Quit pretending like you care about the poor

Submitted by H0lland0ats t3_z8ukg0 in wallstreetbets

I keep seeing the posts from MSM opinion pieces pushing narratives regarding the federal reserve and interest rates.

These opinions range from "staglation for a period is good" to "the rich are engineering a recession to buy your assets cheap".

The Federal Reserve has 2 mandates:

  1. Price stability (i.e inflation)

  2. Maximize employment

In a normal, healthy economy, these two things follow each other relatively closely for obvious reasons. That is to say, the Fed can usually achieve both goals with the same policy.

Our current economy is neither normal OR healthy for many reasons that are as complex as they are unexpected including: (I'm arriving at a point soon I promise)

1)Massive disruption to global labor markets from Covid, aging populations, and slowing population growth.

2)China zero Covid policies, lockdowns, and major supply chain disruptions associated with closed systems.

3)War and geopolitical factors. Ukraine War has had massive implications for many different commodities and supply chains. Lots to be read about in different posts. Taiwan looms large on the horizon.

4)Climate effects. Avoiding the climate change trap, record droughts and flooding have severely impacted numerous agricultural products, and there's no reason to think these problems will get better.

  1. Excess liquidity. People will argue about this one, but I think it's clear decades of low or even negative interest rate environments have lead to incredible amounts of cheap debt, and reckless spending.

  2. Divided Governments. A plurality of western nations are experiencing the greatest political division in history, leading to lack of governance and unpredictable policy (flip flops).

This list can go on and on but here is my point: The Fed cannot achieve both of its mandates. It is in a position where it must choose whether to control Inflation, or employment, or some combination of the 2.

Unfortunately any path the Fed goes down WILL hurt the poor, and increase the wealth gap, in the absence of other policy outside of the Feds control. People can certainly debate whether some amount of employment, or uncontrolled costs are worse for the poor but stop pretending either is good and you are the genius who has their best intentions at heart. After all, this is a subreddit for degen gambling regards. You only care now because you ARE the poor.

TLDR

The Fed doesn't have the tools to keep unemployment and inflation low. High costs and job loss BOTH hurt the poor. If you want to help the poor, the discussion will revolve around government policy not fed policy, and there are many other places to have that conversation.

Quit posting these clickbait opinion pieces from shitstream media that ALL shill for the rich. And most of all stop getting poor from your shitty fucking trades.

Edit:

Fixed some of my shitty formatting. I wrote this on my phone.

18

Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

Obvious-Expert-007 t1_iydfnko wrote

"Poor" is relative.

3

H0lland0ats OP t1_iydfuqx wrote

Only to rich people.

8

Obvious-Expert-007 t1_iydh21r wrote

Define "rich"

1

H0lland0ats OP t1_iydipfq wrote

Again if you aren't sure if you are rich, you probably are..

Edit

There is a far bigger range of people who are all wealthy compared to 90% of the population. They just don't feel wealthy compared to each other.

For the purposes of the discussion let's say poor is anyone who can't afford basic nutrition, housing, thermal protection, and transportation.

Obviously these things depend on market and realistically include other costs like healthcare, childcare, etc. Point here is there are levels of poverty, but generally people who can afford all of these things and can build a safety net are not "poor".

0

Agreeable_Net_4325 t1_iydspls wrote

You are correct. It is not in the purview of the Fed's mandate. The edgy tone of the post is cringe af tho.

3

H0lland0ats OP t1_iydu6fu wrote

Intentionally.

It's cringe af for people to keep posting shitbait opinion pieces from Bloomberg and Wapo.

It just turns into an oppprtunity for people to inject politics and other non sequitur's rather than make predictions.

This sub is slowly be invaded by politics like every other subreddit and outside of making predictions based on political news, I'm not here for that.

3

Lucr3tius t1_iydvvvv wrote

>making predictions based on political news

The market reacts to political news. The economy is inseparable from politics.

4

H0lland0ats OP t1_iydx65b wrote

Duh.

It seems like you are getting confused about the making predictions part. I'm not here to read your about your personal value system.

1

liquefire81 t1_iyf4gdq wrote

Hi, Im a economics professor and looking at macro and micro deviations of both the norm required for survival and, nah Im fucking kidding, im a delinquent on this sub but I bet another tax cut for the rich would fix things!

3

VisualMod t1_iydaxsg wrote

User Report
Total Submissions 0 First Seen In WSB 7 months ago
Total Comments 100 Previous Best DD
Account Age 5 years [^scan ^comment ](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=VisualMod&subject=scan_comment&message=Replace%20this%20text%20with%20a%20comment%20ID%20(which%20looks%20like%20h26cq3k)%20to%20have%20the%20bot%20scan%20your%20comment%20and%20correct%20your%20first%20seen%20date.) [^scan ^submission ](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=VisualMod&subject=scan_submission&message=Replace%20this%20text%20with%20a%20submission%20ID%20(which%20looks%20like%20h26cq3k)%20to%20have%20the%20bot%20scan%20your%20submission%20and%20correct%20your%20first%20seen%20date.)
Vote Spam Click to Vote Vote Approve Click to Vote

^^Discord ^^BanBets ^^VoteBot ^^FAQ ^^Leaderboard ^^- ^^Keep_VM_Alive >TL;DR: The Federal Reserve cannot control both inflation and unemployment at the same time, and any policy it chooses will hurt the poor. If you want to help the poor, you need to focus on government policy, not Fed policy.

1

CoffeeMaster000 t1_iydwpja wrote

They been saying they can only affect demand side of inflation problem.

1

H0lland0ats OP t1_iydxd5u wrote

Which is partly true.

In reality demand and supply affect each other.

1

l-espion t1_iyeaiw0 wrote

You will own nothing and happy. When you think about it everything make sense.

1

H0lland0ats OP t1_iyebx4v wrote

I don't know if this is a warning, a simile or something else.

Anyhow I don't speak fortune cookie

3

origami_asshole t1_iydq43o wrote

They want to to back to 2019 when the poors didn’t know how to buy calls

0

sqgeafvfasvefvfevfsa t1_iyfaaux wrote

If the Fed cared about the poor, they'd raise rates to 15%. A plumber making 50k a year would do a lot better with rock-bottom prices. Cheap debt almost exclusively helps the rich and asset holders. If you can't fight them, join them. That's all it is

0

dan5138 t1_iyduonh wrote

I mean it feels engineered, kinda funny how we have a major recession roughly every 10 years.

My question is why can't the fed rate be continually adjusted? I mean it was super obvious what was going to happen. Shut down the economy because covid, then as soon as we have a vaccine, open it up and turn on the money printer. Not to mention giving corporations 600 billion for free. The moratorium on student debt probably helped inject quite a bit of cash too. But wait we just stimulated the economy and increased demand without resolving supply issues. Then the fed just sat on their hands and kept rates low... I mean is anyone surprised the result was inflation?

With all the technology available today, along with emerging technologies. Why can't the rate constantly change by fractionally small rates overnight? I feel like we have enough information available to model the economy and keep things moving along. Why are we dependent upon a bunch of geriatrics to determine rates?

Perhaps the people at the top are afraid of change? Perhaps current systems benefit them too much to change? Why is the banking system in the US run by 50 year old software? What about winning a popularity contest qualifies someone to make decisions on policies and governance?

−1

Lucr3tius t1_iydvdbr wrote

>I feel like we have enough information available to model the economy

I disagree. Analysts are frequently wildly off in their predictions for metrics like GDP, Job Growth, CPI etc... Now it could be argued that they're playing the "consumer confidence" game and they know they're full of shit just painting a rosy picture, but I'm more inclined to believe that they're simply morons. If it was just a consumer confidence game and they really knew what the under the hood situation looks like in the economy they wouldn't lose so much money.

1

H0lland0ats OP t1_iydwsjc wrote

Yeah I mean they can't even accurately model weather for more than a few days. Why would they be able to accurately model the behavior of millions of people?

My background is in electrical engineering, and in math they call this "sensitivity to initial conditions" which simple means if any of your variables in your model are not instantiated perfectly, the entire system diverges. Modeling an entire economy is the definition of chaos.

2

Lucr3tius t1_iyduh7j wrote

tbh I have a very negative opinion of the poor, and generally regard their plight as the result of some character flaw or bad choices. It was never a mystery to anyone growing up over the last 40 years that drugs and alcohol are bad for you, but this is the case for the vast majority of the poor. There are some circumstances where some drug dealer doctor gets their patient hooked on opioids and then they start doing heroine when the prescriptions run out, but even in those circumstances you should inquire about what your doctor is prescribing you and why. People who have no innate suspicion of doctors and other professionals that exploit customers aren't worthy of empathy, because you can't care more about someone than they care for themselves.

So yea, I'm a bad person I guess. Fuck the poor.

−2

Baby_Hippos_Swimming t1_iye17hu wrote

Have you considered that the stress and anxiety from financial insecurity could cause someone to self medicate with drugs and alcohol?

You might have your causation wrong in the correlation.

2

Lucr3tius t1_iye28rl wrote

>could cause someone to

That isn't how volition works. If you make bad choices its not just some random cause and effect externality that you had no control over. Drug addiction doesn't "just happen." We all deal with stress and anxiety, and we all have to find coping mechanisms. If you choose a self destructive coping mechanism its on you.

−1

VisualMod t1_iydayfv wrote

>It is clear that the Fed cannot achieve both of its mandates simultaneously. Inflationary pressures will hurt the poor, while job losses will increase inequality. The best way to help the poor is through government policy, not monetary policy.

−3

zjz t1_iydbbrk wrote

VM, quit pretending like you care about the poor.

20

PleasureSoul t1_iyde1rk wrote

Circular logic that makes no sense since the Fed unwittingly is more aligned with China

−9

H0lland0ats OP t1_iydekd5 wrote

I'm not sure how that makes my logic circular..

The point here is the Fed doesn't have the tools to fix our economy for poor people.

5