I don't know why you are asking about pedophiles and sex trafficing - The Dow is over 50,000 right now, the S&P is at almost 7,000, and the Nasdaq is smashing records. Americans' 401(k) savings are booming, thats what we should be talking about.
Thank god I am still able to laugh at something during this administration—if only occasionally.
At the very least, they could have put the comment in quotes to indicate they're quoting someone and it shouldn't be read at the object level.
Edit: Seriously? Am I wrong here? Are you all really okay with Poe's Law-ifying HN, where people post comments that are easy to read as serious when they were intended as ridicule of the person who said them, and the comments erupt in confusion and flames? That's not what we should be expecting out of HN.
"All the cool kids know" is a BS way to post.
And I don't think the people you're talking about would have been political before politics became a bag of memes.
1. The shamelessness absurdity of using "market is up" to deflect from a pedo scandal
2. The fact that the market said "nope" and tanked immediately after Bondi tried to lean on it
You're right. I need to calm down. It's all theater that doesn't impact real people. We can just go about our merry way because no one has been kidnapped by federal agents in defiance of judicial orders.
There was a massive protest in the US this past weekend. Millions of people standing in solidarity. This was the 3rd such protest, each larger than the last.
What has changed?
One of these days the US will realize that emoting together with costumes and posterboards, bitching online, and loudly talking about how "my team is right!" is not effective.
So, in what ways is it effective to give a fuck about national politics? I haven't found any, and I'm emotionally tapped out. The government gets none of my attention.
Local government participation might yield small results, maybe. Not enough for me to give a shit. Seems like twice a week a state-or-lower politician gets rung up for bribes, corruption, etc. I have no desire to play that game, personally.
I think protests are just a tool with varying success depending on context but political action is necessary if you don't want t o lose your country.
The people of Montgomery in the 60's boycotted a bus for a few weeks. What changed? They just got hosed down in the end.
If you're hoping for instantaneous change over a single event, you're not going to see that over a mass protest. The point of protests is to bring awareness and change sentiment.
>So, in what ways is it effective to give a fuck about national politics?
Kristi Noem didn't get fired because people "didn't give a flying fuck about politics". We aren't seeing dozens of republican representatives retire or not run for reelection because "people didn't give a shit about politics". The Epstien files, the push back against ICE, the pressure against the SAVE Act. I can go on all day.
If you feel powerless then feel free to stand by. But let's not pretend that absolutely nothing has changed just because you don't bother to read up on the news you admitted you "don't give a shit about"
Looking over the course of these past 15 months, it's clearly having some effect. I'm sorry if it's not fast enough for you, but not all problems are solved by bullets. Feel free to prove me wrong if you want.
I don’t have anything to prove you wrong about, that onus is on you. :)
Are you implying that criticizing your government is a "witch hunt"?
It's not fair to expect everyone to be intimately aware of every political gaffe, and instantly make the connection when you repeat it so they know not to reply to the comment seriously -- as the original comment was doing.
FFS, just put it in quotes so people know you're quoting someone. (Or if it's not a direct quote, mention that it's from the mentality of the person you're mocking.) Is that so hard? Is it so important that you feel special as someone who knows about that incident that you just have to provoke a confused flamewar?
I would, in fact, say it's a huge deal that anyone remotely aware of what's happening in politics should know about. It was headlined and broadcast on most major networks.
Nor do I see anybody upset that it was misinterpreted or that someone didn't know. Just people who didn't know about it name-calling anyone who did. So not sure how their little joke "provoked" a flamewar, vs people being sensitive and lashing out that they aren't in on the joke immediately.
Putting quotes around a quote isn't hard.
I've never gotten anyone who is educated in economy/finance to provide a reasonable answer to the questions:
"Is the world economy large enough to support a meaningful number of people regularly investing in it, arriving at an amount able to support a comfortable retirement, and then draw said money out on a regular basis? What percentage of the population can be supported thus? What is to be said to that percentage whose participation would exceed the capacity of existing financial markets?"
So the reason you haven’t gotten an answer is because your question doesn’t make much sense.
I think the more salient question is how many people could the market support if everyone was consuming and not producing.
Not producing as in the goods and services that people want such as clean toilets and food and nursing home care. Or not producing the kids who will go on to produce the aforementioned goods and services.
It is a self correcting problem. If the yields are too low people can spend it on hookers and blow before dropping it into a money shredder. The yield shouldn't drop much below the premium for the time preference of money.
This is mostly incorrect.
A 401k in the United States is a tax-advantaged investment account. You can buy shares of individual companies, you can purchase index funds, you can leave it there as cash, buy gold, or just about anything you want or you'd expect to be able to purchase using a brokerage account. Depending on the route you take (Roth or Traditional) you can realize tax savings now or at a later point. 401k Accounts are programs offered by your employer as well [1].
One of the many reasons the OP's question doesn't make sense is because not every country in the world has a 401k program.
[1] There are other programs for individual owners or for those who have an employer that does not offer a 401k.
The only pure advantage is employer matching if you have it and stay employed long enough for it to vest.
So not exactly a necessity to build wealth.
There is still an element of real economic growth underlying the stock market, but passive investing, derivatives and market manipulation have largely decoupled the stock market from the actual economy. At least that's my opinion.
I think the answer to your question would be yes IF: * The world economy keeps growing * There is a fair distribution of the return on the world economy (which there isn't)
Any investment alternative, like a private or public pension, works under the same principle. Even traditional retirement plans depended on investing in having lots of kids to take care of you in old age.
Poor people in the US live like gods compared to people living in 3rd world jungles, but they complain just as much if not more.
So you quickly realize that "comfortable" is a relative term, and envy poisons any honest measure of "comfort".
No one knows what the end game of capitalism looks like, because we landed on the system because it is largely self-regulating and has worked well for carrying society forwards for the last 400ish years. Everything else has done poorly and kind of sucked.
Meanwhile, I'm not sure if we've truly seen an endgame socialist policy. Captialism seems to turn into imperialism and break that up before seeing the endgame there.
The fentanyl addicts drying in the Sun on Tenderloin's sidewalks beg to differ. What a ridiculous statement. There is less poverty in the US, but extreme poverty isn't any easier here.
Also you missed the entire point of the comment you responded to.
May have been true once upon a time, but true no longer.
Taxpayer funded DB pensions are a little bit better, since they offer outsized benefits due to being able to hose future taxpayers.
Perhaps there is issue with shareholder voting, because the funds largely handle that, but generally they are focused on long term growth and stability, and vote accordingly. I mean, then thing you are paying them to do is ensure you have a good retirement fund, if nothing else.
To stick some concrete numbers on this, combined the world's billionaires have about $15 trillion dollars worth of assets. Combined the world's retirement funds have about $60-$70 trillion dollars worth of assets.
What's driving the major disconnect is the generational wealth divide. Boomers have loads of wealth, housing, their pension funds, non-pension investments. Millenials, not so much. (Obviously, this is in part because wealth builds up during one's life, though the divide is stronger than merely that effect)
If you're a boomer, all this politics that promotes the stock market over the material economy is fucking great. Tech lays off another 16 billion people? Stonks go to the moon, and maybe you'll collect a nice fat severance package on your way out of your last job. If you're young though, it's a nightmare.
It's quite recent that the political balance has changed; Biden fumbled the 2024 election in no small part because of his "But the stock market is good, why are you mad?" stance that had been ol' reliable for the decades prior.
Do you have any numbers on this? Age is a pretty important part of the GINI index. People underestimate the age effect when discussing inequality.
Oh wait, they have started 2nd Epstein War to distract from the same list.