No trickle...
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Daily reminder that "higher GDP is good for the economy" is now a wildly disproven myth from the days before economics was a science, by a guy who said we'd get a 15 hour work week.
Monetary inflation is bad. The nitwits who jump in saying "ackchually velocity" are suckers who paid to learn the lie, whose jobs may depend on the lie, and would be very embarrassed to be wrong. Bailouts weren't the exception - they're the rule.
We've been robbed by the 0.1% and don't need to take it anymore.
Adding to this: GDP only measures the amount of money spent on stuff, not the actual value of the things. That's one of the reasons that makes economists think untouched nature is bad, it doesn't contribute to the GDP
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Sadly, Americans are groomed at a young age to dive deep into debt early in life. It has become normalized for most of the population to carry some form of debt (credit cards and student loans are popular choices).
Most people don't even bother making a budget — a task that only needs to be done once a month, and is easier now than ever, thanks to technology.
It has become normalized for most of the population to carry some form of debt.
Not just normalized, Required. Credit scores aren't based on how likely you are to pay off a loan, but on how likely you are to make the creditor money. If you take out loans and pay them off ahead of schedule, it will fuck with your credit. If you close an old credit card after you pay it off, it will fuck up your credit.
Want a house? You better have 400k cash laying around, or have been paying interest on cards and loans for 10 years to establish a good credit score. Want a decent apartment? They check your credit score too! Did I mention that every single job I've applied for has run a credit check on me?
FYI, Equifax leaked literally everyone's personal info after collecting it and selling it without consent. They still operate as one of the major credit score providers.
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You don't need a loan, you need somewhere to live and food
Maybe students just get free dorms and a meal plan by default, and we work that into the cost of education and pay for it as a society
wrote last edited by [email protected]I would be all for that. But at that point we're talking about a restricted form of UBI (which would be nice), and a significant restructuring of how parts of society work.
I'm saying that the way society works now you need a loan to finance housing and food while studying. I'm also saying that's not an inherently bad thing, as long as the loans aren't exploitative. That loan lets you use money that you earn back once you get your degree (given that the system works as it should, which in this case it largely does where I'm from).
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Budget? You pay what bills are most important now, and just buy the cheapest food possible. That's all there is to it
In that case, a monthly budget is even more important – and might be pretty simple
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I totally agree. But no individual should be building an apartment complex, should they? Who should build it? The city, the community, the future occupants... People should get together and put their money in a pile
This should not be an investment to extract rent and profit, it should be an investment today into the future, not through debt, but to plant trees for the future
Houses are too expensive to build as an individual? Then we're doing something wrong. Maybe we don't run electricity to every corner. Maybe we build them out of stone, so they last forever. Maybe we make them out of wood and plaster so they can last centuries. Maybe we make them out of glorified paper, so they're easy to build. Maybe we don't have central air, but use passive cooling and run an AC to certain rooms. Maybe they should be smaller and easier to build
There are other ways of doing things, better ways that will mean slower progress but stability
You shouldn't be able to leverage the future, we should always be investing into tomorrow today
There is literally no way you will build a decent modern house without thousands of man-hours, only in the construction itself. That's before you count the hours needed for getting the materials you need.
It's unreasonable to posit that we should design our society such that you need to save up enough money to finance something like that up-front in order to build a house. Why not go for the (current) solution, where I can loan money to finance the house, then pay that back once I have stable living conditions (because I now have a house)?
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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.
THIS. It's not only about income; it's income minus expenses.
Budgeting was probably the most important financial tool/skill when I was living in poverty. And now that I'm in a more comfortable financial position, I still value budgeting quite a lot. It's great for preventing more money from creating more problems.
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"Slowly"
Slowly as in, the Niagara falls slowly trickle water.
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There is literally no way you will build a decent modern house without thousands of man-hours, only in the construction itself. That's before you count the hours needed for getting the materials you need.
It's unreasonable to posit that we should design our society such that you need to save up enough money to finance something like that up-front in order to build a house. Why not go for the (current) solution, where I can loan money to finance the house, then pay that back once I have stable living conditions (because I now have a house)?
Because it's inherently unstable.
The modern mortgage is only 100 years old, and it's caused crisis after crisis. They happen faster and faster too, with larger and larger bailouts to keep the system afloat
The debt system only works if you have infinite, ever accelerating, the rate of acceleration ever accelerating, growth. There's no new markets to expand into, we're running up against physics
You can't build a modern house without thousands of man hours, making a savings approach impractical? Then don't.
Build differently. It's that simple. Our ancestors figured it out for 100k years, then for a century we went crazy with it, and now it's all falling apart
You can't tell me there's no better way.
I love watching YouTube videos of 5 people building a house in a year just on weekends using Earth bags. A team of Amish people can build a house in days. I watch ones where one person builds a house. There's a guy who built a castle by himself, stone by stone
The man hours are so expensive because everyone has to pay interest on the debt, and the practice of borrowing from the future means every step of the process money is being siphoned off
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It is debt, even if you fail to see that
You could frame it as debt, sure
I'm saying this is a bad framing and you shouldn't frame it that way, because it's more pro social not to think of it that way
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Most important, because that's how most people start and grow their business, they don't have multimillion inheritance.
Also buying house.
And I'm saying no one should do that, things should grow slowly and organically. It's like trees, you can turbo charge their growth and get a board in a decade instead of a century, but the wood is incomparably worse in every way
If you let anyone do it, everyone will be forced to, despite the risk, to be competitive
So no one should do it. It's immoral
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That's just totally incorrect. Most people throughout history didn't even use money, let alone debt.
You need to read "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" by David Graeber. Debt goes back a lot longer than money, and has been part of human existence for as long as that existence has been recorded.
There is no human civilization without debt.
I said that, money was created from debt, of course debt came first
What about the Incas? I'm sure there's others, but we know a lot about them and their economic system, and they only fell because of outside interference
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Oh it trickles down. Just not money, but at least it's warm and golden
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I said that, money was created from debt, of course debt came first
What about the Incas? I'm sure there's others, but we know a lot about them and their economic system, and they only fell because of outside interference
You also said:
Most people throughout history didn't even use money, let alone debt
So, why not just admit you're not well informed on this subject and leave it there?
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Daily reminder that "higher GDP is good for the economy" is now a wildly disproven myth from the days before economics was a science, by a guy who said we'd get a 15 hour work week.
Monetary inflation is bad. The nitwits who jump in saying "ackchually velocity" are suckers who paid to learn the lie, whose jobs may depend on the lie, and would be very embarrassed to be wrong. Bailouts weren't the exception - they're the rule.
We've been robbed by the 0.1% and don't need to take it anymore.
before economics was a science
So... When is that gonna happen?
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Robin Socks
Robin facial recognition algorithm and randomly spraying your head with water.
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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.
Okay.
It's an app. Can't tell you any more than that.
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That's by design, the money flows from the average American to the companies. Then slowly trickles into the pockets of the ceo's.
Money is just abstracted fungiblized value.
It's stealing more of the value you produce. Me@ning you get less
Until chains of debt guilt and terror make you effectively a slave.
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You also said:
Most people throughout history didn't even use money, let alone debt
So, why not just admit you're not well informed on this subject and leave it there?
Ok, now you're just splitting hairs. But I will concede the word debt means more than what I'm using it for
But there's a difference between "I did this for you, and it's expected you'll reciprocate later" and a formalized version of this
I don't know how to put it into words yet, but the merchant of Venice is about the idea I'm circling around. Reciprocity is one thing, selling the future, which is always uncertain, is another
One of these things is the fabric of community, the other is evil
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You could frame it as debt, sure
I'm saying this is a bad framing and you shouldn't frame it that way, because it's more pro social not to think of it that way
It's not framing. It's a textbook example of debt.
It's ok to say you didn't quite knew what the word meant. No need to try to give it a new definition, just because you didn't know.
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This comment on the post indicates that it's a CitizenWatch article, but that article's own listed sources don't support the 60% number either (as I call out in my response to that comment).
I swear there's barely anywhere online anymore where people practice basic skepticism. If it aligns with their existing biases they just slurp it up, no matter how absurd.
This comment section is a particularly bad example.
