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Comment by disgruntledphd2 | Hacker News Reader

Like, I don't really get why people are so worried. Wages are going up, employment is going up, and the price of assets are coming down. This is pretty good for most of the population.

It's really only the small fraction (of which I am a member) that have equities that have really lost anything.

Inflation is still reasonably low, so PPP is going up. I just don't get it.

Mind you, a few years back I didn't really understand how unemployment was bad, wages were poor, asset prices were too damn high and everyone was talking about this "recovery".

I probably just don't understand macroeconomics, I guess :)

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Even if wages are "going up" over the last year or whatever, they have been largely stagnant over the long term in the face of skyrocketing corporate profits. It's a problem 30 or more years in the making and it will come to a head. Look at the recent tax "reform;" we aren't any closer to fixing this, in fact we're accelerating the other way

It's not clear what you mean by "assets". Stock prices tend to reflect growth expectations, so higher prices today imply that real incomes are expected to increase. Other assets are almost the other way around - they increase in price when future interest rates are expected to be lower, which is associated with stagnation and lower growth.

(The latter is why the argument in the article does not even wholly makes sense, IMHO. You don't raise rates in order to get some "room" to slash them in the future; you do it because if you don't, and market rates of return ("natural" rates) are trending higher due to improved growth, inflation will eventually spiral out of control. It's a bit like trying to balance a pencil on your hand, and keep it from falling.)

Prices of assets coming down means margin debt gets called, and investment loans secured by, for example, shares as collateral, leading to defaults and ultimately to bankruptcy of companies with sizeable amounts of debt on its balance sheets.

Now, the argument might be that it's their own fault, but that will likely leads to tens of thousands of jobs lost. And we're not talking tech jobs.

> Wages are going up, employment is going up, and the price of assets are coming down

Huh? Sources?

Most likely, OP was referring to reports like this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-02/u-s-added...

I'm not agreeing with the point, was just curious like you and searched.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/spx:ind

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