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witty_username | 9 years ago
Of course it's about economics as it deals with policy and impacts on people. Simple arguments are better.
Not using economics is a cop-out from using rigorous quantitative analysis. It's interesting that on say climate change HN will be all like we should follow the science, yet economics is the science relevant to our discussion.
> There's far more to life, and to a country, than GDP.
True, so what? More money is still better. GDP per capita is a good measure of peoples' living standards.
An interesting read about "The Economics of Happiness" is https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke201... by Ben S. Bernanke, former chair of the Federal Reserve (the part starting from "As you might guess, when thinking about the sources of psychological well-being" is most relevant).
https://www.gapminder.org/news/hdi-surprisingly-similar-to-g...
> As for ordinary people "owning" companies, that's either a naive or disingenuous argument.
The stats don't back your stance. "Compare that to the middle class, which has a median value of a mere $14,000 a household."
Also, bond yields (and bank interest) go up when stock yields go up and (I don't know if CNN counted this or not) people invest in retirement funds which invest in stock. And insurance companies also invest their customers' money.
(http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/18/investing/stock-market-inves... )
http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/03/retail-investors-hold-38-of...
"A surprising fact revealed in the report is that retail investors have invested $9.8 trillion in the U.S. equities, or 38 percent of the total $25.8 trillion corporate equity holdings. Additionally, $812 billion hedge fund assets belong to US retail investors. To put in context hedge funds have total assets under management of approximately $2 trillion. This would mean that approximately 40% of hedge fund assets come from retail investors in the US, the remainder comes from foreign investors and institutions."
> They're a tiny percentage. It is widely acknowledged the benefits of economic recovery has almost entirely been captured by rich people and ordinary people haven't seen an effective wage increase in a decade.
The stats don't back your stance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Income_Share_of_Top_... here, rejoice that the top 1%'s share is mostly static
Meanwhile,
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N it's increased by 7.3% from 2012-2015
Interestingly, you said "The stats don't back your stance." while not using any stats yourself and only using weasel words like "It is widely acknowledged the benefits of economic recovery".
mattmanser|9 years ago
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/13/us-wealth-i...
Graph looks severely different to the one you just posted.
I'm not going to try and debate anything with someone who thinks economics is the only measure of life, you're too narrow minded.
witty_username|9 years ago
> I'm not going to try and debate anything with someone who thinks economics is the only measure of life, you're too narrow minded.
I don't think money is the only measure of life. Then what do you want to use to measure it?