The SP500 hitting highs is a lot less good news when you realize most of that is simply due to the dollar devaluing against other international currencies.
That isn’t asset appreciation, it’s currency devaluation.
EDIT:
I m on mobile and don’t have the ability to make my own chart with DXY and SP500 normalized to each other, but uh…
https://portfolioslab.com/tools/stock-comparison/^DXY/SPY
Look at this in YTD, then in 1Y, then 5Y.
Normally, these two things move in the same dirrction, though the SP500 tends to grow much more when the DXY grows a little.
Well, now, basicslly since Trump took office, they’re moving in the opposite direction.
So, yeah, this is now what is called a ‘melt up’, where stocks climb higher, but not because of any kind of underlying fundamental strength of the US economy but because the USD has lost about 10% of its value compared to the currencies it most often is traded against.
When the nixon administration abandoned the gold standard, stock prices rose, too. It’s the same mechanism: avoid having cash as the currency devalues.
Is it atypical to learn this in school?
In American schools?
Normal public schools?
Economics is an elective, only available at fairly good schools, usually only taken by overachievers.
Most US Public schools don’t even teach the basics of taxes or finances as it applies to an average person who is going to like, work a job that is taxed, buy a car with a loan.
Our education system has been intentionally destroyed by Republican s for decades, the result is that roughly within +/- 2 years of when I graduated college… US average adult literacy rate has been plummeting.
The average US adult now reads at a 6th grade level, average math skills are also terrible.
Uneducated people are easier to lie to and trick.
The average US adult now reads at a 6th grade level
Read this statistic recently, and while not surprising, it is shocking. I remember when I was young, the average was an 8th grade reading level. And I thought that was terrible.
I had an 8th grade reading level in the 4th grade for crying out loud, meaning the average American reads at a lower level than I could in elementary school.
What does nth grade reading level even mean? Why doesn’t it get corrected to an average of what is actual? In the context of adults I can understand, but I think I’ve heard things like Xrh graders having an average reading level as Yth graders. But if the average reading level of Xth grades is something (like some amount of words), why isn’t that what an Xth grade reading level is?
I hope that makes sense. Like if you everyone how their school experience is and they all believe they had a “worse than average” experience, clearly about half are incorrect.
What does nth grade reading level even mean?
Very broadly, a lower grade of reading level means:
Less broad vocabularly,
Less ability to use and comprehend more complex grammar and sentence structure,
Less critical analysis capability,
Less ability to understand context and domain specific, different meanings of words,
More reliance on nebulouy defined, vague slang vocabulary.
In the context of adults I can understand, but I think I’ve heard things like Xrh graders having an average reading level as Yth graders.
This means that say, a typical 8th grader now has reading/writing abilities on par with a 6th grader.
In other words, kids keep failing classes and getting passed onto the next grade anyway, instead of being held back, or sent into some kind of ‘catch-up’ or ‘remedial’ classes to get them up to standard.
…
Teachers and the education system broadly have, you know, rubrics, standards, lists of concepts that a kid is supposed to be taught in each class and grade.
This is how ‘grading’ works, the idea is that your test is supposed to evaluate how successful the student was at learning, how succesful the course was at actually teaching the student new concepts.
The main problem is that we underfund teachers and schools, and also punish teachers and schools when they actually do the right thing and refuse to pretend a kid has learned things they haven’t.
So, the result is, kids don’t learn.
…
Semi-relevant rant about smart phones in the class room
Another recent contributor to this is just pandemic levels of kids on their phones in class, all the time, not paying attention.
What you should do is something like ok, if I see your phone in class once, it gets taken away for the rest of the class, two times, the rest of the day, 3 times, you have to surrender your phone to the office when you get to school and get it back when school is over.
But students and parents literally respond like feral zombies when you propose this, despite this being the norm throughout the proliferation of cellphones, and early days of smartphones.
There’s nothing stopping you from using a phone responsibly. Set it on vibrate, if you get an actual important txt or call, ask to step outside the class and take the call/message.
Schools also have landline phones for emergencies.
Another thing is that short form video content addiction does actually cause brainrot, it is real, its been shown in numerous academic studies.
Lower attention spans, lower impulse control, less control over emotions, and shortform video content platforms in particular also spread misinfo and disinfo like wildfire.
Daily reminder that “higher GDP is good for the economy” is now a wildly disproven myth from the days before economics was a science, by a guy who said we’d get a 15 hour work week.
Monetary inflation is bad. The nitwits who jump in saying “ackchually velocity” are suckers who paid to learn the lie, whose jobs may depend on the lie, and would be very embarrassed to be wrong. Bailouts weren’t the exception - they’re the rule.
We’ve been robbed by the 0.1% and don’t need to take it anymore.
Adding to this: GDP only measures the amount of money spent on stuff, not the actual value of the things. That’s one of the reasons that makes economists think untouched nature is bad, it doesn’t contribute to the GDP
Two economists are walking in the woods when they see a pile of bear shit.
One says to the other “I’ll pay you $500 to pick up that shit.”
The other agrees, but immediately regrets it. He says he’ll pay the other $500 to take it from him. The other agrees.
The first thinks for a moment and says to the second “I think we’re both worse off than before we started this walk.”
The second, hands full of bear shit, is shocked and yells “What do you mean, we just increased the GDP by $1000!”
before economics was a science
So… When is that gonna happen?
Canadian here, what’s “AfterPay”? and PLEASE don’t tell me it’s like layaway or a payday loan or something.
That’s exactly what it is.
Yeah, basically a payday loan you can do from your phone. I’m sure this won’t crash the economy.
Okay.
It’s an app. Can’t tell you any more than that.
Unironically, it used to be called “Horse and Sparrow Economics,” with the rich eating grains, and the poors pecking their meals from the horseshit.
True story
“Thank you my liege”
it never trickles down.
Username checks out.
I’m not quite at the bottom but I can see it from here.
Oh it trickles down. Just not money, but at least it’s warm and golden 🙏
That’s by design, the money flows from the average American to the companies. Then slowly trickles into the pockets of the ceo’s.
“Slowly”
Slowly as in, the Niagara falls slowly trickle water.
Money is just abstracted fungiblized value.
It’s stealing more of the value you produce. Me@ning you get less
Until chains of debt guilt and terror make you effectively a slave.
Where’d this stat come from. Looking around and another site says 25% made payments for groceries. Another site says 60% split payments when buying - not just for groceries. So I sincerely doubt the stat of 60% making payments just for groceries.
This comment on the post indicates that it’s a CitizenWatch article, but that article’s own listed sources don’t support the 60% number either (as I call out in my response to that comment).
I swear there’s barely anywhere online anymore where people practice basic skepticism. If it aligns with their existing biases they just slurp it up, no matter how absurd.
👍This comment section is a particularly bad example.
Yeah, that statistic is obviously bullshit and people here should notice. They really should notice
It’s not like the statistic wanted to be noticed
noticing harder
A split payment doesn’t necessarily mean being destitute either. My wife and I keep our finances separate and do split payments when we go grocery shopping together.
Should’ve been 96% or something—the same as the percentage of people I hope realized the number couldn’t possibly be accurate. Make it truly absurd if it won’t be accurate!
@NichEherVielleicht@feddit.org might consider swapping the image with an edit or adding brackets after the title or something - know you’re just resharing fuňe meme
Legit rules of the trickle
- Trickle tomorrow
- No trickle? See Rule 1
Sadly, Americans are groomed at a young age to dive deep into debt early in life. It has become normalized for most of the population to carry some form of debt (credit cards and student loans are popular choices).
Most people don’t even bother making a budget — a task that only needs to be done once a month, and is easier now than ever, thanks to technology.
Try and make a budget for minimum wage. Many people can’t afford to live even meagerly.
Why bother budgeting if you’re just going to lose anyway?
I have, I mean you kinda HAVE to budget what little you bring in to ensure you don’t end up on the streets. and it’s not even about saving. saving was just a pipe dream. budgeting was just to ensure rent got paid, bills were paid, and I was able to eat sometimes.
I know people who make 6 figures and can’t/won’t budget and most live paycheque to paycheque or are absolutely broke just before their next direct deposit. I worked with a guy that made 6 figures and all the time just before payday he’d bum me for cigarettes or ask if I could buy him a coffee or a sandwich cause he had NOTHING. And this was a guy that would always have the latest tech shit, videogames on day one of release - like all of them, nice clothes, etc. just spend, spend, spend.
I’ve known more people who SHOULD be well off that don’t budget and are constantly broke than people who make minimum wage and are surviving.
Budget? You pay what bills are most important now, and just buy the cheapest food possible. That’s all there is to it :/
In that case, a monthly budget is even more important – and might be pretty simple
THIS. It’s not only about income; it’s income minus expenses.
Budgeting was probably the most important financial tool/skill when I was living in poverty. And now that I’m in a more comfortable financial position, I still value budgeting quite a lot. It’s great for preventing more money from creating more problems.
this is it pretty much. personal responsibility when it comes to this line of discourse is mostly just a myth. people are often not really responsible for the majority of their own live’s outcomes, let alone those most disadvantaged. people get deeply offended at the idea they’re not, in reality, some superman personally championing every single successful thing they’re in the vicinity of.
i wish this culture would go away of blaming everyone individually for problems that are almost entirely systemic.
it seems really obvious when you think about it even just a little bit that your future is mostly written by those around you, not yourself. you have a certain freedom of metered and realistic choice, but no freedom of will. couldn’t just will yourself out of a bad situation or to fly, it takes more pieces than that.
Self fulfilling profecy
I mean, to reduce your losses? I’ve had a budget balance out red, compared my options and been incredibly lucky. I would not have been quite as lucky if I’d just said ‘fuck it’ and zero’d out the balance.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist, social support structures should be stronger, I have only succeeded based on community and relationships… But you gotta try at least.
…You assume that I haven’t? I originally had to learn to budget when I was making less than minimum wage, to avoid homelessness. Budgeting can be even more important with less money.
You can’t budget your way out of poverty. If income doesn’t cover base survival, you simply are fucked.
There are surely people out there whose failure to plan has put them into a horrible and avoidable situation. But there are many more who make good choices and still end up horribly in debt. And for them, what’s the point? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Most people don’t even bother making a budget — a task that only needs to be done once a month, and is easier now than ever, thanks to technology.
Avoidable debt and spending beyond means are one thing, but budgeting only helps so much when the cost of essential goods has skyrocketed, rent is out of control, and pay is all but stagnant. I applaud the sound financial advice of making a simple personal budget, but the problem is (for most people) far, far greater than credit card debt at the stage people are BNPL groceries…
It has become normalized for most of the population to carry some form of debt.
Not just normalized, Required. Credit scores aren’t based on how likely you are to pay off a loan, but on how likely you are to make the creditor money. If you take out loans and pay them off ahead of schedule, it will fuck with your credit. If you close an old credit card after you pay it off, it will fuck up your credit.
Want a house? You better have 400k cash laying around, or have been paying interest on cards and loans for 10 years to establish a good credit score. Want a decent apartment? They check your credit score too! Did I mention that every single job I’ve applied for has run a credit check on me?
FYI, Equifax leaked literally everyone’s personal info after collecting it and selling it without consent. They still operate as one of the major credit score providers.
Oh, I feel something trickling down alright.
It’s like Robin Hood in reverse.
Robin Socks
Robin facial recognition algorithm and randomly spraying your head with water.
Weird stat aside, I was watching a podcast with Scott Galloway yesterday and he made a comment about Jerome Powell bringing inflation down to 2% without triggering a recession, and I had to facepalm. The rich, even those with a shred of empathy, are massively out of touch with what the 99% are experiencing right now.
It’s trickle up. You can see the cone in section 2. Increase h and the trickle trickles.
Me, off in the corner believing debt is immoral
Society legitimately cannot function without debt. I agree giving people predatory “micro loans” for groceries is dystopian but every society that has discovered agriculture has also discovered the concept of debt because it’s a natural consequence of an economic order so tied to seasonal cycles. Interest is also not bad, and every society that has developed debt has also quickly developed interest. Societies that have religious prohibitions or taboos against interest find workarounds because it’s proven to be a critical part of how economics works. Personally I am glad that I was able to buy a house for hundreds of thousands of dollars I don’t have yet because I will be able to pay off that in time and I appreciate that the bank is willing to lend me that money for such a long time at a relatively low rate of return for them. The Soviet Union even had banks that offered loans with interest but they were run by the State. It’s kind of unavoidable.
Many societies also develop a system of redistribution or debt forgiveness. It’s known that too much debt accumulation in too few hands cause increasingly bigger issues or that circumstances change. But there are always those that need to learn the lesson again.
Not many societies developed a system of redistribution. We live in one of the extremely few that have, and it took a lot of smart people a lot of time (and infighting) to get into something that works.
We just need to apply it.
Why was your house worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? Because we use debt. How do you think people lived for thousands of years? Home mortgages weren’t a normal thing until like 100 years ago
Societies without it found workarounds, because it’s easy. It’s tempting. It’s a money dupe glitch combined with gambling. If anyone uses it, they get an insurmountable advantage over all players who don’t. It’s moloch, it’s the demon of racing to the bottom
You should not be able to spend your future
People didn’t own their houses for the most part. Have you ever taken even a freshman level economics class, by the way?
Yes. And FYI, micro and macro economics are bullshit. They’re easily digestible lies that don’t hold up to the real world. There’s real studies of economics going on at higher levels, but what gets boosted is essentially propaganda to justify political positions
Have you ever had a good history class, where instead of myths written by the winners they told the stories of people and how they interact? Where they break down the system into players, and go over the same event from many points of view? All the very human drives and politics, the infinite compromises that get grandfathered in, the true analysis of “how did we get here”?
The world is made up of systems. I build, analyze, and fix systems, it’s what I do. The only way to analyze a system or a change is to run it through, turning it over in your mind from one perspective after another, until you start to understand how it fits together
Know what every society in the past has done? Collapse. The ones with debt collapse after about 250 years, every time. It’s an inevitability… Some societies fail into the next iteration instead of going through a dark age, but they all collapse.
Debt creates a boom bust cycle that grows exponentially. It’s inherently unstable.
But some failed from external factors. From disease and colonization. There’s one empire that I find very interesting in that regard…the incas
Maybe they would’ve collapsed too, but their system seems a lot more stable to me. And I don’t think it had any idea of debt, of selling the future
Are you thinking about usury? Debt in general is actually one of the moat important threads of our societal fabric
Most important? I’ll never go into debt, just won’t spend money I don’t have. It’s a no brainer for me.
Do you own a home? Do you think that’s a worthwhile thing to do? Without debt, home ownership is basically completely out of reach for most people despite the fact that many people will earn enough money to buy a house in their lifetime. It allows you to pay for money now with money later. Debt is legitimately an extremely important part of an economy- there’s a reason it’s been invented by pretty much every agricultural society in history. As with most financial instruments, it started with farmers - it costs money to plant and grow a crop of grain, but that crop doesn’t produce money until you sell it at harvest time so you have an issue where if last year’s crop didn’t go so well due to weather and you are low on cash in the spring, you can’t afford to plant next year’s crop and get out of the hole. So borrowing money is the easiest way.
This also works with businesses and governments. Say you want to buy a machine that prints designs on T shirts because you want to sell T shirts. You can’t afford the machine now, but you believe that you’d be able to with the money you could make from your T shirt business, so you go to the bank and convince them of the plan, and they give you money up front. Without debt, that T shirt business couldn’t happen unless you got a bunch of investors to help you out.
I wonder what the housing market would look like if individuals couldn’t get mortgages, but investors couldn’t either?
Availability of credit has a huge impact on prices, and landlordism is mostly founded on cheap credit.
There are many examples of this being essentially the status quo in many places and historical eras and essentially it just makes housing availability worse since only the ultra wealthy can afford to build expensive structures and they just accumulate more wealth and power. Think about in the middle ages when a local lord would have to foot the bill to build townhouses completely up front but he and his descendants would retain ownership of them and demand payment to live in them for hundreds of years to come. There are places where access to credit is poor today where people basically live in makeshift shacks if they don’t rent because they can’t afford to buy houses otherwise. There are a lot of ways to fix land ownership and exploitation by landlords, but historically speaking, this was not it. I know nobody likes living in debt and debt can be used for exploitation, but completely abolishing credit simply will not have good outcomes as a whole.
Feudalism had a lot of good points structurally, replace the lord with public servants and I don’t see the problem. The city builds the housing, and it becomes part of the tax revenue forever. If the city prices basic housing too high, economic activity falls, tax revenue falls, and the city declines
Shanty towns aren’t good, but we haven’t fixed the problem, we just have homelessness now
Debt is bad, fuedalism is good. Got it lmao.
Most important, because that’s how most people start and grow their business, they don’t have multimillion inheritance.
Also buying house.
And I’m saying no one should do that, things should grow slowly and organically. It’s like trees, you can turbo charge their growth and get a board in a decade instead of a century, but the wood is incomparably worse in every way
If you let anyone do it, everyone will be forced to, despite the risk, to be competitive
So no one should do it. It’s immoral
I mean even in nature, like tree, everything is a competition. In a forest if you are a tree and can’t outgrow or even catch up with everyone then you’re fallen behind and risking being covered by everyone else, eventually you’ll become weak and susceptible to termite and disease. Your example kinda fall apart, yeah?
Same in business. It’s really about sustainable growth and able to catch up, and also secure your own stability in the market. What if your machine broke down and it’s very expensive to repair or replace? What if your current equipment can’t catching up with the demand? What if your landlord wanted to sell the shop and you wanted to secure your location instead of moving, which also cost time and money? All these require a huge investment up front if you don’t take loan, and in business, these might take up a large chunk of available fund that can otherwise used for something else, or even as emergency fund if there’s market downturn.
To say it’s immoral is to say the forest is sinful.
Okay, so a forest is a living thing in itself. It’s a super organism. It grows organically, slowly expanding outwards. In the depths of the forest, trees fall occasionally, creating an opportunity for new trees to complete for the sunlight. They don’t just compete by growing, the forest also gives them nutrients through the mycelial network and chokes out threats. Natural systems form around these cycles
That’s great. I love forests
What you’re describing, is chopping down all the trees and replanting them. But that’s a farm, not a forest. It leads to weak trees with shallow roots, it leads to a weak forest prone to landslides where a natural forest would have held firm. It doesn’t have the ecosystem that would have naturally grown along with it, and would have enriched the soil and made the whole thing even more stable.
It produces a lot more wood, but it’s all weak and overextended
I think that’s a great example of what I’m referring to.
If anyone has access to these tools, everyone must use them, or someone else taking that shortcut will outgrow them and put them out of business. It’s a race to the bottom, everyone must extend themselves to their limits to compete, and so the whole system is always one bad storm away from disaster.
I’m saying that’s bad. It’s unstable and produces worse results by any metric but growth
That’s not how forests work. At all. I don’t even know where to start on this
If you want a real response, ask me tomorrow. I can speak on this matter for days, but I’m done essay posting for tonight
If that essay is about the forest, then don’t bother, that’s just analogy and i simplify and leave out a lot of thing just so i can explain it.
And if you can’t bother with a real respond, why not just respond tomorrow instead? Or don’t respond. Instead you demand me to just ask again tomorrow? You aren’t my superior you know.
Even if you’re able to make that work on an individual level (never buy a home, don’t get higher education, make sure you don’t need a car), you can’t make it work on a societal level.
If you want to contribute to supplying houses to people, you need to build the houses before you can sell/rent them (mostly). That means you need to take up a loan to pay for everything involved in building houses. Then you can sell/rent the houses to individuals that don’t want to take up loans. Regardless of whether you personally ever take up a loan, you likely wouldn’t have housing without someone doing it (unless you live on a family farm from waaay back), because the people that built it needed a loan to do so.
The only expense for school besides the usual stuff(paper and pencils and such) were textbooks.
Idk about you, but while I was getting my free engineering degree in Norway I still had to pay for rent and food.
In principle, I could have studied part-time instead of full time, while working some job that doesn’t require a degree, but I don’t see how that would benefit anyone. Regardless, even if you have housing and food covered while studying, you still need money for books, paper, a computer, etc. so either you need a job (which, for a lot of degrees, means you’ll be studying part-time), or you need a loan.
You don’t need a loan, you need somewhere to live and food
Maybe students just get free dorms and a meal plan by default, and we work that into the cost of education and pay for it as a society
I would be all for that. But at that point we’re talking about a restricted form of UBI (which would be nice), and a significant restructuring of how parts of society work.
I’m saying that the way society works now you need a loan to finance housing and food while studying. I’m also saying that’s not an inherently bad thing, as long as the loans aren’t exploitative. That loan lets you use money that you earn back once you get your degree (given that the system works as it should, which in this case it largely does where I’m from).
You (and the other guy that replied) are indeed thinking of usury (which is a very evil thing, even frowned upon by most religions), which is the situation of lending assets to for the sake of profit
Debt on the other hand is a more general concept, did you ever borrow a pen from another person? While you were writing you were in debt for that pen (but this is a silly example that can be disregarded)
Did your parents take care of you as a child? In most cultures, thar means you’re in debt and owe them care when they get old (though I understand that this varies from culture to culture, but the idea is there anyway) If you are friendly to your neighbors and they invite you home to dinner several times, you are also expected to pay back the favor sometime down the road, this is another form of debt
To sum it up, debt is much more intrinsic to our behavior as humans than we usually think, even though “formal debt” might not be
This is not debt, and I maintain my point. Debt is wrong
If you lend out your pen and they break or lose it, a little bit of trust between you dies. And this is something inevitable over time. If you give your pen to them and they give it back once they get their own pen, trust is built. If they don’t, that’s fine too… Because you gave it to them
You can’t count favors, and you shouldn’t have debts. Debts ruin relationships, it feels bad from both sides. It feels bad to know they owe you, it feels bad to owe a debt. It feels like a relief to have it paid back, but it doesn’t feel good
You should help people, but when you give someone money to start their business you should never expect it back. You can spread ideas like honor and gratitude, but if the business fails you shouldn’t feel like you lost something
If you take care of your parents because they raised you like a child, you’re asking for elder abuse. In these cultures, the parents try to chip in however they can… In hard times historically they’d wander out into the wilderness to avoid burdening the family.
But the term for this is not debt, it’s duty. A good person is patient with their children and their parents. A good person does what they can for their family, the whole way through
Shitty people take out their anger on their children and resent their parents for every bite of food
Fair enough, I can agree on some points, and agree to disagree on others, I believe our conceptions largely align even though the labeling is different
It is debt, even if you fail to see that :)
You could frame it as debt, sure
I’m saying this is a bad framing and you shouldn’t frame it that way, because it’s more pro social not to think of it that way
It’s not framing. It’s a textbook example of debt.
It’s ok to say you didn’t quite knew what the word meant. No need to try to give it a new definition, just because you didn’t know. 😄
It’s not important, it’s the cornerstone of modern society. It’s a really bad cornerstone though, like great filter level bad
What problem does it solve that couldn’t be better solved in another way?
Well, it solves the problem of “I’m 25 years old with a decent paying job but no saved up capital, and need to buy <house/car/etc.>”. Without taking on debt, I would need to save up for years to buy this stuff, but by taking on debt I can buy it now and “save up” (i.e. pay back) over the next years.
By all means, loans should be regulated in order to prevent people from taking on debt they can’t afford, and to prevent/punish predatory practices. Debt in and of itself however can be a very good thing.
I have an apartment and a car now, with down-payments that I can afford without huge problems. Without taking a loan it probably would have taken me 25 years to be able to afford this. Except I wouldn’t have, because the money I’m now using for down-payments would instead have gone to paying rent.
That’s not a problem, that’s a short cut.
In exchange for you being able to buy things before you can afford them, they’re priced so it would take decades to save up.
Because if anyone sells their future, everyone has to if they want to compete
In exchange for you being able to buy things before you can afford them, they’re priced so it would take decades to save up.
To some degree, you’re probably right. However, no matter how you look at it, building an apartment complex or even a single house, costs much more resources than what most people have saved up at any given time. So no. It’s not just a matter of “competing” or that things are over-priced. Large infrastructure is just expensive to build, because it costs a bunch of man hours and materials to build it.
I totally agree. But no individual should be building an apartment complex, should they? Who should build it? The city, the community, the future occupants… People should get together and put their money in a pile
This should not be an investment to extract rent and profit, it should be an investment today into the future, not through debt, but to plant trees for the future
Houses are too expensive to build as an individual? Then we’re doing something wrong. Maybe we don’t run electricity to every corner. Maybe we build them out of stone, so they last forever. Maybe we make them out of wood and plaster so they can last centuries. Maybe we make them out of glorified paper, so they’re easy to build. Maybe we don’t have central air, but use passive cooling and run an AC to certain rooms. Maybe they should be smaller and easier to build
There are other ways of doing things, better ways that will mean slower progress but stability
You shouldn’t be able to leverage the future, we should always be investing into tomorrow today
There is literally no way you will build a decent modern house without thousands of man-hours, only in the construction itself. That’s before you count the hours needed for getting the materials you need.
It’s unreasonable to posit that we should design our society such that you need to save up enough money to finance something like that up-front in order to build a house. Why not go for the (current) solution, where I can loan money to finance the house, then pay that back once I have stable living conditions (because I now have a house)?
What kind of debt? Is it immoral to owe someone a favour? Or is it immoral for someone to owe you a favour?
Is it only immoral if there’s interest? If someone lends someone $500 to cover rent, that’s immoral? Is it more or less immoral to watch someone lose their housing when you could have helped?
All immoral. You can give someone $500, they might give you back $500, maybe even more
But you can’t have the expectations of repayment. That’s where it goes off the rails
Owing someone a favour is immoral? That’s a weird world you live in.
That’s the thing… Owing someone is the problem
Helping is great. Counting favors is bad. Help, repay help, pay it forward… All great. Expect repayment? Now we’re back at the problem
It’s funny how people keep litigating debt into more and more nebulous forms, but I’m just more and more convinced I’m correct. Debt is wrong, it’s evil. We should actively prevent it, in our thinking, in our language, in our laws
You all are just too debt brained to understand, no one should be allowed to sell their future. From every angle, it just plays out worse than just not doing it
“Debt brained”? Dude, “debt” has existed as long as humanity has existed. You’re the one who’s “debt brained” for thinking it’s a bad thing. That’s just society.
In a society people do favours for each-other and what makes it a society is that the person who had a favour done for them acknowledges that as a member of that society, they should try to pay the favour back at some point, otherwise they just seem like a drain on that society. That doesn’t mean that you can’t also have gifts, it just means that sometimes aid isn’t given as a form of gift, it’s given with an expectation that at some future point the giftee will become the gifter.
That’s just totally incorrect. Most people throughout history didn’t even use money, let alone debt. Taxes were paid in grain, livestock, and essentially community service
Debt created money, but money is not as old as humanity. It’s not required, it’s not coded into our genes
And counting favors is widely accepted to be shitty behavior. It’s transactional, it’s low trust
You can just do favors, and call the guy who never helps out a lazy asshole. They’re unreliable so people eventually don’t want to help them, and we have all sorts of fairy tales about it
That’s just totally incorrect. Most people throughout history didn’t even use money, let alone debt.
You need to read “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” by David Graeber. Debt goes back a lot longer than money, and has been part of human existence for as long as that existence has been recorded.
There is no human civilization without debt.
