Any of you heard of Gary's economics and is he a socialist? \ stacker news ~econ

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Any of you heard of Gary's economics and is he a socialist?

186 sats \ 12 comments \ @stack_harder 11 Jan econ

Ok, so there is this economics influencer from the UK and his stuff has popped up in my feed a few times, he's kind of the economist for the average joe and I've watched a few of his videos now and , quite honestly, i think he's missing the whole point.

for example, this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QROpbj_Yz-0

now he obviously has good intentions and feels the pain of normal people getting squeezed by inflation, but all his arguments are based on class inequality.

GPT summary of that video Inequality is the underlying cause of economic deterioration, and without addressing it, conditions will worsen for the majority while the wealthy thrive. Bold political and economic changes are necessary to reverse this trend.

now, we've never really had a truly equal society, it's not something that's ever existed. he says it's unfair that the rich with assets are benefiting, but missing the point that when the money weakens, people look to store it anywhere they can.

now, pre-bitcoin, you maybe could have argued that the rich have access to all these fancy investment tools, but for at least 7 years, any regular Joe could have bought bitcoin and smashed all the tradfi metrics to bits. could have become fiat-rich in the process.

IMO, he should be telling his followers that fiat is the poison and the thing that's fucked. sure giving the rich a bash always gets a few clicks, but that's not what it's about. at a minimum, the message should be, start saving what you can in assets, not fiat.

but as it is, it's kind of meh, wealth divide, yeah, no shit.

what do you think, is Gary a legit economist that has been blinded by his Keysian education, or a secret socialist offering nothing but feel-good hot takes?

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132 sats \ 6 replies \ @Undisciplined 11 Jan

European economics training is notoriously terrible. As bad as American mainstream economists can be, our counterparts in Europe are atrocious.

Inequality is one of the most preposterous things to focus on, because the implication is that if everyone were 10x wealthier, in real terms, we'd have all the same problems. What matters to real people is their own purchasing power, not other people's purchasing power.

54 sats \ 5 replies \ @stack_harder OP 11 Jan

this does get him a loyal following though, but honestly, people watching him are thinking they are getting smarter and learning economics, getting the warm fuzzy feelings because life is shit, but in reality, they are just becoming stupider, missing out on bitcoin and wallowing in anger at people with more money. people like this need to be orange pilling hard

62 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined 11 Jan

wallowing in anger at people with more money

This is the part that bothers me the most. These bad popular "economists" generate a lot of resentment in society, which is really dangerous.

Good economists tend to instill a deep sense of appreciation in their readers/listeners towards the immense prosperity we enjoy.

36 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder OP 12 Jan

he should really rebrand himself to Gary the commie because he's just complaining about wealth inequality and it being unfair in all his videos.

at this point, you would think anyone could look at the various historical examples of doing wealth distribution to 'make things fair'

something else i find annoying, is that while yes the rich get richer, the average person in the UK now has a million ways to invest and also build savings (since that's his audience). literally, open revolut and trade stocks, crypto, whatever

nobody is actively holding anyone down and out of assets or anything.

he's saying ASSETS ARE GOING TO GO UP, well ok, tell your audience to fucking buy some then. take a position.

instead, it's all just fluff about how the government needs to fix inequality. I mean, it's just nonsense really. how does an ineffective, debt-laden government fix something that doesn't even have a fixed definition. like saying the gov needs to fix the bad vibes lol

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 12 Jan

how does an ineffective, debt-laden government fix something that doesn't even have a fixed definition

This is one of the key elements of the scam. So many of their goals are intentionally vague: fair share, living wage, affordable housing, breathable air, etc. You can never be held accountable when no one can say what you meant.

24 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 11 Jan

Good economists tend to instill a deep sense of appreciation in their readers/listeners towards the immense prosperity we enjoy.

Yes, I think a good economics education has to start with why markets, entrepreneurship, and capitalism are good. Then we can talk about the issues at the edges, but we can't forget that this economic system has brought about the greatest gains in prosperity in human history.

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 11 Jan

Thomas Sowell makes the point more often than most economists that poverty is the natural state we should be comparing outcomes to.

Asking what causes poverty is the wrong question. What we need to understand is why there's any prosperity at all.

44 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bishop 11 Jan

He doesn't just talk about inequality. He also says that the game is rigged; which I agree with.

An interesting point he makes is that the 'poor' work in isolation. I agree with this. I get the impression that Gary wants the 'poor' to unite politically (rather than focus on poverty at the individual level) and tax the rich more on fixed assets.

I think Bitcoin is a better tool of coordination ( intended individual greed morphed into unintended and additional altruism). However, it's hard to deny that you need to be quite affluent in the first place to build a big position in Bitcoin.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 11 Jan

sure, although when wasn't the game rigged against your average pleb? i just find the whole, let's tax the rich more point stupid, it wont fix a thing because the monetary system is so fundamentally broken, i just don't know why he's not addressing this.

course, the thing with btc is that at least anyone can save in it and it will preserve what economic energy that you have managed to muster

32 sats \ 1 reply \ @7e6e393a56 11 Jan

Gary is a Keynesian who firmly believes that capitalism only exists because of the existence of the state. Not even a breakdown will change your mind. I see a lot of the same style as Gary, and there's nothing you can do about it

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 12 Jan

yeah, he's basically just a naive socialist who has become popular because people think he's like like them but an expert economist, telling it like it is.

hearts in the right place, but his viewers will continue to get rekd

14 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 11 Jan

Eh, I don't know him and I don't have time to watch his videos. But I can tell you what I would look for before I would call them a "good" economist:

Is this person a systematic thinker who is able to "zoom out"? Sometimes people have a decent analysis of one particular thing in isolation, but they fail to consider the knock on and spillover effects into other areas.
- Example: emissions of electric vehicles. Many people fail to even think about the emissions cost of mining, production, and disposal and only look at the emissions that come from directly operating the car.
Is the person overly ideological? Having opinions is fine, but if the person seems to cherry-pick data and ignore any evidences that go against their point of view, then they're not worth listening to.
Does the person understand data? Too many people take research papers and claims by "experts" at face value. I only want to listen to someone who has demonstrated an ability to be critical about data and research claims. They need to understand endogeneity: reverse causality, omitted variables bias, measurement error, selection bias. They also need to be aware that data collection itself is imperfect. Someone who takes every statistic and every research report at face value isn't worth listening to.
- Example: crime statistics. If crime goes down, it can be due to crime actually going down, or less reporting, or less discovery, or recategorization of crimes.
- Another example: COVID statistics. If hospitals get extra money for COVID patients, they have an incentive to mark more patients as having COVID. Too many people failed or refused to acknowledge this when discussing COVID stats.