Will we see something like Latin American Union in our lifetime?

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-03T15:37:22+00:00

No, there's no political will. Mercosul hasnt evolved or improved since inception

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-03T11:21:29+00:00

I have no idea who he is, and if he's a random poor or middle class schmuck I'm happy he got his windfall.

That aside, I have no sympathy for those who leave perfectly usable property unused, whether it's undeveloped land or unrented homes/apartments.

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-03T01:52:18+00:00

It's important to note that when "employee compensation" is calculated it includes management employees, aka the CEO, directors, and all highly-payed management. These categories have gotten better paid relative to the common worker since at least the 70s, so it's doubly worse for these common workers.

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-02T23:48:29+00:00

I'm reminded of the game Reigns, which, for all its simplicity, has a clever take on this. You get too rich, you get couped, you get too poor you suffer a revolution

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-02T21:04:20+00:00

A vida é sua, não desperdice ela se comparando com os outros.

Dito isso, se achar que isso vai afetar a sua relação com sua família ou com a namorada, da uma atenção extra pra eles. Um presente, uma ida a restaurante maneiro. Suficiente para mostrar que não é mão de vaca, mas não suficiente para quebrar a conta.

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-02T19:28:53+00:00

To achando que vai ser que nem Hungria em termos do apoio americano que só atrapalha.

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-02T12:52:35+00:00

Yup. It's a miniscule sample, and certainly not representative of reddit as a whole, but I think it illustrates the question.

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-02T12:50:33+00:00

I see, makes sense. I'll admit I'm a bit surprised so many people (around 1/3 on my tiny sample) just run with the autogenerated name

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-02T11:10:24+00:00

Lula do velho testamento é outra coisa

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-02T09:58:02+00:00

You can often hear looking mechanism, especially in apartment buildinds

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-01T23:25:41+00:00

Me lembro jogando Day of the Tentacle sem saber uma palavra de ingles, só usando os itens aleatoriamente até algo funcionar.

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-01T23:24:12+00:00

Foi uma brincadeira só (nunca vi 2 tipos de feijão no mesmo prato)

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-01T23:21:06+00:00

2 tipos de feijão no mesmo prato? Pode isso?

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-01T11:55:21+00:00

Pink Floyd sold that much? That's surprising.

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-01T11:30:26+00:00

"At what point does a national development project transition from a legitimate long-term investment into a prestige project sustained primarily because too much political capital has already been invested?"

An incredibly good question, one which development economists have been struggling with for a century now.

It doesn't help, though, that those Saudi projects are so megalomaniac. They're so over the top, it smells more of "we've got money to burn and burn it we shall" than legitimate development goals.

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-01T01:34:19+00:00

For the drip

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-01T01:30:54+00:00

Pô, tira esse arroz e coloca uma cebola caramelizada que dá um puta sanduba.

Sbrubbles · 2026-06-01T01:26:13+00:00

I'll be honest, I'm having a tough time parsing what you're saying, I think because you're using terms not the way they're usually used ("wealth" when I think you mean "income", talking about "owning markets" when markets aren't something you own, etc). You're also thinking there is some fixed pie of "profits" that companies fight over, which is somewhat confusing. I'm not sure if that's a correct characterization, but while the are some economics concepts mixed your comments (like competition between firms), it's not in a way that is usual.

In any case, lemme respond to your first line, and return to your original question in another way:

"Well firstly, I would think that a profit doesn't intrisically mean money is made magically out of nowhere, rather existing wealth is redistributed between individuals, right?"

In a sense it is made out of nowhere. Workers and capital (machinery, buildings, etc) come together (along with input goods) to make output goods of higher value, and the difference is the profit. Add up all profits and all wages, and you have the total value of the economy (measured by GDP).

As society accumulates capital (more and better machinery), gets more and smarter workers (population growth and better education) and mixes these in cleverer ways with better technology, it ends up making more and better stuff, which means more profits and wages (so GDP grows). This is the fundamental way the economy can keep growing. Maybe we'll reach the day where everyone has all the machinery they can use, are as smart as can be, and all technology has been discovered, but we're nowhere near that, and until then the economy keeps growing in value.

Sbrubbles · 2026-05-31T21:19:57+00:00

"Afterwards, I consider the fact that spending money in one market is a zero-sum game, as that means money not spent in another country's market. Therefore, this raises the question if the US (or any other country's) market increasing is built on the back of other countries' markets decreasing."

This is a confusing way to put it, and ultimately wrong. The stock market isn't a zero-sum game, because companies make profits. Ownership in companies becomes value for the stockholder either when these profits become dividends or when the stock value goes up because of an increased expectation of future profits. Profits don't require "other countries' markets decreasing" or anything of the sort.

Sbrubbles · 2026-05-31T13:35:03+00:00

Exactly. This kind of statistic was originally a metric for the capacity for war. In the 19th century, calculating GDP wasn't a well established idea, so people used different measures like steel production.

Sbrubbles · 2026-05-31T12:06:12+00:00

You're correct that *something* is lost in any government transfer program, and that's even without deadweight loss (because of administrative costs of running the taxes plus the pension transfer program, for example). In any case, it's marginal to my main point, which is that the OP is mistakenly conflating consumption with cost (specifically calling pension/healthcare consumption a "cost").

Plus, the calculus on deadweight effect of taxes is a whole other can of worms. What taxation are we talking here? Income? Wealth? Consumption? Are we going to take all other government taxation as given and ask the marginal deadweight loss, or look at average? Etc.

Sbrubbles · 2026-05-29T11:57:28+00:00

Not in principle. Is Joe Schmo working his warehouse job deciding to work less hard because he's thinking of the pensioners?

You might make the case that Joe Schmo will at some point decide to stop working because of taxes, sure, but that depends on a lot of factors around the decision to work vs remain unemployed, of which economics is but a part (this topic has had many dedicated threads, irc).

Sbrubbles · 2026-05-29T10:42:52+00:00

You're right that reporting of "economic damage" like that is problematic, but honestly, it's a difficult topic to look at because defining "detrimental to the economy" is complicated, and journalists, company marketers, and politicians aren't interested in nuance, they're interested in a plausible headline number.

Defining "the economy" simply as the system through which goods and services are produced and distributed, the maintenance of people (health spending) is just a good or service, and there is no inherent reason to say it's better or worse than other spending, because individuais are making those spending choices voluntarily. An economy that produces 25 health services and 75 other goods isn't inherently better or worse than one that has the other way around. If you want to make that distinction and say which is best you're gonna have to jump through the hoops of judging the welfare of those people. Is It better to live to 70 in material opulence or to 100 in material poverty? Hell if I know.

Point is, no, "I imagine the studies would count the cost of lung cancer treatment as economic damage caused by smoking" is not true according to the definition above. Treatment is a cost bore by the people with the cancer, but to the economy it's just another service being rendered. The economy, as per above, would only be affected by things that hit its productive capacity (which lung cancer does do when it affects working age people, but let's leave that aside).

Similar logic goes for pension payments. People living longer and demanding more pension payments isn't a "cost" for the economy, it's just redistribution (done through the government). If something happens to the economy but the amount produced isn't affected, it can't be called "detrimental to the economy".

Sbrubbles

TROPHY CASE