[dirck-norman]

Feelings aren’t fact. A lot of data shows the doomerism is not reflected in the actual numbers and much of it has to do with rapid inflation and continued vibes.

Consumption has risen, inflation adjusted wages have risen for blue collar and white collar alike. Most social mobility has been the middle class moving into the upper middle class, not moving to the lower class.

The main thing holding people back is the housing crisis. This is orthogonal to the value creation of businesses.

Value creation is growth. If it didn’t exist the S&P would still be 42.55$.

[everforward]

> The main thing holding people back is the housing crisis. This is orthogonal to the value creation of businesses.

This feels wholly at odds with saying most social mobility is upwards. So most of the social movement is into a class where a home and vacations are a given, but we also have a growing class of people who can't afford a home? Per BLS, average real wages are down 0.3% YoY https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm .

> Value creation is growth. If it didn’t exist the S&P would still be 42.55$.

This reductively assumes "value creation" is the only effect on the S&P pricing. You'll note a ton of graphs correlate with it, e.g. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi is the US inflation rate, which also tracks the S&P pricing. Ie if a company is worth $100 a year ago and inflation was 4%, I'd expect to pay $104 for their stock with 0 value creation whatsoever.

[dirck-norman]

Home ownership is not the definition of economic class.

The s&p has vastly outstripped inflation, this isn’t even an argument. It’s a very bizarre and uninformed opinion to say “inflation is correlated with s&p value”.

In economics, you deduct the inflation rate from growth to get the real rate of return.

I wonder why so many people with such little understanding of financial markets make comments like these.

https://www.multpl.com/inflation-adjusted-s-p-500

[everforward]

> Home ownership is not the definition of economic class.

It was at one point, so if you're saying it doesn't now then your "social movement" is really just goalpost moving. I'm sure the upper class does grow if you just declare that the boundaries of it are now lower. We're all millionaires if we just redefine millionaire to mean "not currently overdrafted".

> In economics, you deduct the inflation rate from growth to get the real rate of return.

Which neglects the impact of inflation on the principal. If I put $100k into the S&P in 2016 I'd have 303k now (303% value). Cumulative inflation during that period was 38.8%, so your metric says I'm at 164% rate of return. $303k today is only worth $218k in 2016 dollars though, so I'm really only up 118% in absolute value.

That's also only using the CPI, and neglecting asset inflation which impacts stock prices outside of actual value creation. More money floating around means more gets parked in index funds, regardless of whether the company is actually doing anything better.

[dirck-norman]

Inflation adjusted 10 year cumulative return is ~192, no matter how much you don't understand how math works.

You don't re-apply inflation onto the principal.

[jacobgkau]

> Consumption has risen, inflation adjusted wages have risen for blue collar and white collar alike.

My wages haven't risen for nearly 5 years, while inflation has occurred over the past 5 years. Why the blanket statements?

> The main thing holding people back is the housing crisis. This is orthogonal to the value creation of businesses.

Are you suggesting a "housing crisis," in your words, wouldn't impact consumption? I'm watching my spending (and living like a child in his parent's house, except it's not my parent and I have to pay for it) in the hopes that in about a decade, I'll have saved up enough of a down payment for a home somewhere in my state that I could actually afford the mortgage on the remaining amount. There are plenty of things I'd potentially spend money on but won't as long as I feel like I'm economically stuck and have a chance in hell of saving my way out of it. So this feeling translates to fact.

If you think my personal experience is just an anecdote and doesn't count because it's not being told through the lens of large-scale numbers, fine. But I really agree with the person you replied to that you're gonna have to be a whole lot more specific than "value creation" if you want people to spend money on your AI products "in this economy," whether it's because they're actually strapped for cash or just pretending like you seem to think they are.

[decidu0us9034]

The upper decile of income earners account for more than half of all consumption in the US. Household balance sheets and wealth have never looked stronger, again when you account for all the appreciated stocks and properties owned by the upper quartile. True incomes for the lowest decile rose significantly for the first time since 1970 in 2022 and then sort of stayed flat again. Sure, statistically significantly, not "significantly" as in personally meaningful after figuring in rising consumer costs. There is a narrative where you can see all this as hugely positive but this is also largely a "vibes" based narrative. I don't know why you'd expect most people to care about what the "vibes" are like for the best off in society, that's a bit removed from their daily concerns.

[geraneum]

> Feelings aren’t fact... much of it has to do with rapid inflation and "continued vibes".

Oh the lost irony.

[dirck-norman]

Is it ironic? Or did you just read the comment incorrectly?