Wouldn’t it be more economically and fiscally efficient to…pay people after retirement by printing money on demand? It’s effectively what we are doing except we now introduced a bunch of middlemen (Wall Street) and funnel retirement money into vehicles for the rich. Current system makes no sense to me.
That's not really equivalent. In a fractional banking system, even if a loan is entirely "newly created money," it's not without strings: it's a loan, that needs to be paid back.
Someone wants to buy a house, the bank creates $500k "out of nothing" and the two parties enter into a loan. For the buyer, their $500k asset (bank money) is balanced by a $500k liability (mortgage). It's symmetrical for the bank: a $500k liability (bank deposit) is balanced by a $500k asset (loan). Once the loan is paid off, the balances go to zero and that "new money" has effectively been completely destroyed. What the loan issuer gets in compensation, of course, is the interest.
Even with QE, when central banks "print money" to buy distressed assets, they are buying assets, not handing out new money no-strings-attached. And that new money is listed as a liability on their balance sheet, with the purchased assets balancing it on the other side.
Monetizing social security would break this balance. A central bank would create new money, adding it to their liabilities, and then give it away, receiving... nothing? The money supply would continuously increase without a corresponding sink to "suck it back up." That would (1) lead to inflation, thus (2) requiring more money creation for retirees to keep up with increased prices; goto (1).
In order for something like this to work, you would need some kind of sink. That could be done with taxes. But then we're sort of back where we started. The central bank wouldn't be monetizing social security no-strings-attached, but creating money with a promise from the government that it will tax the economy sufficiently to pay it back. It would just be another loan.
> A central bank would create new money, adding it to their liabilities, and then give it away, receiving... nothing?
Central bank would get government bonds, as you mentioned. Of course, the lions share needs to be offset through a cut from a country's economy, however you organize it (taxes, social security), and bonds cover the variations over a few generations. But there is no real upside when handling that via middle men.
> pay people after retirement by printing money on demand?
Yepp, it is. It's called "Umlageverfahren" here in Austria, which makes it sound it's based on direct transfers from working to retired, but it's basically the same system. The crucial point is, that is saves on the middlemen.
They appear to me as a make work project for the financial market professionals. I wonder if inflation is currently tied to volume of trades that are needed to maintain our economy.
For decades, they wanted to diversify away from oil and build tech industries. The problem is they don’t have skilled labor and would have to import “slaves” as they do with everything. They have some of the lowest skilled and laziest labor in the world. If/when dependence on oil ends, these countries will go back to being poor.
Edit: contrast ME with Mexico who is running out of oil. Yet, they are able to build because they happen to have some of the hardest working labor in the world (though not notably skilled). I rather bet on Mexico revival over ME 100/100.
some colleagues worked in tech companies in middle east oil countries and they confirm what you say.
The local employees would show up for just 2h 3h a day, fake some working tasks, and leave.
They is so much money poured down on them that they don't understand the concept of work, to them it is just a hobby.
Switzerland isn't the most progressive of countries (it only gave women the right to vote in 1971) but AFAIK you don't go to jail if you fuck a man in the ass, in contrast to UAE.
Not something that directly concerns me, but I'm personally more worried about restrictions on freedom of speech, but regardless not somewhere I'd be willing to live (I currently do live in Switzerland).
I used Switzerland as an example because of its financial industry. I wasn’t making any commentary on the culture. Presumably if the UAE is the Switzerland of the Middle East and Indian Ocean, it’s more adapted for that cultural environment and not for what Westerners are looking for.
These laws are also pretty much never enforced in UAE, as far as I understand.
Government websites are known for giving warnings about lots of things that aren’t a big deal in real life. I am basing my opinion on people I know that have been there, plus topics on Reddit, etc. But of course your mileage may vary and it’s reasonable to be worried about such laws if they might apply to you.
Formally documented de jure discrimination is hardly the only available approach. For example, the term "grandfather clause" stems from Southern states applying severe voter restrictions (poll taxes, literacy tests, etc.) but exempting anyone whose ancestors had the right to vote on a particular pre-Civil War date.
Functionally? Permitted poor/uneducated whites but not blacks to vote without ever mentioning a race in the law.
"No person shall be registered as an elector of this state or be allowed to vote in any election held herein, unless he be able to read and write any section of the Constitution of the state of Oklahoma; but no person who was, on January 1, 1866, or any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under any form of government, or who at that time resided in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant of such person, shall be denied the right to register and vote because of his inability to so read and write sections of such Constitution."
You should be worried about gay rights: some years ago, a French teenage boy was raped by some local men, and the authorities initially tried to get the boy to confess.
A number of particularly nasty elements to the response—including that the authorities knew that one of the rapists carried HIV, and had previously segregated him in custody to prevent him spreading the virus to other prisoners, but they fabricated medical tests to the contrary and lied to the boy’s family.
Which is also excellent not just for stealing, but also for murder. Half a year ago a German-born Pole killed a family in a car crash and run away to UAE.[0] They tried to extradit him but without success.
The article is from October - in the meantime it turned out he actually fled to UAE. The Polish government tried to extradite him but failed. There are many sources on that, unfortunately in Polish only.
Probably not, they'll still put the money in Luxembourg and Switzerland, but they can exchange gold and diamonds and stuff like that from shady dealings in Africa for money there.
If you look into it you'll find that it's a nice marketplace for israeli oligarchs running operations in DR Congo, e.g. for diamonds which Israel exports unexpected amounts of, and you'll also find that the Rapid Support Forces/Janjaweed in Sudan are buddies of the UAE. Unlike Switzerland the UAE is quite aggressive militarily, e.g. occupying part of Yemen.
Been a while since I last had a run through books about this and no time at the moment to go remind myself about titles, but I can give some links to start digging.
If you look into Omar al-Bashir's 'career' you'll likely find it enlightening about the degree of Gulf involvement in Sudan. The Gulf states are really, really good at PR, they can afford the biggest, most efficient firms to run it for them, but there are a lot of books about the colonial history in the region and how trade and economics have evolved over the last century.
The strategically importantly located island of Socotra has a really interesting history, lots of pirates and stuff. Since 2018 UAE is occupying it and lately Yemen news sources have claimed that Israel is in on it, and the US DoD has been asked whether they're there too. Starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Arab_Emirates_takeover_...
Think about the fact that education is pretty much free there. They even pay for Western institutions to set up satellite campuses. You’d think they should have the most educated and skilled labor in the world. At some point, you have to realize it’s cultural: they don’t want to work.
Funny you mention Switzerland because they have some of the highest skilled labor in the world.
You’re generalizing nearly 20 million people in Saudi Arabia alone. How this is even an acceptable thing to say on HN is beyond me.
The Gulf countries have more than enough expertise to manage and run their wealth for the foreseeable future. To say they’ll be poor again without oil is simply ignorant of the facts and probably related to the point I made above.
> To say they’ll be poor again without oil is simply ignorant
I wanted to reply "But Sheikh Mohammed himself said so!" but then trying to back up my claim I realized it's false. [0] It's amazing how many false things we take for granted just because they align with our world-view (and make a good story).
I won’t comment on culture but it is a fact that the majority of working Saudis work in bullshit government jobs where they basically collect paychecks for free, and actual labor is overwhelmingly performed by cheap migrant workers, no? Or is my information out of date? That’s an arrangement you can’t find anywhere outside the Gulf, to my knowledge.
You have a bunch of weasel words there that are doing some heavy lifting: "majority", "actual" and "overwhelmingly".
It's not possible to run a functioning country (which SA undeniably is) without a large number of people who are at least somewhat competent, at least somewhat hardworking, and at least somewhat loyal to the country. You may be able to rely on cheap migrant workers for the hard physical labor, but not for the planning and administration that makes the whole thing work.
According to https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/20/news/saudi-government-worke..., 70% of employed Saudis work for the government, and according to their civil service minister, "many" of them don't even work an hour a day. If you think they're structured like any other country and I'm merely singling them out with "weasel words" we can't possibly have a discussion.
The oil money printer can hide a lot of problems. A small percentage of somewhat competent people aren't guaranteed to be able to provide for a huge number of useless freeloaders if the gravy train stops. Look at Venezuela for a somewhat similar situation.
Yeah, and I went to Greece, a country with a population half the size of Saudi Arabia, a few years ago and got bad service everywhere. The economic data is also not good.
But I wouldn’t somehow think it’s accurate or acceptable to claim Greeks are all lazy and rude.
If the collective financial portfolio of the Gulf countries goes away, you’ll have much larger problems to worry about.
This project was a side project and always has been. Its success or lack thereof has very little to do with the overall financial position of the country.
> For decades, they wanted to diversify away from oil and build tech industries. The problem is they don’t have skilled labor and would have to import “slaves” as they do with everything.
Quite correct. I had people reaching out to me saying they want me to contract for Arabic millionaires -- websites, backends, a lot of stuff together -- but every time they demanded time tracking, they wanted to know my physical address, wanted my photo, and one of them even wanted me to install camera so he can track me in real time with some misguided AI-based software.
Each time I giggled to myself and responded something along the lines of:
"While the offer sounds tempting financially, and while I would love to have some tech independence, your offer falls short on the privacy front, and it also contains clauses that can nullify the independence to choose tech tomorrow. I'll have to decline and if you are open to feedback: insisting on face tracking is not how you hire the really good programmers, to which I don't pretend to belong but have known a good number of them".
So yes their mindset is apparently always 10 masters + 20_000_000 slaves and as hard as they are trying, they will not export this culture to anywhere else except maybe India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, China and a few others. The West will not change for them no matter how rich they are.
The Qatari have also obviously paid off various FIFA officials but hey, that's just football.
In my experience of working with software developers in India and China, the ones who are really good would absolutely refuse this kind of privacy invasion. Good developers living in those countries have choice and are well paid.
It also makes money from construction projects. It’s one of the big reasons they offer residence visas to people who buy real estate there.
I live in Dubai but grew up in the United States. Despite what people may believe, there is freedom of religion here, women aren’t oppressed, and the government genuinely cares about having a good city to live in.
I don't want to open a flame war, but I visited the city during the Expo and its a highway with a stripe of skyscrapers on each side and slums beyond. It's impossible to walk anywhere. (To be fair, the public transport is pretty good, as long as you live next to the highway.)
When I read "a good city to live in" I imagine something like Vienna.
That is fair. I guess my comparison is San Diego (where I grew up) and Mexico, where I lived all of my adult life until moving to Dubai in 2022.
The city is building a new metro line and improving on walkability as new neighborhoods of high population density pop up. It will still be very focused on shopping malls with AC because of the heat during the summers. Official records of real estate transactions have a data point for "closest shopping mall" for a reason.
If you’ve ever had a gun or knife pointed at you, trust me that “walkability” is not going to be high on your priorities of what makes a city a good place to live. The UAE is safer than Switzerland.
I actually liked how walkable Mexico City is. It used to not be great but I feel that in recent times it's a much nicer city to live in than Dubai. Of course that's only based on living there for 6 months and being relatively wealthy (that said I'd argue Dubai is also only nice if you have the means).
"I went to <insert any major city here> and there's tall buildings and slums beyond"
Even Vienna has slum-like areas, every major city does. Not sure how that's a knock against Dubai. I'm not even sure what slums you saw in Dubai, Having lived there for a few years there's definitely low income housing in certain parts but I'd struggle to call them slums.
And you wonder why China is experiencing brain drain. Rest of world is moving toward 4-day work week and these guys think their citizens are dumb enough to slave away their lives.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632901/schools-across-the... ("Schools across the U.S. are trying a 4-day week. Why? To retain teachers") (My note: ~1000 US school districts have moved to a four day week, as they are unable to retain teachers otherwise)
https://www.abc15.com/news/national/4-day-workweeks-may-be-a... (“Nearly one-third (30%) of large US companies are exploring new work schedule shifts such as four-day or four-and-a-half-day workweeks, according to a KPMG survey of CEOs released this week.”)
In Europe I believe you can request an 80% work week, I've seen job posting and heard it second hand. Here's a Swiss example, https://threema.ch/en/jobs#openings of 80-100% jobs
In North America there were and are a number of companies that operate or operated (pre-layoffs etc, ZIRP free money RIP) on a 4 day work week. You can search "4 day companies" and you'll find a list. Some companies still operate on a 4 day week, so it wasn't necessarily a ZIRP-era only thing.
US congress or someone in government proposed a 32 hour work week -- unlikely to be passed of course or get any traction any time soon.
But in general, there's growing mainstream sentiment towards trying and exploring shorter work weeks.
If AI/AI-enabled-capitalists doesn't enslave us, those grandiose promised AI productivity gains may push sentiment further in that direction.
If anything - the US and, the majority of the world with it - has moved to longer work hours with fewer holidays. Sabbaticals are virtually unheard of anymore. Two people in the family work instead of one. I would argue the world is moving in the opposite direction.
It's an East Asian cultural thing to work super hard for some reason, same with Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. By "Rest of the world" you really just mean a handful of Western European nations with stagnant economies, but by god I do wish I could work less.
We've had 45 years of GDP increase not being reflected in wages, who cares if the economy is "stagnant" if the people making it happen aren't seeing the benefit.
Well, I can mostly speak to Japan, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was also true in China.
The long hours of Japanese work culture are true, but simultaneously, there's a lot of wasted time. Japan evens praises sleeping at the office, when you're clearly getting no work done.
This might be limited to white-collar office workers; no idea about people on the factory floor.
I don’t think people in East Asia work harder at all. It’s mostly sitting around and taking two hour lunches. I regularly worked 80-100 hours for most of my 20s and early 30s. It’s not sustainable at all and 95% of the population do not even have the physical and mental stamina to do it for more than a couple of weeks out of the year. Out of all the places I’ve experienced, East Coast (and particularly NYC) has the hardest working culture. It’s not even close.
Can you please elaborate on "downward pressure". Because the way I see it, 4day work week should actually increase the salaries, not reduce it. The way I see - if there is work for 3200 hrs. - it could either be done by one person in 80 weeks (current setup), OR 100 weeks in new setup. Assuming next that velocity should remain the same to keep competitiveness, it's gonna require you to hire not 0.25, but probably 0.5 person for one day free. Hence demand increase for employees. No?
Unions and labor regulations are important components of arriving at the desired outcome. You have to keep pulling the policy ratchets to reduce the work week and bolster worker protections, otherwise capitalism will extract until there is nothing left.
I didn’t know Threads is still a thing. It is still very much barebones and frankly laughable for a product pushed out by a trillion dollar company. The fact that it took them five months is even more comical considering that all they did was pare down IG.
It's become go broadcasting standard to show some AI bot's win/loss confidence percentage for a given board state. It was fascinating for a few years, but now I feel like it takes away from some of the magic of watching pro level play.
Tesla is stuck with him and that will be the end. I do wonder why anyone with talent would work for Tesla at this point. Such a polarizing thing to have on your cv.
Whatever you think of the cars, the work culture, or of Elon, Tesla is the most prestigious EV brand in the world right now. They are the "reference" for the industry.
Tesla on your resume (versus, say, GM) is far more likely to get you an interview at another company than get you auto-rejected.
How’s that prejudice? If you went and worked for Tesla after 2020 when all of their flaws were out in the open, then you opted into that environment. Are you saying you don’t make hiring decisions based on resume and where people worked? Hiring is always a subjective process. “Cultural fit” is a thing.
Maybe if you're applying to work for Cathie Wood. I'd consider Tesla a yellow flag if you started there the last few years.
I don't think it's really considered that strong of a place for engineers and they don't pay as well and work people harder so I assume these people couldn't get in to better companies. not so much for SpaceX where there's less choice in that sector.
"I assume these people couldn't get in to better companies". That's a pretty ignorant statement as Space X and Tesla are harder to get into than Harvard.
Well yeah, if you have an axe to grind and don't like Musk, then for you it's a red flag, but not for most people. Most people don't hate him enough to discriminate against a candidate for working there.
There are no more desirable companies than Space X because literally no other company is doing anything remotely like what they are. You have Boeing which is a disaster and Nasa which also isn't close.
As of 2022 Space X and Tesla were the #1 and #2 most desired companies to work for.
