
U.S. Is World’s Most Competitive Economy for First Time in a Decade - spking
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-is-worlds-most-competitive-economy-for-first-time-in-a-decade-1539727213
======
kevmo
Meanwhile, household debt is at it's all-time high, $13.3 trillion...
surpassing its previous peak in 2008.
[https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc.html](https://www.newyorkfed.org/microeconomics/hhdc.html)

This article seems like fluff/propaganda.

~~~
paulpauper
when ppl think of household debt, they think big screen TVs and other
discretionary items, but it's actually mostly mortgages and student loans
[https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/US-
Hous...](https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/US-Household-
Debt-1.png)

~~~
IMTDb
Which is even scarier.

In case of default, discretionary items can be seize and sold to at least
repay part of the debt (while decreasing quality of life).

2008 has shown what seizing houses leads to.

Now think that there is nothing to seize for student debt loans.

If you fail to get a good enough income using the degree you paid using debt,
you are as hopeless as if you had used it all on hookers and cocaine. At least
with discretionary items you have a big TV which holds some value.

~~~
tomjen3
Cars might hold some value, houses might hold more value over time, but TVs?
Don't expect much.

What we need is to make college debt discharable through bankruptcy, same as
any other debt. Then the only people who can borrow are those likely to be
able to pay it of, which nicely solves the problem of unplayable college debt
(while reducing the interest students of medical, science, law etc have to
pay, since more money will be chasing fewer students), for profit colleges and
useless degrees.

Does it mean some people won't be able to study their favourite subject? In
general no[0], in college? Yes.

[0]: Remember the " you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could
have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!"? Today it
is probably 15 USD on Beeminder, and you won't have a degree, but that degree
is worthless in the first place, so overall huge win.

~~~
dreeves
Ha! Can we use that footnote in our marketing copy? :)

~~~
tomjen3
Sure

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shmolyneaux
The content of this article is based on the 2018 The Global Competitiveness
Report which you can find here:
[http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2018/05FullReport/TheGlobalC...](http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2018/05FullReport/TheGlobalCompetitivenessReport2018.pdf)

~~~
munk-a
So there's a handy table in that document that shows all the rankings and
notes that the US position hasn't moved in the past year, how is this article
even a thing?

~~~
dkasper
You’re not wrong that the chart shows that rank didn’t change for some reason,
but if you look at the 2017 report you’ll see the US was number 2 last year.

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threeseed
That economic growth came at a pretty severe cost though.

The budget deficit blew out by 17% in 2018 as a result of the tax cuts.

~~~
40acres
For a long time I couldn't wrap my head around why defecits matter to the US
when we print our currency. To be honest I still don't fully understand the
hand wringing over a balanced budget and reading more about modern monetary
theory is leading me to believe that for a superpower which issues it's own
currency the defecit is more of a political issue that a concrete one.

The defecit just keeps ballooning but the only thing stopping the US
government from running are self imposed restrictions on debt (the "debt
ceiling"). The US is not a company, and it's not a normal household, why does
the budget matter?

~~~
nknezek
The deficit mainly matters because we have to pay interest on the loans we
take out. If the rates are good, it's actually a great investment. If the
rates are bad, it hamstrings future growth, because now the budget is spent
paying back old loans instead of building new things.

Well, why can't we just print money? We can, but it runs the risk of
inflation. Inflation is historically low, so yes -- we could totally just
print a bunch of money to pay back our debts with relatively little risk of
inflation in the short term.

Essentially, debt doesn't matter, except that we have to pay interest.
Interest doesn't matter because we print money, except that it might cause
inflation. Taxes "destroy" money to dampen inflation. Thus, we can pay off our
loans, but that might cause inflation, which might require us to raise taxes
not to repay the loans, but to prevent inflation.

~~~
mercutio2
In other words, we don't have to pay interest, we choose to, because inflation
would almost certainly rise substantially if we printed a ton of money, and
we're cautious (some might say overcautious) about inflation.

Of course there are some head-scratching rationalizations going around about
why gargantuan deficits are good _now_ , a decade into one of the longest
economic expansions in living memory, but would have been bad to do when
proposed in response to one of the deepest recessions in living memory.

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KirinDave
And fewer and fewer people benefit from it.

So okay. Great. Now let's do it in a way that doesn't turn the entire nation
into a series of hyper-reactionary tribes fighting over leftovers.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/b1dLN](http://archive.is/b1dLN)

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davidw
Seems relevant:
[http://www.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings](http://www.doingbusiness.org/en/rankings)

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Avshalom
Is that 2008 based on data immediately before or after the largest economic
catastrophe sine the Great Depression?

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paulpauper
I think it has been competitive for a lot longer than that. Despite all the
bad news about partisanship, Trump, wealth inequality, there is a lot of
innovation in the US and intellectual output from research universities and
the private sector. It's why the rich Chinese keep coming here and keep buying
up the real estate and applying to the most prestigious of universities.
There's more good news than bad even though the former gets so much attention.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
It moved up from #2 last year. A less sensational headline would be something
like "A bunch of countries with approximately equal competitiveness scores had
their scores change by approximately 1%".

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yvsong
Competitive or competent?

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geofft
Is it just me or has the HN front page been more overtly political in the last
few days? This is #1, some fear-mongering about China from Bloomberg is #2 (as
if we forgot their technical fear-mongering about China the other day), and
both of the stories are mainstream news (explicitly discouraged in the
Guidelines) and have no particular "hacker" angle, except insofar as many
hackers participate in the world economy just as many normies do. Earlier
there was an NYT opinion piece from a sad conservative college professor
(flagged), and before that a page from GOPUSA.com calling an internal Google
presentation "the end of free speech as we know it" (flagkilled).

How is this stuff getting upvoted?

~~~
DoreenMichele
There are now 5 million visitors a year. So it's not really shocking that more
"mainstream" stuff does better these days than it might have done back in the
day.

I tend to feel like I have no idea whatsoever what will do well here. I
sometimes decline to post some article because I think it's not HN worthy,
only to see it on the front page later.

I sometimes get accused of posting _political_ pieces when, to my mind, they
are interesting for sociological reasons. I certainly don't post things to
promote any kind of political agenda per se.

I also didn't notice the things you are specifically commenting on. I recall
different details from the front page. So there's possibly a certain amount of
"You just happened to see X for some reason." which isn't conclusive proof of
objective fact.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
Yeah, HackerNews seems to be getting closer to Reddit by the day.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I don't know what you mean by that. I participate on Reddit. I experience HN
and Reddit as completely different animals. I see them as very extremely an
_apples to oranges_ comparison.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
Perhaps my comment was the prime example ]=

What I meant is:

Three years ago, HackerNews seemed (to me) to be a forum for intellectuals to
discuss things business/tech-y. Opinions were mostly well thought out. When
they weren't, they were challenged (thanks for calling me out [= ).

Now it just seems like the break-room banter. A lot of sensationalist articles
seem to make the front page. A lot of purely comedic comments (which I do
appreciate). A lot more unfounded anecdotes. A lot of promotional posts, etc.

Also -- and I'm admittedly putting on my tin hat here -- I've seen a lot of
discussions that seem like they're just troll accounts trying to further
polarize the community.

Maybe I'm part of the problem ]=

~~~
DoreenMichele
Hacker News is a single entity. Reddit is a conglomeration of sub forums, each
with their own interests, rules and moderators.

Reddit is a very cosmopolitan environment. It's like a big city, where you can
participate in different social groups and there can be overlap in members,
but it isn't guaranteed. Your behavior on one sub forum can impact your
reputation on another, but it isn't the same as a situation where you deal
with the same moderators and same group of people all the time for everything.

I don't hang on "the front page" of Reddit. I have a few niche interests I
dabble in a bit over there.

I occasionally consider writing a blog post to talk about some of the
differences between forums of various formats that I've experienced. It's more
than I care to try to catalog in a comment here.

But when you say "HN is like Reddit," that doesn't even parse for me. Because
it's like "So, exactly what part of Reddit are you comparing it to?" It
strikes me as a _six blind men and the elephant_ scenario.

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ta2987
HN: no politics allowed, except when they are.

~~~
monetus
If you really care, you could try to flag it couldn't you?

A lot of the users seem to be more business oriented though, and they will
want to hack the economy... So good luck.

