the economy has normalized for ZIRP. the Fed may try to make a token rise in rates to flex its power, but the reality is every aspect of the economy is too indebted to shoulder the higher borrowing costs. once Powell vacates the Fed chair, we will probably see a replacement who is more comfortable with a permanent regime of negative rates.
I've argued this for years. Interest rates peaked at about the same time that wealth inequality began to diverge around 1980 or so. I don't think any of this is terribly complicated. Money is a commodity, and like all commodities, the price is set at the margin. Money also has diminishing marginal utility, so as you accumulate more of it, at some point it has less use.
Think about two people, one extremely wealthy, one middle class. The middle class guy making $75k probably has to spend all his money for consumption: food, rent, car, etc. There's little left over for saving or investing. In order for that guy to justify forgoing consumption and instead saving it, he requires a high interest rate, otherwise it's not worth it. But what about the guy worth $100 million? He can't spend it all on consumption, so he has to save a lot of it. Ah, but what's his opportunity cost? Zero. He has no choice, and the money he'll earn from interest won't even get spent anyway. So, two people, two very different marginal costs.
The world is just one giant pool of capital. Over the last four decades, as capital has shifted from being more evenly spread out amongst people with high marginal costs to a smaller group of people with marginal costs of zero, interest rates keep falling...the majority of capital now resides amongst people who can't spend it all and are happy to earn any real rate of return.
"Money also has diminishing marginal utility, so as you accumulate more of it, at some point it has less use."
Thats true assuming the same scope, like living expenses. It gets a little more nuanced if the person changes the activities in scope. If you're giving billions away in a philanthropic organization that you run (ie Gates), then you've found new utility for that money. So in some ways it has more possible uses, but less pressure to actually use it. But I think your implied point of limited choices for people with lower income/capital is still valid.
If it's unequivocally true, how about a source that shows scope does not impact it?
I'm simply stating that money does not have fewer uses as one gets more of it. Usually the person's scope changes to include new uses that were not previously possible. The important thing to note is that utility is being used in mixed definition here. Strictly speaking it's definition is happiness or satisfaction. The part about having less use doesn't necessarily match this.
Diminishing marginal utility is an axiom over fixed magnitude amounts of a good. Bill Gates still gets less out of an additional $10 even with new opportunities for philanthropy than a panhandler who is hours from starving to death and currently has $0. "Diminishing" doesn't mean it has to go to zero, but Bill Gates is not going to be in any situation where some number of dollars given to him on top of what he has means the difference between life and death.
Heck, this exact fact is the very reason why Bill Gates engages in philanthropy. He realizes that other people need the money more than he does.
"Money also has diminishing marginal utility, so as you accumulate more of it, at some point it has less use."
The additional money does not have less use. It's just not going to add as much to quality of life or dictate "life and death". There are still many uses for it, so of which may not be possible with lower amounts.
If you consider "add to quality of life" a synonym for marginal utility I think you may be in agreement.
Yes, $10 buys the same Mcdonald's lunch regardless of how much money one has, but two people, one with $0 and one with $1bn in net worth will be excited about that lunch to very different degrees.
Diminishing marginal utility of money means that each additional dollar spent results in a smaller increase in quality of life. This is true of all consumption goods. For example, if you don't have a car, and you buy a car, your quality of life will improve a lot. If you buy a second car, it will improve only little. By the time you have 15 cars in your garage, buying another car will do nothing to improve your quality of life, or it could even worsen your living conditions.
Sure. Utility, in this sense, is a proxy for the enjoyment/satisfaction gained by the consumer from the thing.
You seem to be interpreting utility in terms of the quantity of things the money can be used for or in terms of the societal benefit that can be obtained from the money, it is not entirely clear.
"Money also has diminishing marginal utility, so as you accumulate more of it, at some point it has less use."
This thread is in response to this, to point out that the use of money is not the same as the marginal utility. Its mot like having a bunch of money makes it less useful or have fewer uses.
> use of money is not the same as the marginal utility
Yes, but as I said above, in this case having use is defined relative to promoting your own satisfaction as a consumer.
I think you are trying to tease apart "utility" vs "use", but to have utility is the property of having use. It's a question of what the utility/use is in reference to, and for economists, that utility is in reference to preference satisfaction by the consumers.
Saying it's an axiom is correct - economists generally pose this as a fact, but where would we end up if it was the opposite, if the utility of money rose with the amount you have?
In other words: if the diminishing utility axiom were true we could start redistributing now, but one would predict the money owners would be against it.
It's proof by contradiction - everyone knows money is political power.
> if the diminishing utility axiom were true we could start redistributing now, but one would predict the money owners would be against it.
If something has diminishing *marginal* utility if doesn't follow that a third party has a right to seize it(property rights, different/tangential topic). Therefore this:
> It's proof by contradiction - everyone knows money is political power.
It's at best a strong hypothesis. There can be situations where utility is constant or even increasing (not necessarily monotone). If I can only afford one shirt then actually going for a situation where I can own three shirts could make my life a lot simpler, similarly, being able to afford a car could have strong positive effects.
I think, the idea that getting rich does not create a lot of additional joy from diminishing utility is one the best fairy tales ever invented.
I sort of agree, but would say that fairy tale part might be better described as a psychological effect, but still consistent with your questioning it as other than a hard economic fact. What I mean is that the person's psychology may change as they become accustomed to a specific standard of living. For example, if someone grows up driving new BWMs, they might see it as "normal" and not derive as much joy from it as someone who got a new BWM after working for it for years. So it seems that the axiom is specific to an individual and their psyche, which provides provides few beneficial use cases beyond understanding that if people have 'a lot' of money, then money might not be a strong motivator.
> think, the idea that getting rich does not create a lot of additional joy from diminishing utility is one the best fairy tales ever invented.
It's diminishing marginal utility. Every single comment I've gotten disputing this either misinterprets the word "marginal" or the word "utility", I encourage all of y'all to take an economics course.
Sorry, just skipped the "marginal", but my point stands: the marginal utility does not need to drop. I could enjoy my 10th car just as much as my 9th... or even more (and I have taken some economics courses). Similarly, going from $1B to $2B might more than double my total utility, nothing is stopping that from happing a priori
Edit: granted, there are a lot of observable situations that do indeed show diminishing marginal utility, but I think the concept is often too much taken at face value when actual data or analysis is scarce and the marginal utility might behave in a more complex way
Yes, because economics is a social science, none of its axioms are "a priori" in the same sense that they might be in math.
That said, the empirical evidence is pretty overwhelming in favor of diminishing marginal utility of money, in addition to the fact that it just makes sense. Actual data on this phenomena is not actual as scarce as you seem to be suggesting.
I am aware of some older studies on marginal utility of money for individuals, but they span quite low income/wealth. I have seen some small data that suggest that at the very least the drop in marginal utility is much weaker than previously thought for high wealth brackets. Do you have some pointers to newer data on UHWIs, for example?
I personally have found that there were times when the marginal utility of my additional wealth was growing as I could suddenly do things I could not do before... (while it other times it almost felt like 0)
>Based on these figures, MarketWatch reported Bezos donated just .5 percent of his net worth last year - a quarter of the 2 percent the average American donates each year.
Also, why should money be concentrated in the hands of the ultra-wealthy, does their wealth make them more qualified to decide how it's spent compared to society/government?
>First off, the amounts involved are tiny relative to the fortunes behind them. Bezos’s $100m, for example, amounts to about 11 days of his income.
>Well-publicized philanthropy also conveniently distracts attention from how several of these billionaires are endangering their workers and, by extension, the public.
>And why should we believe that Gates or any other billionaire’s “boldness” necessarily reflects society’s values and needs? Oligarchies aren’t the same as democracies.
I think you're getting off track or putting words in my mouth.
"Based on these figures, MarketWatch reported Bezos donated just .5 percent of his net worth last year - a quarter of the 2 percent the average American donates each year."
I'm not looking at percent of net worth. Most of the time that is not the "money" that we are talking about here and would not be subject to the utility and use being discussed. For example, the vast majority of Bezos' worth is tied up stock. Also, not every billionaire is the same. Some may not be giving much, but there are many who have pledged to give away the majority of their fortunes.
"Also, why should money be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, does that make them more qualified to decide how it's spent compared to society/government?"
I've made no claims or mention on this topic.
"Well-publicized philanthropy also conveniently distracts attention from how several of these billionaires are endangering their workers and, by extension, the public."
Again, not part of my discussion. However, I will say that I find this to be untrue when you see articles coming out discussing this very thing (ie your quote).
"Oligarchies aren’t the same as democracies."
Again, off topic. I agree that they are different. I even agree with the implied part about living in an oligarchy. However, that oligarchy in my opinion is more based on if someone is in the ruling class with special privileges and the power to ignore laws when they want (politicians, judges, cops, DAs, etc) than being a billionaire (although money can help influence).
>Most of the time that is not the "money" that we are talking about here and would not be subject to the utility and use being discussed. For example, the vast majority of Bezos' worth is tied up stock.
It could be subject to the same utility if we taxed it, that's what I was getting at. Wealthy people aren't using money that society could put to great use.
>Also, not every billionaire is the same. Some may not be giving much, but there are many who have pledged to give away the majority of their fortunes.
Why settle for "some" when we could tax all of them?
Again, this whole 'tax the rich' bent you are on is off-topic. In fact, it seems you are not understanding utility in this context of marginal utility.
"It could be subject to the same utility if we taxed it, that's what I was getting at."
"Wealthy people aren't using money that society could put to great use."
Then you could say that the average person's 401k isn't being used either. But investments are a use of money that do contribute to society in providing capital to businesses and individuals. Gains on those investments are also taxable.
There are plenty of things we could do, but that's not really what we are discussing here.
>Then you could say that the average person's 401k isn't being used either.
But the average person has much more marginal utility for their amount of wealth. Going by the average 401k balances here (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/01061...), the marginal utility of dollars $38,401, $160,001, etc is much greater than even millions of dollars at Bezos and Gates level wealth. What else am I missing about utility in this context?
>Gains on those investments are also taxable.
At a much lower rate than income, further cementing the advantages of the ultra-wealthy.
> Also, why should money be concentrated in the hands of the ultra-wealthy, does their wealth make them more qualified to decide how it's spent compared to society/government?
This is why Bill Gates is still a monster to me. The amount of damage he did through Microsoft over the decades (both corrupting culture so everyone is tied to using MS Windows and the people MSFT economically wiped out) cannot be measured. His after-the-fact giving does not make up for it.
Eh. Part of the reason is that living in the US is just plain expensive.
According to statistics on average American household budget, 16% goes to housing. 14% goes to transportation.[1]
So you can say that 30% of your consumption goes directly to land use, because cars need infrastructure and because we refuse high density housing and increased barrier for new housing supply.
Taxes, which is 12%, actually comes a distant second.
Also, with 75K, sounds like you would have ample amount to invest.
$75k household income with kids is a pittance in pretty much all areas of the US that have seen economic growth in the past few decades. Most people are simply skipping saving/investing sufficient funds for their old age/emergencies (a few million by 65, but I would say you need decent portion by 50 since likelihood of being unable to work starts going up a lot).
Unlikely. Educated, empowered women with access to family planning facilities have less children if they have any children at all. Birth rates in developed countries with more robust social safety nets and less inequality have total fertility rates below that of the US.
> Educated, empowered women with access to family planning facilities have less children if they have any children at all
This has nothing to do with wealth inequality. This does have to do with optimizing for wealth accumulation. Possibly something to do with Quality of Life, wherein children used to improve it comparatively, while now they are more of a risk proposition. For people in poverty, they are a (subsidized) source of income, which is unfortunate.
What's interesting though as that households with over $200,000 in income have the lowest birthrate of all. The highest birthrates are in households with very low income. In essence, for every dollar of household income you have, your birthrate decreases.
I suspect birthrate’s biggest factor is women’s financial independence and access to cheap and convenient birth control such as IUDs and birth control pills.
Birthrates are plummeting even for low income households, and I would bet it has something to do with Affordable Care Act of 2010 greatly increasing access to birth control by making it free. From the women I have spoken to, it is almost a no brainer to get an IUD.
Up until a few decades ago, women did not have a nearly foolproof way of preventing pregnancy while still being able to have dec. As well as having the power (financial independence) to say no to anyone pressuring them into getting pregnant. So now, the fertility rate will more accurately reflect a woman’s desire to get pregnant (at a certain age, at a certain income/wealth, given a certain set of possible partners, given a certain number of other children they already have, in a certain culture/time).
The caveats in the parenthesis are almost unnecessary though, since we are seeing declines in birthrate across all incomes/wealth levels around the world. I think we will see very, very few women choosing to have more than 3 kids, or even 3 kids. I actually only know of 1 couple with 3 kids, everyone else has 0, 1, or 2, and I am in mid 30s.
There is a crossover point somewhere on the income/QoL scale where children go from utility to liability.
It's incredible recently, and still only in some countries, where children are in the liability area. By and large for all human history, children where a utility. More or less free labor to help support the family.
I suspect high income >200k/yr households are also highly correlated to high CoL locations. If you live in an SF 1 bedroom that costs 1.5 million dollars the marginal cost of an additional child is likely to be over a million dollars in the first 10 years of life. A family with exactly 200k/yr is at the entry point for financially achieving what would have traditionally been viewed as a middle class financial situation in the US e.g. owning a home, funding a retirement, taking regular vacations, paying for children's college etc. Even 1 child in a high CoL location can jeopardize these goals.
A relevant number would be the difference between income and the marginal cost per child.
What's interesting is birth rates say otherwise. The wealthier you are the lower your birthrate. People that can certainly afford to have many children are not where as very low income people are having many. I think it's something more than people feeling like they can't afford it.
Birth rates for lower incomes are plummeting too, so I think it is mostly lack of access to birth control like IUDs and pills, but also lack of women’s financial independence.
"Also, with 75K, sounds like you would have ample amount to invest."
Depends on location and if you have a family. $75k for a single person in an average area will provide a fair amount to invest. $75k for a family of four in most suburbs is going to be tight. In either case, the value available to invest is substantially less that high net worth individuals and will limit many investment opportunities (private equity, accredited investor status, and likely not making enough to take advantage of mega backdoor Roth).
With housing, cause and effect probably runs the other way. It’s seen as a good investment and soaks up monstrous amounts of capital, and for that machine to work and Calpers to pay pensions, housing prices must always go up.
That page is not exactly neutral though: it includes FICA (not completely unreasonable, though maybe uncommon) and includes FICA in Household Income (who knows their income with FICA included?).
Blue collar worker in non-income tax state that doesn't own property and has 2-3 kids is probably going to be around 12-15% overall. That's a pretty small subset of the country, 2-3 states or so. If you use the same book of tricks (i.e. ignore a myriad of local taxes and taxes collected on goods sold) that people around here typically use when trying to make certain high tax states look not too out of line with the national average then huge swaths of the south and midwest would be included.
>If you use the same book of tricks (i.e. ignore a myriad of local taxes and taxes collected on goods sold) that people around here typically use when trying to make certain high tax states look not too out of line with the national average
It really irks me when people do that. They also conveniently leave out items such as the average cost of electricity or gas prices.
Some of those have other taxes that are high to make up for it hence why I said the number where the all things considered tax burden is down at 12ish percent is probably low single digits.
Median household income in the US is $80k/yr. If you live in say Houston or Orlando a married couple will pay $6,230 in federal income tax + $6,120 in FICA for a total of $12,350 in taxes or 15.4%. If they have children, they will pay less.
A lower middle-class couple with similar circumstances making $50k will pay 12.9% in taxes.
No, its not, its about $65K. Though Google’s Knowledge Graph pulls a snippet about the structurally higher median family income if you search for median household income.
income tax rates in the US are pretty low, especially compared to the rest of the world. Even if your income crosses into a high bracket, you only pay the higher rate for anything above the threshold, so your effective rate is much lower often. the In addition to various benefits and other programs to help families. There is ton of assistance and other programs.
== So you can say that 30% of your consumption goes directly to land use, because cars need infrastructure and because we refuse high density housing and increased barrier for new housing supply.==
Aren’t the most dense and transit friendly places also the most expensive (SF, NYC, etc.)?
> Eh. Part of the reason is that living in the US is just plain expensive.
This is backwards. The point of the article and the GP is to explain why it's expensive. Reason seems to be low rates -> assets inflate. Naturally those assets tend to be in the hands of older/wealthier people.
I'm not sure I agree with this. "Interest rates" in terms of savings rates are typically below inflation. The wealthy guy and the middle class guy are not going to do well keeping their money in a savings account. Both have to find better ways to allocate their money and take on a little risk. Whether that is investing in a business, stocks, real estate, whatever is a better option at that time.
Low interest rates actually give middle class guy more opportunity because it becomes cheaper to borrow. You can use leverage to increase your position. The most common form of this is a mortgage, but there are many other ways to utilize debt properly as well.
I'm far from an economics expert, pretty novice actually. So I am probably wrong. But as a guy who came from a lower middle class household and has utilized debt & investments to change that significantly I feel like low interest rates have been a huge part of that.
It really is hard to say whether it is better or worse for the "middle class guy." Sure, it makes debt more accessible and also makes debt faster to wipe out due to inflation, but low interest rates typically increase asset prices (everything else being equal, which it usually isn't) and assets are primarily owned by the wealthy.
> Low interest rates actually give middle class guy more opportunity because it becomes cheaper to borrow. You can use leverage to increase your position. The most common form of this is a mortgage, but there are many other ways to utilize debt properly as well.
It is the same for everyone else, hence assets get more expensive. It washes out, unless you make riskier and riskier bets to stay ahead of the curve. Some will win, but most will lose.
But for the poor, a 2x in cost of milk isn’t as burdensome when there’s a 1.2x in hourly wage. Plus, the cost of borrowing to buy that new car went down. Even though I hate this current inflation in ALL non-cash assets, it’s been generally positive for the poor, in the short-term, anyway.
Is it really though? As relative demand for consumption falls there is less demand for labor. Wages stagnate and fall while income concentrates further. Most poor people wish most for a path out of poverty, but what we've seen is that the paths out have become less successful and more expensive e.g. College.
How is a doubling in prices offset by a 20% increase in wages? And has there every been a time when high inflation was offset by and even higher increase in wages? Wages never keep up and inflation always hurts the poor. A rich person couldn't care less if milk's price doubles. They'll drink just as much milk. A poor person who's banking on that yearly bonus/bump in pay to pay for all the next year's inflating milk, is going to have to do without some milk.
If it's only the cost of milk that has doubled, I agree that a 20% hourly wage increase will cover it. It's a different story if the overall cost-of-living outpaces wages.
The wealthy may not keep their money in savings accounts (they dont) but I think the GP's argument still stands -- because most other products pay a spread above the base rate. If savings rates are low, so are all riskier rates above. As an example, Triple A corporates generally pay a mostly-consistent spread above the risk free rate. Triple B pay a mostly-consistent spread above that. And so on.
I'm far from an economics expert, pretty novice actually. So I am probably wrong. But as a guy who came from a lower middle class household and has utilized debt & investments to change that significantly I feel like low interest rates have been a huge part of that.
a combination of cheap mortgages, surging home price, surging stock prices, and high-paying professional jobs. You see this all over Reddit on popular Fire subs of ppl in their 20s and 30s with substantial wealth thanks to those four factors.
For people with good incomes and and hence an opportunity to borrow and invest, the past decade has been amazing.
I think it's not a bad analysis, but entirely absent from your story is the Central Bank and I really don't think that can be absent from discussions of rates.
By far the biggest supplier of credit are banks, not private individuals - and their supply is effectively dictated by the Fed.
The Fed is reactive. The Fed doesn't set interest rates, the market does. I believe this is one of the biggest misconceptions about our central bank. Yes, the Fed plays an obvious role, more to do with printing money for whatever the issue-of-the-day is, but the market is far more powerful than the Fed when it comes to interest rates. If the Fed raised rates 500bps tomorrow, over time, interest rates would still settle back at 0%, and all the Fed would've done is created complete dysfunction.
> The Fed doesn't set interest rates, the market does.
The Fed sets interest rate targets, and the intervenes, maasively if necessary, in the market to acheive them.
> If the Fed raised rates 500bps tomorrow, over time, interest rates would still settle back at 0%
The only reason rates are near zero is that the Fed has set its rate target near zero and intervened massively in the market to attain that target. If the Fed raised its rate target and kept it higher, rates would rise and stay higher. When the Fed target, was higher (most of the Fed’s history), interest rates remained higher.
The Fed doesn't set its targets based on what it thinks the market would do without intervention, but based on what it thinks needs to happen to achieve its balance of employment and price stability objectives.
> Central banks are reactive.
You bracket your post, beginning and end with it, but you don't seem to understand that all it means is that Central Bank action goals respond to observed conditions. You act as if it means the Central Bank is impotent to affect conditions, and in particular interest rates, which is clearly false.
The Feds have some scope to nudge the interest rate, but they cannot massively change it against the market. The persistent low rates of the past 2 decades are mostly market driven, because there's been a lack of growth.
The feds try to nudge lower the rates past the "natural" rate (a rate as if they weren't there), but the trend of the rates being down isn't determined by the Feds.
I guess I disagree with this guy's characterization - unless the point he is making is that the Fed has to operate within the constraints of what makes sense given the market or otherwise the market fails.
> Fed has to operate within the constraints of what makes sense
that's an implicit assumption all rational economists would have. It's like saying the US could just be holding the entire world hostage by threatening to nuke the entire world.
The blogpost you linked is basically confirming that the feds don't have unlimited room for controlling interest rates. they can merely nudge it a bit here and there, and hope for the best.
I like the analogy of the bus driver through the Alps.
But they can only set the Fed Funds Rate at a rate that is lower than the 30y Treasury rate. Any higher and we get a yield curve inversion and a recession[0]. And as the GP says, the destabilizing effect of that recession only pushes rates down until we reach 0%.
So as the 30YT falls, the Fed can do nothing but allow it to fall further.
> But they can only set the Fed Funds Rate at a rate that is lower than the 30y Treasury rate.
Wrong. They can set the Fed fund rate target anywhere they want. The same interventions that move the rate the target addresses toward the target also normally move other rates, including various Treasury rates, in the same direction, which is why Fed action on the Ged funds target is usually discussed as action on interest rates, not just the single rate the target nominally applies to.
> Any higher and we get a yield curve inversion and a recession[0].
Yield curve inversions (in any of the Treasury rates, not just the 30-year) are typically viewed as potential recession signals because they reflect an abnormal decoupling of usually-linked behavior representing broad insecurity with the investment opportunities in private markets. They are not viewed as causing recessions, and thus the 30 year Treasury rate is not a constraint on Fed funds targets.
They can set the Fed fund rate anywhere they want... if they are willing to accept the consequences of doing so.
Anywhere they set the Fed fund rate, there will be consequences, of one kind or another. The Fed is trying for the lest-bad set of consequences, and therefore their possible policy is severely constrained.
> They can set the Fed fund rate anywhere they want... if they are willing to accept the consequences of doing so
Sure, the “consequences of doing so” is how they choose where they want to set them.
The upthread suggestion that the 30yr Treasury rate puts an effective cap on target rates because a yield inversion will cause a recession (and, implicitly, Treasury rates are unresponsive to the policies that are used to achieve the Fed funds target) remains false and based on mistaking a symptom with a cause of recessions.
It's not so much that central banks are reactive as that central banks can't set interest rates and the inflation rate simultaneously. In other words, central banks can set nominal interest rates, but real rates (i.e. nominal rates adjusted for inflation) are ultimately set by the market.
Targeting low inflation is price stability and assuming every single central bank targets the same inflation target then you implicitly target a specific exchange rate (with some fluctuations). If you set the interest rate arbitrarily people flee the currency and break the implicit peg which can manifest itself as inflation.
The Fed has effectively complete control over nominal rates, your mental model for the economy is incorrect.
I am unsure why you think that 0% is the natural rate for rates (I'm assuming you mean real as the alternative misunderstanding is even worse). People prefer to have money now rather than money later.
He just means that raising interest rates will lead to less debt growth and therefore decrease inflation which then lowers the natural interest rates downwards where it will then get stuck at 0% because negative interest rates can't be implemented on cash.
According to the Friedman Rule 0% interest is an ideal interest rate assuming no inflation or deflation. However, what ideal really means in practice and whether we can actually have no inflation is still unknown.
Not sure how high interest rates mean better return from investment. I mean look at the chart from last two decades or so. If by investment you you mean giving money to the bank so the bank can loan it to other people then obviously the investment will be paid by people who need loans which is, you know, not exactly good for lower/middle class.
I for one think near zero interest rates are optimal. As o long as we can ensure there isn't too much irresponsible lending. Liquidity is very important and ensuring people who can make use of the money have easy access to it is very important.
I believe technology is the primary culprit. Think of something like WhatsApp, which Facebook bought for about $20 billion and would be worth who-knows-how-much today. I think WhatsApp had like 70 employees, a couple founders, only took a small amount of capital, and yet created $20 billion of value in a company in just a few years. Go back a couple decades when technology couldn't scale like it can today, what would it take to create a $20 billion company? How many years, how many employees, how many suppliers, how many customers, how much capital, etc etc. Instead, it was like three guys who each made $7 billion or whatever. This word "scale" is really just code for concentration, as in, a company can grow without having to spread the wealth around, it can instead accumulate to a relatively small group of highly intelligent and creative people. Technology enables that top echelon of people to keep more for themselves.
So, I would say technology in a general sense is really what's driving wealth concentration. The long-term persistency of declining rates and increasing wealth concentration tell us it has to be structural, and I'm not sure what else can explain it. But, people are often uncomfortable with this, because it's not fixable. High taxes don't fix it over time, because we can keep replaying that game over and over again and the smartest will just keep winning and amassing a disproportionate share of the wealth created.
I can see the logic of this statement, and it is in line with a lot of economic thinking... but I disagree with the jist.
First, the "price of money," is not set by markets if by "price of money" we mean interest rates. Interest rates are set by a central bank, which is a monopoly. IE, only the ECB can make euros. Only the Fed can make dollars. Exchange rates are set by the market, but the interest rate is a decision made in a boardroom. Money is not a commodity, like other commodities. It's price (interest rates) is not determined by supply and demand. It's determined by monopoly price setting.
Pegged currencies work the opposite way. CBs set the exchange rate, but they can't control interest rates. You could make the argument that the "price of money" is represented by exchange rates in the former, interest rates in the latter. But semantics aside, I think it's important to start with a recognition that CBs set interest rates as they see fit in most major currency markets today. Fed interest rates are not market determined.
This is also (a not unrelated) thing that has changed since 1980. There was also a shift from pegged and semi-pegged currencies to floating exchange rates.
Second, interest rates are not the actual return on savings in most cases. Most "savings" are in assets. Pension portfolios, private wealth funds, real estate, etc. These are the returns that "justify forgoing consumption," not interest rates. Returns on such investments have been high in recent years. CB interest rates translate relatively directly into the cost of borrowing, and the cost of repaying old debts. Interest rates do not determine the return on savings.
Third, and this is where Thomas Picketty makes his controversial points... there is not much give in the "money now vs money later" market. For the most part, ordinary people spend their income. Wealthy people save/invest their money. When wages rise, the volume or price of goods may rise. When investment returns rise, the value of assets rise and inequality is increased. Regardless of profits, losses, taxes or such, Bezos' lifestyle will not change. Only the value of his assets will change. At the extreme end, poor people spend all their money and have no assets. Rich people save all their money and have negligible spending.
The fact that market returns, the real "savings rate" have been high has not, on average, encouraged middle class guy to save more.
That said, if you aren't already, you may interested in Hayek. His most famous work is all about interest rates as prices, and choosing between money now and money later. I disagree, at least in regards to 2021, but he was a clear writer and worth looking up.
> Exchange rates are set by the market, but the interest rate is a decision made in a boardroom
Only partly. One of the points the author makes is that central bank interest rates, while conceptually set arbitrarily "in a boardroom", are constrained to a narrow range by market realities, and attempts by "the boardroom" to set interest rates outside this range result in various forms of economic dysfunction that central banks try hard to avoid.
> Returns on such investments have been high in recent years. CB interest rates translate relatively directly into the cost of borrowing, and the cost of repaying old debts. Interest rates do not determine the return on savings.
Yes and no. We've been in a bull market for so long that people such as yourself have begun to think of investments as simply savings with high yield. You're neglecting to account for risk. CB interest rates set the risk-free savings rate. Of course you can get higher returns by taking more risk, and for most people, taking a bit of risk is the right thing to do.
I realize this is controversial, and many economists still disagree. I do think that wind is blowing in my direction though.
IMO, this is Monetarism's big mistake. Now that floating exchange rates are the norm, this becomes more clear. Interest rates are not constrained to a narrow range by market realities. CBs can set them to 0%, as we now see. They could set them to 1000% if they chose, since CBs can print arbitrary sums to pay interest.
Interest rates have consequences in the economy, but not restrictions. Those exist in a pegged currency world, not in floating exchange world. If depositors don't want to own CB bonds, they can redeem them for dollars/euros. The CB will always have dollars/euros available to make good on that.
>First, the "price of money," is not set by markets if by "price of money" we mean interest rates. Interest rates are set by a central bank, which is a monopoly. ... It's determined by monopoly price setting.
The alternative is free banking and it is unlikely to work with a shared currency. Each bank would need to issue its own currency.
> Interest rates do not determine the return on savings.
Technically a high interest rate competes with investments for capital. It means someone is borrowing money at high interest and wants you to make enough room in the economy for that investment. The interest isn't the return, it's the compensation for the inconvenience of delaying spending. If the interest rate is higher than what solvent borrowers would pay then the interest rate on bank accounts directly competes with investments for capital. An investor getting 5% on a bank account will not spend the money on an investment that returns 4%. The absurdity of this choice is that if there are no borrowers at 5% interest no investments will actually be made. The investor is creating a hole in the economy for no reason.
If one person is making 75k they aren't middle class. 75k might not go very far with kids but in that case their spouse would also likely be working so the household income would be significantly higher than that.
Edit: To be clear, the actual definition of middle class income is much lower as well:
> That puts the base salary to be in the middle class just shy of $46,000.
I'm guessing I am getting voted down because a lot of people here think it's difficult to live on 75k, but the reality is that a huge percentage of americans are living on even less, so the difficulty of getting by with kids on 75k doesn't really affect whether an individual making 75k is considered middle class or not.
Yeah, it's easy to underestimate just how little money most Americans make when you're in your 'bubble'. Something like only 30% of Americans have a college degree. the other 70% are likely going to be in that sub-45k bracket.
I don't think it matters if $75k is middle class or not. It's definitely not ultra rich, as was the other example person in the original comment, so the argument still applies.
Middle class is kind of an arbitrary term though. I think working class describes things much more clearly (I work for an employer for a living). And there are plenty of working class people making $75k a year.
Question - which guy with $100million - the one with it all in cash, or the one who owns a company that is “worth” $100million ? Those are two very different people.
No, it's the same. He created $100 million for himself that might have otherwise be spread out amongst employees, suppliers, investors, etc, who would've used their "share" of the $100 million for consumption and savings, with higher marginal costs of saving. Whether it's cash or equity is irrelevant because money is fungible...he's just skipping the step of converting it to cash and saving/reinvesting it.
>The Great Depression didn’t really end until wartime mobilization caused a surge in incomes and production that wiped out old debts, leveled the wealth distribution, and gave people confidence in the future. The end of the war also kicked off a baby boom after a long drought of births.
a) The author is going to catch some flak for being so bold as to suggest that federal government policy wasn't what dug the US economy out of the great depression.
b) If intentionally crafted policy changes designed to fix the problem were ineffective the first time why should we have reason to believe that we have any other option than to wait it out and let some yet unforeseen situational change change things?
I also give these statements (the first sentence) flak because the logical conclusion would be that to get out of a depression one should start a war or perhaps just pay everyone to dig ditches. The reality of war is quite the opposite: it is a huge expenditure that makes the parties net poorer. The victor only gets richer if they get to steal more wealth from the looser than the war cost them, which was not the case of WW2.
I agree that war is a neg negative but the flatting effect on the economy is well studied. If you've got inequality so bad that it's causing serious problems you can still wind up being net positive after a war (or any other net negative event that flattens things out) several years out because the flattening broke the economy out of the feedback loops that were causing problems.
Based on my casual observation it has (almost) nothing to do with the policies and (almost) everything to do with the effect on the economy of a total war.
What wars do is break monopoly power. If the rich own all the land, money, patents you can take it from them.
Inflation doesn't create prosperity through an increase in the supply of money, it increases prosperity by breaking the monopoly power of money. During deflation you create $10 of value (assuming perfect price stability) but since the value of the dollar has risen you only get paid $5. When you add more dollars into the economy the monopoly power is shrinking, you get paid the whole $10 again.
Negative interest rates break the monopoly power of money by charging a holding fee for excessive patience.
Land value taxes break the monopoly power of land.
Democracy breaks the monopoly power on ruling the nation.
What we basically need is a slow decline in power, year by year instead of an instantaneous decline of power in a war or revolution.
>> The victor only gets richer if they get to steal more wealth from the looser than the war cost them, which was not the case of WW2.
It isnt quite that simple. Sometimes it is "stealing" from the future and paying to people now. One example would be recent wars where we took from the future (national debt) and gave to people now (war expenditure.)
Another example is "stealing" from the country and re-distributing to select people in the country. An example, again, would be recent wars where we took from the country (national debt; opex) and re-distributed to select people in the country (defense industry; their payroll).
The above two, combined with war reparations (even if net-negative reparations) can equal an overall positive to some parties.
Finally, post-war, the regime for the opposing country can be such that they favor trade with the US (e.g., using Halliburton to build their new oil infra; using Bechtel to build their new civil infra) -- again, the money flows back to the US, albiet in an uneven and sectioned waterfall
>It isnt quite that simple. Sometimes it is "stealing" from the future and paying to people now. One example would be recent wars where we took from the future (national debt) and gave to people now (war expenditure.)
It's actually the opposite. Debt is about giving later and taking now.
When you take on debt to pay for a war, the damage is not done to future generations, it's done to the present. 20 years of war in Afghanistan are the price we paid. We could have done something else with the money, that is what we lost. The debt itself is not the problem, because it also created the money that is necessary to pay it back. Some of the dollars in your wallet are backed by the debt taken on for the sake of the Afghanistan war.
In general you're correct though the US was probably a special case during WW2.
The US benefited enormously from being the only industrial power to end the war with no significant loss of territory or industrial capacity. Casualties were also relatively light with only 0.32% of the population dying due to the war.
During the war making use of women and other groups that normally wouldn't have been working would have also offset some of the production losses incurred by sending young men off to fight.
Well, the more obvious answer would be to just have negative interest rates. Karl Marx proposed seizing the means of production, why not just make its owners pay for their excessive patience?
The problem with a depression is that everyone holds onto money hoping for fictional security in the ability to indebt someone else rather than being the one in debt.
I hate this trope. What were the effective tax rates paid? The high nominal rates were trivially easy to circumvent so the rates people actually paid weren't all that historically anomalous. When you start talking about overall tax burden (sales taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, etc) the 1950s look like a libertarian's wet dream.
Effective tax rates on the top 1% were around 43%, falling around 32% in the mid 2000's. Last data point on this source was about 37%.
Meanwhile the growth of real income held by the top earners has dramatically risen since the 1980s vs. the other classes.
With these two facts in mind, one would assume that a modern day spectrum of income inequality on 1950s taxation policy would see an effective rate MUCH higher than what they experienced, which was still generally noticeably higher than what is experienced today. A couple percentage points makes a big difference.
Wealth isn't (just) stored-up income. At least, if you're going to make this equivalence, also limit your picture of wealth inequality to the subset of wealth which is stored-up income.
My sense is that the vast majority of the wealth inequality picture is driven by returns.
To your second point, you might consider that economists have learned a few things since the great depression, just as technologists have learned a few things since 1939.
How do you get to Mao though? You can't have land reform at the behest of a strong centralized government without a strong centralized government. It takes a lot of shooting to get from here to there and the end result isn't guaranteed. Once you have instability things could go any which way. You could get Mao, you could get Hitler, or you could get the Balkans.
Doesn’t take a clairvoyant to realize that given our current political trajectory, the 2030s are gonna be wild. The right has been armed for years and the left just bought millions of guns over the last year.
It's going to be more difficult to actually use the guns though, as there's been an import ban on Russian ammo, which is a huge chunk of the ammo market that's already being squeezed. At this rate only the wealthy will be able to afford to arm themselves/revolt.
The import ban is going to be less impactful than the Biden administration likely hoped. Russian firearms imports were already banned, and ammo prices haven’t risen significantly for non-Russian calibers since the ban was announced; all it did was cut out the cheap steel at the bottom of the market (which, unless it’s an AK pattern gun, is exclusively practice ammo anyway because it’s not very reliable or accurate).
The most likely scenario is that the cheap steel ammo just gets made in former combloc countries instead and imported to the US from Serbia or Czech Republic. Ammunition is also a global market, so that cheap Russian ammo will get dumped somewhere, and wherever that happens will then export more to the US to meet the demand.
The monetary system has turned modern capitalism into some kind of social lottery system which has nothing to do with value creation and everything to do with social scheming (playing politics) and dumb luck.
It's all about gaining preferential access to a limited number of opportunities and then locking opponents out - The monetary system actively helps capital holders to build moats around their businesses by ensuring that they and their business partners get preferential and disproportionate access to newly printed credit - This creates asymmetric playing fields which are anti-competitive by design.
Cantillon effects mean that the further an entity is from the source of new money, the more scarce money is going to be for them.
The lack of consistency when it comes to our perceptions about something as fundamental as the scarcity of money is the root of many of our modern problems.
People who have access to easy money tend to spend money more easily and in larger amounts and they also tend to produce less. On the other hand, people who don't have access to easy money have to work much harder and produce much more value to get enough money to get by in a world where all the prices are determined by those who earn the easy money.
>The monetary system has turned modern capitalism into some kind of social lottery system which has nothing to do with value creation and everything to do with social scheming (playing politics) and dumb luck.
You have described literally any scarce monetary system that is suffering from a lack of money. When there is a lack of money in the economy people try to get closer and closer to the source of fresh money because the old money has become inaccessible. There simply is nothing that forces money to circulate in the economy. If money was circulating we could do away with the deflation/inflation nonsense.
>The monetary system actively helps capital holders to build moats around their businesses by ensuring that they and their business partners get preferential and disproportionate access to newly printed credit
What I believe is that banks are simply ignoring small businesses for some inexplicable reason. If banks don't lend to the small guy then he has no choice other than to beg the government to do something meaning welfare or stimulus checks.
>Cantillon effects mean that the further an entity is from the source of new money, the more scarce money is going to be for them.
The reason why the distance to new money matters is that the distance to old money is growing or infinite. Money doesn't circulate. Government spending circulates money but it has always been considered a hack. Keynesian gold digging is a thought experiment trying to show that even doing the dumbest thing you can imagine is still better than doing nothing.
I personally do not care about government spending funded through debt that much because a tax less system with deficit spending wouldn't have any compounding problem and if done properly wouldn't cause significant inflation. The effect of income taxation is much higher. A -> B -> C -> D. Income and sales taxes compound. Money that reaches D has been taxed more heavily than money that reaches A who gets paid by the government. If you get paid millions by the government it is entirely possible that your effective tax burden vs other citizens is 0 despite paying huge income taxes because the taxes you paid are immediately used to pay you again.
This is an interesting perspective and I suspect that this is how most central bankers think about it. But the way I see it, the old money was hard-earned money, it's good money so it should be difficult to earn it.
This problem cannot be solved by artificially creating an alternative source of (easy) money (which is what the reserve banks did). By creating this stream of easy money, central banks allowed reckless, unqualified speculators to amass capital; this capital then gave these unqualified, reckless people the right to decide the trajectory of the economy and our lives. Because of this, nowadays, fools and crazy people are running the show.
The sad thing is that even if you have an amazing business, you still cannot compete with those unskilled fools who earn easy money because they can always beat you on price. These fools will call this advantage 'economies of scale' and they will try to imply that it's related to production efficiency as a result of scale... but in reality, it has nothing to do with production efficiency or scale and has a lot to do with them having access to larger quantities of easy money due to their proximity to the money printers. 'Scale' is the effect of receiving a lot of money, not the cause.
There is a similar inversion of cause and effect when it comes to selfishness and economic efficiency (E.g. Ayn Rand philosophy). Many people see a correlation and mistakenly believe that selfishness is the root of economic efficiency. In reality, an efficient system which produces surpluses will naturally make room for selfish, unproductive people to come in and absorb the surpluses. Altruists are the ones who produce surpluses, selfish people merely capture them.
This to me is a nice distraction from the fact that since 2008 most western governments have bought an insane amount of bonds from banks, including their own government bonds, with printed money, creating artificial demand for the very products that set the lowest risk interest rates.
The japanese government even bought stocks with printed money.
This has pushed interest rates down at a massive scale. There is nothing like a normal market on interest rates on money. It's all controlled by governments.
Of course this also had the other effect of pumping money into many people close to governments, typically bankers, who instead of going to prison from the 2008 crises, now got rich themselves but also pushed up stock prices to make other rich people richer (Tim cook would never have earned $750m from high apple stock prices without QE from government). This might have the secondary order effect of what the blog post is saying, but it's still caused by government printing money.
I am not convinced the theories in that article are correct.
One example: "The ultra-rich need no encouragement to refrain from buying goods and services, so any increase in income concentration should put downward pressure on interest rates. Another way to look at it is that an increase in income concentration boosts the demand for financial assets, which should push up prices and push down yields."
Why should income inequality do that? What matters would be people's spending power, which is not necessarily correlated with income inequality - everybody could get richer, only some people could get a lot more richer, and it would still be income inequality.
Also not sure how he calculates growth and demand. He argues there is less need to invest into the future because there are fewer young people. But don't older people have even more needs than younger people (their maintenance is more expensive, they need accessible housing, cars to drive them around and so on)?
In my country (Germany) apparently they expect the demand for housing to rise, even though they expect fewer people, because they think people will live in increasingly smaller households (so more households with fewer people per household).
Good point. Another issue is how many people outside the US have gotten disposable income over the last 50 years. Those people all can now invest some of their income, creating massive demand for investments.
Like what robinhood did, but at a much larger scale.
Which isn't anything to do with income inequality, in fact it's about how many many people have gotten richer in the world recently.
Income inequality is not the problem. Indeed everyone's purchasing power was way lower in the past and still people saved money. People save less money now, and that's one of the problems. Saving money does
mean making the sacrifice of not spending it today, perhaps not even in the future. The other problem is called Central Banks. Central Banks need and force low interests, but then gov. debt is not attractive anymore (except for banks, which buy them with money freshly printed by the FED) and people chase higher returns in the general market. So investors end up fishing in equities, creating a bubble. The problem is that companies that consume a lot of physical resources, like Tesla, are pumped... while companies that dig those resources from the ground are not. In the end this increases scarcity and raw materials become
more costly. This ends up driving prices up across the whole economy, it's inflation. Created by Central Banks. But of course when it happens many people will blame the free market.
The deposit insurance programs shields you from risk in the market. 2008 introduced a lot of risk that wasn't passed on. So the reason why there is a shift toward taking on personal risk is that the moral hazard in the banking system introduced too much of it to the point that it requires negative rates.
yes, I don't think folks appreciate how many people have made fortunes very recently. When Forbes first made their billionaire list in 1987, the counted 140 around the world.
Today, there are 228 billionaires around the world with fortunes greater than $10 billion, and 1299 worth at least $2.4 billion, which is the current value of $1 billion 1987 dollars.
Most of this is due to the explosion of capital markets, lower interest rates, and a huge part of the global economy freeing up. It's not because they made a bunch of other people worse off.
Kids don't generally own houses, and at one time they made up a sizeable portion of the German population.
You can have a "shrinking" population, but still a growing adult population - and you would expect more demand for housing (and smaller household size) from this alone.
German birthrates have been steadily declining for a long time. Declining birth rates and immigration (mostly to make up for that) probably plays as big a role on demand as family formation.
A nice gateway article to remind you all of crypto. I know HN despises all things crypto, but it is an exit ramp from all the BS of central banks. The fed seems fine on allowing quantitative easing for the next few years. In my opinion the net result of quantitative easing is to lower the real wages of labor, which means more net work will need to be done. This will make the wealthy (capital owners) more wealthy and make the workers (labor owners) poorer. I've taken the crypto off ramp from the central bank's power. You can too.
A nice gateway article to remind you all of crypto.
lol Why would anyone need to be be reminded. it is in the news constantly. People talk about it constantly.
but it is an exit ramp from all the BS of central banks.
Compare the performance of Bitcoin vs. S&P 500 over the past few years. Stocks have much smoother returns and are a much more effective hedge against inflation. Crypto too volatile, poor returns. BTC fell in half in 2021. stocks make new highs everyday.
How does crypto help against property owners charging extortionate sums for housing?
If I have more crypto the property owner will just charge me in crypto and all the gains I have made advantaged me vs non crypto people but if everyone followed this strategy you would not be better or worse off when it comes to buying a house.
Everyone would be spending their crypto gains on housing and make it even more expensive.
99% of people who hate the central bank hate it because it gives property owners more pricing power i.e. "the central bank made housing more expensive". Just think about the news articles "crypto made housing more expensive" if everyone did it.
The question is, who cares about interest rates? People invest in stocks. And return on stocks in the last 20-30 years wasn't worse than historical average, and considering very low inflation in this period, it was quite a bit above average. And certainly the uber rich don't keep money on savings accounts - it's too risky (almost all money would be above FDIC threshold) and they can easily afford volatility of stock market as their planning horizon is near infinite - longer than human lifetime, and at that horizon, stocks are a lot more stable than bank deposits.
"People invest in stocks"... Do you have any numbers on that? In my circles hardly anyone has stocks, some people with money to spare of with a financial background. In general people don't buy stocks, in my opinion.
How do they save for retirement then? Certainly you can't do it with any fixed interest instruments - they are all below inflation or about at inflation at best.
Total value of U.S. stock market is $95T+$46T for bond market, of housing, $33T and commercial real estate, $17T. That reflects the breakdown of "where people invest".
Because bonds make no sense by themselves and are only needed for rebalancing of stocks, 74% of investment goes into 'stock market'.
Hmm, in the Netherlands we have pension funds and the AOW (general elderly law) both provide people with income. In general, if you have a job, you are saving for you pension. And the pension funds? They invest ;)
> who cares about interest rates? People invest in stocks
The return on equities is coupled to rates. When rates are low, ceteris paribus, the earnings yield on stocks will be low. Put another way, lower rates drive higher P/E ratios; higher P/E ratios, ceteris paribus, tend to predict lower future returns.
You need to examine how stocks return though. Because interest rates are so low today the dividend yield of the S&P500 is about 1.28%. Since the late 70's in particular it has been a steady march down as interest rates have declined over that same time.
So to your point yes the "return" has been similar in the last 20, 30 years as historical averages but it's coming from asset price inflation rather than income streams. That's an important and notable difference. Investors are willing to bid up the price of stocks to get any kind of return (since the returns of bonds have fallen so much) creating more asset bubbles and volatility. Additionally, what if we can't really take interest rates lower at some point? Yields on the S&P500 will be nearly tiny and asset prices won't be able to climb further as there's nothing left to harvest.
I'll grant it's not as simple as I make it out here - companies have employed strategies to buy back stock rather than pay dividends since it's logically a better thing to do in terms of taxes.
FWIW, stocks are sort of a bit player in the financial markets. Bonds are king and the main player overall and as their yields have fallen this has been good for businesses in many ways (cheap money to take risks with) but it also means that really risky bonds are not yielding much for the level of risk they are associated with.
Dividends don't matter.
If anything it makes sense to look at profits or better yet profits before investments in future profitable projects. With that in mind it's still 3-4% at least on average for S&P500 companies.
Yes profitability is the bigger picture - companies can choose to distribute that as a dividend, stock buyback, or reinvest. My point being that stocks as a form of income (the entire point of an investment) has all but vanished and the yield has been driven down because of interest rate drops. Investors are willing to pay more and more for stocks because of this - where else can you get yield?
One only has to look at P/E ratios since 1980 to see this, meaning that companies aren't simply earning more and doing something else with it. Their stock simply costs more as a percentage of their earnings and less of that is being distributed, relying nearly entirely on appreciation alone to hit their 8% average yearly return. And they've been appreciating more quickly than GDP for quite awhile - not every company is growing earnings 8%/year nor can they.
> With that in mind it's still 3-4% at least on average for S&P500 companies
The current yield is 1.28%, down from 1.58% a year ago. The last time it was 3% was in 2008 (for a few months) and that was only because stock prices fell through the floor driving yields up for a few months.
The last time the index yielded at 3% or more consistently was 1991 with yields being around 4% for much of the 1980's.
I don't think it's possible to really raise rates at all maybe ever again and I think the evidence of this is the last 40 years. They ebb and flow but they trend down and continue to. If the trend reversed the entire system would collapse at this point with mortgages being destroyed, stocks falling rapidly in price as higher yields are demanded, and anyone holding a bond left with a bag. For this reason I believe we either see rates to continue to fall or stabilize around 0 and pretty much sit there as growth in terms of yield and appreciation more or less stagnate but with assets so inflated they are out of reach of most people while yielding below inflation which is the only driver of "appreciation" but not in real dollars.
What do you mean by "index yield"? Average p/e ratio is 35 from what I am googling so that's 3% right there. As there is not much incentives to make profit (better to invest, buy other companies etc.) It should be higher than 3%.
If you mean dividend yield then it's a completely meaningless metric for obvious reasons. The only thing dividends matter for is assessing growth potential and how well the company is run (inverse correlation with both).
I think it's completely crazy to expect returns of 7-8% as they historically were. My view is that equities were criminally undervalued for decades, they are still undervalued but at least more reasonably priced now. It will take a while. I think it will a better world if you can't just get 7% or 5% or w/e almost risk free return. Once the returns are closer to 0 there will be incentive to deploy capital to create value which will be better for most, especially for the working class.
If you were to hold an S&P500 ETF, the dividend yield you'd receive each year.
Yes, the P/E is 35 today but historically it has been 15. It tends to find a correction back to 15 eventually. However, this is the average since the late 1800's and of course things are different today. I think if you look at the last 40 years, P/E has been a bit higher than 15 on average.
> I think it's completely crazy to expect returns of 7-8% as they historically were. My view is that equities were criminally undervalued for decades, they are still undervalued but at least more reasonably priced now. It will take a while. I think it will a better world if you can't just get 7% or 5% or w/e almost risk free return. Once the returns are closer to 0 there will be incentive to deploy capital to create value which will be better for most, especially for the working class.
That's an interesting way to look at it and I can't say I disagree. It is interesting how the purpose of equities has changed. For many years it was the idea that you wanted to create an income source. But over the last 100 years it has changed to expecting appreciation.
I think my main disagreement is I think a world with higher interest rates and therefore lower asset prices is a more stable place. But I see your point of view. But with no returns, why would anyone invest in a company? Why would anyone loan money or buy equity if there were no expectations of a return and yet the risk of bankruptcy still existed? Why would a stock appreciate in value if it would return nothing? I mean, the only reason a stock raises in value is because it is assumed that their profits will eventually be paid out at a percentage of the calculated risk.
I think that a lot of issues for America could be solved by a loosening of immigration policy. In a nutshell, we need more young people. We aren't making enough here, so let's import them.
Adding enough young people via immigration solves the issue in the article. In addition, they will pay for our Medicare and Social Security.
I agree with your assessment and reasoning. Unfortunately, a large portion of the public, who are disproportionately powerful because of the structure of state and federal governments, are against immigration. Remember the "crisis" of migrant caravans?
Not sure why you've been downvoted, Trump's main distinguishing policy areas were immigration and trade. He played heavily into the "they're stealing our jobs" motif which has been extremely common in US history, going back to immigration waves of the 1800's.
I think that the article underestimates a second aspect of the ww2 mobilization, excess and even baseline global productive capacity was either usurped for wartime production or outright destroyed through warfare.
by the end of the war, Europe and Asia had been almost entirely leveled. The combination of Fascism, Communism, and war had also destroyed many of the ultra wealthies fortunes if they hadn't been outright killed.
Meanwhile, while the US government paid for conversion of auto-factories into wartime aircraft and tank factories - it didn't pay to restore productive capacity to peacetime purposes.
While the author highlights that the current debt cycle is unstable economically - I think they underestimate the risk that it is also unstable politically.
This is why there is such a huge mindest difference between baby boomers and millenials. The boomers grew up in an environment where every single helping hand was useful. Millenials grew up in an environment where they have to compete to get anywhere. It wouldn't surprise me if this is fueling ageism because old people simply can't handle the unreasonable level of competition.
>New research suggests that ... the drop in interest rates has been caused by changes in population structure and by shifts in the distribution of income.... In most economies, baseline interest rates are “set” by central banks.
No need for quotes here. People at central banks literally set the baseline interest rate. There's not much evidence for attributing this straightforward bureaucratic process to vague trends in population and income.
>Central banks can impose any level of (local currency) borrowing costs on the economy that they want, which is why some say that “interest rates are a policy variable.” But central banks generally avoid exercising that power arbitrarily—and for good reason.
Wow bankers have reasons? It seems like this article is not just assuming market efficiency but also banker efficiency. Neither is a good assumption.
>the trends in inequality that have retarded growth and have pushed down interest rates were choices that can be changed.
This is a radical claim about cause and effect for which there is almost no empirical evidence. AKA pseudo-science.
Central banks create inequality by artifically lowering interest rates house prices has increased due to lowering cost of mortages. Lower mortage price means higher asset prices. Higher house prices makes it hard for younger generations to buy an appartment.
Secondly central banks try and keep inflation around 2% by lowering interest rate will drive wage inflation. Except that central banks cannot control prices and wage inflation by locally controlling interest rate in a globalized economy. So the fundamental system control principle of central banks are broken.
>Central banks create inequality by artifically lowering interest rates house prices has increased due to lowering cost of mortages.
Why is it the central bank's fault that property sellers are ripping you off? You can take that mortgage and use it to buy a cheaper house somewhere else. The central bank didn't make houses more expensive, people with monopoly pricing power simply take more out of your wallet.
You're arguing either in bad faith or completely devoid of reality. Lower mortgage rates allow existing property owners to pay off cheap houses and further expand portfolios, affecting supply. Meanwhile, zero property owners need to amass increasingly large deposit/downpayment as banks limit lending to a salary multiplier. This is really basic stuff.
Since then, we’ve endured a great reversal in the trends underlying the postwar prosperity, capped off by a global financial crisis that bore many similarities to the Depression. In fact, even though the 2007-10 downturn was shallower, the subsequent recovery was so much weaker that the net effect is that GDP per American grew less in 2007-2019 than in 1929-1940.
This is not a surprise at all and not indicative of the economy being weak. A bigger decline will lead a more abrupt recovery. US GDP surged 40% over the past decade. Compare that to most countries and the US has done quite well Also, inflation was much higher too.
Monetary and fiscal policies to force growth and high employment is wrong, and causes all sorts of problems, like inequality and climate destruction. Free markets (collective free will of people) optimize for efficiency, not growth.
That's why were still using oil instead of nuclear. That's why we're still working instead of automating the necessities. Free energy & free food would result in infinite deflation, zero GDP, and total unemployment which is opposite of what current policies are aimed at. Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.
Interesting article. The arguments re inequality seem to lead to an inevitable need for Universal Basic Income (or whatever else you want to call it) as a smaller group of people continue to generate the vast majority of income and control an even larger percentage of wealth.
Combine the impacts that increasing income and wealth inequality have with the discussions of the impact due to investment in greater automation - reduction in labor and more returns to owners of capital - and it appears inevitable that we will need to ensure a safety net covers everyone.
It seems to me that some countries will figure this out before others. There will be a global race to become the destination country for those with the income and wealth.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 212 ms ] threadThink about two people, one extremely wealthy, one middle class. The middle class guy making $75k probably has to spend all his money for consumption: food, rent, car, etc. There's little left over for saving or investing. In order for that guy to justify forgoing consumption and instead saving it, he requires a high interest rate, otherwise it's not worth it. But what about the guy worth $100 million? He can't spend it all on consumption, so he has to save a lot of it. Ah, but what's his opportunity cost? Zero. He has no choice, and the money he'll earn from interest won't even get spent anyway. So, two people, two very different marginal costs.
The world is just one giant pool of capital. Over the last four decades, as capital has shifted from being more evenly spread out amongst people with high marginal costs to a smaller group of people with marginal costs of zero, interest rates keep falling...the majority of capital now resides amongst people who can't spend it all and are happy to earn any real rate of return.
Thats true assuming the same scope, like living expenses. It gets a little more nuanced if the person changes the activities in scope. If you're giving billions away in a philanthropic organization that you run (ie Gates), then you've found new utility for that money. So in some ways it has more possible uses, but less pressure to actually use it. But I think your implied point of limited choices for people with lower income/capital is still valid.
I'm simply stating that money does not have fewer uses as one gets more of it. Usually the person's scope changes to include new uses that were not previously possible. The important thing to note is that utility is being used in mixed definition here. Strictly speaking it's definition is happiness or satisfaction. The part about having less use doesn't necessarily match this.
Heck, this exact fact is the very reason why Bill Gates engages in philanthropy. He realizes that other people need the money more than he does.
"Money also has diminishing marginal utility, so as you accumulate more of it, at some point it has less use."
The additional money does not have less use. It's just not going to add as much to quality of life or dictate "life and death". There are still many uses for it, so of which may not be possible with lower amounts.
Yes, $10 buys the same Mcdonald's lunch regardless of how much money one has, but two people, one with $0 and one with $1bn in net worth will be excited about that lunch to very different degrees.
This thread in response to this, to point out that the use of money is not the same as the marginal utility.
"Money also has diminishing marginal utility, so as you accumulate more of it, at some point it has less use."
The additional money does not have less use. It's just not going to add as much to quality of life. There are still many uses for it.
You seem to be interpreting utility in terms of the quantity of things the money can be used for or in terms of the societal benefit that can be obtained from the money, it is not entirely clear.
This thread is in response to this, to point out that the use of money is not the same as the marginal utility. Its mot like having a bunch of money makes it less useful or have fewer uses.
Yes, but as I said above, in this case having use is defined relative to promoting your own satisfaction as a consumer.
I think you are trying to tease apart "utility" vs "use", but to have utility is the property of having use. It's a question of what the utility/use is in reference to, and for economists, that utility is in reference to preference satisfaction by the consumers.
In other words: if the diminishing utility axiom were true we could start redistributing now, but one would predict the money owners would be against it.
It's proof by contradiction - everyone knows money is political power.
If something has diminishing *marginal* utility if doesn't follow that a third party has a right to seize it(property rights, different/tangential topic). Therefore this:
> It's proof by contradiction - everyone knows money is political power.
Is an inconsequential conclusion.
I think, the idea that getting rich does not create a lot of additional joy from diminishing utility is one the best fairy tales ever invented.
It's diminishing marginal utility. Every single comment I've gotten disputing this either misinterprets the word "marginal" or the word "utility", I encourage all of y'all to take an economics course.
Edit: granted, there are a lot of observable situations that do indeed show diminishing marginal utility, but I think the concept is often too much taken at face value when actual data or analysis is scarce and the marginal utility might behave in a more complex way
That said, the empirical evidence is pretty overwhelming in favor of diminishing marginal utility of money, in addition to the fact that it just makes sense. Actual data on this phenomena is not actual as scarce as you seem to be suggesting.
I personally have found that there were times when the marginal utility of my additional wealth was growing as I could suddenly do things I could not do before... (while it other times it almost felt like 0)
Billionaires give away far less of their money compared to the average person:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/ceo-says-billionaires-...
>Based on these figures, MarketWatch reported Bezos donated just .5 percent of his net worth last year - a quarter of the 2 percent the average American donates each year.
Also, why should money be concentrated in the hands of the ultra-wealthy, does their wealth make them more qualified to decide how it's spent compared to society/government?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/12/americ...
>First off, the amounts involved are tiny relative to the fortunes behind them. Bezos’s $100m, for example, amounts to about 11 days of his income.
>Well-publicized philanthropy also conveniently distracts attention from how several of these billionaires are endangering their workers and, by extension, the public.
>And why should we believe that Gates or any other billionaire’s “boldness” necessarily reflects society’s values and needs? Oligarchies aren’t the same as democracies.
"Based on these figures, MarketWatch reported Bezos donated just .5 percent of his net worth last year - a quarter of the 2 percent the average American donates each year."
I'm not looking at percent of net worth. Most of the time that is not the "money" that we are talking about here and would not be subject to the utility and use being discussed. For example, the vast majority of Bezos' worth is tied up stock. Also, not every billionaire is the same. Some may not be giving much, but there are many who have pledged to give away the majority of their fortunes.
"Also, why should money be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, does that make them more qualified to decide how it's spent compared to society/government?"
I've made no claims or mention on this topic.
"Well-publicized philanthropy also conveniently distracts attention from how several of these billionaires are endangering their workers and, by extension, the public."
Again, not part of my discussion. However, I will say that I find this to be untrue when you see articles coming out discussing this very thing (ie your quote).
"Oligarchies aren’t the same as democracies."
Again, off topic. I agree that they are different. I even agree with the implied part about living in an oligarchy. However, that oligarchy in my opinion is more based on if someone is in the ruling class with special privileges and the power to ignore laws when they want (politicians, judges, cops, DAs, etc) than being a billionaire (although money can help influence).
It could be subject to the same utility if we taxed it, that's what I was getting at. Wealthy people aren't using money that society could put to great use.
>Also, not every billionaire is the same. Some may not be giving much, but there are many who have pledged to give away the majority of their fortunes.
Why settle for "some" when we could tax all of them?
"It could be subject to the same utility if we taxed it, that's what I was getting at."
"Wealthy people aren't using money that society could put to great use."
Then you could say that the average person's 401k isn't being used either. But investments are a use of money that do contribute to society in providing capital to businesses and individuals. Gains on those investments are also taxable.
There are plenty of things we could do, but that's not really what we are discussing here.
But the average person has much more marginal utility for their amount of wealth. Going by the average 401k balances here (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/01061...), the marginal utility of dollars $38,401, $160,001, etc is much greater than even millions of dollars at Bezos and Gates level wealth. What else am I missing about utility in this context?
>Gains on those investments are also taxable.
At a much lower rate than income, further cementing the advantages of the ultra-wealthy.
Not while it's invested and locked away in a 401k, according to your comment about it not being used (presumably consumption based):
"Wealthy people aren't using money that society could put to great use." Emphasis mine
"What else am I missing about utility in this context?"
This thread was in response to someone claiming money has less use when you have more of it, which isn't really what marginal utility is about.
"At a much lower rate than income, further cementing the advantages of the ultra-wealthy."
Ok... we aren't really discussing rewriting the tax code.
This is why Bill Gates is still a monster to me. The amount of damage he did through Microsoft over the decades (both corrupting culture so everyone is tied to using MS Windows and the people MSFT economically wiped out) cannot be measured. His after-the-fact giving does not make up for it.
According to statistics on average American household budget, 16% goes to housing. 14% goes to transportation.[1]
So you can say that 30% of your consumption goes directly to land use, because cars need infrastructure and because we refuse high density housing and increased barrier for new housing supply.
Taxes, which is 12%, actually comes a distant second.
Also, with 75K, sounds like you would have ample amount to invest.
1. https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-household-budget
https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-...
> Educated, empowered women with access to family planning facilities have less children if they have any children at all
This has nothing to do with wealth inequality. This does have to do with optimizing for wealth accumulation. Possibly something to do with Quality of Life, wherein children used to improve it comparatively, while now they are more of a risk proposition. For people in poverty, they are a (subsidized) source of income, which is unfortunate.
Birthrates are plummeting even for low income households, and I would bet it has something to do with Affordable Care Act of 2010 greatly increasing access to birth control by making it free. From the women I have spoken to, it is almost a no brainer to get an IUD.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/562541/birth-rate-by-pov...
I think societies are about the find out the real price of having babies now that they are not simply a byproduct of sex or women not having power.
Can you expand on that, I'm not sure I follow?
The caveats in the parenthesis are almost unnecessary though, since we are seeing declines in birthrate across all incomes/wealth levels around the world. I think we will see very, very few women choosing to have more than 3 kids, or even 3 kids. I actually only know of 1 couple with 3 kids, everyone else has 0, 1, or 2, and I am in mid 30s.
It's incredible recently, and still only in some countries, where children are in the liability area. By and large for all human history, children where a utility. More or less free labor to help support the family.
A relevant number would be the difference between income and the marginal cost per child.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/562541/birth-rate-by-pov...
Depends on location and if you have a family. $75k for a single person in an average area will provide a fair amount to invest. $75k for a family of four in most suburbs is going to be tight. In either case, the value available to invest is substantially less that high net worth individuals and will limit many investment opportunities (private equity, accredited investor status, and likely not making enough to take advantage of mega backdoor Roth).
Of course this doesn't cover property tax, sales tax, etc.
This is a handy calculator to calculate effective tax rates:
https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes
It really irks me when people do that. They also conveniently leave out items such as the average cost of electricity or gas prices.
A lower middle-class couple with similar circumstances making $50k will pay 12.9% in taxes.
No, its not, its about $65K. Though Google’s Knowledge Graph pulls a snippet about the structurally higher median family income if you search for median household income.
My brother mentioned he was paying around 10% as a single person with a $50k income a few years back.
Aren’t the most dense and transit friendly places also the most expensive (SF, NYC, etc.)?
Trains are very cost effective method of transportation, but it doesn't mean squat if fare is high and demand is overwhelming.
This is backwards. The point of the article and the GP is to explain why it's expensive. Reason seems to be low rates -> assets inflate. Naturally those assets tend to be in the hands of older/wealthier people.
Low interest rates actually give middle class guy more opportunity because it becomes cheaper to borrow. You can use leverage to increase your position. The most common form of this is a mortgage, but there are many other ways to utilize debt properly as well.
I'm far from an economics expert, pretty novice actually. So I am probably wrong. But as a guy who came from a lower middle class household and has utilized debt & investments to change that significantly I feel like low interest rates have been a huge part of that.
It is the same for everyone else, hence assets get more expensive. It washes out, unless you make riskier and riskier bets to stay ahead of the curve. Some will win, but most will lose.
a combination of cheap mortgages, surging home price, surging stock prices, and high-paying professional jobs. You see this all over Reddit on popular Fire subs of ppl in their 20s and 30s with substantial wealth thanks to those four factors.
For people with good incomes and and hence an opportunity to borrow and invest, the past decade has been amazing.
By far the biggest supplier of credit are banks, not private individuals - and their supply is effectively dictated by the Fed.
Central banks are reactive.
The Fed sets interest rate targets, and the intervenes, maasively if necessary, in the market to acheive them.
> If the Fed raised rates 500bps tomorrow, over time, interest rates would still settle back at 0%
The only reason rates are near zero is that the Fed has set its rate target near zero and intervened massively in the market to attain that target. If the Fed raised its rate target and kept it higher, rates would rise and stay higher. When the Fed target, was higher (most of the Fed’s history), interest rates remained higher.
The Fed doesn't set its targets based on what it thinks the market would do without intervention, but based on what it thinks needs to happen to achieve its balance of employment and price stability objectives.
> Central banks are reactive.
You bracket your post, beginning and end with it, but you don't seem to understand that all it means is that Central Bank action goals respond to observed conditions. You act as if it means the Central Bank is impotent to affect conditions, and in particular interest rates, which is clearly false.
The Feds have some scope to nudge the interest rate, but they cannot massively change it against the market. The persistent low rates of the past 2 decades are mostly market driven, because there's been a lack of growth.
The feds try to nudge lower the rates past the "natural" rate (a rate as if they weren't there), but the trend of the rates being down isn't determined by the Feds.
The feds have the ability to influence rates a bit, but not set them directly as they wish.
This blog post summarizes my opinion https://www.themoneyillusion.com/monetary-policy-and-interes...
that's an implicit assumption all rational economists would have. It's like saying the US could just be holding the entire world hostage by threatening to nuke the entire world.
The blogpost you linked is basically confirming that the feds don't have unlimited room for controlling interest rates. they can merely nudge it a bit here and there, and hope for the best.
I like the analogy of the bus driver through the Alps.
So as the 30YT falls, the Fed can do nothing but allow it to fall further.
[0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ENDs
Wrong. They can set the Fed fund rate target anywhere they want. The same interventions that move the rate the target addresses toward the target also normally move other rates, including various Treasury rates, in the same direction, which is why Fed action on the Ged funds target is usually discussed as action on interest rates, not just the single rate the target nominally applies to.
> Any higher and we get a yield curve inversion and a recession[0].
Yield curve inversions (in any of the Treasury rates, not just the 30-year) are typically viewed as potential recession signals because they reflect an abnormal decoupling of usually-linked behavior representing broad insecurity with the investment opportunities in private markets. They are not viewed as causing recessions, and thus the 30 year Treasury rate is not a constraint on Fed funds targets.
Anywhere they set the Fed fund rate, there will be consequences, of one kind or another. The Fed is trying for the lest-bad set of consequences, and therefore their possible policy is severely constrained.
Should the Fed set interest rates arbitrarily? No, but that was not what was being discussed.
Sure, the “consequences of doing so” is how they choose where they want to set them.
The upthread suggestion that the 30yr Treasury rate puts an effective cap on target rates because a yield inversion will cause a recession (and, implicitly, Treasury rates are unresponsive to the policies that are used to achieve the Fed funds target) remains false and based on mistaking a symptom with a cause of recessions.
Targeting low inflation is price stability and assuming every single central bank targets the same inflation target then you implicitly target a specific exchange rate (with some fluctuations). If you set the interest rate arbitrarily people flee the currency and break the implicit peg which can manifest itself as inflation.
I am unsure why you think that 0% is the natural rate for rates (I'm assuming you mean real as the alternative misunderstanding is even worse). People prefer to have money now rather than money later.
According to the Friedman Rule 0% interest is an ideal interest rate assuming no inflation or deflation. However, what ideal really means in practice and whether we can actually have no inflation is still unknown.
I for one think near zero interest rates are optimal. As o long as we can ensure there isn't too much irresponsible lending. Liquidity is very important and ensuring people who can make use of the money have easy access to it is very important.
I believe technology is the primary culprit. Think of something like WhatsApp, which Facebook bought for about $20 billion and would be worth who-knows-how-much today. I think WhatsApp had like 70 employees, a couple founders, only took a small amount of capital, and yet created $20 billion of value in a company in just a few years. Go back a couple decades when technology couldn't scale like it can today, what would it take to create a $20 billion company? How many years, how many employees, how many suppliers, how many customers, how much capital, etc etc. Instead, it was like three guys who each made $7 billion or whatever. This word "scale" is really just code for concentration, as in, a company can grow without having to spread the wealth around, it can instead accumulate to a relatively small group of highly intelligent and creative people. Technology enables that top echelon of people to keep more for themselves.
So, I would say technology in a general sense is really what's driving wealth concentration. The long-term persistency of declining rates and increasing wealth concentration tell us it has to be structural, and I'm not sure what else can explain it. But, people are often uncomfortable with this, because it's not fixable. High taxes don't fix it over time, because we can keep replaying that game over and over again and the smartest will just keep winning and amassing a disproportionate share of the wealth created.
First, the "price of money," is not set by markets if by "price of money" we mean interest rates. Interest rates are set by a central bank, which is a monopoly. IE, only the ECB can make euros. Only the Fed can make dollars. Exchange rates are set by the market, but the interest rate is a decision made in a boardroom. Money is not a commodity, like other commodities. It's price (interest rates) is not determined by supply and demand. It's determined by monopoly price setting.
Pegged currencies work the opposite way. CBs set the exchange rate, but they can't control interest rates. You could make the argument that the "price of money" is represented by exchange rates in the former, interest rates in the latter. But semantics aside, I think it's important to start with a recognition that CBs set interest rates as they see fit in most major currency markets today. Fed interest rates are not market determined.
This is also (a not unrelated) thing that has changed since 1980. There was also a shift from pegged and semi-pegged currencies to floating exchange rates.
Second, interest rates are not the actual return on savings in most cases. Most "savings" are in assets. Pension portfolios, private wealth funds, real estate, etc. These are the returns that "justify forgoing consumption," not interest rates. Returns on such investments have been high in recent years. CB interest rates translate relatively directly into the cost of borrowing, and the cost of repaying old debts. Interest rates do not determine the return on savings.
Third, and this is where Thomas Picketty makes his controversial points... there is not much give in the "money now vs money later" market. For the most part, ordinary people spend their income. Wealthy people save/invest their money. When wages rise, the volume or price of goods may rise. When investment returns rise, the value of assets rise and inequality is increased. Regardless of profits, losses, taxes or such, Bezos' lifestyle will not change. Only the value of his assets will change. At the extreme end, poor people spend all their money and have no assets. Rich people save all their money and have negligible spending.
The fact that market returns, the real "savings rate" have been high has not, on average, encouraged middle class guy to save more.
That said, if you aren't already, you may interested in Hayek. His most famous work is all about interest rates as prices, and choosing between money now and money later. I disagree, at least in regards to 2021, but he was a clear writer and worth looking up.
Only partly. One of the points the author makes is that central bank interest rates, while conceptually set arbitrarily "in a boardroom", are constrained to a narrow range by market realities, and attempts by "the boardroom" to set interest rates outside this range result in various forms of economic dysfunction that central banks try hard to avoid.
> Returns on such investments have been high in recent years. CB interest rates translate relatively directly into the cost of borrowing, and the cost of repaying old debts. Interest rates do not determine the return on savings.
Yes and no. We've been in a bull market for so long that people such as yourself have begun to think of investments as simply savings with high yield. You're neglecting to account for risk. CB interest rates set the risk-free savings rate. Of course you can get higher returns by taking more risk, and for most people, taking a bit of risk is the right thing to do.
I realize this is controversial, and many economists still disagree. I do think that wind is blowing in my direction though.
IMO, this is Monetarism's big mistake. Now that floating exchange rates are the norm, this becomes more clear. Interest rates are not constrained to a narrow range by market realities. CBs can set them to 0%, as we now see. They could set them to 1000% if they chose, since CBs can print arbitrary sums to pay interest.
Interest rates have consequences in the economy, but not restrictions. Those exist in a pegged currency world, not in floating exchange world. If depositors don't want to own CB bonds, they can redeem them for dollars/euros. The CB will always have dollars/euros available to make good on that.
The alternative is free banking and it is unlikely to work with a shared currency. Each bank would need to issue its own currency.
> Interest rates do not determine the return on savings.
Technically a high interest rate competes with investments for capital. It means someone is borrowing money at high interest and wants you to make enough room in the economy for that investment. The interest isn't the return, it's the compensation for the inconvenience of delaying spending. If the interest rate is higher than what solvent borrowers would pay then the interest rate on bank accounts directly competes with investments for capital. An investor getting 5% on a bank account will not spend the money on an investment that returns 4%. The absurdity of this choice is that if there are no borrowers at 5% interest no investments will actually be made. The investor is creating a hole in the economy for no reason.
If one person is making 75k they aren't middle class. 75k might not go very far with kids but in that case their spouse would also likely be working so the household income would be significantly higher than that.
Edit: To be clear, the actual definition of middle class income is much lower as well:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/21/middle-class-calculator.html
> That puts the base salary to be in the middle class just shy of $46,000.
I'm guessing I am getting voted down because a lot of people here think it's difficult to live on 75k, but the reality is that a huge percentage of americans are living on even less, so the difficulty of getting by with kids on 75k doesn't really affect whether an individual making 75k is considered middle class or not.
Middle class is kind of an arbitrary term though. I think working class describes things much more clearly (I work for an employer for a living). And there are plenty of working class people making $75k a year.
Question - which guy with $100million - the one with it all in cash, or the one who owns a company that is “worth” $100million ? Those are two very different people.
a) The author is going to catch some flak for being so bold as to suggest that federal government policy wasn't what dug the US economy out of the great depression.
b) If intentionally crafted policy changes designed to fix the problem were ineffective the first time why should we have reason to believe that we have any other option than to wait it out and let some yet unforeseen situational change change things?
Inflation doesn't create prosperity through an increase in the supply of money, it increases prosperity by breaking the monopoly power of money. During deflation you create $10 of value (assuming perfect price stability) but since the value of the dollar has risen you only get paid $5. When you add more dollars into the economy the monopoly power is shrinking, you get paid the whole $10 again.
Negative interest rates break the monopoly power of money by charging a holding fee for excessive patience.
Land value taxes break the monopoly power of land.
Democracy breaks the monopoly power on ruling the nation.
What we basically need is a slow decline in power, year by year instead of an instantaneous decline of power in a war or revolution.
It isnt quite that simple. Sometimes it is "stealing" from the future and paying to people now. One example would be recent wars where we took from the future (national debt) and gave to people now (war expenditure.)
Another example is "stealing" from the country and re-distributing to select people in the country. An example, again, would be recent wars where we took from the country (national debt; opex) and re-distributed to select people in the country (defense industry; their payroll).
The above two, combined with war reparations (even if net-negative reparations) can equal an overall positive to some parties.
Finally, post-war, the regime for the opposing country can be such that they favor trade with the US (e.g., using Halliburton to build their new oil infra; using Bechtel to build their new civil infra) -- again, the money flows back to the US, albiet in an uneven and sectioned waterfall
It's actually the opposite. Debt is about giving later and taking now.
When you take on debt to pay for a war, the damage is not done to future generations, it's done to the present. 20 years of war in Afghanistan are the price we paid. We could have done something else with the money, that is what we lost. The debt itself is not the problem, because it also created the money that is necessary to pay it back. Some of the dollars in your wallet are backed by the debt taken on for the sake of the Afghanistan war.
The US benefited enormously from being the only industrial power to end the war with no significant loss of territory or industrial capacity. Casualties were also relatively light with only 0.32% of the population dying due to the war.
During the war making use of women and other groups that normally wouldn't have been working would have also offset some of the production losses incurred by sending young men off to fight.
This seems mostly an effect of other countries being destroyed (some by the US) rather than the US economy actually benefiting from war mobilization.
The problem with a depression is that everyone holds onto money hoping for fictional security in the ability to indebt someone else rather than being the one in debt.
Meanwhile the growth of real income held by the top earners has dramatically risen since the 1980s vs. the other classes.
With these two facts in mind, one would assume that a modern day spectrum of income inequality on 1950s taxation policy would see an effective rate MUCH higher than what they experienced, which was still generally noticeably higher than what is experienced today. A couple percentage points makes a big difference.
https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/
https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide...
My sense is that the vast majority of the wealth inequality picture is driven by returns.
https://www.state.gov/fact-sheet-united-states-imposes-addit...
The most likely scenario is that the cheap steel ammo just gets made in former combloc countries instead and imported to the US from Serbia or Czech Republic. Ammunition is also a global market, so that cheap Russian ammo will get dumped somewhere, and wherever that happens will then export more to the US to meet the demand.
Cantillon effects mean that the further an entity is from the source of new money, the more scarce money is going to be for them. The lack of consistency when it comes to our perceptions about something as fundamental as the scarcity of money is the root of many of our modern problems.
People who have access to easy money tend to spend money more easily and in larger amounts and they also tend to produce less. On the other hand, people who don't have access to easy money have to work much harder and produce much more value to get enough money to get by in a world where all the prices are determined by those who earn the easy money.
You have described literally any scarce monetary system that is suffering from a lack of money. When there is a lack of money in the economy people try to get closer and closer to the source of fresh money because the old money has become inaccessible. There simply is nothing that forces money to circulate in the economy. If money was circulating we could do away with the deflation/inflation nonsense.
>The monetary system actively helps capital holders to build moats around their businesses by ensuring that they and their business partners get preferential and disproportionate access to newly printed credit
What I believe is that banks are simply ignoring small businesses for some inexplicable reason. If banks don't lend to the small guy then he has no choice other than to beg the government to do something meaning welfare or stimulus checks.
>Cantillon effects mean that the further an entity is from the source of new money, the more scarce money is going to be for them.
The reason why the distance to new money matters is that the distance to old money is growing or infinite. Money doesn't circulate. Government spending circulates money but it has always been considered a hack. Keynesian gold digging is a thought experiment trying to show that even doing the dumbest thing you can imagine is still better than doing nothing.
I personally do not care about government spending funded through debt that much because a tax less system with deficit spending wouldn't have any compounding problem and if done properly wouldn't cause significant inflation. The effect of income taxation is much higher. A -> B -> C -> D. Income and sales taxes compound. Money that reaches D has been taxed more heavily than money that reaches A who gets paid by the government. If you get paid millions by the government it is entirely possible that your effective tax burden vs other citizens is 0 despite paying huge income taxes because the taxes you paid are immediately used to pay you again.
This problem cannot be solved by artificially creating an alternative source of (easy) money (which is what the reserve banks did). By creating this stream of easy money, central banks allowed reckless, unqualified speculators to amass capital; this capital then gave these unqualified, reckless people the right to decide the trajectory of the economy and our lives. Because of this, nowadays, fools and crazy people are running the show.
The sad thing is that even if you have an amazing business, you still cannot compete with those unskilled fools who earn easy money because they can always beat you on price. These fools will call this advantage 'economies of scale' and they will try to imply that it's related to production efficiency as a result of scale... but in reality, it has nothing to do with production efficiency or scale and has a lot to do with them having access to larger quantities of easy money due to their proximity to the money printers. 'Scale' is the effect of receiving a lot of money, not the cause.
There is a similar inversion of cause and effect when it comes to selfishness and economic efficiency (E.g. Ayn Rand philosophy). Many people see a correlation and mistakenly believe that selfishness is the root of economic efficiency. In reality, an efficient system which produces surpluses will naturally make room for selfish, unproductive people to come in and absorb the surpluses. Altruists are the ones who produce surpluses, selfish people merely capture them.
The japanese government even bought stocks with printed money.
This has pushed interest rates down at a massive scale. There is nothing like a normal market on interest rates on money. It's all controlled by governments.
Of course this also had the other effect of pumping money into many people close to governments, typically bankers, who instead of going to prison from the 2008 crises, now got rich themselves but also pushed up stock prices to make other rich people richer (Tim cook would never have earned $750m from high apple stock prices without QE from government). This might have the secondary order effect of what the blog post is saying, but it's still caused by government printing money.
One example: "The ultra-rich need no encouragement to refrain from buying goods and services, so any increase in income concentration should put downward pressure on interest rates. Another way to look at it is that an increase in income concentration boosts the demand for financial assets, which should push up prices and push down yields."
Why should income inequality do that? What matters would be people's spending power, which is not necessarily correlated with income inequality - everybody could get richer, only some people could get a lot more richer, and it would still be income inequality.
Also not sure how he calculates growth and demand. He argues there is less need to invest into the future because there are fewer young people. But don't older people have even more needs than younger people (their maintenance is more expensive, they need accessible housing, cars to drive them around and so on)?
In my country (Germany) apparently they expect the demand for housing to rise, even though they expect fewer people, because they think people will live in increasingly smaller households (so more households with fewer people per household).
Just some random examples.
Like what robinhood did, but at a much larger scale.
Which isn't anything to do with income inequality, in fact it's about how many many people have gotten richer in the world recently.
Today, there are 228 billionaires around the world with fortunes greater than $10 billion, and 1299 worth at least $2.4 billion, which is the current value of $1 billion 1987 dollars.
Most of this is due to the explosion of capital markets, lower interest rates, and a huge part of the global economy freeing up. It's not because they made a bunch of other people worse off.
You can have a "shrinking" population, but still a growing adult population - and you would expect more demand for housing (and smaller household size) from this alone.
German birthrates have been steadily declining for a long time. Declining birth rates and immigration (mostly to make up for that) probably plays as big a role on demand as family formation.
lol Why would anyone need to be be reminded. it is in the news constantly. People talk about it constantly.
but it is an exit ramp from all the BS of central banks.
Compare the performance of Bitcoin vs. S&P 500 over the past few years. Stocks have much smoother returns and are a much more effective hedge against inflation. Crypto too volatile, poor returns. BTC fell in half in 2021. stocks make new highs everyday.
If I have more crypto the property owner will just charge me in crypto and all the gains I have made advantaged me vs non crypto people but if everyone followed this strategy you would not be better or worse off when it comes to buying a house.
Everyone would be spending their crypto gains on housing and make it even more expensive.
99% of people who hate the central bank hate it because it gives property owners more pricing power i.e. "the central bank made housing more expensive". Just think about the news articles "crypto made housing more expensive" if everyone did it.
Total value of U.S. stock market is $95T+$46T for bond market, of housing, $33T and commercial real estate, $17T. That reflects the breakdown of "where people invest".
Because bonds make no sense by themselves and are only needed for rebalancing of stocks, 74% of investment goes into 'stock market'.
This is borderline "Let them eat cake"...
The return on equities is coupled to rates. When rates are low, ceteris paribus, the earnings yield on stocks will be low. Put another way, lower rates drive higher P/E ratios; higher P/E ratios, ceteris paribus, tend to predict lower future returns.
So to your point yes the "return" has been similar in the last 20, 30 years as historical averages but it's coming from asset price inflation rather than income streams. That's an important and notable difference. Investors are willing to bid up the price of stocks to get any kind of return (since the returns of bonds have fallen so much) creating more asset bubbles and volatility. Additionally, what if we can't really take interest rates lower at some point? Yields on the S&P500 will be nearly tiny and asset prices won't be able to climb further as there's nothing left to harvest.
I'll grant it's not as simple as I make it out here - companies have employed strategies to buy back stock rather than pay dividends since it's logically a better thing to do in terms of taxes.
FWIW, stocks are sort of a bit player in the financial markets. Bonds are king and the main player overall and as their yields have fallen this has been good for businesses in many ways (cheap money to take risks with) but it also means that really risky bonds are not yielding much for the level of risk they are associated with.
One only has to look at P/E ratios since 1980 to see this, meaning that companies aren't simply earning more and doing something else with it. Their stock simply costs more as a percentage of their earnings and less of that is being distributed, relying nearly entirely on appreciation alone to hit their 8% average yearly return. And they've been appreciating more quickly than GDP for quite awhile - not every company is growing earnings 8%/year nor can they.
> With that in mind it's still 3-4% at least on average for S&P500 companies
The current yield is 1.28%, down from 1.58% a year ago. The last time it was 3% was in 2008 (for a few months) and that was only because stock prices fell through the floor driving yields up for a few months.
The last time the index yielded at 3% or more consistently was 1991 with yields being around 4% for much of the 1980's.
I don't think it's possible to really raise rates at all maybe ever again and I think the evidence of this is the last 40 years. They ebb and flow but they trend down and continue to. If the trend reversed the entire system would collapse at this point with mortgages being destroyed, stocks falling rapidly in price as higher yields are demanded, and anyone holding a bond left with a bag. For this reason I believe we either see rates to continue to fall or stabilize around 0 and pretty much sit there as growth in terms of yield and appreciation more or less stagnate but with assets so inflated they are out of reach of most people while yielding below inflation which is the only driver of "appreciation" but not in real dollars.
I think it's completely crazy to expect returns of 7-8% as they historically were. My view is that equities were criminally undervalued for decades, they are still undervalued but at least more reasonably priced now. It will take a while. I think it will a better world if you can't just get 7% or 5% or w/e almost risk free return. Once the returns are closer to 0 there will be incentive to deploy capital to create value which will be better for most, especially for the working class.
If you were to hold an S&P500 ETF, the dividend yield you'd receive each year.
Yes, the P/E is 35 today but historically it has been 15. It tends to find a correction back to 15 eventually. However, this is the average since the late 1800's and of course things are different today. I think if you look at the last 40 years, P/E has been a bit higher than 15 on average.
> I think it's completely crazy to expect returns of 7-8% as they historically were. My view is that equities were criminally undervalued for decades, they are still undervalued but at least more reasonably priced now. It will take a while. I think it will a better world if you can't just get 7% or 5% or w/e almost risk free return. Once the returns are closer to 0 there will be incentive to deploy capital to create value which will be better for most, especially for the working class.
That's an interesting way to look at it and I can't say I disagree. It is interesting how the purpose of equities has changed. For many years it was the idea that you wanted to create an income source. But over the last 100 years it has changed to expecting appreciation.
I think my main disagreement is I think a world with higher interest rates and therefore lower asset prices is a more stable place. But I see your point of view. But with no returns, why would anyone invest in a company? Why would anyone loan money or buy equity if there were no expectations of a return and yet the risk of bankruptcy still existed? Why would a stock appreciate in value if it would return nothing? I mean, the only reason a stock raises in value is because it is assumed that their profits will eventually be paid out at a percentage of the calculated risk.
> Pitt’s Rickert chastises his colleagues for acting so happy and says: “Every 1 percent unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die. Did you know that?”
I recently rewatched that movie and his character nailed pretty much everything that is happening now. He even wears a mask on the escalator.
Adding enough young people via immigration solves the issue in the article. In addition, they will pay for our Medicare and Social Security.
by the end of the war, Europe and Asia had been almost entirely leveled. The combination of Fascism, Communism, and war had also destroyed many of the ultra wealthies fortunes if they hadn't been outright killed.
Meanwhile, while the US government paid for conversion of auto-factories into wartime aircraft and tank factories - it didn't pay to restore productive capacity to peacetime purposes.
While the author highlights that the current debt cycle is unstable economically - I think they underestimate the risk that it is also unstable politically.
No need for quotes here. People at central banks literally set the baseline interest rate. There's not much evidence for attributing this straightforward bureaucratic process to vague trends in population and income.
>Central banks can impose any level of (local currency) borrowing costs on the economy that they want, which is why some say that “interest rates are a policy variable.” But central banks generally avoid exercising that power arbitrarily—and for good reason.
Wow bankers have reasons? It seems like this article is not just assuming market efficiency but also banker efficiency. Neither is a good assumption.
>the trends in inequality that have retarded growth and have pushed down interest rates were choices that can be changed.
This is a radical claim about cause and effect for which there is almost no empirical evidence. AKA pseudo-science.
Secondly central banks try and keep inflation around 2% by lowering interest rate will drive wage inflation. Except that central banks cannot control prices and wage inflation by locally controlling interest rate in a globalized economy. So the fundamental system control principle of central banks are broken.
Why is it the central bank's fault that property sellers are ripping you off? You can take that mortgage and use it to buy a cheaper house somewhere else. The central bank didn't make houses more expensive, people with monopoly pricing power simply take more out of your wallet.
This is not a surprise at all and not indicative of the economy being weak. A bigger decline will lead a more abrupt recovery. US GDP surged 40% over the past decade. Compare that to most countries and the US has done quite well Also, inflation was much higher too.
That's why were still using oil instead of nuclear. That's why we're still working instead of automating the necessities. Free energy & free food would result in infinite deflation, zero GDP, and total unemployment which is opposite of what current policies are aimed at. Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.
Combine the impacts that increasing income and wealth inequality have with the discussions of the impact due to investment in greater automation - reduction in labor and more returns to owners of capital - and it appears inevitable that we will need to ensure a safety net covers everyone.
It seems to me that some countries will figure this out before others. There will be a global race to become the destination country for those with the income and wealth.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...
The Fed can make the 10Y note yield 1% with 10% (or any rate) inflation if they a. wanted to and b. didn't care about foreign exchange rates.
Mohamed El-Erian must think Klein is a hack.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27191691-the-only-game-i...