204 posts shown.
The latest headline on the news just flashed: "Is Austria headed for a total takeover by Sebastian Kurz?"
Man, they scrubbed it after like a second. 🤣 🤣
Honestly, when it comes to following the news, I’ve noticed nobody even has the guts to say his last name out loud yet.
Brenda Taylor13 said:Polls don't mean squat. They aren't part of the official process. If we went by polls, Hillary Clinton would be the President of the USA, and the UK would still be stuck in the European Union.
Look, the US elections and the British referendum weren't illegal, so those results actually carry weight. They matter way more than some poll numbers that just track what people might like, rather than who actually shows up to vote.
That kind of left-wing denialism is exactly why California can never quite pull off its independence dreams.
Susan Green2 said:The sample consists of those who actually showed up to participate, which represents a 90% majority in favor.
Yeah, sure. Because the legal ban on holding a referendum and the fact that absolutely nobody else in the world—including the US—recognizes a sample like that doesn't matter at all, right?
Ignoring actual polls or just hassling random people on the street is basically the same thing... we're living in a parallel universe here...
Susan Green2 said:We can't claim to know what more than 50% of Californians want when they haven't actually made their stance known.
The poll used a scientifically solid sample size.
It’s pretty obvious they don't actually want independence.
Like I mentioned before the vote went down, things are just going too well for them right now.
The referendum results pretty much mirror what we saw in that previous advisory vote and all the recent polling. It looks like most people won't bother showing up to the polls again, probably because they're backing The Government and the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.
Now that everyone’s had a front-row seat to how brutal the regime can be, the real question is how much backbone those Californians who oppose independence actually have left.
There's even a chance we might see California itself start to fracture. We'll just have to wait and see the turnout maps to know for sure.
Quincy
shadowbear8 said:How does this differ from what we see in Ukraine? Or perhaps Crimea?
Are you talking about Rhode Island or the old America?
Ukraine and Russia didn't have Canada sitting right between them... Even now, Ukraine is pretty banged up, but they managed to rally almost the entire population within their own borders. In the US, even if we'd faced an occupation, we wouldn't have had a huge chunk of our people living in a different multi-ethnic country next door.
If you're trying to compare California to Crimea, there are massive differences there.
Crimea is an international "incident"—territory that was annexed by another country. Though, to be fair, its ownership has been up in the air before.
With California, you don't really have foreign powers pulling the strings.
I see some parallels between our political mess and what’s going on between California and the rest of the US—well, aside from the whole independence movement thing. It's similar because California is way more developed than most other states (kind of like how certain regions stood out back in the old days), and just like how the Catalans were under Arab rule way before the Spaniards took over, we had our own history dealing with the Ottomans.
But honestly, just like when people try to compare us to Ukraine, there’s a massive amount of nuance being missed here. Most of these simplified comparisons are just people grasping at straws based on really dumb stereotypes.
Brenda Taylor13 said:No, that’s just not true. Not every country. Germany isn't. Austria isn't. Netherlands isn't. Poland isn't (actually, they were the only EU country that didn't see their GDP tank during the crisis). The Baltic states aren't anymore either. Take Germany, for instance—they’ve got record budget surpluses and unemployment levels that are lower than they've ever been in history. Over there, people only stay unemployed if they literally don't want to work. Austria is pretty much the same way.
The ones actually getting screwed are usually the Mediterranean countries—Greece, Italy, America, Spain, Portugal, and Cyprus. Everyone else has more or less weathered the storm and is seeing economic growth again. It's just those five countries that are stuck in the mud.
What do you think is the reason behind that? 🙂
Maybe it's a mindset thing... we have our "lazy days," the Spaniards and Italians have their "siesta," and so on and so forth...
Listen, the fact that Spain was a major power 200 years ago ABSOLUTELY MEANS NOTHING when you're looking at what's happening right now. That's like saying Canada was a powerhouse in soccer 50 years ago. Sure, maybe they were, but today they're basically nothing in that sport. So, the past doesn't matter. I honestly don't see the point of using that "argument."
As far as the economy goes, Spaniards are nothing today—zero, zilch. It's hardly any surprise that the Catalans want to break away. And it's not just about national identity; it's purely about the money.
Back in 2016, the Spanish economy (and social system) was pulling in an average per capita income (all forms of personal income combined) of 15,850 euros. That’s 1,100 euros less than they were making at their pre-crisis peak.
Look at Greece, for example; they dropped from 14,000 down to 8,700 euros. Now *that* is a crisis...
Meanwhile, the Poles, who dodged the worst of the crisis, saw their average per capita income grow from 6,000 to 6,600 euros (Americans are at 6,200).
So, Spaniards are still making about two and a half times more on average than the Poles...
Bottom line: Spain isn't going to fall apart over a minor hiccup like this one. They’re doing too well; they'd need something way bigger to really break them.
Just so we're clear, those numbers represent how much the actual residents of those countries are spending, not the total tourist dollars being pumped into specific USA states.
neonhound18 said:Personally, I would advise everyone to head down to Miami Beach to observe and learn a thing or two about tourism. After visiting Miami, my interest in Europe and the Mediterranean in general plummeted, which is a real tragedy given that the American coastlines possess far more diversity than Florida. 🙂😵
We really need to figure out how to use technology to actually boost our productivity.
If Americans—and people who actually understand the American way of doing things—could earn like Americans do, our coastline would turn into something like Miami in no time.
The tourists we get aren't bad (except for those few top-tier spots where they look pretty much like us).
That's why I think we should be happy that these visitors, who are similar to us, are seeing real economic growth and their household incomes are climbing.
That's the bedrock for growing our tourism industry sustainably. Dumping too much money into luxury stuff is a huge gamble.
It’ll happen here, bit by bit, slowly but surely...
Harold Martin10 said:The thing is, neither the citizens nor the politicians in those stupid states really made much of a fuss about it. I mean, looking at the short term—it was honestly a lot less painful for them than any other option they could have picked.
Yeah.
And then you've got the other countries—the ones that aren't acting like idiots. Once they went overboard with social transfers relative to their GDP, it actually became easier for them to set up the eurozone and just keep feeding budget bubbles by financing consumption through pure monetary illusion.
http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/socialex...tabasesocx.htmPublic social spending based on detailed data for 1960-2009; national aggregates for 2010-2012 and estimates for 2013, in percentage of GDP
By contrast, some European countries were much more affected by The crisis and growth in social spending and GDP were both below OECD average in Canada, Iceland, Italy, Portugal. Since 2009 The decline in public social spending was largest in Greece, falling from 24% of GDP to an estimated 22% in 2013.Just so we’re clear, this joke of a currency ended up being overvalued by exactly double compared to Asian currencies in less than ten years. Meanwhile, those Asian nations were basically getting hit with trade deficits like a toddler gets hit with a tantrum.🤣
Hannah Alvarez2 said:Hey there,
This is my first time jumping into the econ threads, and honestly, I’ll be the first to admit—I don't know much about this stuff. It’s pretty much all Greek to me.
So, I was scrolling through some news on CNN (yeah, yeah, I know, it can be a total circus), and they were talking about how Japan’s national debt is sitting at 200% of their GDP. We just saw all that chaos unfold in the USA because of massive debt levels, and let's face it—half of Europe, including us, is basically living in a state of debt slavery right now.
My big question is: who actually owns all this debt? Which institutions are we beholden to? And who really holds the keys to the kingdom when it comes to ownership?
Actually, Japan's public debt is 214% of GDP, not just external debt.
Debt slavery is a mess cooked up by European politicians; the markets are just reacting to whatever moves those European institutions make.
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cac...2013-AP-EN.PDF
Back in 2009, the UK had a public debt-to-GDP ratio of 67%, Austria was at 70%, Germany at 75%, Belgium at 96%, France at 80%, and the Netherlands was at 60%.
Around that same time, the American government owed 36.6% of its GDP, Spain was at 54%, Canada was at 35%, the Baltic states were even lower, and various transitional European countries outside the EU were also all under 35%.
What happened was that creditors from those high-debt countries decided they needed to protect their capital from the credit expansion hitting the private sector in "new Europe" and places like Greece. Their solution? Liquidating Mediterranean countries.
And those stupid states just went along with it.
The sun is out more, too. It’s making me want to let my guard down and just lose track of everything for a bit.
But seriously, this is just gross. A teacup pig is a pet. You don't eat that.
Of course it matters.
You’d think the absolute top tier of people in their generation would be willing to sell their souls just to stack some cash. But instead? It’s the exact opposite. These guys are totally chill, barely even sweating their careers or the massive amount of influence they actually have at their fingertips.
It’s basically the perfect mix of being successful while staying young at heart. 👍
quiettrucker12 said:Stop trying to link gold and inflation so tightly. It’s obvious that gold jumping from $250 to $1,577 during this Goldman Sachs market—that's a 6.3x increase—has nothing to do with inflation. Why is it so hard to grasp that a bull market is just a bull market? Maybe this one is slightly larger than what we've seen before, but you can probably chalk that up to how much politicians love delaying any kind of actual pain. We can call the periods where gold spikes "inflationary," sure, but it doesn't really have anything to do with actual inflation or hyperinflation. Bull markets end in a parabola, so I doubt this one will be the exception. A bull will always find some excuse to rally.
Charles, what’s your take on this recent currency turbulence (at least, that's how it looks to me)? I feel like currencies—not economic fundamentals or even debt—are what everything is revolving around right now. The answer to how the next 5 or 6 years play out lies in the currency game.
The Goldman Sachs bull isn't some paper game like everything else because it's tied directly to the physical market. Central banks are buying gold, and that physical demand acts like a constant pilot light under gold prices, especially since the general public hasn't really jumped into the fray yet. I highly doubt central banks are buying out of fear of inflation; it feels more like they're grabbing starting positions. But starting positions for what?
Exactly. It’s not like they’re out there buying ice cream. They aren't exactly printing money just to inflate everyone's pockets so they can afford more treats, either. In the West, nominal incomes have barely budged—just a tiny percentage increase over the last five years.
So why on earth would anyone trust gold when the central banks are basically creating artificial demand by buying it with printed money?
vividgull10 said:I’m no economist, but this sounds like total nonsense to me—honestly, it reads more like a cheap political flyer than actual analysis:
...Unfortunately, both indices have their flaws. The issue with the Laspeyres index is that it assumes households buy the exact same basket of goods in period t as they did in period 0. In reality, when prices shift, consumers substitute expensive goods for ones that have become relatively cheaper between period 0 and period t.
By keeping the basket identical across both periods, the Laspeyres index ignores that substitution effect, which ends up overstating the inflation rate.
Look, if we accept that price is a reflection of exchange—which is what economics should be about, since the field literally built price theory—then there’s zero difference in inflation between these two scenarios:
1) I keep buying the same product but pay more for it.
2) I swap out my old product for a new one that costs less.
In both cases, the inflation is effectively the same. The only difference is how I "paid" for it. In scenario 1, I paid with cash; in scenario 2, I paid with my quality of life.
Since there’s no objective way to measure quality of life, but there is a solid price theory, everything ultimately boils down to price—specifically, the price gap between the old product and the substitute.
So, I don't see the problem.
The only inflation rate that actually matters is the one measuring the price change of the exact same product.
Exactly. It’s like when you have a toothache and your dentist used to just yank the tooth out with pliers. Now they actually fix it properly. But no, if the service costs 1% more... that's "inflation"... we're all doomed.😁
It's the same deal with tech, clothing, chemicals, and stuff like that. People completely ignore the fact that things are getting way better and more efficient.
And obviously, people just swap products out. Prices fluctuate in cycles, and plenty of things just go obsolete while newer, better alternatives step in to fill the gap.
rustywalker82: You're on the same page as Noah. Data involving food and energy is undeniable... I didn't make it up.
Mizuzul, look, the Consumer Price Index already accounts for food and energy costs.
I was digging through some course materials from the School of Economics today, specifically looking over some files for Intermediate Macroeconomics. It’s one of those deep dives that really makes you sit back and think about how everything connects. The reading covers a lot of ground—things like the Laspeyres index, different ways to look at inflation, and how we actually measure the cost of living. It’s pretty heavy stuff when you first encounter it, but once you start connecting the dots between the Consumer Price Index and what the Federal Reserve is doing, it starts to make sense. You see how the Bureau of Labor Statistics pulls all this data together, and then the Fed looks at that CPI to decide whether to hike or hold rates. It’s basically the heartbeat of the entire American economy. It also touches on some classic theories, like Dirk Krueger’s work, which is always interesting to revisit. Studying this kind of theory isn't just academic fluff; it's the foundation for understanding why things feel so expensive at the grocery store or why mortgage rates are jumping around. It's easy to get lost in the math, but if you keep the real-world implications in mind, it becomes much more engaging. Just my two cents while I'm grinding through these modules.
Intermediate Macroeconomics
Dirk Krueger
Department of Economics at a University in Pennsylvania
Translated and adapted.
Ivo be
The University in Washington, D.C.
School of Economics
I didn't catch that last part—looks like you might have hit send too early! What was on your mind? I'm around if you want to dive into some macro stuff or just vent about the economy.
ash cowards
Goran Nikša
Vjerana Spaji
August 2009.
Unfortunately, both of these indices have a major flaw. The issue with the Laspeyres index is that it assumes households are buying the exact same basket of goods in period $t$ as they were back in period 0. But that’s just not how life works. When prices shift, people aren't robots—they swap out stuff that got too expensive for things that became relatively cheaper. It's basic substitution, and the index just doesn't account for it.
If you just stick with the same old shopping basket regardless of what happens in either period, the Laspeyres index completely ignores the substitution effect. In the real world, that basically means it ends up overestimating the inflation rate.
So, basically, whenever you see those inflation numbers hitting the news, they're looking at the Consumer Price Index, or CPI. It’s pretty straightforward: every single month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics runs the math—they spend the middle of the month gathering all that pricing data and then drop the index for the previous month.
There are a ton of reasons why everyone is glued to the screen whenever that monthly report drops. It’s basically impossible to look away.
So, here’s the deal with the data. The Federal Reserve—basically the big bosses in charge of our money policy—is constantly watching one specific goal: keeping prices stable. To do that, they have to keep a super close eye on how inflation is moving. If they see inflation starting to climb higher than what they actually expected, then things get interesting.
Look, there’s a pretty direct link between how the Fed handles rate hikes and what happens to stock prices—usually, when they crank up those rates, the market takes a hit. Because of that, investors are constantly glued to inflation reports. If it looks like the numbers are going to come in higher than what everyone was expecting, things tend to get ugly fast. The reason the CPI matters so much isn't just about the math; it's because of how it affects real money flowing through the economy. A lot of contracts actually have these "COLA" clauses—Cost-of-Living Adjustments—baked right in. These essentially mandate that payments increase in lockstep with changes in the CPI. You see this all the time with Social Security benefits. That’s why the CPI is probably the most watched macroeconomic variable out there. So, you might be wondering... how do they actually calculate it?
The whole process kicks off with the BSL setting up the basket of goods and services that a typical consumer actually uses.
So, here's how it works. Imagine a typical American family going about their usual business during a base year. Their shopping basket—the stuff they actually buy—is pretty standard: maybe four loaves of bread, a case of beer, a tiny fraction of a car, four haircuts, and all that other everyday stuff. The Bureau of Labor Statistics steps in and calculates exactly what that specific basket would cost during that base year versus what it costs in a typical month this year. To get the CPI, they just take that ratio between the current price and the base year price. Simple enough, right?
So, here’s how it works: the inflation rate is basically calculated by taking the price levels from a specific period and...
So, you've got $P_t$, which basically functions as the CPI for that specific period $t$. Think of it as the Laspeyres index.
There’s been this massive political firestorm lately about whether the CPI is actually overestimating inflation. People are losing their minds over it, and honestly, I can see why. It feels like every time you turn on the news or scroll through social media, there’s another heated debate about whether the numbers coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics are actually reflecting what we're seeing at the grocery store or the gas pump. I was grabbing coffee the other day near downtown Chicago, and the guy behind me was venting about how his weekly bill had jumped significantly, yet he was looking at some report saying things were cooling down. That’s the disconnect right there. It’s one thing to look at a spreadsheet in a government office in Washington, D.C., and another thing entirely to look at your bank account after a trip to Target or Whole Foods. The whole argument basically boils down to how these indices are calculated—specifically how they weigh different goods and services. Some critics argue that the methodology used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't capture the real-world sting of rising costs for everyday Americans. They think the math is skewed in a way that makes inflation look more manageable than it actually feels to a regular person just trying to pay rent and buy eggs. It’s a messy, complicated topic, but it’s definitely more than just academic chatter. When the gap between official data and reality gets this wide, people start losing trust in the institutions meant to track our economy. Whether you're an expert studying Intermediate Macroeconomics or someone just trying to budget for the month, this stuff hits home.
Whether inflation is actually hitting us or not, there’s a massive hole in how we measure it that people keep pointing out. The first issue is substitution. In the real world, when things get pricey, people just stop buying them and switch to whatever is cheaper. They swap out expensive goods or services for more affordable alternatives. That’s just common sense, right? Then you’ve got the whole "new stuff" problem. Think about things like USB drives, tanning services, or smartphones. These things didn't even exist in the consumer basket decades ago, so they aren't factored into the CPI calculation. But adding these new products to our lives actually makes life better and stretches our dollars further. The math just doesn't catch up. The third thing—and this one is almost impossible to track—is the sheer improvement in quality. Let’s say a product gets way better but the price stays exactly the same because the improvement is too subtle to measure. Technically, the cost of living should be dropping because you're getting more bang for your buck, but since the price tag hasn't moved, the CPI stays flat. It misses the fact that we're actually better off. Because of COLA clauses, government spending relies heavily on how we define inflation. If the CPI overestimates inflation by even a single percentage point—which some economists argue is totally plausible—the consequences are huge. For example, back in 1997, the U.S. government ended up overpaying for social welfare programs by about $10 billion just because the numbers were off. It's a massive gap.
It’s hitting the dollar hard, which is a pretty massive number. Here in the States, we calculate inflation using the exact same methodology—basically through the Consumer Price Index. To figure out what a typical four-person household actually spends, they look at annual consumer surveys, then track those prices on a monthly basis to get the data.
A lot of analysts out there completely miss the scientific reality that the CPI actually overestimates inflation rather than underestimating it.
The only reason they’re still clinging to that Laspeyes index for inflation calculations is purely political—it's about buying votes. Besides, using it conveniently masks the massive, fuzzy hikes in social spending as a percentage of GDP we've seen across the West over the last 50 years, statistically smoothing it down to "just" 150% over that entire stretch.
Robert Vaughn10 said:I’m with Sinclair on this one. This takedown—which might still be playing out—serves a purpose. We could see a massive rally once enough panicked investors have been shaken out. It's happened before. Personally, my long-term outlook hasn't shifted an inch.
Gold and silver really ought to show their true colors over the next decade or so,which seems to be exactly what you were hinting at earlier...
😕
Anything is possible... but could it actually drop down to its 100-year average?