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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29605 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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Why is it a bad thing that asset prices are high? That seems like a good thing to me.

it is the 'stealing from the future' meme. If long term returns are X and present returns are X+x, then later investors will be worse off if returns mean-revert to X.

What assumptions would lead to this scenario and why do associate it with higher asset prices? Holding absolute returns constant, higher short-term returns should cause asset prices to fall.

I don’t know that it’s a bad thing, but 50 years of high asset price growth obviously increases inequality.

Do you want to incentivize people to make things or to buy things and hold them?

Ignoring that the prices are so high because you aeent allowed to make enough of them because those who are holding it are getting too high on their own supply to let it be any oher way.

The whole point of wealth creation is to have wealth. If we were less wealthy, we might produce more, but we'd necessarily be worse off.

Circular reasoning. Wealth is the things you have in absolute, not relative. Expensive assets is relative. We want more assets in total.

I'm not following you. The point of wealth is to be able to spend it on things. We produce things, then we have them, then we use them up. That use we get is why we worked to produce them. How is that circular reasoning?

You're saying that once we have things, we don't want to work as hard to produce more things, so we should have less stuff. But having less stuff defeats the purpose of producing it. The entire point is to have stuff we can use, not to produce it for the sake of producing.

I'm saying that wealth quite literally is having MORE things that we want. And more things implies cheaper, not more expensive.

Why is it a bad thing that asset prices are high? That seems like a good thing to me.

This is a bad thing because it implies by definition we don't have enough assets. We are asset poor. Things that we truly are wealthy in and have an abundance of are cheap.

Wealth is measured in terms of what goods and services it can buy. Higher real asset prices have more purchasing power and make society richer, controlling for the quantity of those assets.

Asset prices can be high because the quantity of assets is low or because the demand for assets is high.

We are clearly in the second situation, and that's clearly what's implied by "asset pricing bubble", which is a good situation to be in. It raises the value of existing wealth, which increases our purchasing power and causes more wealth to be created.

Wealth is measured in terms of what goods and services it can buy. Higher real asset prices have more purchasing power and make society richer, controlling for the quantity of those assets.

How is society richer by having less of something?

Certain parts of society is richer, society as a whole no.

It's simple really society A has 5 assets and 10 services per capita, and society B has 4 assets and 10 services per capita, those assets and services are identical. Society A is wealthier. And You can exchange 2 services for 1 asset as opposed to 2.5 services for 1 asset in B.

Which society is richer again?

You are twisting economics in knots to sidestep the simple idea that "more is better".

How is society richer by having less of something?

I'm not sure where the misunderstanding is. By "controlling for the quantity of those assets", I mean that the quantity stays the same. So society wouldn't have less of anything.

And You can exchange 2 services for 1 asset as opposed to 2.5 services for 1 asset in B.

There is no law of economics that says the total value of assets has to equal the quantity of goods and services produced in a given period.

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