Apple to give away free cases to iPhone 4 users - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/16/apple-to-give-away-free-bumpers-to-iphone-4-users/ <comment><USER2> I figured they would do this. Everyone claiming they'd do a full-blown recall was nuts.

Semi-related: Nintendo is great at this stuff. When Mario Party hit for the N64, a lot of its mini-games required rotating the control stick fast. A lot of players would switch from using their thumbs to using their palms to rotate it faster.

The result? Blisters and redness on the palms of kids across the nation.

What did Nintendo do? They sent out free _gloves_ to anyone that wanted one.

<comment><USER3> They did the same with the wii controllers when they started slipping off and breaking big-screen tvs during a furious game of tennis.

Free rubber Wii controller wrappers.

(... having hard time not calling them controller condoms as I try to describe them)

<comment><USER4> They're too thick and have too much structure to be bag like. And now every wii controller you buy has one of them attached to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I seriously thought that the response would have been to offer a free service where they applied a thin clear layer of insulating material around the phone's edge. If people start believing that "iPhone 4s must be in a case" it greatly diminishes the fashion/status value of the phone.

<comment><USER6> Putting an iPhone in a case is really a shame. And yet, so many do it (it seems to me mostly women but my sample size is admittedly not large). The is so expensive, people are afraid to drop it. Maybe it's because it looks delicate?

In any case, I've dropped my 3GS phone about a half dozen times, twice from 3 feet. No damage so far; maybe some scratches, but I use a matte screen protector (more easily scratched than the glass) and a custom vinyl backing (edges and corners still exposed). There's some dust now behind the screen from the impacts, but a case might not have prevented that anyways.

If I had to put the 3GS in a case, I probably wouldn't have bought it in the first place. But then I prize thinness in phones over other things, since I put the phone in my pocket.

At least the iPhone 4 bumpers are less intrusive and ugly than most 3GS cases. Still a shame to cover the stainless steel edge when they finally brought stainless steel back in the iPhone design.

<comment><USER7> I'm on the same page as you. I had the original iPhone up until I just bought the iPhone 4, and I never had a case on my old one. I just always keep my phone with my wallet in my left pocket, and keys, coins, etc. in my right pocket. Without a case it's thin enough. And with sharp things in the other pocket you don't scratch the phone up.

It also helps, of course, that one's reflexes suddenly become much sharper when one is carrying an expensive piece of hardware. I've made some incredible catches of that phone over the years.

There should be a name for this phenomenon - "the hand of Jobs" or "the reflexive property (of smartphones)", perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Physics is the problem? So like he walked into the headquarters going "Ok, very funny guys! Who made physics apply to our products again?".

<comment><USER9> it's called Reality Distortion Field for a reason!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll get a case and see if I like it. Like most people I haven't really had a problem with reception though.

<comment><USER11> The people who don't have iPhones are really upset about it, though. Perhaps Apple should send them some free stuff.

<comment><USER12> The people who have iPhones that didn't work were upset about it. Based on Steve's numbers, they got reports from over 16,000 people about it. The flack they got online was completely disproportionate, but Apple didn't help things by telling those who had real problems that they were holding it wrong, or that they should spend another $30 to get their phone to work better.

Edit: I have an iPhone and I live in Philadelphia, where the signal is awesome. We're renaming one of our subway stops AT&T station here, even. AT&T has wired our subways so that I can use my bloody iPhone underground, and it's awesome. I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted for pointing out that the flack was disproportionate but that 16,000 people reportedly had problems with their phone. What do you disagree with, if you're going to downvote that?

<comment><USER13> I didn't down vote you, but a raw number like 16,000 people is meaningless. What if I said that 16,000 google searches a day give bad results.

<comment><USER14> There's lies, damn lies, and statistics. 0.55% sounds great, and not a big deal. In reality, 16,000 people get dropped calls - almost statistically insignificant. But if you're one of those 16K people, then it happens 100% of the time to you!

(It's fun to play with statistics to alter public perception)

<comment><USER15> When you deal with many millions, tens of thousands really aren't that big a deal, unless it's a really serious problem. Companies work at a different scale than you or I, and it's not reasonable to apply your own feelings about numbers to the numbers they work with.

And it doesn't happen 100% of the time for anyone, it's just very visible to some people when they try it, hence the complaints.

<comment><USER16> A _phone_ that can't make/maintain proper _calls_ IS a really serious problem.

Lying to your customers about perception (5 bars always, making the first two bigger) IS a serious problem.

When the Uberphone that was supposed to be mega-awesome has a repeatable hardware issue this IS a serious problem(even if the issue itself is minor, which it's not).

<comment><USER15> Nah, if you read the ars technica report on it, the perception explanation does turn out to be reasonable due to the way the "reception bars" graph works. Besides that, it explains that despite the fact that the phone suffers greater attenuation than most others, it still actually performs well due to higher sensitivity.

See here: <http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if Apple is repeating history and for the sole sake of focusing on profits over market share. There was a huge pent up demand for iPhone on other US carriers that Apple never and has not filled. Such has opened the door for the success and continued success of Android. I see so many people using Android phones now and so many people bashing iPhone. These same people had Apple fulfilled their demand most of them would not be on the Android bandwagon, which currently the Droid X is getting a ton of buzz and promoted as a just as good alternative to iPhone.

For me I prefer the iPhone, but it's not as cool as it use to be. This further hurts it's luster and cool factor!

<comment><USER18> The US is not the entire world - the iPhone is available for just about every major carrier around the world. In the US, they have AT&T, which has somewhere around 40-45% share of the market. The decision to not make an iPhone compatible with the rest of the US networks is a blip compared to the global market. Which means that the rise of Android has nearly nothing to do with the non-availability of the iPhone on Verizon, and nearly everything to do with the fact that Android is a strong competitor to the iPhone on capability/price.

Still, they'll pry my iPhone 4G out of my cold, dead hands... Android - fuh! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Now that is all cleared up, does anyone know if any stores in NYC have the phone in stock?

<comment><USER20> No. There is currently a 2 to 3 week backlog at all NYC apple stores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think Steve has handled this really well (I'm not a massive fan, but happy to acknowledge some smooth PR work going on when I see it).

Taking the line that other phones have the same issue was clever, but in reality it's actually only phones _with metal cases_ that suffer this problem. The plastic cases on other phones (or the "bumper" outer-case in this solution) insulate the user from the circuitry, of course.

What's interesting is that most other top phones (EVO, Nexus One, etc) don't have metal in the cases = no problems. Perhaps Apple needs to realize metal isn't a great material to make un-grounded, wireless, hand-held products from?

<comment><USER22> _What's interesting is that most other top phones (EVO, Nexus One, etc) don't have metal in the cases = no problems._

Except the Nexus One _does_ have this problem (to the tune of 17 dB of signal loss, according to Anandtech).

<comment><USER23> Holding naturally, Anandtech measured the iPhone 4 losing 19.8 dB vs the Nexus One 10.7 dB. Keep in mind that dB is logarithmic, so the iPhone 4 performs ~10x worse than the Nexus One in that test.

<http://www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review/2>

<comment><USER24> The reason that signal strength is measured in dB in the first place is because it corresponds linearly to _actual performance_ based on distance. It is originally derived from the measurement of a signal needed to sustain an audible sound across X miles of telephone wire. Therefore, it's a bit disingenuous to base performance on the linear strength of the signal.

<comment><USER25> Except that mobile phones are wireless and are subject to inverse square law as far as signal is concerned.

Signal theory traditionally operates with log scale because it simplifies math greatly and makes graphs manageable. If you say have noise floor at -30dB, expressing it on a linear graph is not very convenient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great move in acknowledging the problems and in providing free cases. This is good news for Apple and for its customers (I haven't had any reception issues and think it is better than my 3G iPhone, but I plan to get the case)

OTH this is very bad news for accessory companies that manufacture cases for the iPhone. They're going to have huge unsold inventory (unless Apple buys from them and they're able to sell to Apple with reasonable margins)

<comment><USER27> If I understood correctly, they will offer a selection of 3rd-party cases, due to their inability to keep up with the demand for bumpers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is absolutely brilliant marketing by Apple. First, they increase the perceived value of the case by selling it for $30(even though it costs them about $1), and then decide to give it away for free.

The result is that if you don't have reception problems, you are happy to get a free gift. If you do have reception problems, you get a passable fix or an option to return the phone. Looks like a win win.

<comment><USER29> Except the loss being your beautiful phone (and the iPhone 4 really is a beautiful piece of phone) is now hidden inside a case. The fashion conscious who are having reception problems won't be happy.

And if you argue these phones need cases to protect them, my 3 year old first gen iPhone that never had a case and still looks great disagrees with that sentiment.

<comment><USER30> Both my 1st and 2nd gen iphone suffered a broken screen. Maybe if you've a preternatural grasp on your phone and never ever drop it, sure. But I've had my phone drop from a variety of heights, skate across the train platform, fly down stairs, and more. No case = new phone every few months.

<comment><USER31> At least now without a case, you'll have a reason to upgrade to the inevitable Rev B, then!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm really upset that my own "pundit prediction" of a left-handed iPhone 4 was patently false.

</comment><comment><USER33> Interestingly, they're going to give it to everyone who buys an iPhone 4 before 9/30. Does that mean there's a product refresh in the works? Might not be a bad idea to wait another 2 months, I guess.

<comment><USER34> Or maybe they'll be shipping a case with each iPhone starting 9/30.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "Left handed death-grip"? Ah those damn left-handed idiots, always screwing stuff up for everybody else. ;)

<comment><USER36> I don't understand why people keep suggesting this hits primarily lefties.

I'm right-handed and I pretty much always hold my phone in my left as that leaves my dominant hand for doing anything useful: navigating apps, mousing, one-hand typing, fumbling through pockets, opening doors, etc. Why tie up my dominant hand just to hold something?

<comment><USER37> Because it allows them to both point fingers somewhere else (damn you lefties, you complicated things) and downplay the issue- i.e. pretend that because it only affects 7% of the population, it doesn't matter.

I am left handed btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why don't they just start anodizing that shit going forward?

<comment><USER39> I thought only softer metals like aluminum could be anodized. Not sure you can do that to stainless steel.

<comment><USER38> Oh I didn't realize it was steel. For some reason I was thinking it actually was aluminum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> wait, Apple themselves called the whole thing Antennagate? WTF were they thinking?

There are indeed amateurs working at their PR department. Good luck with getting rid of that instant meme!

<comment><USER40> I think after years of the press labeling every tempest in a teapot "Teapotgate", it's a pretty good PR move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> New iphone hype on the way. Turning HN filter on.

</comment><comment><USER42> There's already a thread discussing the press conference <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1521752>, can we avoid having the full front page loaded with the same press conference news

<comment><USER21> No, because other issues were raised and discussed in the press conference. This is just about issuing free cases.

Let 1000 flowers bloom and all that...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Legit source of market rate pay for engineers in SF? - <AUTHOR>

Anybody have a good source online or elsewhere that can be referred to for market rate pay for engineers in the bay area? <comment><USER2> I have had some success with glassdoor.com - it also at times has comments that can most euphemistically be called 'candid' (see Netflix: <http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Netflix-Reviews-E11891.htm>).</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a detailed description of N95 masks online? - <AUTHOR> I'm just curious about how they work. <comment><USER2> Here's a great explanation on all the different masks. N95 versus KN95, PM2.5 versus PM10 etc. [https://frugear.com/blogs/informational/how-to-choose-the- be...](https://frugear.com/blogs/informational/how-to-choose-the-best-face- mask-respirator)

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is a link covering how electrostatic filter media works.

[http://www.kjfiltration.com/monolith-triboelectric- electrost...](http://www.kjfiltration.com/monolith-triboelectric- electrostatic-air-filter-media.html)

I think most of the N95 masks use this stuff.</comment>


Mapreduce in search (presentation) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/amundtveit/mapreduce-in-search

<comment><USER2> No downloads, so I'm forced to read it in the browser for some reason. Duh.

</comment><comment><USER3> so, does map reduce work in instant search by index? not in the background indexing of terabytes of data.</comment>


Can we use Jenkins for that? - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.simondata.com/can-we-use-jenkins-for-that/ <comment><USER2> Eh, I'm sure there are many things Jenkins is OK at, but it's not that great of build server.

The Multi-Configuration Project abstraction (IE build matrices) is clunky and the plugin ecosystem doesn't respect it well (eg. the Gerrit plugin is extremely popular but very brittle here). So you wind up with O(n) projects anyway and still needing to copy and paste configuration among them.

Also Jenkins configuration itself is pretty nuts - settings splattered _all over_ the web UI, backed by XML - compared to the simplicity of modern tools like Travis (which uses YAML).

And Jenkins' UI I would definitely categorize as typically-poor open source UI, having evolved and grown more complex over many years with no strong guiding vision.

<comment><USER3> I agree with all this. Unfortunately I haven't found anything less bad :(

<comment><USER4> Jenkins + the Job DSL Plugin [0] has been amazing. We don't do any configuration in the web interface, instead everything lives in a groovy file on BitBucket. Every time we push a change Jenkins grabs it and auto runs the groovy file, regenerating all of our jobs. We have it set up so that a job is created for every branch in our repo, so much easier to work with. All a developer has to do to get his branch building is push it to the repo.

[0] [https://wiki.jenkins- ci.org/display/JENKINS/Job+DSL+Plugin](https://wiki.jenkins- ci.org/display/JENKINS/Job+DSL+Plugin)

<comment><USER5> You only need recognition-memory to use Web and GUI interfaces, whereas you need recall-memory to use command line interfaces and scripts, which is far more difficult. That's why clicking in a Web GUI or graphical XML-generator replaced scripting. You need a lot of previous information in your memory for recall to write stuff like the following example taken from your linked page:

      def project = 'quidryan/aws-sdk-test'
      def branchApi = new URL("https://api.github.com/repos/${project}/branches")
      def branches = new groovy.json.JsonSlurper().parse(branchApi.newReader())
      branches.each {
        def branchName = it.name
        job {
            name "${project}-${branchName}".replaceAll('/','-')
            scm {
                git("git://github.com/${project}.git", branchName)
            }
            steps {
                maven("test -Dproject.name=${project}/${branchName}")
            }
        }
      }

The vocabulary and grammar in that script is quite complicated and people would rather be presented with the options for clicking on a web page. But perhaps you're promoting a particular software product?

<comment><USER6> GUIs are more discoverable than command lines. Text files are easier to save in version control. So it's common to have a system where the GUI hooks new users, but they eventually have enough configuration in it that the GUI is no longer a reasonable way to control it all, and they need a way to extract the information in a reasonable format. Hence the reason several Jenkins plugins have evolved to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool ideas here even though a lot of comments are pouring water on it.

Reminds me of this post by Ted dzubia where he uses makefiles for data processing [1].

I like reading about novel uses of tools other than their original intent.

1- [http://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2011/02/stupid-unix- tric...](http://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2011/02/stupid-unix-tricks- workflow-control-with-gnu-make.html)

<comment><USER8> Thanks sheraz - we certainly don't expect Jenkins to serve as core infrastructure for many of these problems long term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The flexibility of Jenkins continually impresses me. Given :

1) Simple UI (for simple usecases) 2) Easy setup on single node or multi-node scenarios 3)Automation capabilities

Unfortunately there are some gaps that make it just enough of a pain to really take up in a Production 24x7 env.

1) In a distributed setup, there are very minimal node management capabilities unless you manually integrate with say Zookeeper or something.

2) the plugins for backing up and restoring configurations are "lacking" to put it politely

3) Very hard to change the Master machine in a master slave set-up

4)etc etc

So while Jenkins is a like the Swiss army knife for CI be careful that you don't take it to a (multi-node production) Gunfight - to stretch the analogy.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is actually my problem with Jenkins. It's great for running arbitrary jobs when triggered to do so. But it's super frustrating for managing many permutations of of the same class of jobs, with component tasks, permutations of different input, and orderly storage/display of output categorized on input. Or in other words: it sucks at building and testing software.

I'm almost to the point of using it just to manage generic "do X sort of stuff" tasks across many nodes, but the jobs that rely on an external system to run parameterized builds, and then the job then stores the results into the external system.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is part of the problem I have with Jenkins. It does far too many things. In many organizations it seems to occupy an awkward position between dev and production, where it's used for both and so ends up as the most fragile part of a production pipeline. Its config is very awkward, and partly as a result of that I've _never_ seen it properly backed up or even a staging instance for testing changes, yet alone blue/green instances.

So I prefer to have clear segregation. Jenkins as a build tool only. Rundeck for deployment. If I had a big need for scheduling, I'd want a dedicated system for doing that too.

</comment><comment><USER12> While not the best answer, I've used Jenkins extensively in the past for some rather creative purposes. Besides the standard "watch a SCM repo and react" type functions I've used it in combination with libvirt to spawn VMs self service for users (as well as coordinate the accounting and access control around this), watch an etag for a file to change in object storage and react, etc. I agree with some of the other commentary in that it's most useful aspects are around _not_ using it with a traditional CI pipeline.

</comment><comment><USER13> We use jenkins for CI, but only on our QA server. I haven't found a way to do CI without giving Jenkins full credentials on our server.

Jenkins is very powerful, but I would not trust it (or any of the myriad plugins we have installed) to not have security holes.

<comment><USER14> Yep. Not long ago a remote code execution hole in Java was found. Fortunately Jenkins was quickly patched: [https://jenkins-ci.org/content/mitigating- unauthenticated-re...](https://jenkins-ci.org/content/mitigating- unauthenticated-remote-code-execution-0-day-jenkins-cli)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> At my previous employer I used Jenkins with build matrices quite heavily. Lately I've been using TeamCity and we're paying for the enterprise variant. TeamCity has its share of flaws but FWIW it seems to handle more complex workflow tasks better.

In particular I like the flexibility around snapshot versus artifact dependencies, the APIs are decent (and you can do a lot of troublingly clever things if you invoke the API from within a build), and the metarunner concept seems strictly more powerful than the Jenkins equivalents, albeit with a somewhat steeper learning curve.

<comment><USER16> We've been using TeamCity for many years, and recently evaluated Jenkins as a possible replacement. Stability was a huge concern and decided to stick with TC. I agree, TC does have its share of flaws, but it's way ahead of Jenkins in many areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would be extremely wary of doing something like this considering that Jenkins stability is not stellar and bugs are aplenty. The codebase is fairly old and is littered with outdated code, failed refactorings etc. In the course of daily operation Jenkins is extremely susceptible to race conditions, potential memory leaks, and that is just core - without even running any plugins. Entrusting your company's critical infrastructure to it seems to me a bit dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone consider Jenkins as a replacement to CRON?

<comment><USER19> We do at my work. It has much more robust options. You can keep multiple jobs from running at the same time if one takes too long. You can auto kill it after a time limit. You get a web UI for all logging from the job. You get great built in tools for auto deleting logs after a certain number of builds or time period. You get a very robust email solution for sending out alerts when jobs run or don't run or fail. It adds some complexity vs CRON but it has many more features.

<comment><USER20> it uses a huge amount of resources compared to cron, though, which is my biggest problem with this approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The question appears to be "how can we abuse Jenkins today"? For small teams and orgs, Jenkins is fine, but scales horribly.

<comment><USER22> Totally agree. When you have critical systems driven from Jenkins jobs, and they're called all hours of the day, how do you manage to upgrade Jenkins without trashing all the running jobs? (A: pay CloudBees for the Multi-Master plugin).

Jenkins skimps on so many basic problems (cleaning workspaces for deleted jobs, resource requirements for jobs, API which can handle 10 requests a second, config store that doesn't require parsing hundreds of XML files on startup). Plus it has its own git implementation, which has unconfigurable checkout behavior (i.e. fetch all branches then checkout), which makes it a huge disk hog on busy repos.

The plugin system is half-baked: we have to check every new plugin (& version) on a test instance to verify that it doesn't interact horribly with any existing plugin.

When Jenkins triggers a downstream job & blocks on it before continuing, it logs the job it triggered, but not the build (until after the job completes). This makes watching a build in progress extremely tedious, and you have to hunt through the builds of the triggered job to find the relevant build. None of this is exposed directly by the API, your client has to derive it itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article feels like it's from years ago. Using Jenkins today is an anachronism - poor UI, poor configuration, poor scalability, poor distribution. My current employer has poured so much well intentioned effort into Jenkins' black hole. Never again.

<comment><USER24> What are you going to use instead?

<comment><USER23> Migrating to Travis and a SWF-based solution, all driven by versioned configuration and code.

<comment><USER25> From a quick look Travis doesn't seem to be open-source or even usable on- premise.

<comment><USER23> Open source is not a requirement. Neither is the ability to run locally, which is something we'd like to very much move away from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In addition to CI, we use it for all of our Selenium testing and for jobs that would otherwise just be cron jobs. The UI for logging and built in email alerting when jobs fail are invaluable.

</comment><comment><USER26> I hope your Jenkins server is well protected, if you're running so many things through it. One [JVM] to rule them all.</comment>


Startup Thinking - <AUTHOR> http://www.speakhuman.com/ch03_Startup_Thinking

<comment><AUTHOR> For most of you here, this will likely be pretty old-hat; nevertheless, there's likely something useful there. Alternately, you can share it with your "non-startup" friends. ;-)</comment>


Economics in One lesson - Henry Hazlitt - <AUTHOR> http://jim.com/econ/contents.html <comment><USER2> I can't recommend this book highly enough. I own multiple copies so that I can lend them out; it highlights fundamental economic fallacies, and introduces holistic/systems thinking to the general population by reminding the reader to focus on all those affected.

<comment><USER3> Seconded. It's a bit idealistic but is also very simply and dramatically demonstrates how poorly most people understand economics. Politicians are especially serious offenders, possibly because even if they know better, solutions that are economically silly are often publicly popular. For example, the "Cash for Clunkers" car programs are not a good idea. Although this book was written years ago, the exact same boneheaded policies are implemented today, advanced by the exact same nonsensical arguments.

This book will make you very frustrated when you have to listen to politicians talk about economics. :-)

<comment><USER4> the idea of politicians as people who learn about all the impacts and nuances of legislation so we don't have to has been proven false for _thousands of years_. the greeks knew that this representative democracy idea was crap. for an example of a functioning government please see the Venetian Republic (the birth place of proto-capitalism).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As the title says: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics!

I love the way author uses simple language to describe complex economics concepts.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is an excellent book, I read it a number of years ago in print form. Is this html version legal?

<comment><USER6> I like to think someone who owns jim.com, a very good domain name, and puts up good content with nice, clean formatting, knows what he's doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It could have been a great book if he had put his own views and opinions more to the background.

Put in a modern setting he's clearly a libertarian economist with little regard for the success of the modern European system in ensuring availability of essentials (food, health care, housing), while stimulating competition on non-essentials (mobile phones, internet access, commercial real estate).

Still a good read though.

<comment><USER8> It always bothers me when people who are obviously pushing a libertarian agenda market "economic arguments for libertarianism" as "economics".

I'm vaguely libertarian, and even mainstream economics implies a lot of scary libertarian things (minimum wages and rent controls have terrible side effects!) but fundamentally, economics is an "is" and libertarianism is an "ought". Seeing them mixed together is broken.

This book has lots of good things in it, but it's clearly trying to push you in one direction rather than simply educate you.

<comment><AUTHOR> tybris & philwelch: I am new to economics, your comments make me feel I am started with the wrong book! Can you recommend some places to start learning ? Thanks!

<comment><USER8> Keep in mind you're getting one side of the picture from Hazlitt. Hazlitt's a libertarian--he thinks less government is better. So he's not very prone to give you much evidence that sometimes, governments can do desirable things, just because that's not his bias.

The best advice I can give you is to try and separate facts from judgments. Take the minimum wage. It's well understood that minimum wage laws cause unemployment. It doesn't _necessarily_ follow from this that you don't need a minimum wage, though. Without a minimum wage, you might have twice as much unskilled labor working for half the pay, but all of them are below subsistence level and require government assistance. Whereas a higher minimum wage means some people can be dropped from the rolls entirely while others have to collect more. Or maybe you change the welfare system. It's a judgment call which tradeoffs you want to make, just like engineering. There are obvious things (command economies are pretty crap, just like bubble sort is a crap algorithm) but there are more subtle things (like time/space tradeoffs that dictate different algorithms for different applications) that depend on what you're trying to do.

Likewise, consider health care. Some people think it's a moral imperative that a wealthy society provide health care to everyone. Economics asks some tough questions--at what cost, what level of care do we provide--but it also provides answers--what are different ways of doing this, and what are the cost-benefits?

Economics at its best is a science. It doesn't dictate your goals to you, it just warns you of some natural constraints. You might say, "I believe in minimal taxes and don't care about poor people who need housing and health care but can't afford it." Well, economics tells you that's very feasible. You might say, "I believe in minimal taxes and a robust welfare state." Economics tells you there's no free lunch. You might say, "I believe everyone should have health insurance that meets these requirements." Well, economics says, you could give everyone health insurance, or you could have a market in health insurance and give people vouchers to pay for it, or do any other thing you can think of, but here are the effects and tradeoffs of those policies.

In terms of what in economics to study? Microeconomics seems better grounded than macro. Behavioral economics seems promising. Austrian is a mixed bag-- there's some stuff that promotes good economic reasoning but then there's also gigantic apologias for anarcho-capitalism based upon some moralistic conception of natural law that totally mix up the science of causes and effects with the moral aspect of goals and intentions.

I find that separating causes and effects from goals and intentions is a big problem not only in economics but also in ecology. There's a difference between saying "I want to sustainably maintain an environment that is good for human life" and "I want to preserve the environment mostly the way it is without human tampering", and an environmental scientist will recommend different policies based upon which goal she implicitly has in mind. Maybe some endangered species can go extinct if there's a better tradeoff for humans, or maybe not. Likewise with economics: there's no such thing as "economics says policy X is bad", only "economics says policy X has effects Y".

<comment><USER9> > Whereas a higher minimum wage means some people can be dropped from the > rolls entirely while others have to collect more.

You're falling prey to the fallacy that Hazlitt describes, focusing on some specific group, and for the short run, when in fact they harm the people generally and the poor substantially and indefinitely via forced unemployment.

In the minimum wage case, with people forced out of work by a policy essentially making it economically untenable to hire certain low-skill workers, or as many of them, you have fewer people engaged in productive labor. Society incurs a loss to its productive capacity, and our general level of abundance is reduced, including for those on the margin who aren't forced into unemployment.

Meanwhile, those who would be gaining skills and experience in the course of work are instead unemployed and idle. This too detracts from our human capital over time, by reducing the skills and thus earning power of the poor, the ostensible benefactors of minimum wage laws.

This isn't a judgment call, it's exactly the sort of thinking Hazlitt warns against.

<comment><USER8> Economics is great for telling us about these hidden costs, and I agree the minimum wage example is a good example where the costs outweigh the benefits. But it's not a clear-cut libertarian case of "all things that cause economic inefficiencies are bad policies". All economics can tell us is approximately _how much_ inefficiency, for instance, would be caused by subsidized food stamps. It's up to everyone to learn what that cost-benefit is and decide whether we can afford to subsidize some folks' food purchases. (Food stamps, and voucher schemes in general, seem to work well in my opinion.)

Or conversely, if we come down and say we want to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions, we might say, "Oh, let's inspect and license all the smokestacks in the US and write each of them permits every year." Economists will shake their heads and say that's an inefficient allocation method, and then they will invent cap-and-trade, where we sell them permits and let them trade the same fixed number of permits, so that SO2 emissions stay under a determined scarcity, but that scarcity is market-allocated. We've been doing that with SO2 for years and it's one of the great recent triumphs of economics.

<comment><USER9> But you've ignored decades of economists explaining how to do social programs in an efficient way. For example, Milton Friedman's Negative Income Tax would take the place minimum wages and food stamps with none of the administrative overhead or perverse incentives (i.e. the "welfare trap," where earning an extra dollar per day results in losing more than a dollar per day in benefits, thus discouraging career advancement).

And wrt sulpur dioxide, economists since Pigou have been arguing not for cap- and-trade, but for pollution taxes to right externalities. And if you go beyond Pigou, you don't find cap-and-trade, but Coase, who argues that if you structure the system properly, you don't even need intervention to right externalities, the actors will find an efficient arrangement on their own. Even beside this, Libertarians have no principled opposition to righting negative externalities: it's one of the few proper roles of government.

In the end, cap-and-trade is preferred not because it's the most effective, but because it's the most politically expedient. Pollution/Source fuels taxes are cheaper to administer, have better incentives for bureacrats to be faithful, and achieve the same ends. They're _better_ and economists will tell you so. The only reason cap-and-trade is the solution-du-jour is because it doesn't include the word "tax" in it. This is why conservatives are identifying it (correctly) as "Tax-and-trade."

You're not arguing against libertarians, you're arguing against the decades of economists you (I'm sorry to say) don't seem to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also delightful, but significantly more advanced is David Friedman's _Price Theory_ : [http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_ToC...](http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_ToC.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> That's not so much a lesson as an idealized (and in practice unachievable) mission statement.

</comment><comment><USER4> if anyone is looking for even simpler material to introduce economics to a broad audience I'd recommend the comic written by peter schiff's father: How an economy grows and why it doesn't Peter is reworking it for reprinting. I plan on buying multiple copies to lend out.

PDF warning: <http://freedom-school.com/money/how-an-economy-grows.pdf>

<comment><USER11> An entertaining comic which covers the basics well but throws in the complexities of reality as an afterthought stated as fact with no justification:

"Basic economic principles do not change with the size of the economy ... direct relationship between self sacrifice, savings, credit, investment, economic incentive, social and economic progress is always the same!"

Yeah right. As an introduction to basic economic principles this comic is great, but it takes a firm position on aspects of economic theory that are very much up for debate. I'd call this propaganda.

<comment><USER4> in the absence of strong evidence that magic properties "emerge" as a result of dealing with larger scales I tend to believe the simplest explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >The first thing that happens, for example, when a law is passed that no one shall be paid less than $106 for a forty-hour week is that no one who is not worth $106 a week to an employer will be employed at all. You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of rendering.

Ok, I can't let logic like that slide by. I'll just list off why it is totally junk reasoning:

\- Assumes that worker is getting 'what he is worth to an employer' currently. This would assume that the worker and the employer are on an equal footing, both in power (workers can be coerced and intimidated into lower wages), and intellect (workers can be tricked and bamboozled), and in information (workers know less about the going rates for labor than an employer, if only because employers have lots of employees, but an employee has only one employer usually). \- Assumes the worker is optimally employed to maximize earnings. Lots of people work in fields because they fell into that sort of work, and learning a new language or new skills is hard or unnatural to them. Being fired from such a low paying job may make developing other skills a necessity. Think of the guy working at McDonald's who could be trained to be a lineman for the electric company or a truck driver, or the truck driver who could (if he had more ambition, and was willing to give up an income for a few months to go to trade school) be a mechanic on jet engines. \- If everyone is held to the same minimum wage, everyone's costs, therefore the price they charge, goes up. Charging more money lets them afford the more expensive workers. \- If workers get more expensive, long term investments in mechanization become more attractive. This lowers costs in the long run, and creates jobs that pay more than the original menial job. All that extra money everyone has because the price of everything is so low due to mechanization means they have plenty of money to spend on luxuries they would never have previously considered, this is called 'Starbucks' and employs lots of people. \- Even if the worker does lose his job, modern unemployment insurance schemes will make that relatively painless to the old 'free market' system of going to debtors prison or indentured servitude.

A-priori economic arguments are bullshit. It is perfectly possible to prove convincingly that in a system without a government private security firms would enforce law and order. We can be convinced of this because we don't know all the reasons this fails in practice, due to our imperfect understanding of the world. The fact that in every single instance that there has been a lack of a functional police force for more than a few hours things go totally batshit insane should render any such 'convincing' argument totally absurd.

<comment><USER13> Nothing in the original argument of the bad effects of minimum wage required that an employee be paid their true worth. The comment you first quote merely presumes that an employer will not pay MORE than what an employee is worth, and all of your "the employer has more information and power" arguing is supporting, not refuting, the original claim.

<comment><USER12> There is no 'true worth'. The value of an employee is what is paid on the market.

Since the relationship is asymetric, with the employer knowing more, being more capable of negotiating, and probably more savvy and intelligent, it is likely that the employees are paid less than what they could negotiate if they were more savvy, smart, or powerful. Therefore, raising their pay via statute, so long as it is still less than the utility gained by the employer by having them around, won't cause anyone to lose a job. There is very likely a gap in the pay the employees collect, and what they could collect if they were more savvy, or had better negotiating skills, or had access to the labor market data the employer has better access to. In those cases where the new minimum wage falls within this gap you have no reason to suspect any loss of jobs.

However, such arguments are totally unnecessary, as we have been running a huge experiment for 60 years and can appeal to empirical data. We do have a minimum wage, and you will not be able to find anyone cannot find a job that is not suffering from psychiatric illness or a substance abuser. Temporary unemployment during economic downswings doesn't count, obviously.

<comment><USER13> Suppose today that someone has skills that provide "utility gained by the [prospective] employer" (what I'd call "true worth") of $4 per hour (and it's not for a restaurant position). Is that person, today, able to get a job paying that $4/hour? No, they aren't, at least not legally.

Why is that? Because the minimum wage law takes that option away from them, increasing unemployment and increasing the underground, untaxed, unregulated, no worker protection or benefits economy.

I am perfectly able to find people today who cannot find a job, who are neither psych nor substance impaired. Convenienently, you say that temporary unemployment during the economic downswing "doesn't count, obviously." I am more inclined to find that statement disingenious rather than obvious. When times are tough, one would expect that wages might come down. When the natural market wage would be lower than the minimum wage, some of those jobs will naturally vanish. How is that to the advantage of a job-seeker?

<comment><USER12> If you know someone who's labor is worth less than minimum wage to employers, consistently over a period of years, then that satisfies what the author was saying, that they can't find work because there is a difference between their work value and the minimum they can be paid.

However, temporary economic hard times are more like a mismatch in the number of people available to do work and the positions available. For example, if the coal plant in your county runs out of coal, there are no coal mining jobs, no matter how cheaply you will work. This doesn't prove anything about the minimum wage.

Since you can't find anyone who is unable to find work due to their labor being worth less than the minimum wage (even digging holes or lugging sacks of concrete pays way more than minimum wage) either the minimum wage is so low that it is moot, or other effects dominate any theoretical 'person worth less than minimum wage' effect in practice.

<comment><USER13> It shouldn't be any surprise that demanding physical labor jobs do in fact naturally pay more than minimum wage. Lots of people have physical limitations that prevent them from lugging sacks of concrete, yet they need and can afford things built with concrete.

If minimum wage is totally moot as you argue, what is the downside to abolishing it? It does not require someone to be consisently un or under employed over a number of years to prove that minimum wage laws contribute to unemployment.

Being out of work for 6-12 months, but willing and unable by minimum wage law to work for $5 an hour to put food on your family's table, would be a substantial and avoidable hardship.

Fortunately, in the real world that doesn't actually happen much, because those enterprising hard-working people can find under-the-table paid-in-cash work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How long is that lesson, 25 pages of at least 1000 words.

I'd say in "25 short lessons". TLDR.

<comment><USER15> Spoiler!!!!:

"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."

The rest is commentary and application examples.

<comment><USER16> In the same way that "eat food" is a lesson on wilderness survival. Or the way that Schrodingers equation tells you all you need to know about Quantum mechanics.

The rest is just commentary and examples.

The lesson is a clever device by the author, he pwns marketing 101, but is "to grok economics consider future global effects" really that inciteful?

Seems to be a nice book though.

<comment><USER15> It sure seems simplistic, but again and again we suffer from policies against that simple rule. It's amazing (and depressing) how many problems can be explained by it, like politicians implementing myopic short-term reforms in order to win the next election (and the future be damned), or to appease some selected and influential group (and be the rest ones left to pay it)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What kind of kezboard do programmers in Germanz use? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Most programmers I know just use the regular German keyboard layout.

Not being a glutton for punishment, I soon switched to a US keyboard layout, either on a real US keyboard (Macbook or Unicomp) or a German one (old Thinkpad, Model M). The latter gets a bit iffy with a few keys due to the different "enter" key size, but you get used to it.

I used to switch to a German layout for typing German text (umlauts etc.), but lately I've just been using the alternate text entry systems. If only they were the same on Macs and Linux systems (Compose vs. tertiary)…

</comment><comment><USER3> Normal German layout, with some keys (braces and other programming stuff) mapped to the home row with caps lock as the modifier key. So <caps lock>+h = $ for example -> sucks to program on computers not owned by me ;)

I also consider to switch the y and z keys like in the us layout, because i need the y key way more often (copy selection in vim) and find it very uncomfortable to reach.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use the "US International" keyboard layout and a dell us keyboard. That way I have nice access to the {[]} braces and to "üäöß" if I need it. But most of the time I substitute those with ae ue oe anyway.</comment>


We're Measuring the Economy All Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/opinion/columnists/great-recession-economy-gdp.html <comment><USER2> I've been thinking a lot about the fundamental flaws in economic metrics — there is just absolutely something missing in the current concept of actuarial efficiency — which is I think the only kind of efficiency that economists are equipped to talk about.

There is 0 value given to the experience of visiting a natural space or to forests which take thousands of years to grow which quite literally could not be reconstructed for any amount of money (for example) ... we need something more at a philosophical level from economics than we are getting. I've been pondering a two dimensional monetary system — dollar amount representing how much you want something and another number for representing how much it costs the world for you to have it ... the one dimensional notion of value claims to merge these things but it clearly does not — investment which produces growth by satisfying ever more wants _should_ hit a point of diminishing return far sooner than our current metrics are able to represent ... if we had a 2d monetary system where pricing models were segregated, actuarial efficiency could be arranged to mean something entirely more meaningful than the current optimization paradigms can ever hope for ...

<comment><USER3> There is a concept in economic theory for what you're discussing, the concept of "externalities". There are definitely ways of measuring these things. But you are right, measures of externalities aren't really considered when people in government / business / the press talk about the economy

I think that's a shame, because externalities can be measured (not perfectly, probably much less accurately than current economic measures -- but something is probably better than nothing). And people care about them -- arguably, today people are more concerned politically with externalities than traditional economic growth. But the dialogue regarding these externalities is generally driven by emotion rather than facts, because no one is really incentivized to do thorough objective research on them at a really large scale (tragedy of the commons)

<comment><USER2> I think "externalities" is close to the concept I want to capture with the second dimension, but I want to bake this concept into the pricing model in such a fundamental way that it can't be ignored. Suppose the second dimension of price in my thought is an approximation of the "total external cost" — this metric undergoes market and actuarial optimization but the domain in which these barks are traded reflects a different set of overall constraints than are captured by the inflationary dollar monetary system. As a rough example, let's say the inflation model for the "bark" currency is tied to the total number of tree years on the planet (I don't think this would be the right way, but just trying it as a conceptual example). So there are roughly num_tree_years "barks" in existence growing at something approaching num_trees per year. Lets say as more trees are planted or time passes that every human is allocated a proportional share of "barks" commiserate to the "bark" growth rate (or loss rate if trees are cut down faster than they are growing). So the currency reflects an externality in a shared way that is also quantitative ... if someone wants to cut down an old growth forest to build a car park, they are gonna need to find a lot of people willing to loan them "barks" to pay for it as they will have to compensate the global balance for all the barks they remove — in addition to seeking the traditional investors who will loan them money for construction on the traditional basis of their sense of the likely desirability-profit of the parking garage ...

This "barks" toy example is definitely not the precise idea I want to capture and not at all fully fleshed out — but suppose a more developed version where there is a mechanism for estimating the externality costs of any transactions and where there are different rules that apply when paying for the "externalities cost" vs paying for its dollar price ...

<comment><USER3> I think it's an interesting concept. As I think about it, we already have a weak version of this in the form of lobbying and political organizing. If a company wants to destroy an old growth forest to build a parking lot, in many areas they need permits / zoning etc. People who would suffer if the forest were destroyed -- people who live nearby, environmentalists, etc -- can raise money and lobby, or organize politically, to make their case, as can those who would benefit -- the company building the parking lot, maybe some neighbors who value more parking more than they value the environment.

I think the issue with this system is that generally the groups imposing the externality are more organized, and often wealthier, than the groups who suffer from it (tragedy of the commons again). Getting the trees cut down may be priority #1 for the company, and opposing it might be priority #30 for a few hundred people. Priorities that low are effectively zero, since most people dont even have time to handle their important priorities

I feel like your idea could potentially tip the balance in the favor of the "commons" by imposing a higher upfront cost to the creator of negative externalities, but I can't really put my finger on whether that is true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Inequality started to get bad around 1980 or so.

That's when my generation ("boomers", we're called, or maybe the "worst generation" to compare us to the WWII "greatest generation") decided that taxation was theft and younger people should suck it up and pay through the nose for their own college and housing.

We've been successful. We've grabbed all the cookies. Some of those cookies could have gone for education, for infrastructure, and other things. Some of them could have gone into urban development to make sure the growing population had decent living quarters. Some of them could have gone into paying for sensible oversight of pharma, finance, and other vital business.

But no. Those cookies are mine, MINE I tell you! And you can't have any. And by the way, no new apartment buildings in MY neighborhood. We're too special to have any riffraff who can't afford to pay most of a megabuck for a place to live.

<irony><snark /></irony>

<comment><USER5> I agree, but there's plenty of blame to go around ... In particular, I think the "greatest generation" also bears heavy responsibility as they, after all, filled out the ranks of the AARP during the 80s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The unemployment rate has also become less meaningful than it once was. In > recent decades, the number of idle working-age adults has surged.

This is a pretty significant error in the article. The Brookings blog post specifically talks about _men_ rather than adults. U6 unemployment is has fallen to the same level it was prior to the dot-com crash.

There's a solid argument that looking at U3 rather than U6 understated the severity of the great recession, but by any sort of unemployment metric the great recession is over.

[https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/08/15/men- not-a...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/08/15/men-not-at-work- why-so-many-men-ages-of-25-to-54-are-not-working/)

[https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment- rate](https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate)

The Brookings blog post also makes no attempt to compare unemployment/marriage rates among men and women, so its entire tone is severely misleading since it's basically trying to paint a simple equalizaton between women and men as a crisis.

<comment><USER7> this whole article is purely leading the charge for how Democrats are going to down play the increase in market, lower jobless numbers especially among minorities, and reports of general good will in the small business area.

Schumer only recently decided he wanted GPD reported differently for the same reason politicians always want to change the measuring stick, because current numbers don't support the message they want the public to hear.

It is very evident we are going to get swamped with all sorts of "new economics" and "fair economics" stories leading up to 2018 because the current numbers being reported look that good. The key is filtering this political campaign driven noise.

<comment><USER8> The article's argument is that the numbers commonly used do not reflect reality accurately anymore. And your response doesn't engage with the specifics of what the authors says is going on, instead you respond "la la la la, I can't hear you, it's all just spin, la la la".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Disclaimer, not an economist but work with a bunch of them. Of course, economists are already hyper-aware of focusing on a single measure and of all these issues with specific indicators, and surprise surprise, we have a wealth of alternatives that are published and are freely accessible all the time:

e.g. the BLS already releases all manner of alternative unemployment statistics (see "discouraged workers"): [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm)

e.g. for income inequality, a crude but well known measure is the Gini index which measures how dispersed incomes are in a population: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA#0](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA#0)

e.g. Consumer price index is another approach measuring access to basic goods: [https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer- pri...](https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index- average-price-data.htm)

Household net worth is another one that the article mentions.

The matter of which number is chosen as the official measure of "goodness" is the real issue and that is a political matter, and because depth of public (and shockingly often policymaker!) discourse on the matter is stuck at "did the thing go up or down". I'm dubious that switching to a different indicator will solve the problem per se - perhaps make it harder to game.

<comment><USER10> Sowell speaks extensively to these types of shenanigans. It's certainly more politically selected and manipulated than economist-chosen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Look around, and you can see the lingering effects of the financial crisis > just about everywhere — everywhere, that is, except in the most commonly > cited economic statistics. So who are you going to believe: Those > statistics, or your own eyes?

Not an auspicious start, David. People believe lots of things that aren't true, for example that crime is going up. That's why reliance on objective measures is crucial.

Of course, the larger point about using the right measures is well taken. But switching to new measures to validate your preconceived gut feeling is fraught with peril. For example, labor force participation rate, which measures the non-institutional population 16 and older, is down to 62% from a peak of 67% in 2000: [https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/labor-force- partic...](https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/labor-force- participation-what-has-happened-since-the-peak.htm) (from 67% to 62%). Is it because discouraged workers are leaving the workforce? Not really--the labor force participation rate of high-school and college-aged people (ages 16-24) is down dramatically. But the rate among those aged 25-55 is down just a few points.

<comment><USER12> The point that he's making is not that individual observation should trump objective measures, but the epistemic claim that if what we perceive contradicts those measures, it's worth interrogating the validity of those measures.

I don't think that the particular example that you're giving is "fraught with peril". Note the lack of an upper bound on the labor force participation rate that you cite - 16+ includes people of retirement age, whereas the measure given in the article shows that the official unemployment rate for men 25-55 is just 1/3 of the "true" unemployment rate that includes disaffected workers. This is significant.

<comment><USER13> It was pretty interesting (and disquieting) to see a linear trend.

I don't know how the statistics are gathered, but I wonder if they separate those who wish to/need to work from those who don't. For those who have given up searching, that is.

<comment><USER14> > I wonder if they separate those who wish to/need to work from those who > don't. For those who have given up searching, that is.

Indeed they do. The rate you most commonly see tries to measure unemployment in the active labor force. If you're not actively looking for work, you're not counted as unemployed. There are other measures which do count "discouraged workers" and others not usually included. They're much higher.

<comment><USER13> Yea, I was talking about further filtering "discouraged workers", or those who've given up searching for work. I think it'd be interesting to apply the "wish to/need to" filter to those who are employed, too!

This article[1] gets into a bit, but

"Some men choose not to work and can afford not to. That's great, Furman says. But for many, probably most, dropping out of the work force not only means a lack of income but also a loss of the dignity that comes with not working."

still sounds like conjecture, to me.

[1]: [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/08/15/men- not-a...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/08/15/men-not-at-work- why-so-many-men-ages-of-25-to-54-are-not-working/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting and related note; the link between energy and GDP has been steadily decoupling at a brisk pace since 1970 [1]. I might be mis- remembering, but I ran the numbers on this and I recall the trend being fairly steady up to about 1970.

There are two ways to spin that; the first and usual way is that we've entered an enlightened new era of services and efficiency where we do not need energy to achieve desired outcomes. The negative spin is that from 1970 GDP growth ceased to be a strong indicator of real improvements.

Maybe the difference is made up in embedded energy in imports; but the US population isn't behaving like a group experiencing exponential growth. Given the industrial base currently in existence, even 2% growth should be crazy improvements on quality of life. Like, for everything an ordinary person had 10 years ago they should have 1.2 things now. Instead the situation could be interpreted as a slow-burn voter revolt brewing against the establishment who run the country. Or I could be clueless.

[1] [https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=10191](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=10191)

<comment><USER16> (GDP growth) - (population growth) is what results in individual quality of life improvements. A 1% population growth rate makes a huge difference to that 2% growth number.

US was under 2/3 the population in 1970 on top of that stuff like cellphones, cars, etc really have significantly improved. But that stuff generally uses less power to do the same things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Funny enough, the proposals here remind me an article on site metrics I read recently. To rephrase the relevant bit, "99.9..% uptime is highly misleading _if a small number of your customers are simply down all the time_."

Unemployment has a long-known flaw cited in the article, especially relevant in this economy: the significant number of adults who have simply given up looking for work, considering it hopeless, and who are therefore not counted in the unemployment statistics.

Any metric gives you just a tiny, keyhole-like view on the world. A big part of the battle is then to understand _what your metrics are blinding you to_.

<comment><USER9> This is a nice connection and it's a kind of what's known as a structuralist argument - what you're saying is that the approach of "uptime is uptime is uptime" is wrong, and distribution of /where/ downtime happens actually matters a lot. Economics did run into similar issues with GDP because it assumed for a long time that "money is money is money", until it found out that just because both Iraq and Vietnam have similar GDPs doesn't mean that they're at all equivalent - one is heavily dependent on oil and has few development prospects, the other has a wealth of productive know how in a ton of different areas (shameless plug, I work on this tool):

Iraq [http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/network/?country=108&pa...](http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/network/?country=108&partner=undefined&product=undefined&productClass=HS&startYear=undefined&target=Product&year=2016)

vs

Vietnam [http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/network/?country=239&pa...](http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/network/?country=239&partner=undefined&product=undefined&productClass=HS&startYear=undefined&target=Product&year=2016)

Each node here is a specific product being exported "significantly" for a country of that size.

\---

So by a similar argument you could look at how similar the population that goes in and out of unemployment (seems likely to me) is every year, and what that implies about policies and job opportunities in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _Almost a century later, it is time for a new set of statistics. It's time > for measures that do a better job of capturing the realities of modern > American life... Fortunately, there is a nascent movement to change that. A > team of academic economists... has begun publishing a version of G.D.P. that > separates out the share of national income flowing to rich, middle class and > poor._

I'm 1,000% for the idea of a statistic that captures a more holistic view of economic improvement.

The problem is, nobody's come up with a single number that feels ideologically neutral, because there's no agreement on what the "right" level of inequality is.

GDP is a sum you can't argue with (and easy to argue that more = better, even if not always true), and likewise unemployment is a percentage you can't argue with (and easy to argue that less = better, again even if not always true).

But even if we separate out GDP by class... it isn't clearly actionable. There's no obvious equivalent of "more = better", because it's clear that wealth increases should be spread out, but it's not clear they should be spread out equally.

The puzzle piece that seems to be lacking is some kind of rigorous justification for what the _right_ level of inequality is in a society. But no political scientist, economist or philosopher has yet developed/proved that in any way that people generally accept.

We can't measure the economy all "right" until we collectively decide what "right" even is.

<comment><USER19> 'Median GDP' is a good version of GDP to give a somewhat balanced view of a typical citizens share of the pie.

Also, we need to stop expecting a single number to track. Any metric will always be flawed or managed. People need financial literacy and critical thinking to see the picture from altitude or I suspect many will be easily manipulated via relevant powerbrokers touting message appropriate single statistics.

<comment><USER18> A median would do a great job of not being affected much by the top 1% or even 10%...

...but at the same time could be virtually unaffected by bringing the bottom 5% completely out of the worst poverty, which some people argue is the top priority, so I'd be worried about adopting this.

I think we _do_ need a single number though. As soon as you have multiple metrics, nobody knows how to balance them anymore. And it's infinitely easier and more realistic to ask our 'intelligentsia' to develop a more easily digestible metric, than to somehow turn all citizens into financially literate critical thinkers. Most people are too busy earning their salary to support and raise their families, to be able to spend the significant time investment required for that kind of critical financial thinking. It's too much of a burden to ask.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "The financial crisis remains the most influential event of the 21st century."

Uh... I think 9/11 may disagree. The financial crisis didn't spawn wars and ISIL.

<comment><USER21> 9/11 didn't really spawn ISIL either.

ISIL is really a function of the Arab spring, spawned by a general popular Arab uprising, which was spawned by a singular uprising in Tunisia, spawned by a single man committing suicide, spawned by Manning's blind cable releases.

The financial crises was global, and nearly brought the American economic system down, I don't think people realize how close we came to serious disaster. The President handed out 1 Trillion dollars in 'magic dollars' to quelch the system it was crazy. It affected everyone in the world. Almost every American was directly affected.

9/11 surely the biggest geopolitical event.

<comment><USER22> >spawned by Manning's blind cable releases.

Genuinely curious, do you have any good sources that explain how the cable releases triggered this set of events? I understand that Manning/Assange have jeopardized some US intelligence efforts (and lives), but not aware of any greater fallout beyond a handful of compromised operations and deaths (no small feat, but smaller than ISIL).

<comment><USER21> The Manning leaks helped spawn the Arab Spring for a set of upside down reasons. Manning had no understanding of what he was doing, nor could anyone expect the outcome. Moroever, the leaks did not show the Americans 'being evil' to the world, in fact, just the opposite: the leaks showed thousands of professional diplomats doing their mundane jobs in a difficult and complicated world. Given how many cables were leaked, and that nothing explosive came out of that making the Americans look particularly evil is a real testament to the professionalism of the American diplomatic corps.

What the cables did however - was demonstrate to regular Arabs how deeply corrupt their _own_ leaders were. Basically, they saw the Americans trying to appease, nudge, console, 'do the best they could' with some corrupt folks.

I'm sorry to not have direct sources, it was years ago when I was abroad, paying attention to all of this. Edit: I added a couple of sources below, it's not a conspiratorial view.

<comment><USER23> Oh, that's pretty cool then. At least it informed people about how bad their leaders were.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." Too many people are incentivized for the metrics to look good to trust the metrics anymore.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, this is it exactly. Goodhart even discovered it in the context of economics: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

The Lucas critique is the other commonly associated one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_critique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_critique)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Definitely agree with the premise here. GDP is up, employment is up, stock market is up. But inequality is growing by day, market consolidation is becoming more and more of a problem, and most Americans are not invested in the stock market, let alone have an extra 1,000 to open up a mutual fund.

Our economic statistics are way too broad and just don't account for the inequality in today's economy.

</comment><comment><USER27> > The United States elected a racist reality-television star who has thrown > the presidency into chaos.

And now I want to stop reading.

Okay, I still finished it. But it really turns me off to sell a lie by constantly throwing one-off assertions of it into random unrelated places, where it is supposed to feel out-of-place to notice it and argue against it.

</comment><comment><USER28> I've taken economic stats with a grain of salt for some time - one because I think after the Carter presidency, the executive branch had a huge incentive to fudge the stats.

The other because macro numbers such as CPI and unemployment rates only tell a high-level story, not the one that mattered - which is, what is happening to ME?

But it should be hypothetically possible nowadays to compute a useful individual CPI based on individual buying habits.

Same goes for taxes - it should be possible to determine how much of one's spending power goes to taxes - income, sales, inclusive taxes such as excise/VAT, etc.

Regarding jobs, it might be possible to develop an "employability" stat based on one's current job, age, and maybe location.

</comment><comment><USER29> "Continuous economic growth and expansion in our finite world is not a must. In fact, the current global economic situation still presents a great opportunity to give nature a rest … to reduce stress, to have more free time, to become more secure and self-reliant, and to improve the quality of our lives." \- [https://medium.com/brewingthoughts/bhutan-an-economy-of- happ...](https://medium.com/brewingthoughts/bhutan-an-economy-of- happiness-22462a702c9d)

</comment><comment><USER30> This is a political opportunity. If the current statistic is misleading, build your political platform on a new statistic that better represents reality and commit to improving it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Beginning of the article negates any point he tried to establish further along. It screams that if the election would have gone the other way that he wouldn't be writing it.

</comment><comment><USER32> I know it's fashionable both to lionize Piketty and criticize him as a huckster. But he did play really fast and loose with statistics in his best- seller.

<comment><USER33> Isn't that pretty much the standard in economics? Whatever I read about economics they all seem give data their own convenient spin instead of admitting "I don't know".

<comment><USER34> Isn't that pretty much the standard in any research? It's pretty pointless to publish a bunch of data and state as your conclusion "gee, I don't know what any of that meant, lol". As long as you aren't actually making up data to fit your thesis (which surely happens) or completely ignoring data contrary to your thesis, I don't see an issue. If someone doesn't agree with it, they can publish their own argument with supporting data.

<comment><USER33> In physics there is a lot of data that shows that there must be something other than regular matter but physicists still admit that they have no clue what it is. I am not an economist but from what I read economists show the data and then always have an explanation for it. Maybe they should stop at the data?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This article points out that there is a large portion of the labor force who has given up looking for work. This may be anecdotal, but I can't think of a single person that I know that is unemployed and not looking for a job/further education/caregiving. I know people who are underemployed or are the proverbial life long student. Am I just in my own little bubble? What do these people do with their days?

<comment><USER36> As was mentioned in an article [0] linked in another comment, men who are unemployed and have given up are typically low self-esteem and susceptible to depression. If you've met one, you won't hear them say they've given up.

[0] [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/08/15/men- not-a...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/08/15/men-not-at-work- why-so-many-men-ages-of-25-to-54-are-not-working/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> From Dean Baker:

[http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/does-france-s- economy-n...](http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/does-france-s-economy-need- to-be-renewed)

" For prime-age workers (ages 25 to 54), according to the OECD, France's employment rate is actually slightly higher than in the United States, 80.4 percent in France, compared to 79.3 percent in the United States."

[https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=36324](https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=36324)

Unemployement rate 25-54 year old is 8.1% in France and 3.3% in the USA.

So less than half the "unemployment rate" for less people working relative to this population.

A few decades worth of "inactivity" rise explaining this result (in french but graph subtitles in english):

[http://guerby.org/blog/index.php/2010/01/31/211-larry- summer...](http://guerby.org/blog/index.php/2010/01/31/211-larry-summers-lit- mon-blog)

Ask your friend studying economics wether they know this data point or not. :)

</comment><comment><USER38> In most statistical analysis, it's useful to throw out the outliers before calculating the results. For example, many latency metrics on websites use the 99th percentile or "P99" as a measure of success.

If we throw away the top 1% of incomes (and the bottom 1% as well to be fair) how well has America actually recovered from 2008? I can't imagine it looks nearly as good.

</comment><comment><USER39> Another interesting datapoint is medicaid enrollment. It's WAY up. If you look at it over the last 18 years:

2000: Enrolled: 31,743,700 | % of country: 11%

2010: Enrolled: 50,314,600 | % of country: 16%

2018: Enrolled: 73,355,220 | % of country: 22%

Although there was an expansion in Medicaid in 2009, these numbers are still showing there are more people who can't afford the basics.

<comment><USER40> Isnt a lot of this an effect from Obamacare? Forcing every American to purchase insurance significantly changed the insurance landscape in America for people both with and without insurance.

<comment><USER39> Yup. That's a lot of the growth between 2000 and 2010. I guess a better indicator would be the growth between 2013 (post Obamacare boom) and today. That has gone from 56,533,472 to 73,355,220.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> A lot of these misleading single value statistics seem to come down to we need a histogram. Money, comp, stock earnings go to different groups of people at very different amounts.

</comment><comment><USER42> There's this thing, I don't know if it has a name, but it's certainly a post- scarcity idea:

The people who spend the most capital (money/time/talent) measuring/sciencing a thing will always be the people who can profit from that thing the most, and they will measure/science it in the capacity that provides the highest returns.

Lots of other people will measure/science the thing, but they either will have their own agenda or do the measury/sciency part less good.

</comment><comment><USER43> We should talk more about the frame in which this "economy" is having ups and downs. That frame is cheap fossile energy. It's about to collapse.

<comment><USER44> First, it's been about to collapse for decades. We keep being about to run out of oil. For my part, I think there's a lot more fracking that will happen if the price rises much farther. Oil therefore may rise a bit, but will continue to be available at a non-ruinous price (speaking purely economically here).

Second, renewables are close to being able to take significant load off of fossil fuels. Already coal use is declining (at least in America), and not because coal got scarce or expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Seems shortsighted to imply these are all metrics related to lingering effects of the financial crisis and not the actively intended results of corporate decision making post crisis. People are rich enough to buy $1000 phones every year and CRVs instead of sedans. That's all that matters.

</comment><comment><USER46> Are there any examples of economic metrics that factor in the cost of environmental externalities?

For example, what is the economic value of our coasts and how do you account for their destruction, by sea level rise, when calculating the cost of manufacturing and the value of any resulting economic activity.

</comment><comment><USER47> I agree we're measuring things wrong, here are only two examples:

\- it's good for a company to sell a ton of crappy cloths that don't last long and the production of which has terrible environmental impact

\- it's good to produce a ton of low quality eggs and sell them

<comment><USER48> "low quality" by what standard? Someone bought them, so they must have met the standard of the purchaser.

Sure, externalities are a problem, but the ability of the market to deliver quality doesn't seem to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> GDH ("Gross Domestic Happiness") might be a better single metric to track.

</comment><comment><USER50> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility) is not measured in economic metrics

</comment><comment><USER51> I've been saying this for years, we need new KPIs.

For the US, I propose 3 major indexes of Life, Liberty and Happiness.

Each of these could accommodate a large number of sub-indexes from a variety of political perspectives.

For example, Liberty might include a metric for access to safe, legal and affordable abortion while Life might contain numbers on actual abortions performed.

Life: mortality rate, birth rate, life expectancy, health spending, etc.

Liberty: drug laws, gun laws, people in jail, freedom of press, etc.

Happiness: mental health, life satisfaction, depression, etc.

Thoughts?

What measures would you include?

</comment><comment><USER52> Extremely simplified this sounds like a typical Median vs Arithmetic Mean issue to me.

</comment><comment><USER53> ... and using adverbs wrong as well. YSWIDT?

<comment><USER54> ... and using acronyms wrong as well. DYSWIDT?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This country has $21 trillion in debt.

With this current administration (Trumpy and previous administrations before him) have been ignoring this swamp-filled problem. So much so that in August, the current administration added $214 billion to the deficit.

We are on our way to adding $1 trillion a year to this country's deficit. $1 trillion is an insane number: [http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html](http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html)

We are now over a 105.4% Debt-to-GDP ratio. If you as a citizen make $1 and spends $2, you're officially bankrupt! The U.S. government can measure all it wants, but we cannot continue to ignore the current situation. The reason Trump got elected in the first place was that his constituents thought he would be the man to address the "swamp." But nope.

<comment><USER56> > If you as a citizen make $1 and spends $2, you're officially bankrupt!

Not exactly, if I've got resources banked to cover the gap.

Unfortunately, the resources we're selling to cover the present excesses are the tax receipts of future citizens, and they would probably prefer to have those funds to cover other priorities.

<comment><USER57> Bear in mind that if the US decides to print $21 trillion dollars it wipes out its entire debt.

Granted, all your dollars would be buy about 1/20th as much as they did before, but the US would be debt-free. (There are other problems with printing $21tn dollars that I'll leave to actual economists to point out.)

<comment><USER55> Overprinting is called hyperinflation. People lose trust in the currency because they are worthless. It has happened before. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I always find it amusing when people of either party persuasion suddenly find qualms with economic metrics when their guy isn't in office. Republican leaning people did it under Obama, and now Democratic leaning people are doing it under Trump. Because neither could explain the grown that was happening when their opponent was in office. I've seen the drum beats of "GDP is irrelevant now" from the Left ever since Trump won and the GDP numbers have generally been above estimates. Stats have become political footballs.

Economist have always known GDP isn't perfect, but it is the best measure we have or that has been devised. That is taught in the first few economic courses if you become an econ major when you're covering GDP.

</comment><comment><USER59> The idea of overall economic output will always be an important abstract measure of the economy, but it completely ignores most of the ways that economic policy intertwines with politics.

I think the biggest danger in how we analyze the economy is that we need to be aware that many of our leaders have an incentive to always report good news about the economy.

The core idea behind policies intended to increase employment, credit availability, etc., is that the government should act to help actors in the economy become more leveraged. Or in other words, that a higher output can be achieved if risk premiums are kept in check through policy action.

Why? Because a bunch of unemployed, suffering people will eventually lead to a political revolution, and so political stability is a significant driver for economic stability and long-term planning.

Arguably, long-term planning is the bedrock of the financial system. It allows trading between the present and future, and arbitrage between possible futures. Political risk/instability adds an additional cost to long-term planning.

So as a result we have welfare economics, targeted both at individuals and firms. The political notion of social welfare is used by planners to create a set of meta-strategies that benefit the recipients.

The problem is that when you connect politics to economic policy you end up with groups that gain status (and power to influence the policy) as a result of the policy. So the policy changes and groups of beneficiaries compete for rents.

Why did the 2008 financial crisis happen? Because economic policy-makers believed that they understood the safe bounds for certain systemic risks within the system. They ended up getting those bounds wrong, and so it came to pass that a lot of other "normal" risks were drastically mispriced once the bounds were exceeded, since their prices had been based on the assumption of asset price stability.

The rest of the details have to do with the many other mechanisms that suffered a cascade of failures due to the bounds set by regulators being exceeded.

Normally, firm insolvency/failure can act as a circuit breaker to stop the effects of a price correction from spreading to the rest of the economy... but the key point is that the pricing assumptions were baked into the rules themselves, so securities of mortgage backed securities were allowed to be treated as underwriting capital by financial institutions, etc.

Sadly, there is no free lunch. Growth-oriented policy will always contain some core assumptions about system invariants that are not necessarily _actually_ invariants. The time horizon for policy mistakes is longer than the typical term in office for those making the rules, so there is no incentive to adopt a more risk-averse view.

Of course, what has happened since 2008 is that the financial system has once again figure out ways to use cheap credit to make profits with little apparent risk. But just as it was the case before 2008 there are still many assumptions about systemic risk baked into the pie.

So this article is timely because of Trump's economic populism and the apparent rise of left-wing economic populist candidates. The article calls for more populist economic metrics. But what is not explicitly stated by the article is that the reason for this is simply to reduce the risk of populism- driven economic shocks that might exceed the bounds baked into the core assumptions used by the regulatory regime.

In other words, there is a call to reformulate the metrics so that they better reflect populist sentiments, and the corresponding implication that policies ought to shift to make these metrics show "good" numbers.

This article comes as part of a series of statements by former Fed and Treasury officials warning that the tools are not adequate to address a future crisis.

Since a crisis will come in the form of significant price corrections, and since the interventions post 2008 prevented a lot of price corrections that were probably appropriate, we can infer that a future correction will be larger than the one in 2008. Combine this with rising tides of economic populism, and it is clear why all of these experts are suddenly calling for a fundamentally different approach. They must be quite convinced that the next correction could bring massive social and political upheaval that dwarfs what we have seen post 2008 with Brexit and the rise of Trump.

Note that a map of the US shows that most counties are "red" and likely find the economic populist message of Trump highly appealing and relevant. Economic populism is dramatically more widespread now than it was in 2008. But prior to 2008 real estate price appreciation in a lot of historically red states led to feelings of affluence and contentment with the status quo. I've argued separately that GWB allowed the real estate bubble to grow a few extra years to help sell the war on Terror. The GSEs (primary underwriters of most mortgages) were not held accountable for failing to produce financials for several years in a row during that time.

So policymakers are now realizing that none of those tools to make people feel complacent are at the ready when the next correction comes, and they are fearful of the political consequences which are nearly inevitable at this point unless measures are put in place now.

</comment><comment><USER60> Yep. All public property and govt granted leases forego capital depreciation. Since most of the planet falls in this category, it is being plundered while only accounting for the sale of the bounty, without considering the loss of real capital (old forest, clean river/ocean/lake, etc). And a dollar/franc/baht/pound is a mass measure unit of gold. And a BTC is debt (promise of future computation) without a creditor, which ultimately means it is worth nothing, when the price forbids the ponzi from going on.

<comment><USER60> Typo: debt without a debtor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Trump's economy is doing fantastically well—better find a different way to evaluate it!

<comment><USER62> Thank you -- this had to be said. Political discourse is useless here in this echo chamber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Funny that The NY Times is now making this point. This was a standard Republican talking point during the Obama years which they have now abandoned post Trump.

<comment><USER64> Without exception, when the administrations change, the talking points always instantly change as it pertains to the hilariously biased media outlets. The day after the election, they either pretend issues no longer exist, or they aggressively focus on issues they were previously intentionally ignoring, depending on who wins. It's political story weighting. The US doesn't have any large, objective media organizations, they're all political party operatives entirely in the bag for their party.

CNN for example is like some kind of insane clown tripping on acid these days, with its commentators routinely saying the craziest shit I've ever seen out of the mainstream media (eg calling for the President to be coup'd by the deep state, or openly advocating for political violence). Once upon a time, they actually had a good reputation for objective news reporting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I have no evidence, only gut feeling, but I believe the "threat to Western liberal democracy" as defined by "Trump, Brexit, and rise of populism and extremism" is not caused by the Credit Crunch but by the decade of Rusia's poisoning the public discourse with its fake news factories and troll farms.

<comment><USER66> FWIW, it's incredibly patronizing to dismiss the political concerns of half the population by essentially saying that they're rubes who have been duped by the Russians.

<comment><USER65> Is my comment really patronizing and dismissing?

<comment><USER66> It is. And, FWIW, Russian bots/trolls/whatever seem to have been as equally active in pushing left wing issues as right wing issues.

<comment><USER44> But "the rise of populism and extremism" can equally well apply to the left.

My personal opinion is that the economic crisis make things worse, and made a lot of people discontent with the current system, but that Russia has been very busily trying to make them _more_ discontent, and trying to push them either to the right or left extreme. The concerns are real, the problems are real, but the trolling is making things considerably worse in terms of political stability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> What I think people like the author who are arguing about inequality are missing is that inequality is not the fundamental issue or put another way I think that tackling it is the wrong goal to have. For instance, if we are all rich, it doesn't matter if some even richer people can have flying cars and homes in the sky. In fact, I would prefer this scenario to a perfectly equal situation in which everyone lives in the same abject poverty or almost as bad, we have a crawling rate of innovation and don't get around to making market ready medical devices, human-AI biosembiotic interfaces, etc. for another century or so.

Our goal should be to increase wealth in general and ensure that the median wealth per capita increases or steadily increases for various segments of the population. Ideally, you would have faster median expansions in lower income segments of the population but in my mind, even if the top %1 had an increased wealth per annum of say 0.05% and the lowest had a lesser increase of 0.02%, I would still prefer that (assuming we've controlled for PPP, inflation, etc) than a system where the poorest increased at 2% a year, the richest dropped -2% and our overall economic productivity declined or stayed roughly the same year after year.

Overall, though I agree with the author in that too much emphasis (in the news at least), is put on GDP. Its still a useful indicator of productivity in an economy and from an investment perspective, but there are as he rightly mentions many qualitative properties left out of this one measurement. Which is kind of always the case is it not? Every time we measure something it measures a specific thing which we decide to interpret in a particular way, its funny how often we generalize that act to areas for which the original measurement was never designed.

<comment><USER68> I'm confused by how your desired situation is compatible with a capitalist market. If everyone is rich, prices just rise to the point where everyone isn't rich anymore. Unless we're talking about a post-scarcity or post-labor economy, which isn't really useful to guiding economic policy today.

<comment><USER67> > If everyone is rich, prices just rise to the point where everyone isn't rich > anymore.

Rich and poor are always tied to purchasing power which itself is tied to productivity, efficiency and innovation within an economy. (as well as the traditional price theory, demand/supply, etc.) I used rich/poor because those are simple terms everyone can understand more easily than PPP or Genuine Savings, etc. (however, wealth is a better term I should have probably used in its stead)

For instance, the phone you can buy and hold in your hand today for $200 is vastly more powerful than the most expensive IBM mainframes of just 20 years ago - A CEO of those times could not even afford the simple phone many refuges have in their Rucksacks these days. Are they rich because of this? It depends on what particular measurement for "rich" you are using.

To answer your question. Yes, ceteris peribus if everyone gets more money instantly (i.e. money supply increases) all prices will rise accordingly and there is a net null effect, however, and this is key, if that increase is in wealth i.e. capital assets, productivity, everyone is better off and prices will increase according to traditional demand-pull.

<comment><USER68> Great, wealth is a much better term to be using here, but you're still hand- waving away the method by which increasing capital assets, productivity, etc. would happen under a capitalist free market. The traditional way you increase these things for everyone is by collective bargaining (unions) or collective ownership of businesses (employee-owned companies). These two things are pretty much directly at odds with American-style capitalism.

Do you think we should be aiming for something more akin to the labor situation in Europe, or do you think there's a different method by which we could create wealth for everyone more equally than today?</comment></comment></comment></comment>