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Comment by tlarkworthy | Hacker News Reader

I believe human ingenuity and power over the elements goes up 7% a year, of which, the stock market is a proxy for. We are a networked organism and good at leveraging innovation at a global scale through supply chains. I see no reason to be pessimistic, we have AI, we have better space flight, we constantly improving energy sources.

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Then why didn't the markets go up in Japan and Europe (per the GP)? Also, why do the US (and maybe other) securities markets increase when the underlying economy is performing poorly?

>Then why didn't the markets go up in Japan and Europe

Population aging and growth uncertainty is a big guess on my part.

https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/02/10/na021020-jap...

The US is highly dependant on massive amount of immigration to maintain demand. Couple that with a few other things, such as the petrodollar, and you have the US behaving in an odd manner that I don't believe will last forever.

Differences between countries, cultures and people do exist. These differences will manifest themselves as variations in productivity, ultimately leading to unequal growth rates.

US companies provide the most valuable services and products by a long shot.

https://companiesmarketcap.com/

> Then why didn't the markets go up in Japan and Europe (per the GP)? Also

Japanese companies are notorious for having poor return on equity for decades.

What is “the markets” for you? If you mean the stocks in in indexes you’re right, but that’s not the whole market.

One thing to consider though is that our nation has taken a lot of debt -in many philosophical forms- to fuel that growth.

Government deficit spending of course helping the economy. But we eventually have to pay taxes to cover that.

Citizens debt fueled spending on homes and goods. Corporate debt similarly. Student loans of course. Individuals and companies can only tolerate so much debt.

Our oil dependence never accounted for the cost of global warming and pollution, but we’re about to pay for that soon. This applies to many materials we consume, oil being the most prominent.

Corporations have systematically slowed pay growth while increasing prices, eventually consumers will be unable to afford enough goods to keep the machine spinning at full (growing 7%) capacity.

Our shrinking population from historic highs means each working person will need to contribute a bigger share to reach that 7%, while having more people to support.

Productivity and GDP, which the stock market is a better proxy for, do not rise 7% a year.

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