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Comment by lenerdenator | Hacker News Reader

I was looking at used cars on Carmax about two or three weeks ago. I looked again today. They're another $1-2k.

This is the shareholder/political class trying to eat their cake and have it too. Pay people a stagnant wage for 40 years while taking most of the surplus value and dedicating it to equities, then pretend to do something about it, but in a way that passes the buck to the people who have been making a stagnant wage so that the wealthy don't incur actual losses.

Share prices will be brought back up through layoffs.

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It amazes me the contortions some people go through to maintain the belief that this administration is competent.

Occam's razor suggests that they just have no idea what they're doing.

These people all have a shared idea of what they're doing, and since they sit in financially-backed echo chambers, those ideas eventually turn so absurd that they appear to have no idea of what they're doing.

I'm fairly convinced it's easier feel like there is some plan, even if a bad or sinister one, than things being in a state of genuine chaos.

You occasionally see the people jumping between different ideas as to what the underlying plan is, once events no longer support their initial idea.

The plan is crystal clear:

1. When equities crash, market liquidity floods the bond market causing yields to drop

2. Refinance debt at these lower rates massively reducing interest burden

3. Cut government spending to cause rates to drop further

4. Reduced rates with a balanced budget results in non-inflationary borrowing and an economic upswing

Along the way, eliminate taxes for those earning below $150k.

If all of the above happens at the expense of equity holders so be it.

This plan has been made clear by multiple people from within the administration (namely Bessent who is one of the greatest macro investors of all time).

Now there’s many things to criticize in this plan (and lots of risk and unknown possible second order effects), but to describe it as “genuine chaos” or ineptitude is strange.

It's not that crystal clear when the ideas from Stephan Miran to reshape the world order by turning allies into vassals is also part of the plan.

There's a plan, it's to reshape the global trade à la Bretton-Woods, and the Plaza Accords.

The rest is just noise and plausible deniability for people to gobble up and accept to have been shoved into a New World Order.

Let us know what the new plan is when Trump does something that doesn't fit with this.

> This plan has been made clear by multiple people from within the administration

Do you have sources?

(I also subscribe to the "genuine chaos" theory, but your comment makes sense)

The first three points:

https://www.foxnews.com/person/r/tanvi-ratna

It’s weird that Congress, the body constitutionally responsible for tariffs and their results, acts like they don’t know about it.

or they could've... taxed wealth. But the broligarchs who control trump wouldn't be ok with that.

But could they? Don't they all have unavoidable loopholes to avoid paying?

we're talking about law makers who can, you know, close loopholes.

My understanding is that the loopholes exist because international trade exists and therefore capital can be juggled through various different states to avoid the tax payments. That is, it's outside the legislative scope of any single set of law makers.

> When equities crash, market liquidity floods the bond market causing yields to drop

I don't know much about markets so genuinely curious as to why the opposite happened in practice (yields went up)?

This regime is one Man, tRump, who surrounded himself by yes men. He doesn't have any sort of negative feedback cycle now to keep a cap on how much damage he can do to the economy. Either they owe him something, they are part of the MAGA cult, or they stand to make money by bending the knee (like Bezos and Zuck and Husk).

Many people share the worldview that those who are higher up in the hierarchy of power are the most capable or deserving of such positions.

So when those leaders start acting in a way that is irrational or clearly damaging, there's a pretty strong cognitive dissonance. There are two ways to deal with it:

- Assume that, since they're the higher-ups, they must know what they're doing. Therefore there must be some sort of plan that you're not able or supposed to understand.

- Reassess the notion that the higher-ups are always the most capable or deserving people, and assume there's a chance for inept people to access positions of power.

The first one is the path of least resistance, since it doesn't require challenging a fundamental pillar of your worldview.

100% agree with this perspective. It’s surprising how few others seem to note this.

Thanks for posting it.

And what is the solution?

Repeal citizens united, curb campaign and lobbying spending, breaking down of these chaebol-like conglomerates, make healthcare public and tax the rich massively. Something no body seems to want.

Switch to a better voting system to destroy the 2 party system and curb extremists getting into power. At least the state compact voting change to modernize the electoral college.

I’m definitely not qualified to answer this.

I would like to say, from my perspective, that it seems to not matter how “good”, even “exceptional”, business listed on the stock market do; the outcome is hostile and negative to the customer/consumer. Costs have only gone up, dramatically so. In my case; entirely disproportionate to, if any, income increase coming in.

Market does good. Market does exceptional. The experience has generally been negative?

Market does bad? I expect a lot of us can connect the dots, and will no doubt be impacted again.

Maybe the market, in my perspective; is not a beneficial experience.

Why would shareholders want to tank the value of their shares?

Buy the dip?

Most wealthy people’s wealth is in investments. If the value of the investments goes down, there are fewer resources to “buy the dip.” It doesn’t hold water as a theory. Basically robbing Peter to pay Paul.

They have people whose jobs it is to even out those troughs, and I don't think you realize just how wealthy the wealthiest wealthy really are. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Larry Ellison each have a net worth that is on par with the total gross economic output of a small American metropolitan area.

> Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Larry Ellison each have a net worth that is on par with the total gross economic output of a small American metropolitan area.

You're comparing apples to oranges.

Net worth is in dollars, while economic output is dollars per unit of time. The comparison does not make sense.

You didn't even say which unit of time! Hell, I have a higher net worth than the total economic output of the US, given a short enough time frame.

This level of pedantry won't play in reality against someone who just lost everything and is seeking revenge on the tech bros who they perceive as enabling all of this.

I hope lenerdenator didn't just lose everything and isn't seeking revenge on the tech bros - more likely he's a tech bro!

It's not pedantry though. It really makes no sense to compare earnings per unit of time to accumulated wealth. They are entirely different things.

Compare the wealth of Elon vs wealth of average person on the Earth, or average US citizen. Those are also mind-boggling numbers and it makes sense to compare them.

I'm sure all those billionaires who paid Trump the $1m to grin behind him are dreading the impact on their groceries and upward mobility like the rest of us. Never forget that Trump and Bezos and Zuckerberg truly think of us first and wouldn't be so antisocial as to trade your family for a little bit more.

Yes, but investors move in and out of cash positions. Bershire Hathaway is currently sitting on $334 billion in cash. If you're an active investor, you'll have periods of both buying and selling - so you'll have cash, or you won't have cash. To assume 100% is allocated at all times is incorrect.

Hence my use of the word “most.”

Investors do hold some cash, but they generally prefer not to hold a lot of it because inflation reduces its value. $44B sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but it’s only around 8% of the $632B of assets they hold. (Not sure where you got your much bigger figure; mine is from their consolidated balance sheet reported in their 10-K report for Dec 31, 2024.)

see above comment under other thread

To some people, you can propose literally any possible political scenario and they'd find a way to say it benefits the wealthy.

Trump only owns one stock: a major portion of the parent company of Truth social. Nothing he’s done has caused that stock to rise or steady.

Yeah, the random memecoins he issued and the NFC trading cards were meaningless to him. He's only invested in Truth Social and The Constitution. That's why he's in such competition with the owner of Twitter and would never undercut his social media platform.

What I was trying to point out: his wealth is in real estate and one huge chunk of DJT. No blue chips, no managed funds; nothing that mainstream America and Barack Obama would choose. I contend he attacks the mainstream because of all that.

TMTG down over 10% since before announcement

Because they're wealthy enough to have separation between their 'existence' money and their 'power and status' money. Tank the country and they get to own a little sliver more of it. The cheese and clothes they buy don't change. Because they've got more than plenty.

No that's not what I mean I mean like if I have 99% of my assets in ...business capital (read: mostly stock) what's the plan? I'd have to front-run, but the wealthy own half of the business capital in the US so that's also incoherent because there's just not that much besides other wealthy to front-run.

If the wealthy wanted to buy something up on the cheap that they didn't own, they'd do residential real estate: something that's majority middle class owned (a fun corollary: property taxes are just wealth taxes on the middle class, the proportion of business capital the middle class owns is teeny). However, house prices have gone in the opposite direction as you'd expect from this theory!

I never said they want to.

But as many responses to your comments; there’s a portion of the population who are not invested in the markets this way.

There’s clearly a very different perspective for some, and as per my original reply; it seems many more are worried (rightfully so) about assets others cannot even begin to comprehend - let alone invest day to day, or “spare”, money into.

Are you claiming that the 'shareholder class' would rather depress the economy and wipe out trillions in shareholder value...over inflating the economy and lowering interest rates?

Agreed. It’s very rare to get a group of shareholders to agree that the price of their stock should go down.

That is what I believe I also just read... I was just telling my girlfriend that Hackernews is the smarter, tech oriented reddit. Better go fix that.

Not "the shareholder class" but the actual super wealthy, those few thousand individuals at the top.

A way I have recently seen this put is that if you have a billion dollars another billion doesn't do that much for you in real terms. But if you're a billionaire who likes to sexually harass your child's nanny, you would much prefer she be desperate and precarious rather than economically secure or with a lot of other viable options. This is one crude example but the dynamic is in play in many other situations.

So idk, it's plausible to me that the class interests of the wealthy extend beyond mere wealth accumulation. I can imagine circumstances where they would be willing to give up some of their absolute wealth in exchange for greater relative wealth.

Ok, I buy the premise that maybe the top 1000 people are super evil mr. burns type folks. I even buy the fact that they would be giving up absolute wealth for greater relative wealth.

But you know the easiest way to do that. Inflation. Expanding the money supply. Increasing the value of their assets at the expense of the working class. not tanking the value of the companies they own!

Agree. This sounds like the simplistic "billionaires were the problem all along" take, which is, TBF, not that different from Trumpism. The only difference is the choice of enemies who are responsible for all our problems.

Every major financial crisis since (at least) the 80's has resulted in a "K shaped recovery" in which the 99% are forced by circumstance to sell off assets to the wealthy at bargain prices.

...or they could've just laid off and gotten even more.

maybe, just maybe, trump and the people around him are actually just crazy and there's no big conspiracy.

It's the simplest explanation and also the one with the most evidence

I don't think of it as the classic conspiracy in the sense of a La Cosa Nostra meeting in Apalachin.

It's more like a shared set of ideas, and those ideas are crazy, at least if you don't have a net worth that is enough to ride out all but the most historic of social upheavals. And part of avoiding that most historic of social upheavals is not laying off people for the sole profit of it, at least not without a good excuse.

> while taking most of the surplus value

Just FYI, "surplus value" refers a concept Marx made up that is considered in mainstream economics to be an error in reasoning.

Even making sense of it requires buying into the labor theory of value that Marx took from Adams and Ricardo, but which is not taken seriously anymore.

That doesn't detract from the substance of the point you're making. But it's a little like reading someone say their house is hot because of all the phlogiston. It detracts from the force of the argument.

You haven’t said anything.

Surely this retort sounded cooler in your head?

But also, literally I said a lot. There's enough meat there for someone who hasn't spent much time in the history of economics to spend an entire afternoon going down an enjoyable rabbit hole.

that connection between surplus value and the labour theory of value is fully unexplained in your post, so... you have not said nothing, but you haven't said enough to make your post consequential I'm afraid

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