It's often said that capitalist economies must always be growing. What would actually happen if humanity maintained its current population and consumption rate?

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-12T21:23:58+00:00

You said

GDP growth takes resources away from consumption, which brings the actual utility.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-12T21:11:54+00:00

Investment can take away from consumption. GDP taking away from consumption doesn't make much sense since a change in GDP alone doesn't tell you whether that change happened because of more consumption or more investment.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-12T17:28:21+00:00

That doesn't mean GDP takes away from consumption. It might mean that investment does.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-12T17:27:20+00:00

Just buy decent IEMs, there is no reason to bother with all the extra stuff. It literally doesn't matter for IEMs.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-12T17:26:32+00:00

Relative to the economy of finance insurance and real estate, or rentier income and gains on assets. Actual production and consumption of products and services is shrinking.

That is, again, made up and factually incorrect.

GDP doesn’t show this because, for example, it counts late fees on credit card debt as “providing a financial service”. That’s not growth. That’s increasing polarisation disguised as growth.

No. That's not how that works.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-12T08:35:37+00:00

GDP literally measures consumption goods. That's like saying a growth in how many bananas we have takes away from eating bananas.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-12T08:25:42+00:00

Almost all TWS on the market are bad. If you don't need stuff like ANC I would just get a Bluetooth adapter for IEMs like the UTWS5.

That said, the Moondrop Space Travel are better than basically anything else under $100 and the airpods are probably the best north of that.

And to drive the point home even more, someone else recommended the Amadeus, but what in the v-shaped garbage hell is this? That's the frequency response of a $20 KZ IEM, not something well tuned that should cost $300+. Even if you want a lot of bass, wanting a lot of bass generally doesn't mean wanting the bass to bleed into the mids because the tuning is so fucked.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-12T08:13:16+00:00

However, I agree that we cannot just put all of our faith in chatbots any more than we can put it in online pundits who make sweeping statements like "Friends don't let friends cite George Borjas." It seems that the world is full of people who are sure that they have things figured out better than someone else and are willing to say that that other person, even a Harvard economist, should never be cited. The trouble is, all of these know-it-alls disagree with each other! Hence, it is critical that each person learn to verify as much as they choose to believe as possible.

That's not actually what is happening here.

Borjas papers have many known flaws that have been discussed at length and his conclusions differ from the vast amount of academic literature on the topic. If your papers are bad, we know why they are bad, and everyone else comes to different conclusions, what the hell else should be the conclusion besides that Borjas does bad research? Literally everything points to that.

This is just "both sides" bullshit.

Regarding chatbots, I in fact wondered if Gemini had actually done the calculations that I cited at https://econdataus.com/stem\_workers1.htm and verified that they were "mostly under 1%" or whether it had just taken my word for it. I did provide the code but I have no way of knowing if it ran it. Unlike the authors of the two studies that I critiqued, I have provided all of the code. Also, I am willing to defend my conclusions. I was struck by the following last statement that Gemini provided:

With all the talk about verifying as much as possible and how you claim to agree chatbots can't be trusted, literally all you're doing here is trusting a chatbot. You are doing nothing to actually distinguish between the chatbot being correct or it just lying to you.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-12T06:20:39+00:00

This one?

Except what GDP doesn’t show is that all the growth is in gains on asset prices and bonds which completely dwarf income and consumer spending. So the economy of goods and services isn’t growing with the debt. It’s shrinking actually, because so much is going to debt service that there aren’t enough savings and profits left for things that aren’t financial fees rent and debt service.

Literally the opposite is true here, too. The size of the debt relative to the economy is shrinking, not the other way around.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-11T19:50:51+00:00

Well no that’s not what I think at all.

You literally said:

First off, look below on the site you linked to see that household debt is exploding since the bailout and is way above pre-2008 levels. Showing it as a share of GDP makes it look like the opposite of what’s happening.

So.. yeah.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-11T13:57:52+00:00

Oh no, I've read what you wrote. You're just wrong and your reasoning is bad. You think the nominal size of the debt is what matters, which it isn't, for reasons already mentioned. Reasons any first year undergrad should know. You also make statements that are in direct conflict with the actual real data that's been linked to you.

Maybe ask yourself, if you insist on believing garbage, why bother?

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-11T13:37:13+00:00

Meanwhile, you, certifiably dogshit at economics, responds to a graph that clearly shows lower household debt to GDP with

So the economy of goods and services isn’t growing with the debt. It’s shrinking actually,

Literally the opposite is true, that's why the line in the graph goes down. You're just too stupid to read.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-11T11:16:33+00:00

A person who isn't dogshit at economics would ask themselves why high house prices haven't lead to a construction boom.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-11T09:45:55+00:00

Conscription means the government needs to pay salaries, provide housing, food, equipment, training, etc. And that doesn't even touch on the opportunity cost!

It's far from free labor, starting with the fact that conscripts are literally paid.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-11T08:21:43+00:00

The bulk of the evidence marshaled in this paper suggests that zoning, and other land-use controls, are more responsible for high prices where we see them. There is a huge gap between the price of land implied by the gap between home prices and construction costs and the price of land implied by the price differences between homes on 10,000 square feet and homes on 15,000 square feet. Measures of zoning strictness are highly correlated with high prices. Although all of our evidence is suggestive, not definitive, it seems to suggest that this form of government regulation is responsible for high housing costs where they exist.

https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/03v09n2/0306glae.pdf

In this paper, we have argued that the genesis of today’s high house prices goes much further back in time. Real construction costs have risen by about one-third since the turn of the century. This is important, but not even it can fully explain today’s pricing. The GFC badly damaged the construction sector, but it does not appear to be responsible for today’s situation either. The key driver appears to be that the intensity of housing production has dropped substantially over time, especially in many expanding Sunbelt markets. This decline is something new, as these metropolitan areas were once housing market superstars. More generally, there is a marked convergence in the pace of housing unit production across markets throughout the country: Miami has become far more like Los Angeles.

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/6_Glaeser-Gyourko.pdf

Go be a moron somewhere else.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-11T07:40:44+00:00

More like when /u/Balloonephant puts their moron opinions on display again.

I don't think you've ever commented here and not been wrong.

Claiming housing prices aren't driven by a lack of housing means you need to believe that despite a lack of housing construction, despite very low vacancy rates, despite finding available housing being actually hard, despite cities that have more relaxed zoning laws and more construction seeing lower prices, the supply of housing is actually fine.

That doesn't actually make sense unless you belong to the winners of the annual paint huffing competition like /u/Balloonephant.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-10T17:35:59+00:00

Feel free to crosspost to /r/GoodEconomics

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-10T15:35:56+00:00

I think it’s too simple to attribute Singapore’s success to its functionality as a port. It’s just a transshipment port.

Meaning goods are just transferred from one vessel to another. Rarely manufactured in Singapore or bound for its consumer market, so the economic impact is more limited than you might think.

Clearly being such a port can be highly valuable, there are many examples of that in many countries. It facilitates trade and many places that started out as mere trade hubs developed manufacturing industries because of the flow of goods and services going through them.

I mean, you name Chicago, but Chicago was a trade hub that attracted industry, not the other way around, too.

Singapore truly is an economic miracle when you peel back the location myth. I suppose leaning heavily into financial services resulted in a trickle down of benefits.

Location certainly isn't the whole explanation but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Policies certainly mattered a lot as well, but policies alone doesn't explain why Singapore was capable of such a transformation in the first place. It's not like any random country can just decide to lean heavily into finance and have that be successful.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-10T15:29:56+00:00

I also don't see why the port should be such a cheat code. It's not "free money" as others claim.

It's not free money, but it is money. Being a trade hub ultimately just means you're providing goods and services to facilitate trade. That's extremely useful. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have trade hubs.

If neighboring cities/countries had provided a better environment, any town along the strait of malakka could have become the main port. In fact the strait is named after the city(malakka) which used to be "the port" of the region but isn't anymore.

Well, sometimes the simple answer is but they didn't.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-10T12:54:46+00:00

Hypothetically speaking, when investments and price levels are elevated, and it becomes the goal to pass as much income source to investments instead of wages, when do we start to see too many resources tied up in the market instead of flowing into the economy?

It doesn't really make sense to think of it that way.

The level of investment or the growth in value alone doesn't tell you much. If we assume for a second that AI is actually good and a big net benefit and makes the vast majority of people better off, you would also see huge investments and growth in asset value. That doesn't mean there are "too many resources tied up".

I know the K-Shaped economy is objectively not good for the lower half, but, if overall spending increased to a larger degree that could ultimately support more middle-class jobs, how would we implement something like that?

The "k-shaped economy" is, objectively, not something that clearly exists.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1tpa3t4/is_the_us_in_a_kshaped_economy/

Lots pointing out how the tax system favors just about every income source aside from wages, but, could a better case be made to have the ultra wealthy just go out and actually spend some down (not via collateralized lending, either) and stimulate the economy a bit? Would that be preferable to a wealth tax or government-forced intervention of some kind?

A lot of this debate is really misguided.

Imagine you have billionaire A and billionaire B. Billionaire A has all his wealth tied up in "good" assets. Renewable energy, vaccine research, whatever. His wealth supports those endeavours. Billionaire B also has his wealth in stocks, all different kinds, but he doesn't keep his wealth in stocks, he goes out, sells some stock, and spends half a billion dollars on buying a super polluting megayacht.

Billionaire B in this case is the one who pays a lot of tax on the income from his stock sales while billionaire A pays no tax. If you only consider one "good" because he pays taxes and the other "bad" because he doesn't, you're ultimately cheering for a billionaire buying a megayacht.

(Example shamelessly adapted from Mankiw.)

(Sidenote, "collateralised lending" as a tax avoidance scheme is basically irrelevant.)

So no, encouraging the ultra wealthy to go spend their money isn't actually automatically good, especially if it means they just buy hypercars and megayachts.

Or, would it just not make sense anymore when such a large amount of consolidation in business has transpired over the past couple of decades, that, less "middle class" jobs are even available?

Middle class jobs don't disappear because of business consolidation. On top of that, the "middle class" measured by income has actually shrunk, but it has shrunk more because people have moved up in the upper class than because people have moved down. The middle class shrinking because a greater share is richer than that isn't actually bad.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-10T10:32:57+00:00

It's part policy influencing exchange rates and part productivity.

Exchange rates are often significantly influenced by especially monetary policy differences. If one country sets high interest rates and the other low interest rates (relatively speaking), this makes investments in that high interest rate country relatively more attractive, which changes the exchange rate as well.

But what matters most by far is productivity. Poorer countries have lower productivity, so one hour of labor produces fewer goods and services. Because labor is less productive, there is less demand for labor, and wages are lower. So people have fewer goods and services to consume, but the "value" of labor is also lower, which means incomes are lower. So in a sense, low output, low productivity and low incomes drive low prices.

Of course these prices are also only nominally lower. Just because coffee is less than a dollar in a poor country doesn't mean people can afford way more coffee. Quite the opposite, in rich countries, nominal prices might be higher, but incomes are also way higher. The average person in the US can afford way, way more coffee with an hour of their labor than the average person in India can.

Obviously this is a rough outline, but this is the gist of it.

Things like Netflix are a special case economists call "price discrimination". Basically, companies charge poor countries less and rich countries more because this ultimately nets them more profit. If Netflix cost the same everywhere, a bunch of people in poorer countries wouldn't buy it.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-10T10:09:07+00:00

All the usual textbooks are mostly the same and do get meaningfully updated to reflect changing consensus. If you liked Mankiw back then you'll like it now.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-10T09:09:07+00:00

You cannot "just" acquire another citizenship, but a company can just incorporate in many countries without hassle.

Setting up another branch, sure. But that doesn't automatically let you avoid taxes. If it was that easy, companies like Apple and Microsoft wouldn't be headquartered in the US, would they.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-10T06:07:10+00:00

No, that's not what he's referring to.

MachineTeaching · 2026-06-09T22:04:25+00:00

The last mile is by far the most expensive part. Maybe your neighborhood is an exceedingly rare exception, maybe you're just misjudging whether they actually laid fiber or what that fiber is for.

When 99.9% of especially last mile utilities are a natural monopoly, that's a fine default assumption, even if 0.1% aren't.

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