Eh, quick DM to Wall Street Journal or Financial Times and if it's a decently large bank the PR fallout will quickly prevent any potential retaliation.
It is good _nominally_. Real wages are basically flat. Meanwhile, for everyone who didn't get a raise or can't currently find a new job for whatever reason, they're losing purchasing power. On top of that, the housing market has been completely destroyed by the Fed printing money and shoving it into mortgage backed securities. In many nicer areas of Southern California you used to be able to get a starter home for $600k (manageable for someone in a working class profession like a nurse or mechanic), now nothing on the market is less than $1.2M.
Also you forget that a big reason the labor market is so tight is because a couple million Boomers retired early during the pandemic.
Well I think a big contributor to the current inflation problem was the last round of stimulus passed right as the pandemic was starting to wind down. At that point unemployment numbers had almost gotten back to normal and most revenue numbers for things like restaurants, travel, etc. had recovered to at least 70% of pre-pandemic levels. And then some states like California dumped even more money into the economy through multi-round state funded stimulus checks over a year after the pandemic started. The unemployment programs also should have started winding down the moment vaccines were widely available rather than 6 months after the fact.
I personally know a lot of people that just dumped their stimulus checks on memecoins or wasted it buying spurious goods. I'm sure the used car and electronics market also was greatly affected by stimulus as well.
The Fed also should have limited its stimulus to buying Treasuries rather than MBS. It makes no sense for the government to buy mortgage backed securities (basically a freebie to homeowners/homebuyers who are already wealthy).
I expect it's years of money printing to avoid a dip in the middle of the largest demand drop we've had in a very long time, following by a resurgence in demand as folks get out and try to get moving again (resulting in them spending a bunch of that money all the sudden).
It's pretty predictable IMO.
Either we'd have to drop the economy during the demand slackening during COVID (which would have caused a severe recession, because it WAS a recession in activity, and then there would be a bunch of panicked people in the middle of a pandemic who also lost all their income running around and maybe setting even MORE things on fire), or inflate our way out of it.
Hopefully we don't see some crazy 25% inflation like the 80's, but I wouldn't rule it out.
I'd expect that in a few years it'll flatten out though.
I haven't seen the actual data, but a Stanford economist compared the stimulus payments with actual consumption and it's pretty apparent most stimulus dollars were not spent, but rather used to pay down debt or invest (hello r/WSB!).
Never said TCJA or the Bush era tax cuts were used for good purposes :) but it's probably better for the country in the long run to have excess money flowing into tech VC funds rather than being spent on memecoins and shitty electronics. That way maybe 1% of the funds will have positive returns rather than all of it being set on fire.
I'm just saying in the absence of any alternatives (which I'm sure there are), it's better to have 1% of trillions of dollars going towards advancing humanity and technology than 0%. I am fully aware that 99% of that money is going to be burned on WeWorks and the like.
Oh good. I was worried that there were still people earning income from exploitation, rent seeking, monopoly, cronyism, and leveraging principal-agent conflicts of interest but looks like that’s all over now.
Seems to me if real wages are flat or mildly increasing and it’s WAY easier to get a job that’s a way better world to live in for the kind of people who apply for jobs.
> teachers with X degree and Y years experience get Y0,000 ±5%
That would never work in tech. And the higher paying firm you go to, the less it works. High performers in FAANG can have refresher and bonus multipliers of 2.5x the base performance rating. In HFT high performers total comp can be double or triple low performers' TC.
I would think it shouldn't work for teachers either. In the US there is a marked difference in teacher compensation between good districts and bad districts and you see the quality difference in the students that come out of those schools.
Ironic they leave out Asian men in the graph at the top. I guess those numbers wouldn't fit their "America is racist" trope.
Other than that though, standardizing pay will balance the playing field towards smaller companies. Bigger companies will face pressure to standardize pay packages per level (see: Coinbase, Uber) which limits their ability to reward top performers. Smaller companies won't have that same pressure. The pay gap is largely a function of how much each gender negotiates on average and if you take away negotiating then people will just leave to places where they're paid what they're worth.
The largest part of the pay gap is not negotiation, it's occupational segregation. And for the most part, sharing salaries publicly won't fix this at all. It's too late by the time everyone has chosen a career. To fix this gap, we really need to change how we all think about gender roles from birth.
Whats to fix? The evidence shows that women and men choose different things. There is less STEM participation by women in countries that are more gender-egalitarian.
Smart women who are capable of STEM careers largely choose different careers, if they can. Whats wrong with that? Doesn't assuming that there is something to "fix" here imply that women are broken? It's already clear that removing the barriers to enter these fields doesn't make them substantially more attractive to women, so whats left to "fix"?
There is more to the equation than STEM vs non-STEM jobs.
> removing the barriers to enter these fields doesn't make them substantially more attractive to women
Any why is that the case? There are a lot of assumptions about the types of jobs that men/women should be doing, and there are also a lot of cultural assumptions about those job positions themselves and what they expect of their workers. There are also still many jobs which are not receptive to one gender or the other, either by their cultures or the cultures of their customers. This is something that should be fixed, even if it doesn't impact the choices that people make, although we do know that cultural expectations have a huge impact on choice.
We also don't only have cultural expectations about jobs women should have. We also have expectations about jobs men have. For example, many cultures expect men to make personal sacrifices in order to earn more money. Gender expectations usually affect both genders at the same time, rarely one in isolation.
Shouldn't we be equally concerned about men or women being hurt at work? The fact that most places, culturally, are not, is exactly the kind of stuff I'm referring to.
The US and Europe have great safety regulations for workers. It turns out given the choice women would rather not live in the middle of nowhere in -40C weather getting soaked by crude oil and mud every day, even if it pays six figures. Why do men do it? Because there's a societal expectation that they provide for the family as a breadwinner.
Exactly. Just because we have made great progress with blatant sexism over the past 50 years doesn’t mean that we’re treating sexes equally. This is one of the reasons why a wage gap due to “choice” isn’t as much of a “choice” as many write it off as.
We raise children with an expectation that women need to be “protected” from certain jobs (and other expectations), then after two decades of that conditioning, we ask them to make a “choice”. Of course those “choices” end up being biased. But they didn’t fully choose, they were raised to believe certain things about themselves and their surroundings.
I did not claim that men and women have to choose careers in equal proportions. They might, or they might not.
But we do have plenty of examples where the expectations of society have influenced their choices in a way that conflicts with the free will of men and women.
I am sure we can both come up with many examples of things that society expects men to do, and things that society expects women to do. And, examples of scenarios where people would be treated very differently if they were a man or a woman. Obviously, these are a factor in people's life experiences, and therefore a factor in the way people make decisions. We may not expect them to choose differently given their own free will, but we also know that they are not making these decisions due to free will alone.
One day, we may be able to make them in the absence of gender stereotypes, if people choose so. Or, at least, some or most of them. The fact that we have changed some of them suggests that we may be able to change more.
So instead of pushing girls and boys to choose jobs based on their gender we should...push girls and boys to choose different jobs based on their gender? It seems like you're fighting fire with fire here.
> push girls and boys to choose different jobs based on their gender?
Nowhere did I suggest as much. I am simply suggesting that the gender roles we ascribe to children early on leave permanent impressions upon what they choose, and maybe more importantly, what others expect of them.
No, women (and men) are not “incorrect” for having been misguided by their upbringing. Children aren’t to blame for the way they were raised, they have no choice in the matter. Those who influenced them in that way are the ones who are incorrect.
We have plenty of relevant examples of scenarios where, given the exact same set of circumstances, men and women would be treated differently for exercising free will in defiance of gender norms. There are still jobs, even in the most progressive parts of the world, where people are given different levels of respect just because of their gender.
Unfortunately the party in charge right now is trumpeting the idea that inflation must be because companies are price gouging customers rather than trying to slow down domestic spending. The other party doesn't like to balance budgets either and if the Fed even touches interest rates the market (and everyone's 401k) tanks.
> Unfortunately the party in charge right now is trumpeting the idea that inflation must be because companies are price gouging customers rather than trying to slow down domestic spending.
What is the scope of the evidence that proves that this claim (which, btw, is really not being trumpeted by anyone "in charge") is false?
The law of supply and demand is what sets prices across an entire economy, not some grand conspiracy by every company to overcharge consumers. Greedy companies might collude in an industry here and there, but that doesn’t cause across the board inflation.
And this grand conspiracy argument is the position, at least in part, being pushed by the Democratic Party in the US. It’s actually similar to what flailing governments in third world inflationary economies say too. It’s always the evil capitalists raising prices for no reason but to line their pockets. Ignorant drivel meant to appease ignorant people and deflect blame.
> The law of supply and demand is what sets prices across an entire economy, not some grand conspiracy by every company to overcharge consumers.
Nope. Prices are set by what the market is willing to bear. Supply and demand are loosely correlated with the final retail price of things.
Demand for a good is based on its current asking price and how the consumer values that good. If the asking price ends up pricing the good out of the market's ability to pay for it the demand will drop irrespective of the supply.
As for conspiracies to increase prices, that's just a ludicrous position. All players in the market with the same incentives can move in lockstep with zero coordination. There doesn't need to be a conspiracy when every company basically lives by "make the most money".
If you see a competitor raising prices it's the perfect time to raise your own prices irrespective of your costs. If your costs haven't increased then you get better margins for free. There's no need for direct collusion when competitors are looking at the same news and have the same overall playbook.
Except that ignores the innovation we bring to manufacturing. If a car manufacturer finds a way to use less material in a component or a furniture maker finds a way to use more of the tree in their products then that lowers the marginal cost. Their competitors will adopt the same idea or else risk going out of business.
Housing however is constrained by the price of land, outside of a few small regions like the Netherlands there is no amount of innovation that will create more of it. Hence the price of housing is set by what the market will bear.
I've heard the "it's a conspiracy to raise prices!!" point of view too. It's a very simplistic way to think about the inflation, and I wish there were a little more critical thinking around it.
However, some of the inflation is being caused by companies just being comfortable raising their prices. They are comfortable because so many companies are monopolies, and as soon as there's any slight pressure in the direction of inflation, they immediately pass it onto their customers without any punishment. The anger against companies for gouging consumers is placed correctly, but of course it's with the wrong explanations.
There is no need whatsoever for a conspiracy. The interests of those who (a) own capital and (b) sell stuff naturally align without much need for coordination.
You seem to be claiming that the price increases seen over the last (pick a number) 10 months are all driven by "actual inflation", and that the instances of companies raising prices to increase their profit margins are rare.
I haven't seen good evidence for this claim. I have seen reasonable evidence that it's the other way around: a few limited sectors have experienced "actual inflation", but most of the price increases are arbitrary and imposed by sellers.
Note: we do not have "across the board inflation" either. Quite a few things have continued to drop in price across the pandemic.
Inflation is not just driven by changes in the supply curve. It can also happen due to shifts in the demand curve. If you pump money into the elite class by printing money, they can drive the prices of education, housing, etc. higher. Eventually, those increased prices work their way down to the middle and lower classes.
The word "can" is doing a lot of work here. Real-world economics is almost infinitely more complex than this sort of simplistic analysis.
Just as one example: housing prices often rise in response to a process frequently referred to as "gentrification" (often with a somewhat disparaging tone, to put it mildly). But that process tends to start when people with very little income to spend on housing move into low cost of living neighborhoods and subtly shift their demographics and nature. So is gentrification a process driven by the "poor" (the initial influx of new tenants) or by the "rich" (developers who can carry out significant remodelling and/or new construction) ? The answer is clearly both, yet even that doesn't really cover the whole mechanism. For a start, for gentrification to become significant in driving up housing costs, existing owners need to sell. These are often neither the newcomers nor the developers. Gentrification also requires a modest but distinct influx of businesses into an area, which in turn requires businesses to either start or expand.
I'm citing this as just one single example of where bullshit simplifications drawn from "basic" economics fail to describe the real world. There are so, so many more.
Gentrification is a classic example of supply and demand from microecon. As an area becomes nicer to live in it gains more and more demand with people with high willingness and ability to pay. Supply remains fixed, because of US zoning laws, or grows more slowly than people come into the neighborhood. The price goes up because of _demand_ going up without supply going up.
Why does it gentrify in the first place? Because the initial group of "gentrifiers" took the time and money to develop the area to make it more appealing, thus increasing demand.
Economics says you can't fix it no matter how much regulation you impose because at some point all the surrounding businesses, etc. will be gentrified too and force out poor people. Even if you freeze rent, ban new businesses from coming in, etc. the existing business owners will start to cater to their new clientele simply because the demand from those customers is much higher. The only thing you _can_ do is ban people from moving to the neighborhood, at which point you've turned into the worst parts of the Soviet Union.
> Why does it gentrify in the first place? Because the initial group of "gentrifiers" took the time and money to develop the area to make it more appealing, thus increasing demand.
Wildly simplistic. The first stage of gentrification involves almost no money and almost no development. It doesn't even really involve much time. It's the result of a demographic shift (and often not a very big one at at that) between the existing residents and newcomers who are willing to trade currently less-than-ideal living conditions for lower costs.
Also, more money in the hands of the elite class(es) does not inevitably drive prices of anything other than the few goods & services for which prices are actively negotiated. The fact that your rich clientele have more money does not, in and of itself, require you to raise your prices. That's a choice you make, which is dependent upon but also independent of their disposable wealth.
We have a huge trades shortage and COVID might force a lot of supply chains to come back at least in part to the US. The demand for new construction has never been higher either.
A large portion of society that doesn't want to work on hot, dusty, dirty worksites might become obsolete with nothing useful for them to do. But there are absolutely jobs that are accessible to no-skill workers with only 1-2 years investment in schooling.
> everyone in the administrative region gets covered for everything
That leads to rampant abuses. For example in certain East Asian city states with "universal" healthcare people would use ambulances as taxis because they were free. You need copays to prevent this kind of abuse.
And you also forget that the US has a big illegal immigration problem. By and large illegal immigrants make minimum wage or lower, generally under the table (i.e. not paying taxes on it). By covering healthcare for them you are automatically subsidizing illegal immigrants at the cost of citizens and permanent residents. Is that fair?
If you think these aren't legitimate outcomes of allowing everyone to have free healthcare then you're naive.
I think these behaviours would occur. I think it’s pointless and sickeningly discriminatory to legislate too hard against them.
The taxi issue seems trivial compared with the cost of actual healthcare. I’ve no objection to some light-touch system for reducing this risk, but it hardly seems worth worrying about. You (your government) could attempt to fix this by sorting out their transport networks and taxi legislation too. This isn’t a flaw in a healthcare system, it’s a symptom of a broken transport system.
Those immigrant workers “avoiding tax” are doing the worst jobs in your society, and living in the worst conditions. The very least you can do is pay their healthcare .
There may be an “immigration problem”, but it’s that national borders create an arbitrary and discriminatory barrier to free movement people and enforce QoL disparities across the world.
> This isn’t a flaw in a healthcare system, it’s a symptom of a broken transport system.
Nobody wants to sit next to piss/weed/cig smelling people and get their shit robbed on public transit (see: BART) if they can afford a car instead. Plus, US light rail runs at much slower speeds than places like China due to NIMBYism, so it also takes longer than driving to get places.
> The very least you can do is pay their healthcare .
The very least they could do is come into the country legally. And by the way, a lot of the really crappy jobs are done by legal residents, like garbagemen, sewer maintenance, lineman, etc. Guess what? My local taxes pay for those workers to have good salaries and I'm happy to pay. The US also has a visa for farm workers to come to the US as well.
> national borders create an arbitrary and discriminatory barrier to free movement people and enforce QoL disparities across the world.
Spoken like someone who is privileged and wealthy enough to be unaffected by open borders. Globalization has destroyed the American factory job, along with its high wages, and you still claim open borders are the way forward? Pro tip, don't claim to be morally superior when you work as a software engineer making $$$ that has a huge demand supply imbalance. If you really believe what you're saying then go work in India in a bodyshop making $10k and working 80h weeks, but pay your US cost of living. That's what millions of blue collar workers are facing when you open borders.
Please exit your bubble and talk to some real working class people for once. People like you are like the engineers I meet who openly talk about how self driving cars are going to disrupt the industry as they get into an Uber. Zero self-awareness.
I hate self driving cars and I hate Uber. Although I use them because they’re a bit cheaper and easier to use when you’re slightly socially phobic. Uber should be broken up and/or “refactored” into just a pricing/hailing service bought in by private drivers. It might actually find a proper balance with the market then. But it would make less profit.
I’m not in the US. I do live in a bubble, you’re right about that.
You didn’t read deep enough what I was saying and assumed I was only talking about borders. Borders permit (demand) national currencies. National currencies and their exchange reinforce arbitrary value disparities between countries. Value disparities between currencies are deep systemic racism, and work with border controls to limit QoL improvements and reinforce racial and cultural division. Globalisation as it has been thus-far implemented has been a scourge across the human world, and probably deeper into the material fabric we share. I’m unsurprised to hear your frustration with what it’s done: it’s the sickening profiteering tool of the already-powerful.
A human world that shared more information, allowed easier cultural and people flow, wasn’t gouged by currency exchange value extraction schemes, and focused more on local resource management and honestly dealing with externalities would have some chance of fixing the bigger issues.
I’m a dreamer. The bubble I live on is called Earth.
Climate change is perhaps one of the many reasons both the Roman and Byzantine empires fell or lost ability to project power. The Byzantine conquest of Italy was finishing up when these plagues hit and they never recovered their original strength again.
One has to wonder whether modern agriculture is no longer as affected by these kinds of changes or whether the war in Ukraine is just a sign of things to come.
Not sure why you were downvoted but this is true - desktop Ryzen chips have terrible idle power usage due to the IO die. The APU variants have lower IPC and performance due to lower cache, but have good idle power usage. There's no way to get both good idle power and good IPC.
Right but surely that just means that the same power draw also exists with intel chips, it's just located elsewhere on the board. Something has to do IO after all.
Not quite true, because on-die data transfer is a lot cheaper than off-die. If you look at full system power consumption between even chiplet based and monolithic Ryzen products there is a large difference.
As long as public transportation in the US continues to be unsafe, dirty, and slow people will continue to drive cars. It doesn't matter how much public transport you build out, if I have to sit next to a guy smelling like piss I will never get on the subway when I have a car.
