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I have previously said interest rates only rising in the face of wage inflation and ignoring decades of asset inflation was a attack by the investor class who feel they shouldn't have to share the rewards with workers.

This guy confirms that thinking is likely prevalent.

Workers need to be reminded who they work for? They need to be reminded that the Hamptons isn't a defensible position.

Asset multiples will collapse if unemployment rises significantly and the labor market weakens. Surely the investor class will still come out ahead, but it's interesting they seem to be ignoring this fact (except Warren Buffett, who's cash reserve to equity ratio is far greater than most of his peers)
“Winning is not enough, others must fail”. Quite ironic that the investor class sees it as a zero sum game.
It’s fear. They fear losing wealth, which if why they must always have more of and do anything to keep, even at the detriment of others— sometimes even their own family.

These people are dangerous.

They're sociopathic, genocidal vampires.
The rich won't be happy until everyone else is living in favelas and subjected to debt peonage.
I don't think that's it, it's more that line has stopped going up and they need someone to blame that isn't the gross misallocation of their own resources. Investing has been incredibly short sighted for the last 40 years, and they're reaping what's been sewn now.
This is the same person that said young people can't afford houses because they spend too much money on avocado on toast.
I believe, in spirit, what he was referring to was the inordinate premium young people spend for conveniences. He doesn’t have anything against avocado toast, except for the fact that it costs $1.25 to make, but restaurants in NYC or any large city may charge $12 before gratuity for it.

No lie, I’ve seen a slice of avocado toast on a menu for $12. It made me irate. When I go out to eat, I optimize for price, and difficulty to make at home. Thus, I often opt for Ribs with brusselsprouts, because both take a lot of time: tending to the grill, chopping annoying Brussels in half…etc. Even then, you can mess it up, rendering your time spent wasted. I’ve eaten bangin’ ribs with Brussels for $25. Avocado toast takes 2 min, tops and requires 0 skill.

I think that’s the point he was trying to make.

This is ridiculous, IMO. When you go out to eat you should optimize for pleasure, not the difficulty of constructing a dish. Avocado Toast was chosen in the "young people suck" articles because it was trendy, not because it simple.

Look at the other complaint - espresso drinks at cafes. People whine that young people could save more money if they just stopped buying lattes. Given that virtually nobody has an espresso machine at home, this is the polar opposite of the "well, you can make it at home" situation.

No. The complaint is "young people should stop complaining about their economic fortunes because it is their own damn fault." Nothing to do with trading money for convenience.

Nah, he's 100% a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" guy. He goes around making a bunch of assertions for which he has no evidence, but conveniently confirm his worldview and require him to change his habits not at all. I googled "how much do millennials spend on avocado toast" and got a bazillion results with sources about how it's not an issue. I also just googled "australia tradies productivity" and after some reading, it seems a lot more likely that the slowdown in productivity is from firm consolidation leading to a lack of competition.

If he really cared about this stuff, he'd be advocating for stricter antitrust (monopoly regulation is I think what it's called in Australia) rules, but weirdly you find almost no multimillionaire business owners doing so. Instead they spend their column inches arguing that we need to whip the rowers harder so the boat goes faster.

Or hey, CEO pay spiked too, meaning they've also been paid a lot more to do at least the same amount of work they were doing. Is he also advocating for higher levels of unemployment for the CEO class? Definitely not!

> No lie, I’ve seen a slice of avocado toast on a menu for $12. It made me irate.

For a point we have in common, I have problems in most Italian restaurants because of exactly this. I'm like, "I know this cost $4 and 15min to make, why does it cost $25". Yeah yeah I know I'm subsidizing the steak or whatever, but:

- I probably more than make up for that w/ my drink orders

- I still don't like it! (lol)

> I believe, in spirit, what he was referring to was the inordinate premium young people spend for conveniences.

And why shouldnt they? It's not like not spending that money would have allowed them to buy a home.

If rich people would have shared more, making things like buying a home possible, you would most definitely see more people skipping avocado toasts. But rich people fucked everyone over, so might as well go for the little things in life.

You're defending his point while simultaneously missing it. See this quote: "There was no discussions around, could I go out for breakfast, could I go out for dinner."
Brussel sprouts can be made well very easily, idk what you're talking about
Source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Gurner has the source
Or maybe just maybe, we ought to move away from our current school of economics and find a different one that addresses the shortcomings of the current one.

I would love to see more coops start up as it puts each employee with the responsibility of working as hard as they wish, but also taking on the responsibility.

Or at least giving employees stock shares.

Oh also raise taxes, on the rich or force them to invest their excessive money into the economy (investment projects or even funds/stocks for instance).

Huberman Lab and Marc Andreesen just had an episode about this. Something about status and power dynamics, and how the current guard will never allow such a drastic change to the status quo because it jeopardizes their existence.

Idk if they said this in the episode, but I believe this to be true, even if it were the most optimal economic arrangement. People’s desire for finding their local maxima prevents us from achieving a global maxima.

Didn't even realize I'm subscribed to their channel on youtube. Thanks for "jarring" my memory.
I have long thought our society would be a lot better if we did more to incentivize small and medium-sized businesses to flourish, and to discourage scale. Better for employees, better for consumers, better for the overall character of communities. Also, regions that are dominated by smaller firms tend to have the most robust economies.
> "We need to see pain in the economy."

Says the person who has been allowed to accumulate $912M under the very same economy.

> "We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around."

The people work for themselves. Too bad the free market is slightly inconvenient for you right now.

> "There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around."

So they 're supposed to believe that they are so lucky to be able to have a job at all and (most importantly) behave accordingly.

The nerve of that shithead...

Too late for that. Too few people were born in the 21st century and now are entering the workforce in record low numbers.

And this time you can't just throw people at the problem, because it's a worldwide phenomenon - at least in countries where most of the population gets the 9+ years of education required to participate in an advanced economy.

1. Retirement ages have generally been increasing over the period which should offset this.

2. Immigration is a thing.

3. Kids are labour intensive so if we weren't having kids, maybe that freed up labour depressing wages that are now returning to 'normal' rather than wages being 'normal' previously.

4. What nation has anywhere near zero employment?

> 1. Retirement ages have generally been increasing over the period which should offset this.

It won't because you're adding like 5 years of work from a cohort that amounts to around 3% of the total population, while at the same time you're already missing at least double that from the deficit of births in the 90s and it's only going to get worse.

> 2. Immigration is a thing.

From where? The supply of immigrants who went to school is dwindling - and has been for over 20 years now because they're not born in source countries.

> 3. Kids are labour intensive so if we weren't having kids, maybe that freed up labour depressing wages that are now returning to 'normal' rather than wages being 'normal' previously.

Children aren't "full time for the rest of your life" labour intensive - I should know since I'm a parent.

> 4. What nation has anywhere near zero employment?

I don't understand this question and how it relates to what I wrote.

> Retirement ages have generally been increasing over the period which should offset this.

Wait wasn't capitalism supposed to bring us less work hours and less overall working years ? That's what every politicians/economics were saying in the 60s/70s/80s, where did it go ?

> Immigration is a thing.

A thing that brings other things that are less and less accepted in a lot of countries

As an American who has spent a couple of years in Sydney, there are a few interesting observations:

- Tradies (construction workers, train workers, etc) are super common, it's a well-respected job, and it pays well (something like $25-30/hr AUD). - Sydney has so many construction projects. Every little bit of road is endlessly built, ripped up, redesigned, and built again. There are MANY train stations (~200?) and many of them constantly get refreshed and made super nice. - Speaking of trains, there are like 7 competing public transit train systems in the greater Sydney area. Many of them are not interoperable - Construction is FAST here. From train station upgrades to apartments (though they're cookie cutter like the US), everything goes up in like 6-12 months.

A part of me feels they have so much money to slosh around everyone's got jobs, and they can throw it on endless civic projects. It's like playing Sim City with an infinite money cheat.

The joke here is that Australia makes money "by selling pieces of it to China" but that will probably end sooner or later... and that's when unemployment will soar, and the good times will end.

Until then, let the good times roll (on one of the competing train lines)

Trades pay significantly more than that in the urban US in my experience. Not sure if it is because of a history of being less well-respected but supply is definitely low still relative to demand post-COVID.

I wish my midwestern US city had some more money sloshing into civic projects.

I say multimillionaires should pay more taxes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37440551 ("The IRS is going after 1,600 millionaires who owe hundreds of millions in overdue taxes, and it's using AI to catch them")

To your point though, the marginal rates these folks are exposed to should go up.

Anyone who naively think so will only made them actually pay less taxes relatively to middle classes.
> Anyone who naively think so will only made them actually pay less taxes relatively to middle classes.

You mean the way it worked in the 1950s [Narrator: No, it didn't] when the U.S. had something like a 91% top marginal tax rate?

https://slate.com/business/2017/08/the-history-of-tax-rates-...

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/income-taxes-on-t...

A clawback tax would do the trick.
Person who earns money from exploiting labor says labor should be cheaper. Shocking.
I don't want unemployed people desperate to survive threatening order...
The guy who would blow up their own society to either become a modern socialist country or implode and sink into Lord of the Flies.
Wow, cartoon supervillain stuff.
> "if we’re not growing, we’re dead."

is this driven by something fundamental in human nature or is it a byproduct of neolib capitalism.

When he says "we", he likely means the rent-seeker class.
Ironically of course, the standard of living for the average Australian hasn’t changed over the last 20 years. Growth means nothing to most Australians, because ultimately, the money doesn’t wind up in our pockets.

Politicians and rich people treat ever increasing GDP as some kind of admirable pursuit when in reality it’s making Australia far worse. We are not investing in infrastructure and any investments we do make are quickly skimmed and shipped overseas.

I want to try a stagnant economy, as I’d rather everyone works 20 hours and have great lives than what we have now.

I would probably say capitalism generally, but certainly this neolib variety
And then there's this asshole.
I wonder what software would look like if employers wanted to see a jump in productivity and thus eliminate all usage of things like web frameworks and jobs reliant upon such. That would restrict employees and hiring to fewer people capable of performing without those frameworks.
What the hell does the broader business care about web frameworks? Everyone's on salary and there's deadlines. You wanna really eliminate people? Start missing deadlines. They'll replace everyone with contractors indiscriminately regardless of how much you love python or rust and hate javascript.
The purpose of software is automation. If that means eliminating positions that cannot achieve automation, because they just fill in the blanks of some tool API, then so be it. Ultimately it comes down to a single business question:

What costs more, training people or hiring many replaceable people to backfill some tool?

* in Australia
peak capitalistic moral decay