Avid Amoeba

Well most private companies are supported by debt (as they should), so part of the cost is directly paying for the companies’ debt. The state will always have lower interest rates

Shit. That’s a very interesting point I haven’t considered before.

It’s actually pretty comparable for me. My mortgage went up 40% which made the whole monthly cost of housing go up by 28%. Rents in the same building went up similarly but actually haven’t quite caught up.

I guess renting the water supply is cheaper in the short run and more expensive in the long run.

Shit.

It’s too close to expiration for a transfer. 😔 givemoney.gif

Plot twist:

Private equity buys your registrar and jacks up the renewal price 5x.

Amen. You’re like a capitalist, but without the capital.

The one thing scrum has succeeded in is creating an industry of people that get paid to do little work, which is fine as long as they don’t take themselves seriously enough to get in the way. Bullshit jobs are a needed feature of a well run economy.

This is a bad interpretation from the outlet. VW has been fighting against tariffs for Chinese EVs.

So far one of the best use cases for AI in software engineering has been identifying idiots and sociopaths.

I don’t think so. I think he’s worried Ukraine could do an incursion in Belarus and stir Belarussians to topple him.

Link.

Makes sense. Foreign direct investment means there’s no disruption of the local workers. The factory is owned by BYD, however Spanish workers work in it, and are hopefully represented by a Spanish union.

Well there’s data on drastic standard of living improvements over time and some specific policies that prioritize people over capital. At the same time they’re not universal and there’s still plenty of labor exploitation, lack of universal safety nets, environment destruction etc. One could find variables pointing to positive movement though, as well as negative. So I think today it’s a bit of an open question whether the party gives a shit about their people and how much. And that’s why I’m saying it would be interesting to see where they go in 5 years. Are they still building coal power plants or not. How much renewables have they deployed, nuclear, etc.

They should. If their socioeconomic system truly is more people-oriented than the western and given its size, then this would be a great showcase.

And between every dollar being backed by a bushel of potatoes or a dentist appointment and hyperinflation, lies a vast gap of other possibilities. For example dollars backed by future productivity that people believe will materialise which doesn’t exist today. If you factor in debt and look at fiat as a form of debt it should become more obvious why you can create money today that enables people to do work which they otherwise wouldn’t, without causing inflation, let alone hyperinflation, under the assumption of available real resources (labor, tools, metal, land, knowledge, etc).

In fiat economies financial capital isn’t a limiting factor since it can be and is created out of thin air as needed. The need for private citizens’ money to grow the economy is often repeated idea but it doesn’t hold water when you consider how their money was created in the first place. Specifically, currency issuing governments spend money into existence before being able to tax it. Therefore they don’t need to tax in order to spend. If there are the real resources needed for certain economic activity to occur but the limiting factor is the lack of money, a competent government will spend the required money into that sector and the activity will materialize. There’s no need to wait for private individuals to accumulate it over time in order to spend it to enable this economic activity. Crucially, even if you wait, the money is still going to come from a government’s “printing press.”

Other types of capital such as human, intellectual, can limit growth since they’re not as easily replaceable. That’s why I think your second point about who those people are is important. It is possible that they’re knowledgeable workers in different domains. It is also possible that they’re people skilled in exploiting others. If we assume the former, losing them isn’t ideal. If we assume the latter, then it’s a social value judgement of whether you want to have more or fewer of these types in your society, but they’re not essential for economic growth.

Even if they exfiltrate the money, China as every other fiat economy can replace it using a keyboard.

If these folks are indeed knowledgeable and experienced workers, then having them leave isn’t ideal. But whether they’re such people or not is an open question. They might also be people who are good at exploiting others’ labor for profit, just like their western many-multi-mil counterparts.

China saw the world’s biggest outflow of high-net-worth individuals last year and is expected to see a record exodus of 15,200 in 2024, dealing a further blow to its economy, a new report says.

It’s interesting how through the neoliberal lens this looks like “a blow” to their economy. But from a Keynesian or MMT lens, China doesn’t need high net worth individuals to drive the economy. Public investment can and has done this in China as well as many other parts of the world.

From another angle, letting high net worth individuals flee, could reduce apparent wealth inequality in China.

Title says growth, article paragraph says contraction. Yeah technically contraction is negative growth. Still misleading.