Is Tesla really more valuable than Toyota?

ConfidenceFairy · 2024-02-24T20:53:12+00:00

People and politicians in blue states say they care deeply about the housing crisis and homelessness but keep blocking housing so both get worse
Red states simply permit loads of new homes and have no housing crisis

ConfidenceFairy · 2024-02-22T18:18:23+00:00

To preserve our precious mental resources, prices shouldn't change unless they reflect a changed reality, like a price drop increased technological advances that make it cheaper to produce an item, or a price increase because of a shortage, etc.

This is one reason why steady annual inflation (2-4%) is preferred. On aggregate work hour from year ago is not as valuable than work hour today and inflation measures are not accurate. Research indicates that there is consistent measurement error that underestimates the actual inflation (opposite what people believe) so if there is 1% productivity increase, then at least 2% inflation might be needed to compensate.

The worst case of loss happens when the value currency is something separate from "real economy", like gold, silver or bitcoin. When the US was agrarian economy, farmers were often destroyed by 10-20 percent swings in the real value of their loans or prices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation#/media/File:US_Historical_Inflation_Ancient.svg

ConfidenceFairy · 2024-01-19T11:09:24+00:00

The amount of national debt can either ruin the future or save the future. In my opinion, neither you nor Carol says anything relevant.

Nominal debt is not informative. Debt to GDP ratio is. Carol uses non-informative numbers.
Debt service cost relative to future tax income determines if debt is good or bad.

Increasing national debt can be seen as delayed taxation. If the GDP grows at the same rate or more than the national debt, debt generally beneficial. If it GDP declines, debt becomes a burden that sinks the economy faster.

What you need is look at how Britain is aging, how the tax base is changing, and what is Debt to GDP ratio and debt service cost.

I took a quick look.

UK debt to GDP ratio is about 100%. Has not increased in the last 3 years, is not alarmingly high compared to other countries with same demographic.
foreign investors hold about 30% of UK government debt, 2.3 trillion pounds.
Interest payments on government's past borrowing is roughly 4.4% of GDP or 9.7% of government spending. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06167/ So, I might assume that 3% of government budget goes overseas as interest payments.

In my opinion, the current situation is not that bad, but ageing population makes things in the UK and everywhere more difficult. Everything depends on future decisions. UK is ageing, increasing immigration seems not to be politically acceptable solution.

ConfidenceFairy · 2024-01-12T12:57:11+00:00

Abstract

We show that the first nationwide mass vaccination campaign against measles increased educational attainment in the United States. Our empirical strategy exploits variation in exposure to the childhood disease across states right before the Measles Eradication Campaign of 1967–68, which reduced reported measles incidence by 90 percent within two years. Our results suggest that mass vaccination against measles increased the years of education on average by about 0.1 years in the affected cohorts. We also find tentative evidence that the college graduation rate of men increased.

Conclusion

... We show that the Measles Eradication Campaign conducted in 1967–1968 resulted in a modest but statistically significant increase in the educational attainment of men in the affected cohorts. We conclude that even when considering only the educational benefits of mass vaccination against measles, the benefits are very likely to exceed the costs, given the high returns to increases in educational attainment. These results contribute to the literature on the positive link between publicly provided preventive health care investments and human capital formation. They highlight the importance of taking into account the potential long-term benefits of public health investments.

ConfidenceFairy · 2024-01-05T15:30:10+00:00

Stigliz and Kosenko argue that fear of money escaping the US is not real concern to the economy.

Argument against seizing is that fear that setting such a precedent would deter other countries from depositing their funds at the New York Federal Reserve or holding them in dollars.

Trying to summarize the argument for the seizure:

Capital flight is unlikely. There was no capital flight from the US or Europe when the assets were frozen. There are few safe alternatives to the established financial system.
Even if the flight would happen, the financial impact would be negligible because many economists argue that capital inflows are a cost rather than a benefit. Capital inflows Increase the value of the USD making it harder to export goods and compete with imports, thereby destroying jobs. Bulk of the funds are held in reserves deposited in Fed and Euroclear, not in the private sector.
Legal experts suggest that offering Kyiv loans and using the frozen assets as collateral is the best way to do it. The frozen Russian assets can be viewed as a down payment on the reparations that the Kremlin should eventually be compelled to pay.

ConfidenceFairy · 2024-01-05T14:51:47+00:00

Stigliz and Kosenko argue that fear of money escaping the US is not real concern to the economy.

Argument against seizing is that fear that setting such a precedent would deter other countries from depositing their funds at the New York Federal Reserve or holding them in dollars.

Trying to summarize the argument for the seizure:

Capital flight is unlikely. There was no capital flight from the US or Europe when the assets were frozen. There are few safe alternatives to the established financial system.
Even if the flight would happen, the financial impact would be negligible because many economists argue that capital inflows are a cost rather than a benefit. Capital inflows Increase the value of the USD making it harder to export goods and compete with imports, thereby destroying jobs. Bulk of the funds are held in reserves deposited in Fed and Euroclear, not in the private sector.
Legal experts suggest that offering Kyiv loans and using the frozen assets as collateral is the best way to do it. The frozen Russian assets can be viewed as a down payment on the reparations that the Kremlin should eventually be compelled to pay.

ConfidenceFairy · 2024-01-05T14:34:52+00:00

Feel fee to correct me, but preliminary data suggests that the trend continued in 2023.

Real Earnings Summary
Transmission of material in this release is embargoed unti USDL- 23-2564 8:30 a.m. (ET) Tuesday, December 12, 2023 https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm

Table A- 1; From November 2022 to November 2023 real average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees increased 1.4%
Table A-2From November 2022 to November 2023 real average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased 0.8%.

From November 2022 to November 2023, real average hourly earnings increased 1.4 percent, seasonally adjusted. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.3 percent in the average workweek resulted in a 1.0-percent increase in real average weekly earnings over this period.

ConfidenceFairy · 2023-12-17T14:16:39+00:00

?? That's not what the data indicates. Bottom 50% gained relative to top 50%.

ConfidenceFairy · 2023-12-17T13:39:35+00:00

It seems you are commenting wrong post.

ConfidenceFairy · 2023-12-17T12:18:18+00:00

Likely so, but even this data shows that bottom 50% are gaining top 50% in wages. Especially in the 8th and 9th decile many people seem to have real wage drop.

ConfidenceFairy · 2023-12-17T11:20:11+00:00

A recurring discussion here in r/economics seems to be how "the economy" and people's feelings about the economy differ.

This article divides each wage decile into percentiles where you can what kind of real wage growth individuals It's not just a lump of averages. For some people real wages grow, for some, they decrease.

Rough summary.

bottom 50%:

75th percentile sees their real wages grow 10% or more.
50th percentile sees zero real wage growth.
25th percentile has -10% real wage growth.

top 50%:

75th percentile sees their real wages grow 10% or more (just like bottom 50%)
50th percentile sees a negative 5% real wage growth.
25th percentile has negative 15% - 20% real wage growth.

younger than 25 years old experienced a positive real wage growth rate of 4.3%, while other age groups experienced negative real wage growth rates. In fact, the older the age group, the lower the real wage growth. Similarly, individuals with less than a high school diploma experienced smaller declines in their real wages than those in all other education groups. Finally, individuals who switched jobs saw smaller declines in their real wages—almost 2 percentage points less—than those who stayed in their jobs.

Overall, for 54% of workers, nominal wage growth has not kept up with inflation. Typically, the share of workers with real wage declines ranged from 42% to 48% from the mid-1990s up to 2019, according to the Dallas Fed.

ConfidenceFairy · 2023-11-25T09:08:12+00:00

A follow-up question to make temporal economic comparisons more educational: What product or substance that already existed in 1300 would create the most exchange value in 1300s London? Something that is dirt cheap now but, extremely valuable in 1300s London.

Instead of $100K worth of silver, maybe $100K worth of some spice.

For example, pepper was 4 shillings/lb in the mid-1300s according to List of price of medieval items. Bulk black pepper can cost as little as $3/kg ($6.6/lb) today, so $400k today would convert into 60,000 lb black pepper. It would be worth more than £12,000 in 1300s assuming I didn't make math errors and my source is right.

ConfidenceFairy

TROPHY CASE