If rent gets cheaper, people are just gonna spend that on everything else, further driving up the price of food, gas, netflix bills etc
American Economics Thread
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FriedRiceNSpice
Captain
How? People have to buy food and pay for gas regardless of how much they are paying for rent. And access to Netflix is not supply-constrained, more people paying for Netflix is not going to make Netflix more expensive. Certainly prices of some (non-essential) goods is likely to increase, but not in the categories of goods you proposed.
Yes - hence why inflation is a macroeconomic topic on how much money is in the economy, the velocity of the money, and how much production it is chasing tho food & energy costs are going to be muted inflationary pressures.
There has been substantial agricultural innovation in the U.S. with smart agriculture with quite rapid deployments - allowing for far more targeted fertilizer regimes, irrigation, and plant genetics selection that will increase agricultural production for each unit of land (, ).
As for gas costs - the U.S. has used the strategic petroleum reserve to keep oil prices tightly bounded between $65-$80/bbl (this way, successfully managing competing interests among households, the environment, and oil corporates - the original purpose of the SPR as a giant oil stash is irrelevant now that the U.S. is a net oil exporter), is producing more oil than any country ever before (), due to substantial innovation in remote sensing/prospecting, fracking and oilfield extraction that have made previously untapped oil sources such as the Texas Permian Basin, the Pennsylvania Mercalleus Shale, and the North Dakota Bakken Oil Field now accessible to any crack-job upstream oil producer (companies primarily focused on extraction but not pipeline transport or refineries - such as ConocoPhilips, Anadarko, Pioneer Natural Resources, Occidental Petroleum, etc).
You didn’t seem familiar with agency deference or how most regulations originate (or where most executive agencies originate from).
No, the argument is that even assuming hackjob partisan arguments are true (see for example, the “lol Regan is actually senile arguments” from a generation prior), that still isn’t operative whatsoever since nearly the entirety of policy work is done by the ~2M people of the federal civil service and the president serves to resolve interagency disputes
“Congress does nothing” is a different argument than “Congress is indeed passing laws, but those laws are meaningless”. Congress is clearly ineffective if it passes nothing, it’s efficacy is otherwise uncertain if it passes laws (since those laws take a while to feed through to actual effects) but there’s quite literally nothing else Congress can do but to make laws. And ultimately, any short-run indicators on a law’s likely impact (CBO analyses, expert opinions, industry opinions, the roll call vote, etc) can be highly informative (and in this case, they’ve been uniformly positive.
They were created by Congress in the sense that everything about them is a function of a Congressional enactment - their headquarters, their authorized workforce, their mission, broad outlines on how that mission is carried out, etc. Even if you narrow the scope to “brilliant scientists”, that itself is a function of Congress - both in the structure of the federal civil service and the educational and experience requirements with GS (and at a higher level of abstraction - Congress’ passage of the National Defense Education Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, National Science Foundation Act, and the Higher Education Act - which combined, form the underlying basis for scientific/technical education in the U.S., federal research grants, and university research programs), drawing the agency organization charts, defining the goals of the agency, and appropriating funds annually to the agency. All of this is substantially more oversight and involvement than a “drunk useless father”.
Yes. Most policymaking either implicitly
Yeah: savings (and it’s closely related correlary, buying insurance - are not virtuous activities). Savings is simply either 1) prepayment for capital expenses or 2) consumption smoothing for future contingent risks. 1) is simply not applicable for most US households since they have near infinitely stable employment (and a steady cash stream) as well as the ability to more or less borrow infinite amounts of money at the risk-free rate. 2) is also not relevant to American households since all of their contingent risks (health, disability, and unemployment) are formally insured and have strong informal insurance (I.e., family members who work in different economic sectors and live in different metro areas - it’s a smaller insurance/mutual aid pool with substantially uncorrelated risk between pool members). Of course there would be lower savings rates
They don’t.
Yeah, I mean, they are. They’ll party all day in high school, major in business at a regional university, graduate, work for an obscure highly innovative middle-market manufacturer, make $90K by 30 with infinite job security and live in the suburbs of their hometown metro areas without a worry in the world
It has always been the case that Congress, not regulatory agencies, have final say over what is and is not the law (and the CDC has never had lawmaking authority) and it’s worked quite well over the past number of centuries.
No one has special qualifications because COVID opening (or not) was about trade offs between various interest groups. That is not a question that can be answered with science. It is an inherently political question.
It didn’t fail. I can advance multiple different threads in one post.
Yeah, more or less. Policy matters, a lot.
It’s a pretty common argument that the current level of immigration is too high, but that is clearly not the case if immigrants who entered in the 1830s-1860s (when there were no immigration restrictions, anywhere in the United States) did substantially well and led to an unbroken century and a half of economic development (especially since the post-1965 wave of immigration is much more exclusive and inherently positively selected).
It’s clearly not the case, otherwise most countries would be running fiscal surpluses.
They are doing fine (), and they aren’t taking up “room”, they make the pie bigger for everyone because economic growth is not a zero-sum game ().
Given one of the largest lobbying groups for more immigration are Silicon Valley corporates and manufacturers, that should give away the answer.
It cuts against “actually no innovation happening” which is fairly widely held.
Low savings rates, in it of themselves, are not a poor financial choice (or is it living paycheck-to-paycheck).
Generally, if everyone is consuming higher quality goods, that is a definitional improvement in standards of living.
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manqiangrexue
Brigadier
You don't seem familiar with common sense, logic, math, or how to read charts.
You thought I was unfamiliar because your reading comprehension sat at a level insufficient to see that I had addressed the former via COVID and the failed agency deference that resulted in mass deaths and that I had never made a remark on the latter but you erroneously assumed that I thought the president makes all the laws (or something equally stupid that you usually make up).
You have total imbeciles like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, etc... making fools out of themselves with a hate boner for a China that simply does better, you have funny videos coming out all the time showing just how stupid these ~2M people are as they act like ignorant asshats like during the TikTok trial, and then on top, you have a president who doesn't know where he is or what he'd doing but definitely needs to go to bed on time or ahead of time regardless of which foreign dignitary is visiting or whatever else is happening.
It's definitely the latter, not the former.
It has to pass effective laws, not just any laws. Short-run indicator of what? For example, if Congress passes a law on nuclear power, and the US ends up fielding several gen 4 reactors building them faster than China or if it develops a 5th gen reactor that is superior, I would say that Congress is effective. If they pass this law and planning work and spending kicks off, that's not a postive short-run indicator; that's a part of the process, not a part of the result.
To evaluate the effectiveness of Congress now, you would have to come to long-term conclusions about what they had done before. Since America's number one obsession is its competition with China, did Congress pass laws that managed to keep China at distance or did China catch up/overtake? That's the long term evaluation of how effective your government runs. It's comparative, of course, to how effectively China's government is ran, since that is your main rival, but that's just how it is. Good or bad is all comparative to each other. Michael Jordan wouldn't be good or bad at basketball if he's not playing against anyone.
Creating an agency with funding and putting some basic framework for scientific education is really baseline operating at this level. Third world countries know to create a CDC and teach math/science. Many of the CDC's brilliant scientists (I really only said that because I'm comparing them to the idiots in the rest of your government; they're just regular scientists compared to other scientists) are foreign imported so that does not even serve as any testament to the quality of the education system.
That's not even a sentence. What is it supposed to mean?
Don't start that shit again. Your people spend recklessly and end up paycheck to paycheck. You want to sugar-coat it and call it risk-loving, you can dig the hole and lay in it. Everyone here knows that's called spending like an irresponsible dumbass. Anybody can do it but the wise don't. If you saw how I drive and you saw how make choices in life, then you saw my bank account, the last neuron in your head would short-circuit cus you wouldn't know whether to classify me as risk-loving or risk-adverse or selectively risk loving/adverse with your broken bullshit econ theory.
Then don't run away from the discussion like you do every time when I prove they do.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Who's "they"? Less then 10% of the US. "Highly innovative" is irrelevent but something nice you imagined to make it sound good. $90K by 30 is in the top of the US wherever you are but the vast majority earning that do so in heavily populated metropolis' like NYC where commuting to cheaper living conditions takes far too much time if even doable. I know people who live in NYC but want to save money living so they commute 4 hours each way from New Jersey sleeping on the train. If they live where they work, they pay so much rent that $90K pre-tax is barely enough to get by. Then you said "infinite job security," which is something that only a person with infinite stupidity can claim; what did you mean? That they can't get fired no matter what?
Meanwhile, the vast majority of your educational flunkies are at the bottom of your society, harassing people at night for money in every major city.
The US hasn't been around long enough for you to use "number of centuries" unless that number is a measly 2 but we all know you like to exaggerate. And "working quite well" has no definition except that I see the US slipping against China.
And your statement is exactly why the US failed so badly at COVID. It was clearly a scientific question but because you lack all qualifications in science, instead of deferring to specialists, you tried to pretend that it was a problem within your "knowledge" which happens to be useless politics and lawyer bullshit. You pretended that a virus is not a scientific problem; that's how stupid you are. So... politicians pushed over scientists and Americans died. And that'll happen next time too because the attitude is to make excuses for a problem instead of learning and growing from it.
One failed post starting on, "Congress is effective," easily proven wrong, then ending on, "That was just a random grab bag." Since you're spewing nonsense again, is this also a random grab bag of "thoughts"? Please clearly indicate this in the future to prevent further waste of time.
Have it your way. It's then proof that US governance is abysmal compared to that of the CCP.
Who made that argument and who are you arguing against? What types of immigrants? WTF are you talking about?
GOD DAMN YOU'RE STUPID. No matter how much people contribute to the country's economy, a government that overspends will cause a deficit. You didn't know that? You thought a fiscal surplus just means that everyone personally made more money than they personally spent?? Who the F am I wasting time talking to here??!!
"Fine" has no definition and your post has no meaning.
Depends on the type of immigrant. If that were true without any qualifiers, the US wouldn't have any immigration laws.
LOLOLOL You cut off the second part of my question; the part that you don't want to answer. Here, let me give you another shot; I said, "Did they take it back home? Did your rival close a 5 decade gap with you in like 12 years and then get ahead of you because of them?" Sillicon Valley is concerned with just the part that you cited about whether immigrants helped develop technology and certainly we did. It is not nearly as concerned with the critical part you ommitted which matters so much to the US government.
Noooo who said that? There's no innovation in the US?? No... the US is a powerful country with lots of innovation... but just lots less than China. And while you can say you don't care, the US cares.
Now now, the politically correct American term is "risk-loving." For those who are not PC, we call it irresponsible dumbassery.
Who the F gets to say what type of fruit is a higher quality good? You think you can call strawberries/blueberries/raspberries inherently higher quality than apples/oranges/bananas? What kind of mental gymnastics new type of botanical racism did you just invent to try spin your take? LOLOL
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It’s the 78th percentile of all adult individuals (including individuals who earn very little - retirees, college students, disabled individuals, immigrants with limited English proficiency, and individuals with medical issues). A $90K salary is incredibly common among individuals that work (especially for this archetypical fratbro you hate so much).
It means they basically never experience unemployment and when they do - it is for very short periods of time -
Indeed - longest running constitution in force and for the northern states, an unbroken peace since 1776, for the southern states, an unbroken peace since 1865
Given that China’s politics revolve around a country 4 times smaller than it that has somehow encircled it thousands of miles away from Hawaii, it’s self-evident it is “working quite well”. China’s bog normal beta-convergence from capital deepening and technological catchup does nothing to negate it (in fact it supports the theory of the case, China has had 4 - now bordering of 5 - decades of the fastest economic growth ever recorded, yet still can’t effectively assert influence in the Asia-Pacific against an extra regional power thousands of miles away).
Whether to lock down or not is a political question. The likely outcomes of a lockdown or masks or any policy intervention are scientific questions. The likely economic outcomes are another policy consideration that can be modeled to some degree of accuracy. Since those 2 different desirable policy outcomes - economic development and public health - exist in direct conflict, how to balance them is an inherently political question - as is say, the proper amount of environmental regulations, or automotive safety, etc.
Yeah there were two thoughts - Congress does the law passing and here are a series of headlines of technological innovation.
China does it literally the same way, since the NPC gets the final say on policy and to what gets veto’ed (not the executive branch).
Do you not follow US politics at all? “There are so many immigrants, they can’t assimilate” is a fairly common sentiment.
Yes. Government spending is on individuals in the country (excluding a minuscule share for international affairs) - and thus definition ally, the most typical case is that any resident will have more spent on them than they pay in taxes.
Didn’t feel it was necessary to reply (and you get into quite nettlesome issues I would’ve preferred to avoid).
The answer would be no, China’s growth is a mostly endogenous process from capital formation (plus the timing doesn’t match); China’s super-fast growth spurt (1978-2010s-ish) came before when Chinese immigration largely happened (the late 2000s/early 2010s), and it’s also mildly incongruent since the foreign-born Chinese specific share of any U.S labor market segment is small (at most ~2%), even assuming the necessarily odious implicit assumptions here are true.
Silicon Valley is also concerned with avoiding the development of foreign competition (both in the U.S. and global ex-China ) markets since worldwide sales matter. Technology is no good if it can’t be sold on a large scale
You’ve claimed literally the opposite (plus it’s a fairly common sentiment on this site).
It’s not because there’s obvious benefit in consumption today.
You can literally just measure the price per pound.
You literally stated that Congress should be operating a research laboratory. Quite reasonable conclusion that you didn’t know the specifics of administrative law.
Agency deference was literally not a thing for discussions on COVID lockdowns/mask mandates because there was exactly 0 statues that could at all be plausibly interpreted as authorizing the CDC to order a lockdown or a mask mandate (but not without a lack of trying - the CDC even interpreted the Public Health Service Act as giving it authority to ban evictions). The CDC didn’t put a single Federal Register entry that trial-ballooned the more restrictive COVID measures. At best, the CDC could’ve submitted legislative ideas to Congress (that would’ve gone nowhere).
All policies either implicitly or explicitly assume a certain level of heightened mortality in exchange for safety - any public health, environmental, or safety regulation necessarily assumes this. Pure safety-ism can fly with hyperliberal risk-averse regulators, it’s not going to fly with a conservative to left-of-center risk-loving electorate .
I was explaining why even assuming “le president is senile” is true - why that operative effect is small.
Their hate boner for China is because they are hawks. That’s it - and none of those 3 people are civil service employees so it’s broadly irrelevant.
Think you mean 1) TikTok hearing and 2) even if it was a “trial” or a Congressional hearing, it wouldn’t implicate those ~2M people since the judiciary is not the executive and aren’t organized under the Pendleton Act or the Civil Service Reform Act (or for that matter, neither is Congress).
Imagine taking leaks seriously
Short-run indicator of likely effectiveness.
Those lag effects take years but need Congress to get the ball rolling (and overcoming inertia and organizing an executive branch agency to be dedicated to a mission is a feat of itself).
You’ve dismissed the laws as meaningless despite them being in force for a week or less. That’s quite the jump of logic. It will take time to see how policy developments play out (and Congress to change the laws accordingly) but passing laws in it of themselves to bundle together a series of technical reforms and organize an executive branch agency is newsworthy on its own terms (and a necessary first step for good policymaking).
They may “know to create”, that doesn’t mean they do it well - even with things such as universal birth registration. The oversight and reform that Congress continuously does both specific to agencies and broadly applicable to the executive branch writ large is significant since people do not organize themselves for public service.
Even if they were “foreign imported” which ehh..questionable, see Executive Order 11935 (limiting civil service positions to citizens only), that would still be from Congress setting up the 196
1) They simply aren’t living to paycheck-to-paycheck (a phrase with so many definitions, it has no meaning)
2) it literally just is “risk-loving” and not “irresponsible” since if you operate under the assumption that you will always be employed outside of retirement (an completely reasonable assumption for most US households), literally why save except for the occasional capital expenditure?
Individuals with large amounts of precautionary savings (as you seem to have) would indeed be financially risk-averse. Congrats, I guess (?)
Your paycheck to paycheck definition of a household with a maxed out 401K and multiple years of living expenses would definitionally render just about every household in China living “paycheck to paycheck” since their incomes are going to be lower than the 401K contribution limit in all but the rarest circumstances and include an incredibly small share of the population that has very high savings rate and high income.
Also, since most households have some savings (even if in illiquid forms such as retirement accounts and home equity) which would break a textualist non-tautological interpretation of “paycheck-to-paycheck”. Even if you extend the argument to liquidity - American households have a fair number of on balance sheets at any given moment - treasuries, CDs, transaction accounts, accrued payroll, and accrued interest - as well as liquidity off-balance sheet in (that is, accounts receivables from family, if they so need it). Saving money is not virtuous nor is not saving money per se “irresponsible” in the context of most households (they have their big risks insured away, have near infinitely stable employment, and their worst case is that they couch-surf with relatives).
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the economy is now in deflation and there still remains a giant bunch of apartments to come online. Some of the simultaneously largest inflationary shocks to come in a generation (fiscal deficits at 10% of GDP, the Fed going to 0%, the Fed’s balance sheet growing by trillions of dollars a year, the Ukraine war, COVID, and supply chain chaos) and inflation couldn’t even remain high for more than 36 months.