Mastodawn

JOSHUAAAAAAAAAAH

dear economists, if all your economic markers say the economy is going great yet ordinary people keep saying the economy is the worst they've ever seen, maybe get some new economic indicators instead of scratching your head and wondering why the people are so "out of touch" with reality

LovesTha🥧Jun 18

@josh people should stop saying 'the economy is the worst they've seen' as they don't know or care what an economy is.

What they know, and what matters, is how their life is hard and sucks currently.

JOSHUAAAAAAAAAAH Jun 18

@LovesTha rich people's yacht money 😁

LovesTha🥧Jun 18

@josh like i have no idea what the economy is doing, but the embedded dev job market is fucked and everything is getting too expensive too quickly.

Oh and the low training job market is definitely not tight enough for anyone to employee me in those roles too.

JOSHUAAAAAAAAAAH Jun 18

@LovesTha exactly. It's terrible out there, but every economist keeps saying, jobs are up, GDP is up, inflation is falling, i don't know why people are unhappy

Neo Ehproque Jun 19

@josh @LovesTha "jobs are up. Median salary is a loaf of bread. I don't know why those peasants complain"

LovesTha🥧Jun 19

@ehproque @josh median is useful, but I'd rather focus on the bottom quintile's income. In raw and % of GDP terms.

Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊Jun 19

@ehproque @josh @LovesTha

Have you seen the stock prices for CAKE? Those are through the roof!

Neo Ehproque Jun 19

@theogrin @josh @LovesTha the dough is fifty thou!

LovesTha🥧Jun 19

@josh they mostly need to remember that direction and value are different things.

And that the status quo from 10 years ago isn't a goal, it's a minor signpost in the right direction.

millennial fulcrum Jun 18

@josh remember, if it uses GDP it is not an economist: it's a bootlicker.

@falcennial @josh It’s only “the economy” if it’s from a New York-based stock exchange. Anything else is just sparkling horseshit.

millennial fulcrum Jun 18

@aburtch @josh 🤣🤣🤣🤌

David Bridger Jun 18

@josh My best friend in our mid-teens went to university while I went to sea, and we lost contact until our 60s when he found me online. He was a professor of economics and an arrogant man. I didn't stay in touch long. He's the only economist I've ever known, but if he's a good example then I'd say they're best avoided.

JOSHUAAAAAAAAAAH Jun 18

@DavidBridger sounds about right!

myerman@turtleisland Jun 18

@josh if you have ten people on the bus and 9 have $10 each in their pockets, and one is a billionaire with $5000 in his pocket, then the average person has $590 in his pocket. Things are great because yesterday the billionaire wasn’t on the bus and the average was $10.

JOSHUAAAAAAAAAAH Jun 18

@myerman Then the billionaire buys the bus service and makes bus fares $10 a pop 😄

myerman@turtleisland Jun 18

@josh and since it’s part of a private venture fund they sell off the buses for parts and cannibalize the system while raking in huge profits which they plow into candidates who will run on government doesn’t work and will then pay the billionaire to replace the buses with autonomous cars the billionaire owns

JOSHUAAAAAAAAAAH Jun 18

@myerman so true 🙃

Purrbiscat Jun 19

@myerman @josh The billionaire wouldn't be on the bus, so the whole thing is probably a PR stunt anyway.

@myerman @josh They always focus on the average and never compare it to the median as it would highlight the extent of inequalities.

The USA is 3rd best worldwide by average wealth per person but 15th by median wealth per person, for example, with a Gini coefficient similar to that of Congo or Papua New Guinea. This is why they can't shut up about GDP or about the number or millionaires but it's all crickets on every other economic or development metric.

bamfingle Jun 18

@josh Yuuuup. 💯 I've been saying this for a while. Every time NPR's Planet Money does a "the economists say everything is fine" it's a facepalm moment. The discovery of the K economy as a case in point: https://mastodon.social/@zimzat/116380824358560102

@josh This is a set of problems that were answered years ago, but ignored by politicians because they luuurrrrvvvveee rich people. I invite everyone to discover https://stevekeen.com/

3-Book Bundle: Prof. Steve Keen

Kinene⭐🐻Jun 19

@josh I am sensing a "Let them eat cake" moment.

Paging Madam Guillotine...

Sam Izby Jun 19

The economy is showing steady negative growth. Personal incomes have increased by 0.7 times. The number of old people living below the poverty line is steadily declining each year. Do the new math!

🏳️‍⚧️ShadesofRaye🩼Jun 19

"There is no war in Ba Sing Se"

victorvonvortex Jun 19

The 2005 Plutonomy paper from Citigroup:

"...the world is dividing into two blocs - the plutonomies, where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few, and the rest."

"In a plutonomy there... are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the 'non-rich', the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie."

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6JHvOTnxw8CY2dJYk12T29USGlXTE1TNXhmNHlCUQ/view?resourcekey=0-Z3MUEr8pxxLCOEwuDYjfdA

Citigroup Oct 16 2005 Plutonomy Report Part 1.pdf

Google Docs

rollykolyofthepollies Jun 19

@josh okay but wondering why people are “out of touch” is easier and free though

ShadSterling Jun 19

@josh I still want to use economic indicators of how things are for ordinary people

https://mastodon.social/@ShadSterling/112492660762950665

@josh the whole field of economics is basically a pseudoscience, and it probably has the highest death tool of any other pseudoscience thanks to neoliberalism

Jacqueline Jun 19

I am a big proponent of the development of socialist economics

@burnoutqueen @josh yeah maybe i should have said western mainstream economics, which is now so detached from reality it has almost no predictive value

Jacqueline Jun 19

I want to see a good socialist economic system tbh

Jacqueline Jun 19

It would help if they used consistent and mathematically sound algorithms to do calculations

Jacqueline Jun 19

Most of the accounting problems of the Soviet economy were rooted in the fact that they didn't use linear algebra for ideological reasons and I'm not joking

“Economists” are a bunch of pseudo-scientific, glorified horse-pedlers. If you run across any recommendation from one one of these: Do the opposite!

@josh they work on averages but ignore distribution.

So having a single trillionaire means, on average all 240 milliom US citizens has $3000 each, even when everyone really has zero

Paul Brzeski Jun 19

@josh You gotta remember the media are reporting for the wealthy, the con-men and the narcissists.

For people who operate that way, the economy is doing awesome!

For the remaining people who work hard, are honest and compassionate... the economy (and our legal system) is basically a form of torture / evil trap.

JustSaying Jun 19

@josh The "economy" = are the rich getter richer it has NOTHING to do with "ordinary" people (yes it should)

@josh back when Poland was People's Republic of Poland, all the indicators were amazing. Then it went bankrupt.

Passenger Jun 19

Goodhart's Law really is as fundamental as gravity or electromagnetism.

@passenger although I agree, in this case the puzzle is much simpler. The indicators were a lie. They were literally fake. Made up numbers by the departament of propaganda.

Clockwork ☃️✒️Jun 19

But the whole point of economics as a discipline is to describe wellbeing from the point of view of capital, not of the citizens'

TrimTab 🇺🇦Jun 19

@josh
To make a living as an economist, most have to be born to wealthy parents. Their lives are great and the cooked numbers look awesome. These people have never had to look at a price tag or do any real labor in their lives.

The world is perfect in their eyes as it is today, and the numbers back it. And of course.... Wealth distribution has no affect on the world according to their best theories, and is not worth researching.

bananamangodog Jun 20

@josh
But then they'd actually have to do something 🤷🏻

Alex Rosenberg Jun 20

@josh The Consumer Price Index has been fabricated bullshit since Reagan.

Salaries have been in decline ever since.

Kofi Loves Efia

@josh there's a great tiktok series outlining what's wrong with the US economy with a terrible name - https://www.tiktok.com/@nsddahmmy/video/7531521034634251550

TikTok - Make Your Day