Economy

https://takano.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/new-poll-rep-takanos-32-hour-workweek-bill-popular-with-likely-voters

We should have shortened the work week considerably when women entered the paid labor force, doubling the paid labor supply.

If Democrats had included this and other wildly popular and necessary proposals in their platform, maybe they wouldn't have wiped out so hard.

But such policies conflict with the oligarchic/plutocratic/kleptocratic desire for absolute control over the public and working class, so NO DICE!

This topic is being introduced to me in a construction sustainability course and I'm curious if anyone has the expertise to generate a hypothesis on what the market would look like if COVID had not happened.

According to economic research it is rule of law that drives national economic growth. But rule of law, just means that people follow the laws, not whether they are right or wrong. And India has become the fastest growing large economy, without strong rule of law, where people settle disputes outside the law.

Culture also drives economic growth. Like the kind of values and interests most people share. Furthermore culture determines the structure of the economy and society. USA has values/culture of individualism, low context, low power distance etc. That is why it is an innovative and entrepreneurial economy. You get wealth, but also inequality. But there is a lot of variation or diversity, within regions, and between regions. Like the West coast is different from the North East.

But there are also cultural values that drive charity and business ethics. Recently business ethics and stakeholder capitalism is gaining ground. USA is only now starting to catch up with the Scandinavian countries in their Business ethics. But the economy will remain more inequal with smaller government, because their values and interests are different.

Reference: International Leadership and Organisational Behaviour, Bocconni University, Italy; A New Model for Social Business, University of Virginia, USA

Money is a transaction and measuring tool. When you grow your economy, by for example increasing the amount of goods and services provided, you don't actually increase the money supply and vise versa.

Simple examples for people who were unable to follow so far:
Let's assume you have an economy of 10 cars and 10 USD. That's it.
Now you double production to 20 cars. There are still only 10 USD units to exchange for it though. That's deflation Yeh. Now how dfq can we measure economic growth in USD then? How can an entire market move up? Sure an individual company can move up because we assume it does well... and we allocate funds to it, but how can an entire market move up? The only way it can happen is if money supply increases by the same amount as the economy grows or more. You can see it in the example down below:

https://preview.redd.it/g7ji3kc3dxzd1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=bf652feccfe7b472d75bac549bd3a1d9cd72c9d4

We are currently in the state of "Growing Economy". The PE ratio just keeps moving higher and higher. The overall revenue growth inside companies is due to inflation. So there is no economic growth in there either.

That's why any investor who still looks at fundamentals today is losing. Don't look at how the economy does. Don't look at how companies perform when picking ETFs or markets. It doesn't matter, they never mattered because fundamentals only matter with stock picking. Allocating funds from one place to another. All stocks combined only measure the money supply, or rather credit supply. They do not measure the underlying value of it. Otherwise you'd have an average PE ratio that stays flat, but It doesn't. It increases.

The way it works is that banks lend money, especially to hedgefunds and other useless companies that don't create any economic value. They "invest" it. Aka dump it onto the stock market, or pump it into assets. They bid each other up with loans, driving up prices. Taking bigger loans, paying off older loans etc. Through this bidding contest, they increase the value of the house, stock or whatever the security is on the bank balance sheet. Awesome, if it increased in value it means they can lend out more, easy. You are more credit worthy. Great! Rinse, repeat. However there was never an actual increase in economic activity. No new value. The price merely increased due to the abundance of the credit creation. You could say the stock market is the largest ponzi scheme in history and it keeps bubbling and popping, with the housing market being the second biggest one, but honestly, it's true for all assets in general really. That's also how 97% of money creation is caused not by central, but normal banks. Yup. (Exceptions make the rule. Argentina inflation is for example caused by central banks purchasing government bonds - thus new non existent money flows into the government, then into economy. But this is usually the rule for failed currencies. Not USD, or Euro etc.). Historically we had banks lend to companies that create new businesses, buy new machinery etc. So the increase in money supply used to result in a respective increase in goods and services. Whenever we get into a fake crackup boom based on the expectation of higher housing value or stock value, we enter a bubble. This happened famously in the 1920s, but it keeps happening ever since. The underlying issue was never resolved so this dynamic keeps repeating. The causes shift constantly.

So we are in a big bubble. Is it gonna pop? We are yes, but it won't. Banks have liquidity, they have money to lend, let's look at it in march 2025 again. Maybe liqudity dried up by then, it's usually the month with highest number of bankruptcies due to cyclicals (new year, accounting, annual reports, etc.). Hedgefunds are still dumping more money onto the stock market so it keeps moving up for now. Now if we want to break it down we come to the realization that the stock market doesn't track economic growth (and neither does gdp due to government spending but It's the closest number we can use). Stock market evaluations are just based on distorting our measuring unit, the money itself through lending. If you want to get rich. Borrow money, buy buy buy buy. If liquidity starts to dry up, aka credit creation at the banks. Sell dfq and leave the market asap because a crash is imminent. Watch bank balance sheets for that. How is their credit lending progressing? That is what you should watch out for and they are worsening which is why Buffet sold all his Bank of America shares this year.
Problem for most people: You won't get those loans unless you already have collateral. So hey. You are priced out of the market. Congratulations. You atleast finally understand why young people are getting poorer and poorer. So see ya all after the next asset crash for the next pump! Oh wait. We will just bail out banks, do QE and then we can continue everything without a crash. Yup. We are all F-ed.

How does the fake economy crashing affect the real economy? Why the bail outs? Well it's because banks not only lend money to fake, garbage, asset investments. They also lend for meaningful investments. Many companies, actually basically all companies except very few rely on money from the outside to grow and maintain their business. They have a contract for machinery etc. When a bank goes bust, they also lose the credit for their meaningful economic activity. That's why abolishing banks isn't the fix either. Quite the opposite actually. If that isn't bailed out we enter an insane depression and contraction.

Now what is the solution to the problem? Let the big banks crash, let them die and only bail out the deposits of the customers like Iceland did. Create new, smaller regional banks in their place and inject them with some central bank money to kickstart them. It won't even be inflationary because this will only be used to lend out the productive credit for the many small companies and little shops in need for financing in the crisis. It keeps the economy alive and prevents contraction. So now we have both punished speculators and saved the economy. The central banks usually ignore that first part...
Now abolish credit creation and lending for aquiring rights over properties, stocks etc. Aka non productive purposes. Abolish credit cards too as they are just a tool for keeping a dysfunctional system afloat by giving them negative equity. Banks should focus on lending out for productive purposes that grow the goods and services by the same amount. This is why China had over 30 years of double digit growth while we all stagnate around at some neglectable growth rate. You immediately fix the issue of recurring bubbles.
You could make an argument for first time home buyers to be able to get real estate loans, sure, but then those should have a sizable downpayment of atleast 40%. Even those types of loans would still continue the problem of driving up assets, atleast it would be at a more or less neglectable rate. An example for this would be Germany until 2009. They barely gave out housing loans, thus housing prices stayed cheap till they liberalized lending. There was never a german housing bubble since post WW2. Not even once. Well until recently... Thanks hedgefunds.
Oh and btw. all the flat money supply fans out there. The reason why the muslim world had absolutely no growth after their golden age is because interest was forbidden and money supply was flat. If your money supply is flat, what motivation is there to produce more? Take the car example I made in the beginning. Why would you produce more if it is now worth merely half as many currency units. In surch a flat money system, that money would be just hoarded into oblivion and lose its transaction value. Thats why economies throughout the dark ages were flat. You inherit what you get, cherish it, give it to your heir, die. Nothing new, no innovation, no growth, nothing. What you want to have instead is a stable ratio between goods and services and the money supply. For this ideal scenario there is no dumb artificial target. Especially not a 2% consumer goods basket. If anything, that basket should measure 0%. If credit lending is tied to productivity, the money supply growth automatically is 1 on 1 with the economic growth. It also rewards those who create value, thus work is worth it. At the moment it isn't.

I hope you took your time and learned something from it and use that knowledge for your own future ;)

How many times am I going to hear about eggs?

Imagine a situation which has played out thousands of times.

You work for a company that manufacturers in the US They provide tons of jobs and income tax to your local area

A private equity notices your company is profitable

They acquire your company and offshore everything engineers have built to other countries with extremely cheap labor

They receive huge margin on their investment and cut all the staff and hurt the local economy.

Tariffs are enacted. They tax those offshored imports and now private equity is having their margin go to taxes. They raise prices for consumers. Another company makes another similar product to your old companies, but is made in US. Less pollution in shipping to US because made here, and also becomes cheaper because other one raised due to tariffs (not to mention national security in having domestic supply chain. Think covid).

THIS IS WHY THE SILENT MAJORITY VOTED TRUMP. WE HAVE WATCHED OUR COMMUNITIES BECOME GUTTED AND OFFSHORED BY ACQUISTIONS FROM PRIVATE EQUITY. WE ARE PISSED.

There appears to be three thoughts with those voters for Trump/GOP - those that believe Trump wants to do mass deportation:

1. One on one: we like illegal immigrant workers. They are hard working and nice. We respect them.

2. We want to stop illegal immigration and want to deport those not here illegally.

3. We think illegal immigrants are a drain on society or worse: parasites.

If numbers 2 and 3 are accurate - and from my talks with Trump loving friends they are, there’s also one more glaring commonality:

4. We do not want to seriously go after small and large businesses in our community who hire illegals.

Why is there such a disconnect?

There’s something else: ask your Trump friends this. They will clam up, be silent. You won’t be able to explore it with them. It’s a real phenomenon - try it and report back if you can!

I was at a gas station in New Mexico and I saw a $10 bag of takis .

https://preview.redd.it/kcrvbknmmwzd1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a7e7184bbcd34dc494594a229f71e604aad3a3b7

Photo above - Gloria Steinem anticipated this week's "election sex strike" by 50 years. She stole her famous tagline from Irene Dunn in 1970, and used it without attribution.

Okay . . . that didn’t really happen. No male troglodytes threatened their wives and girlfriends financially if they voted “wrong”. In fact, THE OPPOSITE is happening. “Liberal Women” (see link below) have started a sex strike to protest partners who vote for someone they disapprove of.

This is a new low, even for politically polarized America. If the courts ruled that Elon Musk can’t give random Trump voters a million dollars, then the principle is going to be the same when comes to intercourse or fellatio. Nobody is allowed to exchange “anything of value” in return for a promise to vote for a particular candidate.

I don’t expect this to go to trial, however. Beyond that fact any man can just go to the local bar and hook up with someone else. Rather, the legal venue is probably the bigger question. Would this be small claims court for the value of a woman’s intimacy? Or grand larceny, ending up in the supreme court? I guess it depends on the woman, and her bedroom skills.

But we’re talking STRIKE here. This sex strike was possibly inspired by Ford UAW members, who scored $140,000 annual contracts. And then watched the company immediately shut an EV assembly line and cancel a planned battery factory. Jeep workers were laid off by the thousands this week, after striking to win a deal which sent their pay to the moon, too. So whoever is behind this “sex strike” isn't paying attention to current events. Low information voters, and strikers.

If your partner's vote for Trump (or RFK) is “the last straw”, then your relationship was $hitty to begin with. And the election sex strike was just an excuse to look for a partner who is more of a turn-on. Really . . . all this because of the crazy TV ads pitting transgendered pre-op immigrants in prison against the human garbage" of the opposing party? That’s pretty much the only election issue I saw on cable. If any candidates were upset at the $35 trillion national debt, they kept that to themselves.

Just for the record, I am NOT going on a sex strike over the $35 trillion national debt, which drives inflation and impoverishes both us AND our children. But I hope you’ll agree that $35 trillion is grand larceny, not petty theft. The biggest Ponzi scheme in history.

I’m just sayin’ . ..

'4B' movement: Liberal women launch sex strike after Donald Trump win - Washington Times

Do we think anything is gonna happen with the housing market in a year? I have a condo I need to sell asap (neighbors are so incredibly annoying), but because I bought it cash, and no one wants to wait for me to sell this thing so I can buy another house. I want to sell high (so soon) and potentially buy low (if anything changes in a year). So this looks like renting until I sell my house and then using that money to buy again. But I am not sure what the best plan would be here because renting is insane right now. It's an extremely competitive market and all my money is tied up in this condo. Any advice?