General Investing and Economics Discussion - No Politics

[Deleted member 2897]

Don't have people have responsibility!

Free Community College even for those that aren't "college capable" just means the costs will rise because someone else is paying for it. Ol' Joe says that 75% of the new jobs won't require college, so why does everyone need to go to college?

Money is free!!! Give it all away!!! Elect me or mine next election!!! Weeeeee!!!

This stuff will ruin the economy. College and healthcare are “free” in places like Finland. Their lowest tax rate is 40% and highest is 56%. Their sales tax is 25%. And on and on. More reasons why our average net worth is almost 10x higher.

Spending like this when inflation is rampant and the economy is overheated is simply crazy. It should be all hands on deck to figure out how to responsibly cool the economy so we don’t have a big crash.

 

[dtm1997]

This stuff will ruin the economy. College and healthcare are “free” in places like Finland. Their lowest tax rate is 40% and highest is 56%. Their sales tax is 25%. And on and on. More reasons why our average net worth is almost 10x higher.

Spending like this when inflation is rampant and the economy is overheated is simply crazy. It should be all hands on deck to figure out how to responsibly cool the economy so we don’t have a big crash.

Googled happiest countries.

Forbes had Finland number 1.

The 20 Happiest Countries In The World In 2021 (Guess Where The U.S. Ranked?)

An annual survey has ranked the world's happiest countries. (You will be surprised to see how well the U.S. did.)

www.forbes.com

There are trade offs to everything in life. They trade off lower net worth and more taxes for collective happiness, I guess.

It's personal choice and there's nothing wrong with either one.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Googled happiest countries.

Forbes had Finland number 1.

The 20 Happiest Countries In The World In 2021 (Guess Where The U.S. Ranked?)

An annual survey has ranked the world's happiest countries. (You will be surprised to see how well the U.S. did.)

www.forbes.com

There are trade offs to everything in life. They trade off lower net worth and more taxes for collective happiness, I guess.

It's personal choice and there's nothing wrong with either one.

They have 3 million people and their society is incredibly undiverse. It’s like saying Wyoming is the happiest state in the Union. Their people just love to be managed by the government. Like you say, good for them if that’s what they want. But I wouldn’t give away 90% of my money in the bank and 75% of what I make in exchange for that. It’s not in most of our DNA. It’s also why on a per capita basis, many more people move here from Scandinavia than the other way around. There is a reason only 3 million people live in Finland and we’ve gone from 0 to 330 million in a couple hundred years.

 

[Lotta Booze]

This stuff will ruin the economy. College and healthcare are “free” in places like Finland. Their lowest tax rate is 40% and highest is 56%. Their sales tax is 25%. And on and on. More reasons why our average net worth is almost 10x higher.

Looked it up just for my own info

A church tax is...interesting

 

[dtm1997]

They have 3 million people and their society is incredibly undiverse. It’s like saying Wyoming is the happiest state in the Union. Their people just love to be managed by the government. Like you say, good for them if that’s what they want. But I wouldn’t give away 90% of my money in the bank and 75% of what I make in exchange for that. It’s not in most of our DNA. It’s also why on a per capita basis, many more people move here from Scandinavia than the other way around. There is a reason only 3 million people live in Finland and we’ve gone from 0 to 330 million in a couple hundred years.

All great examples of people making personal choices. No right or wrong here, just states of being.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Looked it up just for my own info

View attachment 10452

A church tax is...interesting

Yea, I forgot about that! Imagine paying nearly half your money in income taxes as a working stiff, then 25% on the stuff you have to buy as a sales/VAT tax, then paying a church tax!

 

[Deleted member 2897]

All great examples of people making personal choices. No right or wrong here, just states of being.

Right, but the point was what happens when you do the things that some other countries have already done? Insanely smaller economies and levels of financial success. Our average net worth is $800k. Finland's is $200k. And that's across 330 million people, not 5 million. The level of wealth, stability, and success this country has created is hundreds of times larger. Is it okay for people to prefer to have much less and let someone else manage their lives for whatever reason they want? 100%. There just happen to be very few people willing to move there and live that way. Most people want all that stuff without having to actually pay for it.

 

[Lotta Booze]

Right, but the point was what happens when you do the things that some other countries have already done? Insanely smaller economies and levels of financial success. Our average net worth is $800k. Finland's is $200k. And that's across 330 million people, not 5 million. The level of wealth, stability, and success this country has created is hundreds of times larger. Is it okay for people to prefer to have much less and let someone else manage their lives for whatever reason they want? 100%. There just happen to be very few people willing to move there and live that way. Most people want all that stuff without having to actually pay for it.

No doubt a ton of differences between the countries. Average net worth is one comparison to make. Median net worth is another and Finland's is a bit higher than the US. Lots of stuff to look at

 

[Fatmike91]

Yep - I have always aspired to become more like Finland.

/

 

[Deleted member 2897]

No doubt a ton of differences between the countries. Average net worth is one comparison to make. Median net worth is another and Finland's is a bit higher than the US. Lots of stuff to look at

With those taxes (and some even have taxes on savings balances), they don’t allow high success over there. The difference between the top 20% and bottom 20% over there (going from memory) isn’t very large compared to other countries.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

GDP numbers just came out: +6.4%. The Q2 Covid recession from last year is now 3 massive growth quarters behind us. AND, inventories dropped so fast GDP would have been over 9% had inventories stayed even. **** is out of control.

 

[awbuzz]

"Sorry, but what's the investment thesis here?"


Obviously it to get reelected!!!

Damn politicians that can't do math are turning the U.S. into the Great Grecian Economy of the 21st Century!

 

[dtm1997]

"Sorry, but what's the investment thesis here?"


Obviously it to get reelected!!!

Damn politicians that can't do math are turning the U.S. into the Great Grecian Economy of the 21st Century!

Sorry. What's the investment thesis for us to apply this information?

Buy gold? Short stocks? Head to the craps table? How do you want to apply this info?

Trying to avoid your posts getting picked up as political commentary.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Sorry. What's the investment thesis for us to apply this information?

Buy gold? Short stocks? Head to the craps table? How do you want to apply this info?

Trying to avoid your posts getting picked up as political commentary.

Thank you. Let’s keep bombarding those posts with words like stocks, bonds, and gambling and maybe the thread won’t get nuked.

 

[dtm1997]

Thank you. Let’s keep bombarding those posts with words like stocks, bonds, and gambling and maybe the thread won’t get nuked.

Yeah. I'd like to avoid posts like that being construed as having subtext.

Folks want to talk politics, there's a forum for that here and probably a million places on the Internet. Let's avoid good thread being nuked because of such a post though.

In other news, while I literally have the amount I'd lay on a craps table invested, one of my Crypto lottery tickets is doing well in this week's rally.

Polygon aka MATIC was in the 32-35 cent range and has moved to around 80 cents/token and stayed there a couple of days. Would be nice to see it stabilize here and set a new baseline.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

At the recent Fed Meeting, Chairman Jerome Powell said they will continue to print money and buy at minimum $1.5T of our own bonds to keep interest rates at zero. The Fed is currently sitting on about $8 Trillion of those assets. I'm not one of those guys who is into funny money, but honestly with how the world is on fire everywhere but here, I've often wondered why not buy as much of our outstanding $27T debt as possible, then negotiate with the Treasury to refinance that debt into 100 year notes at 0.01%. The negative implications of most of our debt would be immediately wiped clear. Such an action normally would probably crush the dollar, but given where the world is, if they did that bits at a time, you'd be able to see if anybody cares or not.

 

[LibertyTurns]

Sorry. What's the investment thesis for us to apply this information?

Buy gold? Short stocks? Head to the craps table? How do you want to apply this info?

Trying to avoid your posts getting picked up as political commentary.

You already know this but buy stocks with growing earnings, the more consecutive years/quarters the better. Ideally from this pool you can find those with surging volume. It means a lot of people are interested. Don‘t buy into a bear market.

Winners win. Don’t hang onto a loser. They tend to get better at losing or nearly equally insidious they just creep up while everyone else is moving making you think goodness is on the way. Invariably they suck the life out of you until you begrudgingly realize you hung onto the loser too long & wonder why you didn’t dump it when you first realized it sucked.

Don‘t love your investments. You invest money in an investment, it’s not a dog or your wife & it’s not your friend. It’s an investment.

 

[Lotta Booze]

You already know this but buy stocks with growing earnings, the more consecutive years/quarters the better. Ideally from this pool you can find those with surging volume. It means a lot of people are interested. Don‘t buy into a bear market.

Winners win. Don’t hang onto a loser. They tend to get better at losing or nearly equally insidious they just creep up while everyone else is moving making you think goodness is on the way. Invariably they suck the life out of you until you begrudgingly realize you hung onto the loser too long & wonder why you didn’t dump it when you first realized it sucked.

Don‘t love your investments. You invest money in an investment, it’s not a dog or your wife & it’s not your friend. It’s an investment.

"Buy winners. Sell losers."

Damn Liberty, don't give away ALL the tricks of the trade

 

[LibertyTurns]

"Buy winners. Sell losers."

Damn Liberty, don't give away ALL the tricks of the trade

It’s really not that hard. Averaging 13% return per year since 1997. Hang onto the winners, dump the losers quickly. Yeah I got plenty of war wounds from selling prematurely missing much larger gains, failures of analysis and absorbed 5-10% losses, etc. However, if your decent investments get you 15-25%, your good ones net you 25-50% and you nail 1-2 100%’ers in a year, the swings & misses along the way hardly matter. Rinse & repeat.

 

[awbuzz]

Sorry. What's the investment thesis for us to apply this information?

Buy gold? Short stocks? Head to the craps table? How do you want to apply this info?

Trying to avoid your posts getting picked up as political commentary.

No true political context intended, but definitely can see how it could be interpreted that way.

I am P.O'd with both major political parties who think money grows on trees.

Taxes are going to have to go way up to pay for all of this. This is also true regarding the first and second go around of Covid stimulus last year, it is only being accelerated this year with Covid stimulus already passed and now the push for another $4T.

Granted the tax cuts from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are currently set to expire in 2026 anyway, top rates of 35% for corporate taxes, 39.6% for personal taxes, and still 20% for long-term capital gains. Will Congress just accelerate that to mid 2021 or starting in 2022?

When it comes to investing, tax increases have NOT necessarily killed stocks overall. Oddly, a little research shows that the S&P 500, has shown higher average returns, and higher odds of an advance even if not higher average returns. The push in part is due to Federal spending to drive the economy. Granted, I do not believe we can tax ourselves into prosperity.

When it comes to retirement investing, if someone has not already started a Roth IRA or a Roth 401k I would do so and put in as much as you possibly can so that it can grow tax-free. In essence pay a lower tax rate now versus a higher tax rate when you take it out if you are putting it in a standard 401k or IRA account. This of course assumes that you anticipate drawing out a similar or greater taxable income from your retirement funds.