 5y ago
That’s not how the Gini coefficient[1] is being calculated. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
Ekaros 5y ago
Without external trade I doubt that 1 million will buy too much.
bserge 5y ago
And now let's take a real example where 100 people have a trillion and 100,000,000 people have 10,000. And that's not even the bottom end.

drtz 5y ago

This is a fair point. Treating things like Social Security and Medicare obligations as unfunded debt is akin to me declaring that I have a large amount of debt because I have to pay for food and clothe myself from now until I die. It's money I will pay, most certainly, but it's only an obligation to myself to sustain my life at some reasonable standard. Much like Medicare and Social Security, it will be paid for with money I earn in the future as I live my life.