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Are We All Just Living Beyond Our Means Now?

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Are We All Just Living Beyond Our Means Now?

Paywall removed: https://archive.is/Bpddu

39 comments
  • Money’s gonna stop mattering in the states soon, I think. Orangeboi is probably gonna try to replace the USD with NFTs or some crypto scamcoin or something. The rest of the world needs to move away from the USD, and fast.

    I wish I was joking.

    • It's called deglobalization.

      The US dollar became relevant internationally because it allowed goods and services to be exchanged world-wide. Notably, oil is sold and bought in USD, which is super-convenient to the US federal bank because they can control how much oil they can buy by just printing more money and going into more debt.

      However, as I and many other people have rightly predicted, going into debt does indeed hurt the federal household. At a certain point, it just becomes unsustainable, tearing not only the federal budget but all of the government and political domain down with it. That formally causes the collapse of the US. I'm not joking. The US will re-build itself eventually but by that time, it will have lost a lot of credibility.

      • [heavy sigh]

        That’s just not true, none of it.

        “The US dollar became relevant… because it allowed goods and services to be exchanged globally.”

        Wrong. Any currency could enable that (look back at Spanish doubloons) the US dollar filled that niche more recently because coming out of ww2 the us had a relatively untouched territory and a monster of an economy that the rest of the west couldn’t provide otherwise. The US filled an economic vacuum by virtue of good fortune. They then acted over the next century to capitalize on that situation. There’s was nothing special about the dollar that made this a unique achievement.

        Oil was sold in OPEC dollars because at the time we made them, not because the dollar was unique or anything compared to all other currencies.

        “However as I have predicted debt…”

        Again wrong and gonna stop you right there chief. Debt existed well before this issue and other counties will continue to encourage specific levels of debt well after this issue frankly because you again wrong and there’s a much better understanding of economics than what your spouting.

        The US isn’t in this position because of the existence of debt they are in this position because of reckless actors (almost always in the GOP) spending a trillion on Iraq, or taking up the mercantilist perspective of a thalidomide baby writ large.

        This is the by product of people who don’t understand interwoven economics, don’t add to that ignorance and blame it going in to debt while ignoring that the us debt has existed far longer than any of these issues.

  • The wellbeing of the people depends largely on the political will of the ruling class; so efforting pressure on the ruling class to improve the living conditions of the people makes sense.

  • tbh I find these articles unrelatable

    I've always followed things like

    https://earlyretirementextreme.com/

    https://mnmlist.com/

    https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/02/22/getting-rich-from-zero-to-hero-in-one-blog-post/

    my mortgage is 1/6th of my monthly pay my next biggest spend is food because I am special needs XD and it drops off quite quick after that

    With an EV with home solar charging, a battery and heat pump, I should pay off my mortgage in the next few years and after that I'll quickly be getting close to barista fire

    • So no student debt for you, good on ya. For me paying my Rent (+Internet and electricity) is already more than 1/4th of what i make, then food, then student loan (1/6th). So i can't relate to the early retirement movement, tbh.

      • i only had a few thousands, thankful for tafe here in Australia

        This I can’t relate to

        Online, “You can see someone on a boat. You can see someone skydiving,” says Kara Perez, the financial educator behind the sustainable spending platform Bravely Go. “That leads to these questions of, ‘What am I doing wrong that I can’t afford that?’ Or, ‘You know what, I deserve that. Let me figure out a way to achieve that’ — which usually means, ‘Let me put that on my credit card.’” If you see that the whole world has flocked to Europe, you may not rush to book a ticket, but you may do something small to give yourself an immediate dopamine hit — DoorDashing yourself an Italian dinner, for example, or buying yourself a swimsuit for future Sicilian sunbathing.

        if you’re ordering doordash or uber eats and having trouble with money i don’t know what to say

        uber eats is the epitome of a waste of money

39 comments