129 sats \ 0 replies \ @2big2fail 24 Aug 2022
having a mortgage ≠ home ownership
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210 sats \ 6 replies \ @itsrealfake 24 Aug 2022
The energy analysis in this article is great.
didn't realize that we were using less energy per capita now than before
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339 sats \ 0 replies \ @andyleroy 24 Aug 2022
Thank you so much for reading the article! (I'm the author and very excited to have this published)
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35 sats \ 4 replies \ @tomlaies 24 Aug 2022
I'd be interested if we use less because of efficiency gains or if we actually consume less. My bet is that it's the first.
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36 sats \ 3 replies \ @andyleroy 24 Aug 2022
It's absolutely in large part due to efficiency gains... just two of the examples in the article:
"In 1956, the ENIAC computer weighed 27 tons, consumed 150 kW, ran about 100,000 operations per second and cost the equivalent of $6 million today. Today, a new Macbook weighs 3.5lbs, consumes around 40 watts, and cranks out 3.2 billion operations per second — all for $2,000.
Airliners have increased their fuel efficiency at a compound rate of 1.3% between 1968 and 2014."
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25 sats \ 2 replies \ @andyleroy 24 Aug 2022
Which poses the question...if our energy efficiency has increased so much, why does the same output - denominated in energy - cost so much more (fiat) in 2022 compared with previous years?
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25 sats \ 1 reply \ @tomlaies 24 Aug 2022
Easy: because the benefits of production output doubling since the 90s and improvements in efficiency have not been distributed fairly through the economy. The rich increased their net worths and the middle class barely got the benefits of technological progress but none of the growth.
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125 sats \ 0 replies \ @andyleroy 24 Aug 2022
I agree with you on all of the front of economic gains being captured in an outsized manner by those with more money - the data seems to support this (https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/)
But I'm not sure I follow the correlation or causation with who owns the majority of the economy and the price impact on something like land or other commodities?
I would argue that all price inflation, especially in land and commodities, is the result of money creation, the benefits of which is most captured in an outsized manner by the rich
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125 sats \ 0 replies \ @andyleroy 24 Aug 2022
Two article quotes:
As we saw in USD prices, this particular house is eight times as expensive, while energy consumption per capita is flat. By this logic, if it took you one month of riding your bike for 10 hours a day to generate the energy to buy the house in 1987, you would now need to ride your bike for eight months to buy the same house. Eight times as much energy for the same product? Better get out that Peloton subscription.
Using his [Allan Sloan's] rollover debt totals of about $7.1 trillion, every 100 basis point increase in the federal funds rate that feeds through to market yields on Treasuries adds another $70 billion to required government spending. If rates ever get up to a 5% range, that puts interest expense (on just current debt) at somewhere close to $500 billion. More than transportation, education, training, employment and social services combined.
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25 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 24 Aug 2022
If you own bitcoins, you can have almost anything you need to live free and decent.
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25 sats \ 0 replies \ @tomlaies 24 Aug 2022
Boomers projecting their lifestyle choice onto other be like:
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25 sats \ 0 replies \ @_musallwah 24 Aug 2022
Am a millennial and financial is the thing I want most matter of fact need. Before anything else.
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