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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25231 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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Honest question---do you think your views about the state of the economy are falsifiable? What are some things you could see that would make you change your mind?

Here are some examples of things that if a few of them were happening at once would make me think the economy was bad:

  • A few quarters of negative real GDP growth
  • Big increases in unemployment
  • Big increases in inflation
  • Increasing household default or delinquency
  • Increases in the number of people who say the economy is bad

BTW here's a list of things I think are not good in the economy, but these are all longer-to-medium term issues and I think my ability to forecast is not great. These things are themselves not directly bad but can cause bad things on the preceding list.

  • Growing national debt with no real political way out (Ds want to keep doing dumb fiscal stimulus, Rs want to keep doing dumb fiscal stimulus (through tax cuts))
  • Lack of housing supply (a national issue that's the sum of a thousand local issues)
  • Lack of meaningful innovation (I increasingly think a ton of tech/vc stuff is run by charlatans and is totally fake and gay, including AI/LLM stuff)
  • Low fertility (although the US is probably better situated here than anybody else)

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