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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

I would argue that much of the money expansion went to asset prices. Just look at the stock market, which is up 30% from PRE-covid levels. If you factor in reduced reduced demand from lockdown measures, then the market increase is even more astonishing. I wrote about the asset price increases before [0]

This is unfortunate since it's essentially helping relatively wealthy asset holders as opposed to those most likely to be affected negatively by covid.

[0] https://mleverything.substack.com/p/where-did-the-12-trillio...

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I agree. The economy is complex. You can’t tie 12 trillion of spending directly to inflation. Negative side effects manifest in ways we don’t expect. In this case, drastically increasing wealth inequality.

It’s interesting to me that software developers don’t intrinsically realize this more than your average person. Nobody knows better than us that making changes to a complex system can have catastrophic downstream effects and has to be extensively tested first.

Most people assume that economics is like a washing machine where you have a few dials and knobs. Sometimes you need to tighten a screw here, apply some grease there, etc.

But in reality, economics is more akin a complex biological system. We have a very rudimentary understanding of how it actually works. Sure, we can create drugs that calm us down or excite us, but we have very limited understanding of the underlying biological system. For instance, we still can't agree what the optimal diet for humans is with wildly contradictory regiments.

It's a great analogy, especially since at the end of the day economic shifts are rooted in... illogical meatbags (us).

Economists like to pretend it's a science, and there are certainly scientific and experimentally-valid findings, but the innermost terms and interactions will always be obsfuscated. Like psychology, except with higher stacks of layered complexity.

It's not as bad as steel deciding to change its tensile strength on a whim (because it heard other steel say so!), but it's not far off.

From what I've seen, there are a lot of people in tech circles expressing anti-capitalist sentiment. However, very few of these people know or care how the economy works. This is very unfortunate, because I think it's useful to try and understand how the system works if you want to have any hope of improving it. Or at least, if you understand how things are trending, you might be able to better prepare and protect yourself and your friends/family.

The average person doesn't understand what inflation is, why it happens, how it affects them and how the government uses inflation to reduce the significance of its debt. The average person also tends to believe government inflation numbers which, IMO, are manipulated and do not represent what is actually happening in the world. For instance, home prices (and thus rents) are rapidly increasing, and housing costs, for most people, are the biggest expense they have to think about, accounting for sometimes more than 50% of their take home pay.

> From what I've seen, there are a lot of left-wing people in tech circles expressing an opposition to capitalism. However, very few of these people know or care how the economy works.

From what I've seen, there are a lot of right-wing people in tech circles expressing a support for capitalism. However, very few of these people know or care how the economy works.

(A particular subgroup understands finance/trading pretty well, and mistakes understanding weather for understanding climate.)

> From what I've seen, there are a lot of right-wing people in tech circles expressing a support for capitalism. However, very few of these people know or care how the economy works.

Fair point. Most people don't know or care how the economy works, left or right. My main point was: it's to your advantage to know how the system works, and it's maybe even more important to understand how it works if you hope to change it.

If you don't understand what is inflation and its impact, or basic economics, then politicians can take advantage of your lack of knowledge, in the same way a shady car mechanic can take advantage of uninformed customers. They might pretend that certain policies will help lower-income people when what they are doing is most beneficial to the ultra-rich.

> They might pretend that certain policies will help lower-income people when what they are doing is most beneficial to the ultra-rich.

Sure, like, for instance, they might pretend that reducing fiscal stimulus that both redistributes wealth downward and fuels inflation (but does the former more than the latter) helps the lower-income by reducing inflation when it really lowers their real post-transfer income while raising it for those in the higher income classes that benefit less or not at all from the transfer but are still effected by price levels.

> (A particular subgroup understands finance/trading pretty well, and mistakes understanding weather for understanding climate.)

now this is just downright seductive. bravo

Money has to go somewhere. When the economy is shut down, there are few places to put money outside of the stock market. In short, people are willing to pay more for stocks, because the alternatives are not there at the same levels they used to be. Supply & Demand, basically.

"The FAAMGs reported aggregate 1Q sales of $321 billion, some $24 billion or 8% above consensus, for year/year growth of 41%." (zerohedge)

What if the stock market is up because revenue and growth are up?

What if revenue and growth are up because people received free money from the government?

Don’t forget about real estate prices. They’ve skyrocketed as well and are a very common way to park money.

They're up because housing has virtually no supply and massive demand, though. Houses are terrible assets as investment vehicles as they have very low returns and high disposal costs. They're really a last resort unless you want to be a landlord.

I disagree with this comment. Real estate can provide solid 5-7% after tax returns (in parts of the US) and due to leverage and low mortgage rates, a small annual increase in price can greatly increase the value of your investment.

Most people only think of real estate as local, so if you look for returns in nyc or SF, you’ll be disappointed. But if you are willing to invest in property across the US you can find areas with much lower prices and higher rents.

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