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29 votes
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If futures contracts/exchanges were outlawed, would anything of value be lost in the global economy?
Like other derivatives, futures seem like they are basically gambling for the wealthy more than real investment. What am I missing?
22 votes -
Pay raises in the US are finally beating inflation after two years of falling behind
13 votes -
Why does market fundamentalism have so much clout in economics?
There's a couple of other words that describe what I'm talking about - neoliberalism, lassez-faire capitalism, and in a more general sense, the Chicago school of economics - but I chose market...
There's a couple of other words that describe what I'm talking about - neoliberalism, lassez-faire capitalism, and in a more general sense, the Chicago school of economics - but I chose market fundamentalism because it seemed to best describe precisely what I'm talking about. I mean the belief that the market is capable of self-regulation and that governmental intervention will cause damage to the economy.
I'm asking this because there's still a lot about economics that I don't know about and so I was hoping someone with a background in the subject who would be able to better answer the question. But I realize it's probably also a political question. I wonder if it's more of an issue of our politicians pressing these views than economists and academics.
Personally, with my life's experience, it seems almost obviously wrong. I've lived through several market downturns and even a crash, and looking through history it seems like every market crash can be attributed to the market failing to correct itself.
21 votes -
US June CPI comes in at 0.2% MoM and 3% YoY, below the 3.1% forecast
30 votes -
Centre for Economic Policy Research - The impact of Brexit on the UK economy - reviewing evidence
10 votes -
Report - The increasing return of legal child labor to the US economy
Child labor is making a comeback with a vengeance. A striking number of lawmakers are undertaking concerted efforts to weaken or repeal statutes that have long prevented (or at least seriously...
Child labor is making a comeback with a vengeance. A striking number of lawmakers are undertaking concerted efforts to weaken or repeal statutes that have long prevented (or at least seriously inhibited) the possibility of exploiting children.
Take a breath and consider this: the number of kids at work in the U.S. increased by 37% between 2015 and 2022. During the last two years, 14 states have either introduced or enacted legislation rolling back regulations that governed the number of hours children can be employed, lowered the restrictions on dangerous work, and legalized subminimum wages for youths.
Iowa now allows those as young as 14 to work in industrial laundries. At age 16, they can take jobs in roofing, construction, excavation, and demolition and can operate power-driven machinery. Fourteen-year-olds can now even work night shifts and once they hit 15 can join assembly lines. All of this was, of course, prohibited not so long ago.
Legislators offer fatuous justifications for such incursions into long-settled practice. Working, they tell us, will get kids off their computers or video games or away from the TV. Or it will strip the government of the power to dictate what children can and can’t do, leaving parents in control — a claim already transformed into fantasy by efforts to strip away protective legislation and permit 14-year-old kids to work without formal parental permission.
In 2014, the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank, published “A Case Against Child Labor Prohibitions,” arguing that such laws stifled opportunity for poor — and especially Black — children. The Foundation for Government Accountability, a think tank funded by a range of wealthy conservative donors including the DeVos family, has spearheaded efforts to weaken child-labor laws, and Americans for Prosperity, the billionaire Koch brothers’ foundation, has joined in.
Here is a Robert Frost poem related to the subject of the article. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53087/out-out
I'm GenX and I worked as a teen, but my earliest jobs were babysitting, not industrial labor.
54 votes -
How are y'all dealing with inflation?
Everywhere I turn everything is more expensive. I'm spending less and less every month on non-necessities, buying more basic foods, never eating out, spending less on entertainment, etc but...
Everywhere I turn everything is more expensive.
I'm spending less and less every month on non-necessities, buying more basic foods, never eating out, spending less on entertainment, etc but everything else just keeps going up and up.
Electricity just went up 12%, my gas bill is up 20%, rent has gone up 10% year after year, water is somehow 30% more expensive than it used to be, my groceries are more expensive than ever even though I'm buying in bulk and not buying anything fancy, I've stopped eating luxuries I used to enjoy like steak and fancy cheese because they've just gotten outrageous.
I have a good job that pays decently but my raises have been less than 3% a year and I feel like I'm getting squeezed out of everything I once had. There's no light at the end of the tunnel is there?
101 votes -
Does the "inflation due to wage growth" narrative hold water?
I've started to notice this narrative in my news feeds. The argument is high wage growth is contributing to stubborn inflation. So cooling wage growth is seen as positive. It'll help central banks...
I've started to notice this narrative in my news feeds. The argument is high wage growth is contributing to stubborn inflation. So cooling wage growth is seen as positive. It'll help central banks pause the hike cycle sooner.
My knee jerk reaction is if wage growth is contributing to inflation it's minuscule; just enough to print the headline. I can't help but feel this narrative is a way to distract from the earlier price gouging narrative and to help employers scapegoat out of raises.
But I'll admit, I haven't looked into this topic deeply. So I'm happy to be schooled.
52 votes -
Gini global inequality at lowest level in nearly 150 years
13 votes -
Real wage growth in the USA at the individual level in 2022
15 votes -
Shifting sands: US inflation’s changing dynamics
17 votes -
How much have record corporate profits contributed to recent US inflation?
41 votes -
The Fed thinks catastrophe is coming for US businesses
15 votes -
Canadian interest rate increases = stave off the housing bubble (or create a spectacular burst?)
Do you guys think they're using rate increases to kill off all the overleveraged homeowners in an effort to create a sell-off and thereby lower housing costs? Could someone smarter than I please...
Do you guys think they're using rate increases to kill off all the overleveraged homeowners in an effort to create a sell-off and thereby lower housing costs?
Could someone smarter than I please explain what is going on... or is our inflation that bad? Seems like some of the inflation might be what I've read as greedflation. I didn't realize we jumped almost 3.75% in less than a year last year...
20 votes -
US rent going up? One company’s algorithm could be why.
47 votes -
Swedish core inflation slowed less than expected in May as Beyoncé fans flooding Stockholm may have driven an increase in hotel prices
8 votes -
US Federal Reserve holds off on rate hike, but says two more are coming later this year
24 votes -
Minneapolis and Honolulu see local inflation levels fall below national goal
20 votes -
US inflation rose at a 4% annual rate in May, the lowest in two years
12 votes -
Any finance tips and tricks for those who are financially illiterate?
So I'm 20, in the US (California to be exact), and I'm planning to (secretly) move out of my parents' house sooner or later. I have a plan and all that, but I'm a bit anxious since I know nothing...
So I'm 20, in the US (California to be exact), and I'm planning to (secretly) move out of my parents' house sooner or later. I have a plan and all that, but I'm a bit anxious since I know nothing about finance. I was never taught about it at school beyond some surface-level vocabulary words (no personal finance. Only like how econ is related to governments and all) and I grew up with a dad who thought he was being selfless by making sure I never had to think about money ever. Mix that in with some good ol' learning problems and I'm clueless about money
Here are some things I learned to give an example of what I mean when I imply I'm absolutely clueless:
- Apparently taxes will sometimes differ from each store I buy from. I have not learned how or why each store has a different percentage (I thought it was by state), just that it sometimes does
- Also, groceries don't have taxes, but they tend to cost more than the pre-packaged stuff
- Speaking of taxes, apparently if you make enough for them you can completely ruin your parents' taxes if you forget to communicate with them. Luckily, I didn't have to learn this the hard way, but I suddenly realized why people who were keeping their jobs a secret from their parents were concerned about making too much
- Credit cards are like a loan that you are forced to pay monthly. I legitimately thought the money was directly transferred from your bank account to the card, but no, it's from this storage in the bank that they have where they take your and everyone else's money and lend it to others
- This was also why I was so confused as to why the banks collapsed right before the Great Depression
- A lot of things only take credit cards. For example, paying a house via cash is literally impossible, which is why you need to rely on a bank (to my disappointment). In fact, living bankless will only cause more problems than it does save money
- I figured out what a lease was. No one taught me that and I never sought to learn it until I was asking for apartment rooms
I'm lucky in that I'm not paying any sort of bills or insurance, and that I'm still reliant on my parents for that. However, I really want to get away from them, even though I would be tied to my parents' insurance plans and all. (I don't think they will ever kick me out of them, no matter what I do.) I don't want to be thrust into something that's difficult to reverse, so for those of you who are older and know what you're doing, is there any finance advice you recommend? What should I expect money-wise when I move out? What has been a regretful decision you've made and what has worked for you?
Resources are also nice, though I'm wary of books that are only found online and thus, I need to pay to see what's inside.
30 votes -
Housing market rate hikes. Media doom and gloom or real hard times ahead?
Rate hikes. "COVID mortgages" up for renewal at much higher rates. Wondering how badly the current rate environment is affecting people IRL. How much of this do you think (or know) is actual bad...
Rate hikes. "COVID mortgages" up for renewal at much higher rates.
Wondering how badly the current rate environment is affecting people IRL. How much of this do you think (or know) is actual bad news vs. just media doom and gloom?
21 votes -
The Eurozone slipped into a mild recession early in the year
12 votes -
Why are US red states hiring so much faster than blue states?
7 votes -
Time to break up Hollywood
5 votes -
Free stuff is good, actually
4 votes -
How Mexico is becoming the new China
6 votes -
US economy is in a 'freight recession,' with China trade decline continuing
7 votes -
The high-wire drama of raising the US debt ceiling is making headlines again. Is there a better way? Perhaps Denmark has the answer
5 votes -
Taxing the superrich
11 votes -
At the heart of the Sweden's economic and social crisis is a broken housing market
9 votes -
The lie that's destroying the economy
5 votes -
Beijing needs to junk its economic playbook
4 votes -
The case of the medieval castle and the opportunity cost of warfare
7 votes -
Microsoft is laying off 10,000 employees
10 votes -
Consumer prices fell 0.1% in December, in line with expectations from economists
8 votes -
Japan’s business owners can’t find successors. This man is giving his away.
9 votes -
Why the super rich are inevitable?
14 votes -
US grew 2.9% in third quarter, GDP shows, and there’s little sign of recession for now
8 votes -
A theme park crisis is wrecking South Korea’s bond market
3 votes -
Real inflation cycle theory
4 votes -
Norway-style windfall tax on energy companies could raise £33.3bn extra by 2027, plugging a hole in UK government finances, analysis has found
4 votes -
US GDP accelerated at 2.6% pace in Q3, better than expected as growth turns positive
8 votes -
Are billionaires a market failure? And if not market, are they social failure?
I was reading this text from the Washington Post (sorry for the maybe paywall): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/06/xi-jinping-crackdown-china-economy-change/ The opinion asserts...
I was reading this text from the Washington Post (sorry for the maybe paywall):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/06/xi-jinping-crackdown-china-economy-change/
The opinion asserts that in response to liberalization of Chinese life, driven by capitalistic economic growth, is the reason that Xi Pinjing "cracked down in every sphere imaginable — attacking the private sector, humiliating billionaires, reviving Communist ideology, purging the party of corrupt officials and ramping up nationalism (mostly anti-Western) in both word and deed."
My conspiratorial brain latched on to the humiliating billionaires line, and started thinking about a between the lines message along the lines that billionaires are good and should not be humiliated, a subtle warning-response to the progressive grumblings here in the U.S. that a failure to support capitalism will result in totalitarianism.
Then I started thinking about the questions, are billionaires good for society? I had always held the position that a billionaire is a market failure (in my econ 101 understanding of the term), much like pollution. It is improper hoarding and unfair leveraging of capital into disproportionate and un-earned degree of pesonal privilege.
It is certainly a by-product of euro-american capitalism, whereby the desires and welfare of the many are trodden on by those with the ability to fight and to shape the regulatory machine meant to protect the interests of the common-wealth.
I see a few possibilities. One, is that my understanding of economics is wrong, and producing as many billionaires as possible is the ultimate goal of capitalism and in fact good for everyone, even in theory.
Two, it is indeed as I suspect, a market failure. And the failure here is one of degree, it is not, in fact problematic to have some individuals with significantly greater wealth among us, and is, in fact, beneficial overall, but to have some with so much more than the rest of us (wealth inequaility) is a result of getting in the way of a clean functioning marketplace.
Three, economic theory is working as described, and economic theory/activity is an insufficient foundation for the maintenance and success of a whole society, and we need to find a way to constrain it to its own sphere, so that it provides us with what we need to be healthy and happy, but no more.
I turn to the bright minds of tildes: am I looking at this right?
16 votes -
Lukashenko imposes ban on price increases in Belarus effective immediately
7 votes -
UK scraps tax cut for wealthy that sparked market turmoil
11 votes -
Liz Truss's UK growth plan is nothing but a magic potion
11 votes -
UK in turmoil as government's gamble to solve economic woes fuels crisis, instead
9 votes -
US child poverty rate at an all-time low
11 votes -
How this Florida town became the sea sponge capital of the world | Big Business
2 votes