And I think the political spin of this article is incorrect, but not unexpected. The living check by check people aren’t the problem as they spend whatever they have getting by. Keeping the money flowing in the economic system prevents the gridlock of the 30s as well as keeping body and soul together.
The problem is the staggering amount of cash in the hands of the investing class. The previous president gave a huge tax break to this group. While this was supposed to stimulate production in the us, there’s no point in doing so when demand is flat. So a trillion more dollars are sloshing about looking for investment return. And the rest of us deal with the fallout of the current investment craze du jour.
They could have done more of what other countries did to needs test the covid money - in Canada, it wasn’t given to people who didn’t lose their jobs and it didn’t exceed their previous income if they did. Other countries did things similarly. It kept demand up and kept some smaller business alive. Even though a lot of layoffs occurred such as those making travel so difficult right now.
And businesses are making record profits while they use covid and the world’s unrest to jack their prices or shrinkflate their products. And there’s this little political instability in Europe right now, causing ripples across the world. Governments and central banks need the will to deal with the problem, but pain avoidance is strong right now.
Edit: the fact that money is available to take twitter private is a symptom of this. The readership of HN could reproduce the thing for peanuts is a short period of time so the return on that cash is at risk. Those funding Elon are counting the return when they flip it again. 44b could buy 10-15 sports teams, or provide a lot of medical research, or fix the battery recycling problem or all sorts of useful things that have guaranteed return.
And I think the political spin of this article is incorrect, but not unexpected. The living check by check people aren’t the problem as they spend whatever they have getting by. Keeping the money flowing in the economic system prevents the gridlock of the 30s as well as keeping body and soul together.
The problem is the staggering amount of cash in the hands of the investing class. The previous president gave a huge tax break to this group. While this was supposed to stimulate production in the us, there’s no point in doing so when demand is flat. So a trillion more dollars are sloshing about looking for investment return. And the rest of us deal with the fallout of the current investment craze du jour.
They could have done more of what other countries did to needs test the covid money - in Canada, it wasn’t given to people who didn’t lose their jobs and it didn’t exceed their previous income if they did. Other countries did things similarly. It kept demand up and kept some smaller business alive. Even though a lot of layoffs occurred such as those making travel so difficult right now.
And businesses are making record profits while they use covid and the world’s unrest to jack their prices or shrinkflate their products. And there’s this little political instability in Europe right now, causing ripples across the world. Governments and central banks need the will to deal with the problem, but pain avoidance is strong right now.
Edit: the fact that money is available to take twitter private is a symptom of this. The readership of HN could reproduce the thing for peanuts is a short period of time so the return on that cash is at risk. Those funding Elon are counting the return when they flip it again. 44b could buy 10-15 sports teams, or provide a lot of medical research, or fix the battery recycling problem or all sorts of useful things that have guaranteed return.