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Now's the time of year I usually pad out my Roth IRA, but I'm thinking about keeping my money in cash for the time being. There's got to be some sort of reckoning between the economic situation the world's in now and DOW 20,000!
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Jan 9, 2017 18:22
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All you need to do is unskew the data a bit and the US is A #1
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Jan 9, 2017 21:39
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Why does globalization/free trade seem to be viewed as inevitably as climate change or the sun rising in the east, in some circles? Certainly there's a lot of momentum behind it, but it doesn't seem like a force of nature to me.
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Jan 10, 2017 23:31
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Paradoxish posted:Globalization is largely responsible for the modern, western way of life being possible. "Inevitable" isn't really the right word since we could definitely stop or reverse it if the political will existed to do so, but the result of doing so probably wouldn't make anyone happy. Well, it certainly didn't create it, as the US middle class was founded on European bones post-WWII. Is the theory that globalization was the only way to sustain that lifestyle after Europe recovered? And why would a somewhat more protectionist trade stance automatically torpedo modern living? Are we talking giving up iPhones for a living wage, or something else?
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Jan 10, 2017 23:38
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Yeah but, like most humans on earth, I don't really care about how trade has lifted the world up. I care about my family's prosperity, which trade has diminished the prospects of. Notice how your analysis focuses almost entirely on "countries", as if the wealth distribution in most countries isn't incredibly imbalanced. And long term, trade won't lift everyone up because, as soon as the Chinese are feeling their oats enough to request better health, safety, and environmental standards, companies will just move to the next hellhole. The marginal lift that trade provides to workers' lives is undone by the instability of structuring our society around industry's needs.
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Jan 11, 2017 15:40
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VitalSigns posted:Eh I know gay guys who voted for Trump who insisted he would never ever appoint an anti-gay supreme court justice because he hires gay people and has gay friends. All those times Trump said he'd do exactly that? Just lies to pander to Republicans, but in office he'll betray them and not me. I know Democrats who thought Obama would never try to slash Social Security because he was a hope-and-change progressive. All those times he clearly indicated that he was a milquetoast neoliberal? Just lies to pander to bipartisanship, but in office he'll betray them and not me. This kind of thing has ceased to surprise me, too.
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Jan 27, 2017 18:30
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readingatwork posted:Got any sources on this? Because most people's actual experiences are the opposite. Just read "people" as "the college educated people that matter" and it's just fine
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Jan 30, 2017 22:25
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Take a person off their subsistence farm, sell it off and pollute it to gently caress, make them work in a factory for slave wages. Boom, someone lifted out of poverty.
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Jan 30, 2017 22:34
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Mozi posted:I'm saying that they did, though - unless you count a poor person from China or India to be worth less than an American. Yes, I do value people from my community and nation more than I view others, and I want us to be successful even if it means everyone else won't be. To say nothing of the fact that China and India still have ridiculous amounts of poverty - of course, that's because the delta between American wages and Chinese/Indian wages were simply pocketed. Keep thinking that "you're a racist if you aren't happy about your city becoming an opiate riddled ghost town" convinces anyone, though.
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Jan 30, 2017 22:52
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shrike82 posted:I know we have to do this song and dance every couple months but yes, the average Chinese/Indian is better off today than (s)he was as a peasant historically. Saying otherwise smacks of first world privilege. Yeah, we're privileged, and admitting to it or not doesn't change it. I'm still, gasp, going to put my children's welfare ahead of some random Chinese person - sorry if this squicks you out even if y'all act along these lines regardless.
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Jan 30, 2017 23:53
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shrike82 posted:And that's precisely why Trump's vision of the world won out. If you think you're above this impulse, you're lying to yourself. On the off chance you're not, I feel bad for your kids. Every Tiger Mom, every dad who strived for a better future for their children, every grandparent who immigrated believes this. Somehow, though, liberals believe that "gently caress all that noise, think of the children (not yours, theirs)" is a message that's going to win out. It won't. call to action fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Jan 31, 2017 |
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Jan 31, 2017 17:33
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Helsing posted:It's contemptible watching free trade advocates continuously move the goal posts. A policy that was sold as enriching the countries that enacted it is now being re-framed as an act of charity by the west (which just coincidentally enriches certain domestic interest groups while screwing off overs). Extremely well said, you could even see this play out on this very page as asdf implied I was a racist for putting my family's welfare over all.
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Jan 31, 2017 20:19
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Or alternatively, spend and enjoy your life now while keeping your monthly commitments manageable, because the future's not going to be a place you want to retire in
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Feb 1, 2017 16:29
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It's kinda funny how Chinese slaves actually get more time off from their jobs than American workers do, what with the Chinese New Year and all
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Feb 1, 2017 21:24
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If you're consciously having kids these days, you probably care more about your own ego than the life they'll have to endure.
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Feb 2, 2017 20:55
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asdf32 posted:Right. Look at that chart and guess which 20 percent of the world population conveniently convinced themselves the sustem has failed and is actively trying to destroy it and screw everyone else (but mostly the poor of course). As they should. Nobody should ever accept "well the poor people in China are slightly less poor now" as a valid excuse for the complete destruction of the American middle class.
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Feb 6, 2017 18:39
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Mozi posted:I'm taking that perspective as a way of saying 'let's reform the system to make it work' as opposed to 'blow it all up,' because I am actually concerned about outcomes. Then maybe we should start proposing things that will reform the system instead of "proposing a reform" that looks an awful lot like blaming Americans for wanting more than Chinese slaves.
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Feb 6, 2017 18:47
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Why is it surprising, considering that real wages continue to stagnate while expenses continue to climb? I can't blame folks for wanting a new toy or something after nearly a decade of belt tightening, either.
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Feb 13, 2017 22:18
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If this is "sunny" growth, we're hosed considering wages haven't grown in any significant way and everyone that found jobs post 2008 did so in lovely temp work. This is a treading water economy at best.
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Feb 14, 2017 20:07
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JeffersonClay posted:I think I triggered some people by implying financial products aren't all Wall Street scams that hurt the economy. True. There are some legitimate financial products that are only backed and commodified by Wall Street scams.
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Feb 14, 2017 20:41
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JeffersonClay posted:I'm pretty sure my car loan from my credit union doesn't have anything to do with a scam but I'll go check under the hood for tentacles to make sure. Yeah you should, maybe you'll learn something about how loans are repackaged and resold And that's assuming you're not being directly predated upon: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/opinion/an-avoidable-crash-in-car-loans.html
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Feb 14, 2017 21:01
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I feel like unemployment measures understate the precarity of working class Americans moreso than they did in the past. If you're a factory worker in the 50s, there needs to be some serious economic poo poo going down before you're kicked to the curb, whereas millions of modern Americans are working on-demand gig jobs that could mean unemployment nearly the instant demand starts to decline.
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Feb 15, 2017 00:15
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Squalid posted:Lucky for you anybody predicting a recession with that kind of precision selling you a fantasy, regardless of what the tea leaves say  Luckily you don't need to be that precise to predict a recession within a window of a few years, especially considering recovery doesn't really exist anymore
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Feb 15, 2017 20:29
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Except it's incredibly hard to afford "quality materials and labor" unless you're going for a full custom house. I've seen the $500k+ homes go up around Denver and, let me tell ya, they're not using good materials. I still think the average house built in the 1940s is, on a per-dollar basis, of a higher quality than most modern housing.
call to action fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Feb 17, 2017 |
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Feb 17, 2017 19:45
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We're hosed if we can't even imagine what a new world would look like.
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Feb 24, 2017 22:42
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The opponents of neoliberalism should probably develop a compelling vision for the future, first, because I haven't seen one.
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Mar 1, 2017 23:09
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Whoever said the only thing that matters was whether the status quo personally benefitted you was correct. Good luck selling people on not burning it all down when your only argument is "well next time you want to buy a new car you'll be sorry!!!" to people that are unemployed and whose children are addicted to heroin. Half of the country is already essentially living in a depression, they don't really give a poo poo whether it spread upwards to the rich. You will never make people care about the health of global trade when they don't have the resources to participate in trade for adequate food, shelter, education, and healthcare. Brexit showed this, Trump showed this, and it will rear its ugly head again and again until we become a more socialist or social democratic society at the minimum. call to action fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Mar 3, 2017 |
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Mar 3, 2017 19:05
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Private Speech posted:No sorry people in the US have a pretty good life compared to the vast majority of the world. Slightly less good than the previous generation, but still really drat good. First of all, this doesn't matter at all politically. Nobody looks at WHO statistics (ignoring the ridiculous child mortality, life expectancy, and healthcare costs we have in the US) and rejoices that they're doing better than Cameroon. Secondly, a lot of people in the US actually have it real bad. Black people living in the shells of former industrial communities like Akron, OH, Latinos (both legal and illegal) living in literal shanties with no running water or electricity all along the Texas/Mexico border, white people living deep in the mountains of WV where the literal only jobs are Walmart stocker and heroin dealer, these people are in legitimately bad situations that privileged folk like yourself like to handwave away. Just because these people have greater access to quarter waters than an Indonesian trash picker doesn't make their suffering inconsequential, you loving dweeb. Try asking people like the folks that run RAM (Remote Area Medical), a medical charity that focuses on underserved communities in the US, instead of smugly jerking yourself off about how great it is to be unable to afford to remove an infected tooth.
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Mar 3, 2017 19:23
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Private Speech posted:And while there is universal healthcare there it's a not a terribly great standard of care unless you can afford to be treated privately. Thanks for tacitly admitting that it's worse to be poor in America with a toothache than almost anywhere else. quote:e: You get paid minimum wage working at Subway or Starbucks there. And no the prices aren't all that different. Imagine serving coffee drinks all day that cost almost as much as your daily salary. And this is still much better than it was even a decade ago. And perhaps more importantly much better than India or Burma or Bangladesh, and somewhat better than Thailand or China. There's actually large swaths of people in America that don't get paid minimum wage, they do this stupid poo poo called "producing all the food". But again, somehow earning a few dollars a day in an open field with no toilets is better in the US than it is in India. Has anyone else noticed this strategy for neolib/capitalism apologists? The pivot from "a rising tide lifts all boats" to "just be happy you're not in CHINA" was effortless for these morons. It takes some deft hands to say "gently caress the struggle of literally every poor and minority in America" and still portray yourself as something other than an inhuman monster. call to action fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Mar 3, 2017 |
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Mar 3, 2017 19:52
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Squalid posted:The global economy is not a football game and you don't win by beating everyone else. We all win when we work together to make ourselves and the world a more prosperous place. gently caress the rest of the world, America should focus on making Americans better off. That includes everyone already here, so throw full amnesty into that. You are identical to the farm owner that sheds crocodile tears over the prospect of providing OSHA-compliant workplaces and living wages to their employees. You are indistinguishable from the people that abuse the H-1B system to force workers to retrain their foreign replacements. Listen, I get it, you want to ensure that we've got an unlimited reserve army of second class labor with no legal protections so you can stuff your face at a cheaper price. Why give farm workers citizenship, with all the protections that comes with, when we can reenact chattel slavery without the plantation-provided housing?
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Mar 3, 2017 22:54
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Avalanche posted:The terrible thing about the "Protestant Work Ethic" is that it says nothing about the idleness of the rich; only the poor. Exactly, it's no coincidence that the people that bankroll Mike Rowe have sons and daughters that have never and will never do one of the jobs he constantly talks about.
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Mar 7, 2017 01:24
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Ever since 2008 happened I've been obsessed with the idea of timing the next crash and selling everything right before it happens. While I'm glad I didn't dump anything yet and got to enjoy the ill-gotten Trump stock market gains, I'm wondering if it's around time to bow out into cash for a bit.
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Mar 7, 2017 21:23
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Twerk from Home posted:Market timing has been a losing strategy throughout all of modern history. Unless you have insider information that's illegal to act on, or are an incredibly successful / lucky researcher like the guy who popped lumber liquidators, you're better off assuming that the market will be higher in 30 years than it is now and just tossing your long-term investment money in. I don't think the gains of industrialization and then computerization across the entire globe will be repeated again, and I think it's pretty foolish to make an assumption along those lines. With the spectre of climate change and automation looming, assuming "normal" 7% annualized gains seems positively idiotic. The continued disconnect between equities and any economic index that relates to real people/consumers should also be worrying. Maybe you can dollar-cost average into the market over the next year or so, that wouldn't be so bad. But making a huge, lump sum index fund purchase now seems like a bad idea as the market is frothy with essentially no reason behind it.
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Mar 8, 2017 00:22
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the trump tutelage posted:Aren't near-term corrections only an issue if you're an aspiring day trader? Anyone who's worried that their timing is bad is probably motivated by the wrong ideas. I get what you're saying, but if we're really entering a period where climate change and automation will be drastically changing the face of society and the economy, we can't rely on the 20th century as a great historical model. Plus, if you sold right before the '08 crash and then bought at the bottom, you'd have probably made up for decades of saving.
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Mar 8, 2017 19:07
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Um, no, you can't talk about labor eliminating automation and anthropogenic climate change in any century. And even though it's not likely you'd be able to do it accurately, the point stands that if you timed the market properly, you would have made *a lot* of money. And we're all well aware what "financial literacy" means in America - maxing Roth IRAs first, then maxing 401(k) deferrals, use low expense ratio funds that are broadly diversified, whatever. Christ, you sound just like a fresh Econ grad trying to explain "ECON 101, GEEZ" to a socialist or something. As someone who enjoys reading their history, the blatant myopia of "look, PROOF that the stock market won't fail!!" using a graph that doesn't even cover a full human lifetime is just kinda funny.
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Mar 8, 2017 19:15
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MiddleOne posted:Because clearly gambling on the end of the world as we know it is the rational choice. Like you wouldn't have bigger problems than losing your savings if things actually came to that point. Who said anything about the end of the world? More likely it's going to be a slow, painful reversion to the global mean - and that's a very, very long fall. the trump tutelage posted:If ifs and buts, etc. And yet, the only data anyone can really show me is post-WW I through present, as if that's somehow a representative period for all of human history.
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Mar 8, 2017 19:20
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MiddleOne posted:Once again, you're making an argument predicated on the end of modern civilization as we know it. Or you know, the end of everything as we know it. I'll repeat myself, and in that situation you are better off having no capital how again...? I think you may be afflicted with a disease that turns the phrase "grinding, slow decline" into "global apocalypse now".
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Mar 8, 2017 20:56
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The labor market is tight enough to raise interest rates, but not wages. Why'd that be?
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Mar 15, 2017 22:24
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icantfindaname posted:The federal reserve targets employment, not wages. Wage growth is caused by productivity and technological improvement, not monetary policy Oh wow and here I thought that affecting employment would affect wages, silly me
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Mar 15, 2017 23:02
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icantfindaname posted:Going beyond full employment causes wages to rise, but the purchasing power of those wages doesn't necessarily rise. There will just be inflation instead unless there is productivity growth Yeah I did Econ 101 too, it was definitely a great course in "how to explain why we can't help workers" Remember when people could buy a house with a job and a high school education? In reality, that didn't happen due to inflation
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Mar 15, 2017 23:16
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