The evidence offered is that the economy is doing well, people are traveling, and there is some technological innovation happening. As though that were unique. He then dismisses certain other, less convenient evidence, like consumer sentiment, and simply doesn't bring up any other changes in the macroeconomic climate over the last 100 years. I would like to know what about the balance of evidence is unique enough to draw an equivalence between the 2020s and the 1920s. Otherwise, this sounds a little like a kind of numerology where similarly numbered years must resemble each other.
It's all the vague similarities - pandemics, wars, economic boom suspiciously looking like a bubble (be it the fact that many people can no longer afford housing, or that anyone and their grandfather is investing somehow).
So nothing conclusive, but if we had conclusive metrics to point to that could indicate an economic bust is coming, we would be able to implement policies to prevent them.
isn't this pretty common to most analyses of past events and attempts to make proxy analyses for the future? If we had all of the facts organized and known we would be able to prevent all crashes, etc, would we not?
And apparently many people here on HN want to discredit the author's conclusions because they dont agree with them personally.
I don't know what the author of the article is drinking. Me and most of my relatives are in a significantly worse financial position since 2020. Wage growth has hardly matched the wild pace of inflation. Saving money is much harder. Decent jobs are hard to come by. It feels like an erosion of the middle class.
Your experiences are anecdotal but may not be the average... the relative number of people in homelessness has reduced from the 90's to today, that is certainly good.. (It has had a slight peak recently post pandemic).
Purchasing power has climbed, hunger has reduced, I think all of these are important metrics to consider...
I think people are much more polarized and that social media has brought out terrible polarity, but it doesnt necessarily mean the average person is not living better than 30 yrs ago.
> I don't know what the author of the article is drinking
I think that's a bit harsh. The author runs a successful podcast, for a number of years now. I value his opinion, he usually backs up his opinion with numbers. I do sympathize with you, in the sense that I'm also earning less than I used to.
The data disagrees with you. Tech isnt doing well post pandemic but average real wages are up and most people report being in a better financial position than they were pre covid.
> The evidence offered is that the economy is doing well
I don't know if that's even well-defined based on the evidence presented - "a massive stock market boom".
The (USA) economy is doing OK, especially when compared to other countries that have made other policy choices and are faring even worse. But "stock market go up" is not the same thing at all as "most people doing better".
"High house prices" is also not a unambiguously wonderful thing. e.g. if you need to buy a house.
Likewise Low Unemployment is not great if all the jobs are no-benefits gig work and you need three of them to pay off your massive student or medical debt.
Lack of good consumer sentiment indicates this gap.
And this oversimplifying to the point of meaninglessness is why I'm sceptical of the article's point.
since we 'invented' numbers and assigned 'meaning' to them, it makes more 'sense' to tack experiences to frequencies/periods that are easy to represent and seem to mean more than they do by virtue of being 'right at the edge'
In fairness, there are good jazz clubs in many major cities. People can choose to go to these kinds of clubs instead of hang around at home if they really want to. They do exist.
Yes, the post Flu/Covid effect, insane asset prices, vacations, etc. all line up. Shiller PE is at 34, which is higher than in 1929. I am somewhat optimistic we can experience a softer landing than The Great Depression. The Fed hinting a lower rates might be an indication of them understanding the risks of a crash. The problem is due to the systemic nature of the system, a boom can turn into a bust rather quickly.
Are asset prices insane? Home prices are high but in-line with the long-term trend on a real basis. The stock market is rallying but it's been mostly becasue earnings are good. Why would you mention the great depression? To be honest it makes you seem unhinged and not credible.
> Are asset prices insane? Home prices are high but in-line with the long-term trend on a real basis
They are insane compared to the relative growth, or lack thereof, of median wages, yes. If an assets continues appreciating even past the point it's accessible to the vast majority of the population, "supply and demand econ 101" is no longer working. When that asset is one of the most critical components of life (housing) and on which many lives are built around (be it where one lives and works, or how many kids one can afford to house, or the community one can have), this is unquestionably not good and can have wild ramifications. Disenfranchised young people are a dangerous political force, while population declines could break economic models as we understand them today (it's bordering on the impossible to have infinite growth when the population is declining).
Well I’m not saying I agree with it, but a comparison to the Great Depression is not out of context for an article comparing today’s economic situation to that immediately preceding the Great Depression!
Why would someone mention the great depression in a comment about an article comparing the economy 2024 to the economy right before great depression?
Yeah good point, I don't know why anyone would read and then discuss an article on a site dedicated to discussing linked articles. It must be gp who has no credibility - how dare they comment on-topic!
Whatever it is, it doesn't look good for young people. Good luck to them buying a house with these prices & interest rates, or trying to save for a downpayment while renting. The previous generation is hellbent on maximum extraction & I got mine mentality & rent-seeking.
I'd rather be a young person in the 2020's than a young person in the 1920's. That group was called the "greatest generation" for a reason, and it wasn't because they had it easy.
It's always a mistake to give in to Titanic Life Boat logic ("The design of the Titanic was fine, anyone could have gotten into a life boat / but could everyone get into a life boat? / what are you, a COMMUNIST?"). If you try to avoid the problem by focusing on young people, they'll just focus on a young person who made it and hold them up as proof that it's possible (see: person downthread "my daughter just bought a house"). Plenty of kids got into titanic life boats so it's fine, see? The rest just didn't hustle hard enough. Do you want society to be full of cripples who can't hustle into a lifeboat? Don't play that game.
No, if the system forces a growing fraction of people to lose we have to be honest about that, pin down why, and ask if it's really truly unsolvable. Hint: food and clothing and house construction have shrunk dramatically over time as a fraction of our economic activity. The first-principles problems did not get harder and we did not get worse at solving them. This hell is of our own design. It will hurt to solve, but it can be solved.
> buying a house with these prices & interest rates, or trying to save for a downpayment while renting.
While there are certainly problems here, higher interest rates drive demand down and lower prices, while lower interest rates drive up demand and raise prices.
Investors tend to look for the best return on investment, the number I often see given is 5%/year. The rent I collect is close to that fraction of the market value of the apartment I own in the UK.
The choice between "rent" and "mortgage" is where the cost of the two is about equal in the first year, which is always a bit unfair on first-time purchasers as (1) they're generally younger and thus earning less money, and (2) the impact of interest payments is always front-loaded towards the beginning of the repayment period.
This in turn means that there's a temptation for very long repayment periods to make it seem easier: in a world of genuinely 0% interest mortgages, paying off a ¤600k over 40 years is clearly easier than paying it off over 20, and lower rates asymptotically approach this.
Conversely, when the interest rate is high enough that (even without paying off the capital and regardless of repayment period) it approximates the rental market rate of the property, this drives down demand. To see why, go back to that previous example of a ¤600k (sale price) property: if the landlord can ask for ¤2.5k/month rent, and the interest rate on a mortgage is 5% AER, then the cost to service the interest without paying capital is the same as you get from the rent — which means investors will ask "why should I buy this?" and renters will ask "why would I want that kind of mortgage?", forcing down the asking prices because the only people still interested are people who can do it without borrowing any money.
Previous generation is what, Gen X? Millenials? Yeah gee they had it so easy.
Stop with the "generation blaming" stuff and blaming voodoo on them.
Blame the people you vote for and who they kowtow to, nothing will ever change with petty envy and sour grapes for your neighbor down the street, etc.
The older generations are larger than younger ones in a demographic balloon, hence older generations are a plurality. This has many externalities (for which I agree) are caused by people voting simply in their best interests rather than malice.
Now here is where I push back, is complaining about this unfair scenario "sour grapes" or "envy"? This is a winner takes all scenario. This wealthy group can vote for direct wealth extraction from the poor (which they do, again out of simple self interest) by constraining housing supply in an effective monopoly. That isn't fair, it's a moral hazard. It's not "petty" if you are proveably on the wrong side of demographics. Infact talking about it like this is the only way it can be fixed, as people can be informed into voting for the interests of someone other than themselves.
Your link is about rate of growth of population, your claim is about population.
The basis of your first paragraph will be true in the future, but is not yet (unless you define 30s and 40s as old).
The thing that makes the dynamic in your argument true is that young people do not (or cannot) vote and participate in the political process as much as old people can.
We have people who can no longer produce, but want to consume (and their potential beneficiaries) on one side, and on the other we have people can produce. The former group need to collect rent from the latter group, otherwise they offer nothing to the latter group in exchange for their production.
Which is funny when I see young people advocate for income taxes, when they should be advocating for property/inheritance taxes.
Especially with real estate. Either rent indefinetily by paying their pension , buy the house for 2x-3x+ the monthly rent so you pay their pension in lump sum, or go 1+ hour away from city(also high cost in terms of time etc).
The politicians are also older people who can't empathize. The young also don't vote.
And if you do buy high now, who are you gonna sell even higher when you retire, since there are so few new kids being born?
I have two daughters who are in their early 20s. My oldest daughter, 24, has dreamed of buying a home and starting a family with her high school sweetheart of 10 years and her dream has been completely shattered.
The saddest part is, this isn't even just about buying a home. She's not going to start a family until they are no longer living with us and have a house of their own. But the longer it takes for that to happen, the more difficult and risky it becomes for her to start that family and forget about having 3+ children and starting at 35. That's even if there is a correction in the next 10 years.
So her dreams are completely shattered. She's not the only Gen Z out there that had these types of hopes and ambitions throughout their adolescence and early adulthood and are now feeling completely hopeless.
Yes, it may be true that unemployment is at a low and stocks are up. That means absolutely nothing to young adults in their 20s who are still living with their parents, not by choice but because they have absolutely no hope of ever being able to buy a home of their own.
So I wouldn't be surprised if in the coming years we see record turn-outs of young voters.
Do the young even have someone to vote for in Canada though? Only the PPC wants to stop immigration and build housing but they are a fringe party unlikely to get a single seat rather than run the country. The BQ is a decent option in Quebec, but in the rest of Canada pretty much any party that has seats currently is far too pro-immigration and far too pro-Boomer to get anything done on house prices. PP is very good at talking about how the other parties are failing while offering no real solutions himself for example.
Every party talks about lowering house prices, but the only government that has been successful at lowering prices has been David Eby's NDP government in BC.
Eby's NDP government boosted housing starts by 11%. Rental prices still went up in Vancouver and the surrounding area because an 11% increase is a pittance compared to the insane demand from current immigration policy. Assuming that's even possible nationally and that the Federal NDP will have similar policies (both of which are dubious assumptions), that's not going to be adequate to keep up with the insane surge in immigration all of the big three parties seem to be behind. The Liberals at least appear to be somewhat open to minor course corrections but the NDP has historically and is currently the most pro immigration party in the country and it's not possible to get market conditions to improve if you want the population to grow by 2,000,000 people a year.
You can't bring in enough people for 800,000 homes if you have historically built around 250,000 and the best government in the country manages an 11% increase without inflating rents and making the housing crisis worse. We need to radically slow the insane surge in demand so that building more housing has a chance to keep up. Canada has historically had 2.3 people per home so if we increase builds to 300,000/year we can support bringing in roughly 660,000 people with stable prices. If we bring in 2M everyone can guess what will happen.
I agree. And it will be interesting to see how the PPC performs (love them or hate them) because, as you said, the mainstream parties look an awful lot alike to people who are not firmly entrenched in a partisan position (i.e: many young people who are still figuring things out).
For sure but I gotta ask, even if the young did vote who is there to vote for? The bipartisan system here is rigged IMO. Even if you vote for a less popular candidate they're usually still beholden to the party.
If the young reliably voted, for their own interests...then both parties have these things called "primaries", where their general election candidates are picked. Sometimes from a wide field of contenders, and usually with very low barriers to entry (either to vote, or to be a candidate).
My understanding is that career politicians' take on the youth vote is: "If the stars happen to align, and you play it right, the youth vote can win you an election. But usually not - so you should mostly let your opponent waste his time chasing the youth vote."
Primaries have a weird system based on delegates, not direct votes. It's really difficult to know who you're actually voting for, I couldn't find any information on which candidate the delegates on my ballot were actually for.
At least in Michigan, the primary ballots pretty much list the actual candidates.
A few times, when things looked murkier, I've just contacted the local (city or county) party organization, and quickly gotten answers.
If that didn't work, I'd probably try contacting the League of Women Voters, County Clerk's office, or similar [non-]governmental groups that work at keeping track of such things. And some web searches, looking for primary candidates with on-line campaign info.
It's zoning and transportation policy that pump housing prices to the moon, not onlyfans.
What prevents ownership? It's tax policy that rests heavily on capital-labor interactions and barely at all on capital-capital interactions. Monetary policy that deflates wages but not asset values. Trade policy that pumps assets and dumps exports.
Trans people did not do this. The self-serving policies of asset owners did this.
Agreed. It's hard to confront the fact that your sweet, old neighbor lady across the street shows up to screech at city council meetings every week because someone wants to build an apartment building. Multiply this times 40 million, and you get our current predicament.
I have seen people go to truly insane lengths to prevent buildings from going up in prosperous downtown cores in middle America. But what do you expect? Everyone wants housing to be an investment, and for it to appreciate, the supply has to go down. Eventually, something has to give, and it's going to be ugly.
> They convinced young women that it’s a sign of independence to have an OF, the Europeans that Russia is an enemy, and half the western population that men can be women.
The latter has absolutely zero to do with the former, it's just a grab bag of reactionary culture complaints (and the Russia one is just straightforwardly true).
Which, ironically, is exactly what the global elites really want people to do: divide themselves over cultural issues and spend all of their time arguing with each other rather than come together and examine the financial system we all live under.
As in you loose agains „the elites“. IMO the current dopamine and consumption driven culture only benefits a very small slice of the society. While externalized costs ruin many lives. Mental and physical health is going down the drain and nobody cares. E.g. obesity pandemic, drugs abuse and so on. People don't abuse junk food because of happiness and content. And yet we all end up paying, at least in countries with state health insurance :)
We as a society are at a loss when people think OnlyFans is a viable career path. Or a hobby, which is even worse. OF is the same as prostitution. Vast majority (if not all) people end up there for very sad reasons and we as a society should strive to eliminate it. Normalizing such abuse of the vulnerable is even worse.
Many cases of gender „change“ are similar symptoms of long running abuse we as a society normalize. E.g. trans athletes. Or over-sexualized display of how some people envision what it is to be a woman.
> In some jurisdictions, women's prisons have been incarcerating males who say they are women. Some of these males have then subsequently raped, sexually assaulted and even impregnated female inmates who have been forced to cohabit with them.
Do you have any citations? I’d be fascinated to read.
Statistically it barely registers against a backdrop of male guards raping and impregnating women in womens prison.
ie. While technically 'true' it's a massive amplification of an anti trans talking point at the expense a mauch larger real issue that's ignored .. because the propogators don't actually care about women in prison, that's just a mask of concern for the sake of the pretence.
As stated, trans prisoners pose significantly less threat than male prison guards:
> This is why in women's prisons that prioritise safeguarding of inmates, sex-based staffing ratios are implemented so that there are sufficient female prison guards to keep a watchful eye on any male guards that may be present.
I see some fringe russophiles on both left and right wing, both here in europe and in US. But in 99% of cases it's „I hate my government, so I just believe in opposite if what they say“. The only sincere love for actual Russia is Stalin-adoring tankies. But that's what.. the 0.00001%?
Sure, but tankies miiiight be 1% of the left while the Russophilia is pretty strong in the entire alt-right, which is like 40% of the right. The problems are similar in nature but different in scale.
The thing is tankies love the real Russia as it is. Some in alt-right like the propaganda image that has nothing to do with reality. And some just follow „enemy of the enemy is my friend“ for better or worse. So the nature of the problem is widely different too. The whole BS surrounding Tucker interview is a good example IMO.
Here in Lithuania alt-right is very anti-Russian since we have both pretty good on-the-ground information as well as, let's say, historical experience. It's funny watching our alt-right meeting West alt-right.
Yep. A pretty simple exercise for many people is if they can buy now the house they bought a couple of years ago. Or how their wage changed to support the new monthly payment if buying now. Or if they were renting now can they even save for the downpayment to buy their own house?
The people in charge want it both ways so they keep on printing money and funding several optional wars simultaneously. They've kicked consequences down the road and seemingly, the new budget approved, kicks it further down the road. That and you add 10MM new legal+illegal immigrants in the span of three years to the housing demand pool and it pushes citizens further away from housing attainability. It's nuts. Then you have lax enforcement for criminal activity and you get what we have now.
If the Biden admin wants to win the election, they will have to deal with the fact that foreign workers are pushing out perhaps lazier American workers who are also unwilling to work for devalued wages caused by inflation. Foreign workers are used to inflation and whatever we have is better than what they have at home. The Admin will have to deal with that tension -else they will have more traditional core supporters hold their noses and vote for the other guy once again.
I'm quite certain if we had a Ross Perot running as a third party candidate, he or she would win. Biden is decrepit and can't decide if he's for American workers or foreign workers more. Trump shoots from the hip too much and is too thin skinned and impulsive.
Birth rates in the US have been below replacement levels for some time now. This means we will need more immigrants to sustain the never ending growth capitalism demands.
The stock market may demand never ending growth, to keep generating positive returns. But how does capitalism itself (private ownership of production) demand never ending growth, any more than a planned economy would?
> The stock market may demand never ending growth, to keep generating positive returns. But how does capitalism itself (private ownership of production) demand never ending growth, any more than a planned economy would?
You're right that capitalism is when most of the means of production is privately owned (private ownership), but production and income distribution is largely through the operation of markets. More: https://www.britannica.com/money/capitalism#
> But how does capitalism itself (private ownership of production) demand never ending growth
If rich people own the world and growth = investment returns = how rich people get paid for being rich, do you think they want it to stop? Or will they (and the system they own) do anything to keep it going?
There's a reason why the moralizing lore of capitalism always happens at the bottom of an S curve even though most economic sectors spend most of the time at the top of an S curve. At the bottom of an S curve, a new investment frontier has opened up. By foregoing consumption today and investing, we can enable more/faster/better consumption tomorrow. Investors get part of the windfall, consumers get part of the windfall, everyone wins. However, at the top of an S curve, capital is plentiful and investment opportunities are scarce. The value of investment / foregoing consumption drops to nearly 0, and in practice probably goes slightly negative due to hope springing eternal / boondoggle chasing. That's all ok, the accounting will assign credit and blame in the end, but it's a huge problem if you are rich enough that you obtain your money by investing rather than by working. Suddenly, your source of income (sorry, capital gains, wouldn't want the IRS to tax you like a pleb) has gone away. If there is nothing to invest in, how do you get paid for investing? What to do?
Answer: pull any and every lever to get the growth train going again. But what if the growth is low quality? Doesn't matter. You are here to get paid, not to generate quality growth. Does it cause inflation? Not on your assets -- doesn't matter. Does it cause housing to become unaffordable? Doesn't matter. Does it cause imperial conflict when the overseas growth markets don't like your terms? Doesn't matter. As far as our economy is concerned, the important thing is that the people who literally own our economy get paid, all else is secondary.
NOTE: I'm not nearly as anti-capitalist as you might think. Capitalism is the best system for bringing the maximum amount of resources to bear on new frontiers. In a world that seems to be winner-take-all in so many respects, this may be the horse you want to bet on. Still, almost all of the Big Problems in the world today can be traced directly back to our economic structure. This is not an indictment: it would be true of any economic structure. Still, the question remains of whether what we do is worthwhile and how much we want to do to file down the sharp edges. IMO, it is worthwhile, but we should do more to file down the edges. YMMV.
Those same people in charge seemly also are cozying up to degrowth which is at odds with historical capitalism. I don't think they have figured out what they want which is why the approach is schizophrenic --that want econ growth and degrowth, they want pop growth but also don't want growth so their bargain is to import the growth that they don't want...
Probably, but one big issue is conservatives are traditionally loath to support single unwed mothers or even single fathers. For them it was a moral issue, other times it was bigotry.
If the government underwrote single mothers and fathers as much as we now provide in housing and food for some kinds of immigrants, in the past we would have seen a healthier population. They dug that hole. That is to Say Bernie of the 90s wouldn't have been much worse than what we find ourselves with today.
Don't reward single parents... reward families staying together and raising their kids how they want to, as decided by each individual family. There is a drastic statistical difference between those raised in family units vs single parent households... It's even significantly better to have grandparents (note the plural) raise a kid than a single parent.
It's not so much rewarding the unwed parents but supporting their children -it could have been community driven with grandparental involvement and so on, however, tat would likely be unpalatable for the small government minded --this could have been pushed off to other social institutions like churches --so long as one does not incentivize the wrong thing.
No, I don't think nice round numbers like 20 or 100 years show a pattern. I like to think more in terms of generations: 15 to 30 years. I can't predict the future. Please take my 30 year time-line idea as numerology where similarly numbered years must resemble each other. It's broken into a decade each of boom-bust-war:
1890 boom "Klondike Gold Rush"
1900 bust "Panic of 1901"
1910 war WW1
1920 boom "Roaring"
1930 bust "Great Depression"
1940 war WW2
1950 boom "Golden Age" [1]
1960 bust [2]
1970 war Viet Nam
1980 boom "Long" [3]
1990 bust [4] [5]
2000 war Afghanistan, Iraq
2010 boom [6]
2020 bust [7]
2030 war [8]
Of course, there are booms, busts and wars occurring at anytime. And some parts of the world might feel like they are in the future and some in the past.
One parallel that I noticed is how prevalent these easy installment plans are now (Zip, AfterPay, etc) and they don’t require a credit check. People are even using them to buy basic necessities like groceries at Walmart which seems a bit concerning.
> Consumer sentiment doesn’t exactly line up with a roaring 20s mentality because people hate inflation and higher interest rates. But you have to watch what people do, not what they say.
> People are spending money on food, travel, clothes and technology.
Slaves don't have a choice but to spend their fiat money in a low interest rate world whose present condition of low interest rates exists only because this is the last exercise rep the government can push out before reality and nature come in to remove all the artificial economics implementations. In simple words, real capitalism has not yet been tried and a great reset away from stupidity and liberal-democratic welfare is coming.
Malthus wins in the end, no matter how much you try to delay the inevitable.
Malthus never factored ephemeralization into his calculations. We can produce more with less than ever before. Buckminister Fuller addresses this head on in his magnum opus "Critical Path"
The ephemeral nature of the Tweet is nothing compared to the harsh fact that the highly efficient means of production (your producing more stuff with less resources) is in the hands of a segment of the population that wants to segregate itself away from the segment that has nothing but common men in it. So, every time someone tries to rebuke the Malthusian overpopulation condition, it's just a kidnapped person falling in love with his kidnapper. Or neo-feudal serfs trying to lick the boots of their assigned king in hopes of pleasing this would-be benefactor which lords over the mostly hopeless dwarf.
Buckminister Fuller is the one with improper calculations. His libertarian's model for addressing effective capitalism (with the goal of central planning for a secessionary, yet still vassal, state) relies on old and obsolete conceptual tools, namely history itself. All geopolitical problems is a scam with at the top of that pyramid scheme suit wearing bureaucrats who are the characters from the 1984 dystopia, with no differences between them. You're kinda blind to your oppression and the totalitarian regime you're running under.
