The economy is the biggest bubble in world history, says Robert Kiyosaki | Hacker News Reader

The economy is the biggest bubble in world history, says Robert Kiyosaki

marketwatch.com

33 pointsmsolujic43 comments

Maybe it is but the guy is a snake oil salesman who doesn't deserve more attention for saying this.

He’s the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, right? I know a few people who were helped by his book. What is your issue?

His ideas do not scale, so while they may help an individual here and there, they are not helpful for society on the whole. Just my opinion.

Yeah. I understand that for some people, personal wealth is their primary goal, but for me I’d prefer a modest life where those in my community are also able to achieve something similar. I’d rather be a worker in a healthy cooperative than a land owner extracting rents from hard working people earning minimum wage. So books about how to be a land owner seem to me to undermine the society I’d like to see.

"Rich Dad, Poor Dad" good parts can be summarized in one sentence: "Start saving money and invest what you save". The rest of it is just bullshit.

I think it is more, "rich people buy assets and poor people buy liabilities."

Almost every successful real estate person I have contact with thinks very highly of RDPD. If you listen to real estate podcasts, almost everyone recommends RDPD. I agree it is light on many details, but many people seem to get a great deal out of that book.

That book is the perfect stupid people's detector

I'd love to be half as stupid as the majority of landlords I know in my local landlord association who speak highly of RDPD.

do you really want to live as a crappy small landlord collecting rent from strugling young couples? bravo.

It's the American dream. Always has been.

Moral aspersions aside, dumb they aint.

He has other books too

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Want_You_to_Be_Rich

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_Touch_(book)

It's a resume that speaks for itself.

His book is largely a work of fiction that happens to have some, frankly rather simple and not that insightful stuff in there.

Good advice can be and is often simple, so that's not really a criticism. My problem is that he then ran with that as a platform to 'Always Be Right' when actually he's not really very qualified or experienced above some real basics.

He's a charlatan cruising on a few good phrases.

There is some good material in that book, and it is written in a manner that appeals to a wide audience, so the book does some good, but generally, Kiyosaki is a salesman (of himself as a genius) above all else, and often gives hot takes that will draw attention but have minimal real value behind them.

This claim is typical of a Kiyosaki take: it is extreme, it seems plausible, it draws attention, and it has no real basis in research or reality. I'm not saying the economy won't crash (it might or might not), but Kiyosaki doesn't have specific data backing his thesis.

I learnt two things from that book: passive income is awesome, and spending money on status is rubbish. Those two things seem trivially obvious, however coming from a background of being an employee, I didn’t “know” them.

I credit that book with helping me become financially independent - now living on passive income from a business started 16 years ago.

If you learn one valuable thing from a book, that makes a book valuable, I think.

I don’t swallow some of his modern pondering such as this one on the economy, but neither do I dismiss his opinions just because he wrote a “simple” book. I find his outlook interesting, and I generally agree that something is turning to shit. I don’t think that means avoid all equities, but it does mean selecting equities that don’t crash if the world economy burns.

He recommends you invest in gold, silver, Bitcoin.

I'm hearing "One of these things is not like the other..." playing in my head.

Silver because of industrial uses?

Because gold is being now purchased by Central Banks (albeit not the ones that would necessarily tell me it's time to go all-in on gold)?

The term "bubble" gets misused a lot, to the point that they describe any asset appreciation that might be due for a 30% correction as a "bubble." Tulips were a bubble. Dot-coms were a bubble. Housing in 2021 wasn't because prices were driven by real market forces (asset appreciation elsewhere, low interest rates, increased demand for housing due to WFH), not just a speculative mania backed by hopes and dreams.

I like that he's suggesting Bitcoin as an alternative, though /s

Housing in 2021 was driven by low interest rates. That is over.

I bought a house because my wife and I couldn’t WFH from a 2 bedroom apartment. The low interest rate was just good timing. While interest rates are crazy high now, the inventory shortage on housing persists, at least in the range we bought. I’m glad I bought, even in a sellers market.

It's not over until the market reaches equilibrium. Modest 3 bedroom homes up to an hours commute outside central London are still up to 20-25x the average UK wage. Even with 2 average incomes you're looking at 10-12x.

The math (based on shift in interest rates) says there should be a 30% correction, but the reality is nobody is predicting that. More like 10-15% over the next 2 years.

Meanwhile rents are going in to the stratosphere as people abandon their home-owning aspirations.

Higher rates are doing nothing but causing suffering. Inflation is expected to persist and official projections of it suddenly falling away seem contrived.

I thought the main difference this time is that it’s not just one bubble like tulips or tech but the fact that multiple important industries are all in bubbles creating in effect a super bubble that surpasses all others?

https://www.gmo.com/americas/research-library/entering-the-s...

It’s just the credit cycle, not a bubble, simply the consequence of low cost of capital. It is deflating already and as the parent said it’ll likely be a correction rather than a true bubble pop, outside of maybe a few sectors like crypto or early stage public companies

Economy is clearly on shaky footing.

My child has a sore throat, and my doctor tells me there's an antibiotics shortage. First time in my young life I've heard of an antibiotics shortage.

I work in construction, housing, and there are materials shortages causing price increases and delays.

My parents are talking about retirement, how the recent crash has made them reassess their position. I remind them there's a lot of folks looking to retire, looking to sell their assets, a drag on securities.

US Dollar is tied to productivity - now headlines are saying there is uncertainty in productivity measurements.

We could be in for a bumpy ride. If you're looking to retire, inflation could eat your lunch. Kiyosaki's target audience is in that age range.

How much of those shortages are simply from the supply chain crunch? I keep reading how that is easing.

I don't know, but I'll be glad when things are back to normal

Tbh as an aside why prescribe a child an antibiotic for a sore throat?

I have more faith in the economy surviving for the long term rather than collapsing. It seems that there are many people that preach about a doomsday collapse, but they usually have an agenda for doing so. Take Peter David Schiff for example.

> GOLD @$1700. Predict $3000 in 1 year.

That's quoted as Robert Kiyosaki's prediction from May 16 2020. Bad prediction.

He's trying to get attention by making whatever predictions, rather than trying to make correct predictions.

Whenever these proclamations stress me out, I remember this:

The atom of the economy is a human. There are almost 8 billion of us. We will continue to need shelter and food. We will continue to want better and better lives. There will always be booms and busts. But demand will never disappear.

Civilizations do collapse, and that means loss of life and that means loss of demand. That would especially be true in a collapse of today's world, where high-tech farming methods keeps us fed, and globalism keeps all of us wealthy and fat. If we can price the cost of keeping civilization (esp the biosphere) alive into our economies, then by God I'd say capitalism deserves to be crowned the GOAT of civilization organizing principles. Sadly, capitalism is failing terribly at this, and is in fact acting like ignorance is bliss. So dumb!

Kiyosaki must be up to something if he's complaining.

He has been saying similar things for 15 years.

Because he is old he doesn't understand how fractured the world is today. For example, 100 people could create some new crypto token and mint 100 trillion coins. Then they could sell 100 of those tokens online for 100 dollars. Technically that would mean that the marketcap of crypto is now 100 trillion and very likely that this value will plummet in the future. That would be a 'huge' bubble, but have very little impact on the real world since it only effects a small number of people

If someone tells you the world will end and the same person doesn't change anything in his life... he is lying and wants attention or profit.

And if he does change things in his life.. well then he's just crazy. Not that I'm a doomsday prepper or anything.. but I do find it ironic that being too emotional over potentially awful things makes people dismiss you

I keep seeing articles like this.

"Some guy" who said "bad thing would happen", and it did, is now saying "another bad thing well happen really soon".

I can never remember them to check up later if that thing happened or not.

This guy in particular has said a lot about what will happen soon

Skin in the game. If he thinks the economy is going to crash, he can put his money where his mouth is and short the economy so that he stands to lose something if his predictions are wrong.

Until then, I don't care what he predicts.

This is probably one of the most foolish statements I always hear on HN and it is also a logical fallacy.

Also, you have no idea what his position with the market is.

When people talk like this, IMHO, it is out of a fear of something they do not want to believe.

Over a year ago, Sept 21, 2021 he said:

"Giant stock market crash coming October. Why? Treasury and Fed short of T-bills. Gold, silver, bitcoin may crash too. Cash best for picking up bargains after crash. Not selling gold, silver, bitcoin, yet have lots of cash for life after stock market crash. Stocks dangerous. Careful."

He was wrong with his timing on the stock market crash, but Bitcoin is down 70% from then.

So what I’m hearing is, he got 1 out of 4 points right. Why is he worth believing again?

> Treasury and Fed short of T-bills.

What does that even mean? Is there a typo I don’t understand?

Let's face it: central planning has had a horrible track record. Every centrally planned & highly regulated sector of the economy is broken. Whether it's housing, energy, education or healthcare it all sucks, regardless of the govt you've got running the show.

Govt provided services pumped full of govt created fiat inevitably turn to completely crap quality.

THE Robert Kiyosaki???

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