Hey David Solomon, the economy isn't doing well just because "the people keep spending" and "spending is up" because higher price tags are WHY spending is up, ya nimrod. Go Sachs yourself.
It's not so simple.
There are different measures of spending, and plenty of them do adjust for the higher price tags, for inflation and sectoral spending and such.
It's a necessarily complicated topic, though. For example, price tags can rise when people are able to spend more.
And the question of what a well-doing economy looks like is tricky in itself, with things like inequality and providing things we subjectively don't want in the first place.
Maybe a call out the game, not the player, kind of thing.
@volkris
Oh without a doubt. And you may consider my posting as just such a call-out. It's complicated on purpose so that certain people can cook the books and think they can get away with it, because catching 'em at it means to necessarily get deep into the technical weeds. That's been the plan.
@DianeLevesque it's complicated by necessity because these are fundamentally human interactions, and humans are complicated, as they try to cooperatively create complicated modern goods and services.
The feedback process of higher spending contributing to price tags being up is just the quickest example to point to.
No cooking the books, just parties negotiating trade.
That's fine, but the world is more complicated than a situation you can blame on dishonest book cookers.
Whether or not there are people cooking books the interactions between buyers and sellers will still apply. Price discovery, as the economists refer to it, will still take place even if everyone is 100% honest.
Yeah, there are dishonest people profiting off of dishonesty. But it does us no ignore the rest of the world to focus on that drama.
@volkris
I don't need a lecture. After over 70 years of life on this planet, there's not much you have standing to lecture me on. Good day.
@volkris
...except you left out the people who actually cook the books. There are such people. They exist.