No trickle...
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Username checks out.
I'm not quite at the bottom but I can see it from here.
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People didn't own their houses for the most part. Have you ever taken even a freshman level economics class, by the way?
Yes. And FYI, micro and macro economics are bullshit. They're easily digestible lies that don't hold up to the real world. There's real studies of economics going on at higher levels, but what gets boosted is essentially propaganda to justify political positions
Have you ever had a good history class, where instead of myths written by the winners they told the stories of people and how they interact? Where they break down the system into players, and go over the same event from many points of view? All the very human drives and politics, the infinite compromises that get grandfathered in, the true analysis of "how did we get here"?
The world is made up of systems. I build, analyze, and fix systems, it's what I do. The only way to analyze a system or a change is to run it through, turning it over in your mind from one perspective after another, until you start to understand how it fits together
Know what every society in the past has done? Collapse. The ones with debt collapse after about 250 years, every time. It's an inevitability... Some societies fail into the next iteration instead of going through a dark age, but they all collapse.
Debt creates a boom bust cycle that grows exponentially. It's inherently unstable.
But some failed from external factors. From disease and colonization. There's one empire that I find very interesting in that regard...the incas
Maybe they would've collapsed too, but their system seems a lot more stable to me. And I don't think it had any idea of debt, of selling the future
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Yeah, that statistic is obviously bullshit and people here should notice. They really should notice
noticing harder
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Me, off in the corner believing debt is immoral
What kind of debt? Is it immoral to owe someone a favour? Or is it immoral for someone to owe you a favour?
Is it only immoral if there's interest? If someone lends someone $500 to cover rent, that's immoral? Is it more or less immoral to watch someone lose their housing when you could have helped?
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
Legit rules of the trickle
- Trickle tomorrow
- No trickle? See Rule 1
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What kind of debt? Is it immoral to owe someone a favour? Or is it immoral for someone to owe you a favour?
Is it only immoral if there's interest? If someone lends someone $500 to cover rent, that's immoral? Is it more or less immoral to watch someone lose their housing when you could have helped?
All immoral. You can give someone $500, they might give you back $500, maybe even more
But you can't have the expectations of repayment. That's where it goes off the rails
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It's not important, it's the cornerstone of modern society. It's a really bad cornerstone though, like great filter level bad
What problem does it solve that couldn't be better solved in another way?
Well, it solves the problem of "I'm 25 years old with a decent paying job but no saved up capital, and need to buy <house/car/etc.>". Without taking on debt, I would need to save up for years to buy this stuff, but by taking on debt I can buy it now and "save up" (i.e. pay back) over the next years.
By all means, loans should be regulated in order to prevent people from taking on debt they can't afford, and to prevent/punish predatory practices. Debt in and of itself however can be a very good thing.
I have an apartment and a car now, with down-payments that I can afford without huge problems. Without taking a loan it probably would have taken me 25 years to be able to afford this. Except I wouldn't have, because the money I'm now using for down-payments would instead have gone to paying rent.
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All immoral. You can give someone $500, they might give you back $500, maybe even more
But you can't have the expectations of repayment. That's where it goes off the rails
Owing someone a favour is immoral? That's a weird world you live in.
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Most important? I'll never go into debt, just won't spend money I don't have. It's a no brainer for me.
Even if you're able to make that work on an individual level (never buy a home, don't get higher education, make sure you don't need a car), you can't make it work on a societal level.
If you want to contribute to supplying houses to people, you need to build the houses before you can sell/rent them (mostly). That means you need to take up a loan to pay for everything involved in building houses. Then you can sell/rent the houses to individuals that don't want to take up loans. Regardless of whether you personally ever take up a loan, you likely wouldn't have housing without someone doing it (unless you live on a family farm from waaay back), because the people that built it needed a loan to do so.
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Yeah, that statistic is obviously bullshit and people here should notice. They really should notice
It’s not like the statistic wanted to be noticed
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Even if you're able to make that work on an individual level (never buy a home, don't get higher education, make sure you don't need a car), you can't make it work on a societal level.
If you want to contribute to supplying houses to people, you need to build the houses before you can sell/rent them (mostly). That means you need to take up a loan to pay for everything involved in building houses. Then you can sell/rent the houses to individuals that don't want to take up loans. Regardless of whether you personally ever take up a loan, you likely wouldn't have housing without someone doing it (unless you live on a family farm from waaay back), because the people that built it needed a loan to do so.
The only expense for school besides the usual stuff(paper and pencils and such) were textbooks.
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This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
The SP500 hitting highs is a lot less good news when you realize most of that is simply due to the dollar devaluing against other international currencies.
That isn't asset appreciation, it's currency devaluation.
EDIT:
I m on mobile and don't have the ability to make my own chart with DXY and SP500 normalized to each other, but uh...
https://portfolioslab.com/tools/stock-comparison/^DXY/SPY
Look at this in YTD, then in 1Y, then 5Y.
Normally, these two things move in the same dirrction, though the SP500 tends to grow much more when the DXY grows a little.
Well, now, basicslly since Trump took office, they're moving in the opposite direction.
So, yeah, this is now what is called a 'melt up', where stocks climb higher, but not because of any kind of underlying fundamental strength of the US economy but because the USD has lost about 10% of its value compared to the currencies it most often is traded against.
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I mean this sincerely: Am I missing something in their sources? None of their three sources about BNPL support the "60%" number for groceries.
https://pueblostarjournal.org/news/2025/06/03/shopping-buy-now-pay-later-groceries
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/26/americans-groceries-buy-now-pay-later-loans.html
CNBC mentions 60% of general admission tickets for Coachella being BNPL sales.
It and the other two articles state 41%-43% of generally surveyed people simply stating they used BNPL last year, not for what.
I'm not seeing any source for "60% of Americans using BNPL for groceries", and anecdotally that doesn't match anything I'm hearing/seeing in my day to day life. Economy's shit, but this feels a little "narrative"-y for my tastes.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Conversely, roughly 10%+ of the US has a negative net worth, ie, they owe more debt than they have assets.
https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p70br-202.pdf
And I say 10%+ because this is from 2022, and in general, credit scores have been nose diving and car/home loan delinquencies and tenant evictions have been skyrocketing, since 2022.
We've also got roughly ~40% at least using BNPL for something.
We also know that ... having a negative net wealth is, while not exclusive to poorer people/households in terms of their yearly income... it is much, much more strongly correlated with that.
Though this may change in 'fun' ways now that the housing market is collapsing, bye bye remnants of the 'middle class'!
So anyway, I think a more realistic number for uh... people who are worse than living paycheck to paycheck, people who are actually living paycheck to loan repayment...
Its somewhere between ~10% and ~40%.
... Which is still really fucking bad, as that means something aporoximating a quarter of society sre now just literally debt slaves.
...
So basically, we have:
A ~20% debt slave class,
A ~50% exploited and struggling worker class (who is often in total denial about this being the case),
A ~25% petitie bougeois, decently paid worker / small business owner class (who routinely gaslights and belittles everyone below them, and aspirationally sucks off and praises those above them),
A ~5% capitalist owner class, that gets astonishingly more powerful and wealthy as you increment up each percent and then tenth of a percent, etc.
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It's trickle up. You can see the cone in section 2. Increase h and the trickle trickles.
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...You assume that I haven't? I originally had to learn to budget when I was making less than minimum wage, to avoid homelessness. Budgeting can be even more important with less money.
You can't budget your way out of poverty. If income doesn't cover base survival, you simply are fucked.
There are surely people out there whose failure to plan has put them into a horrible and avoidable situation. But there are many more who make good choices and still end up horribly in debt. And for them, what's the point? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
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Canadian here, what's "AfterPay"? and PLEASE don't tell me it's like layaway or a payday loan or something.
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Try and make a budget for minimum wage. Many people can't afford to live even meagerly.
Why bother budgeting if you're just going to lose anyway?
I mean, to reduce your losses? I've had a budget balance out red, compared my options and been incredibly lucky. I would not have been quite as lucky if I'd just said 'fuck it' and zero'd out the balance.
Billionaires shouldn't exist, social support structures should be stronger, I have only succeeded based on community and relationships... But you gotta try at least.
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Try and make a budget for minimum wage. Many people can't afford to live even meagerly.
Why bother budgeting if you're just going to lose anyway?
wrote last edited by [email protected]I have, I mean you kinda HAVE to budget what little you bring in to ensure you don't end up on the streets. and it's not even about saving. saving was just a pipe dream. budgeting was just to ensure rent got paid, bills were paid, and I was able to eat sometimes.
I know people who make 6 figures and can't/won't budget and most live paycheque to paycheque or are absolutely broke just before their next direct deposit. I worked with a guy that made 6 figures and all the time just before payday he'd bum me for cigarettes or ask if I could buy him a coffee or a sandwich cause he had NOTHING. And this was a guy that would always have the latest tech shit, videogames on day one of release - like all of them, nice clothes, etc. just spend, spend, spend.
I've known more people who SHOULD be well off that don't budget and are constantly broke than people who make minimum wage and are surviving.
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Canadian here, what's "AfterPay"? and PLEASE don't tell me it's like layaway or a payday loan or something.
That's exactly what it is.
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I have, I mean you kinda HAVE to budget what little you bring in to ensure you don't end up on the streets. and it's not even about saving. saving was just a pipe dream. budgeting was just to ensure rent got paid, bills were paid, and I was able to eat sometimes.
I know people who make 6 figures and can't/won't budget and most live paycheque to paycheque or are absolutely broke just before their next direct deposit. I worked with a guy that made 6 figures and all the time just before payday he'd bum me for cigarettes or ask if I could buy him a coffee or a sandwich cause he had NOTHING. And this was a guy that would always have the latest tech shit, videogames on day one of release - like all of them, nice clothes, etc. just spend, spend, spend.
I've known more people who SHOULD be well off that don't budget and are constantly broke than people who make minimum wage and are surviving.
Budget? You pay what bills are most important now, and just buy the cheapest food possible. That's all there is to it
