Wall Street and main street are two different markets. OP specifically said we'll see consumer price inflation only if money trickles down to consumers, which is evidently not the case. Asset prices has gone to the moon however since 2008.
Annualized S&P 500 Return with Dividends Reinvested from april 2008 to april 2020 are 8.285% [0] which is entirely in line with historical returns [1]. How is that an asset bubble?
There was an asset bubble in property, and you can argue that there still is (there is in my city). However, wages aren't going up, as someone else below pointed out. Inflation to some degree is a race between income and spending power, right? If incomes stay stagnant but house prices double in cost, that's downward pressure on that asset.
The stock market is a different beast. Is it accurate to call it inflation if the asset inflation is "going there"?
Both health care costs and education costs - both mentioned as evidence of inflation someplace and two more places where excess inflation to be "going there" - have been making headlines before this crisis, and I bet they'll become even more prominent after the crisis ends. There will be downward pressure on prices politically on those two things, is my prediction.
Megacaps don't just print money out of thin air. If you have a faltering middle class, who's gonna be there to spend money? Unless you institute some kind of universal basic income, I don't see people's buying power staying the same. Remember, 70% of the economy is driven by people buying shit.
Sounds like you’re in the minority, but I think you’re right. Mega caps are built on the foundation of a broad consumer base that has been eroded faster than at any other time in history. Even those who seem insulated will feel the effects when their mega cap customers begin cutting costs because of their exposure to the consumer markets.
That's exactly why tax cuts to the rich don't make any sense to me. Give tax cuts to the middle and lower classes, they're the ones who go out and actually buy shit, which drives everything else, really.
UBI doesn't stop people working. It just stops them starving if they don't/can't work. It allows them to re-skill without risking ending up on the street. It provides a safe path out of poverty traps.
People will always get bored and people will always want nicer things, so they'll always eventually be motivated to go and get work to improve their lot. UBI won't change that. In fact, it will facilitate it.
UBI doesn’t do that. Unless tied to something like land-value tax, UBI just raises rent cost. Of course it doesn’t happen immediately, but within a year or so UBI will be consumed by rent cost.
Doesn't this depend on the company? Demand for agriculture, petroleum, and financial services (among many other things) are fairly inelastic. People are going to consume all of that stuff regardless of how financially well-off they are.
Demand for agriculture is inelastic, but I don't think the same of petroleum or financial services.
Without travel, demand for petroleum has dropped significantly, to the point it was below 0 for a short time.
Financial services can come to a screeching halt as well if people stop buying on credit or taking loans out on housing and cars. Maybe I'm being short-sighted in only considering the consumer aspect here.
There was a survey that went out that said 80% of small businesses can't afford more than 3 months under the current economic climate. If that's true, does that mean we will see all small business evaporate before the end of 2020?
GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government spending + Net exports [0]
The investment component is dependent on companies' expectations about consumption (or other companies' investment, or government spending) in the future, and obviously the net export component depends on consumption in other countries. So in that sense the ~70% [1] due to direct consumption understates the true importance of consumer spending to GDP.
It also says that the net income is 1 billion though, and 500 million is half of that. High revenue doesn't always mean that the company is generating that much value. Just look at Uber.
I would think that undergoing a rebellion or civil war after which the form of governance changes marks the end of an empire, even if the territorial lines are not redrawn.
Depends on how you look at it I guess. The history of the Chinese empire had periods of relative stability, separated by periods of rebellion, civil war, and strife, sometimes hundreds of years long. There were even periods where the empire was ruled by outsiders.
At the end of any given dynasty, it would be hard to say whether the empire is truly crumbling, or merely transitioning to a new dynasty. Who knows, maybe 1,000 years from now communism and the period of strife in the 20th century will just be seen as an unstable period preceding a dynastic transition.
By that metric, the United States ended in 1861 and another country took its place. The 13th-15th amendments fundamentally changed the understanding of the state / federal power dynamic.
They got lucky by investing in Alibaba and cashed out. Made 100bil that way and suddenly everyone thought Masa was a genius. Saudi princes started giving him free money and the rest is history.
1. Being in extremely left-wing Bay area with historic ties to the free speech movement. 2. They're not, it just benefits both the tech companies and the media to portray them that way.
Add in the visa/immigration issues. A large percentage of the workforce in SV is imported from outside the country. While the business wing of the Republican Party loves cheap labor, there are other wings that oppose it. Once upon a time the labor wing of the Democratic Party would have been against importing labor but the influence of that wing has waned considerably while the business wing has established itself in both major parties. If you're not a native born US citizen, a label that describes quite a few tech workers in the Valley, the left seems more aligned with your continued existence in the United States.
> "A large percentage of the workforce in SV is imported from outside the country."
Imported mostly from East and South Asia, from very socially conservative cultures. I wouldn't be so quick to assume that they're necessarily aligned with the Democrats.
They mostly are, although this is a recent phenomenon. Growing up in the 1990s, Indians/etc. in my area we heavily republican, consistent with their higher income levels and general social conservatism. In the 1996 election Asians went for Dole by a slightly larger margin than white people. But today, Asians vote Democrat at a higher rate than Hispanics.
Worth noting that the difference between neoliberal and left-wing wasn't really brought into focus until a few years ago. Also worth noting that Pelosi advocated for single-payer in the 90s then made a rightward turn.
I remember the day that assault was reported on the news. It made my friends and myself seriously question what the hell is going on the streets of our city.
It's common to prey on the weak and vulnerable. Why make it harder on yourself? Just get a job at that point.
Yep. It's a good example of how reality breaks common expectations.
I suspect it's because females tend to avoid physical confrontation like the plague and some men will stand up if someone gets in their face. But it's only a guess as to why it is the case.
I've definitely had big friends in the past who were always getting shit started with them, even just walking down the street between bars in a group they'd out of nowhere have a stranger single them out, shoulder them while walking past, and voila now there's a street fight.
But that's rather different, it's more about sport than crime. Half the time they'd become drinking buddies afterwards.
When desperate people are on the prowl for people to rob however, I don't believe it's typical for them to prefer tougher targets. My understanding is most thefts are opportunistic and unattended, which tells me there's obviously a preference for less resistance, not more.
Pretty sure Target does that already.