There aren’t enough homes or jobs. What do?
I think this is a large reason behind the polarization in America today. We aren't all facing the same aspect of this imbalance.
I was hoping that the work-from-home movement was going to help with this, but RTO seems to be in full swing. So, I think our best bet would be to stop incentivizing the concentration of job creation. Absent a fix, we will have to wait a few decades for the imbalance to even out.
Could pay people well but half as much and have nice office in Colorado mountains, Vermont, or somewhere else beautiful…
Of course, startups rarely seem interested in saving money…
Maybe the more fundamental problem is that in big city America, it's easy for existing homeowners to band together to forbid any further housing stock from being built.
See Silicon Valley: amazing concentration of high-paying jobs, laughably low population density.
We should be living in a time of ease, where the whole planet is sustained with all of us only working a few hours a week. Instead most people are fighting for scraps barely able to afford rent.
It won't continue like this forever. The line doesn't always go up.
Otherwise, it's one asset holder selling to another asset holder, usually at ever increasing prices. So yes, a lot of money is simply sitting in the stock market.
Now, some does come back in the form of share buybacks and dividends. That being said, the average dividend yield is significantly less than the long-run average (it's less than 2 percent right now, long term average is above 3%).
But instead we have a tiny minority of people who control more and more capital. This has well-known and terrible consequences for society from almost every angle. What I don't understand is why the .1% don't want to step aside and let someone else have a turn. It's funny that our bodies have stomachs, so we know when we've eaten "enough". But money doesn't get stored in the body.
> It's funny that our bodies have stomachs, so we know when we've eaten "enough".
Humorously on topic, GLP-1s patch the reward center in your brain and say “enough is enough.” If only there was a similar protocol for wealth and power.
All the billionaires are equal parts clearly miserable people, and also terrifying and psychopathic. I assume they didn't start out that way, but there's also probably a personality that just has a need to run up the score.
I think if capitalism had a kill screen, that you get to and then you have to go do something else for a while, both the billionaires and the rest of us would all be happier and healthier.
The unenployment rate is quite low. There are complaints you can make about the economy but the model of money you laid out is completely wrong.
>All the money has been hoovered into the stock market.
I think you might misunderstand what the stock market is. Or perhaps you misunderstand what what stocks are? When you purchase stock, it doesn't get locked in a vault, with your name written next to it, and the number of shares it got you on that day. That money goes to the company, and they use that to finance their operations (and ideally, further growth). That financing may go directly to salaries, or even if it goes to services, those services are paid to someone who pays salaries.
If your claim is instead that "all" of that money, or some meaningful majority of that money, is going to electricity and AI silicon, I would invite you to do some basic math on the companies involved.
When you purchase stock, your money goes to the seller of that stock. That's what makes a "market". The stock market isn't a bunch of companies selling their stock to the public.
I incorrectly explained what I meant, and broadly speaking, what I wrote is incorrect.
However, I stand by my statement that "all" of the money is not going to electricity or AI silicon.