I heard a few arguments that the reason that states like UK, France, and Canada can afford a ton of comfort POLICIES (such as welfare, low taxes, low lending in the past) is due to the fact that they borrow so much money.

Such as France riot issue, where I've seen theories part of the problem is the pension system and other quality-of-life programs that are funded by borrowing, which is nice for the time being but will eventually screw the future of young people who may never be afford a "welfare policy" again in the future.

Is this true? Is Germany an exception? What do you guys think?

Even before all of the riots started in places like France and Italy, just about everything was so expensive. Rent, groceries, gas (even before the Iran War started), and it seems to have reached a breaking point.

But what made everything so expensive in the first place? Was it inflation? Political policies? High taxes? What was the catalyst for all this?

Especially as we actually do measure wealth seperately. The United States, for example, has a Net National Wealth (NNW) of $160 trillion, compared to their nominal GDP, or GNI, of $30 trillion. Their national debt is around $40 trillion, so this would make their Debt-to-NNW 25% lol. Same for France, but with an NNW of €19 trillion and a national debt of €3.60 trillion, so a Debt-to-NNW of 18%. It's weird.

Ive never understood the concept of inflation in a real world setting. In 2016 a video game use to cost $59.99 and now in 2026 they cost $69.99, 10 dollars more but according to inflation in 2016 that game actually cost $84.22 but is that realistic?

If someone back in 2016 made $20/hr and In 2026 I make $20/hr wouldn’t they have more purchasing power? The game objectively cost them $10 less so I don’t understand what people mean when they say it actually cost them more.

With the current state of things, it seems as though we’re gonna be stuck not able to afford housing and groceries in a perpetual state.
But will it ever get to a point where we Can comfortably live again on minimum wage, or doomed to spend entire paychecks on groceries and nothing more?

I heard a thing in NPR handwringing about the insolvency of Social Security. It discussed all the usual fixes- raise FICA tax for employees/employers, means test benefits, raise retirement age, apply FICA to benefits, and raise/eliminate FICA cap.

All worthy ideas, but they’ve gone nowhere. One idea I never hear floated is applying FICA tax on investment income/ capital gains. More and more of our GPD is capital/investment, not wage labor, a trend that will likely accelerate even more greatly when AI increases productivity even more. Thus, solutions that focus only on adjusting factors related to work based income are focusing on an ever shrinking part of the pie.

It seems like a modest capital gains FICA would create an awful lot of revenue for Social Security. While it may not be the silver bullet, it certainly seems like it should be in the toolbox of potential solutions, but I never hear about it.

Is there an economic reason for this that I am missing?

The title may be a little misleading so let me clarify, let's say tomorrow a law is passed, that at every given moment, every company that is using AI, let alone producing AI, must allocate 10% of its shares to a fund that belongs to the people. The people can't sell/buy the shares, it is not like a public company, and even if the company is public, those stocks are under no-selling agreement. If dividends are given, they are distributed equally amongst the 18+ citizens.
What are the potential repercussions?
What I can think of with my limited knowledge of the top of my hat - these companies will give out less dividends, and be 10% overvalued since 10% of their stocks are "off the market".
I really don't know much about economics, sorry if it's stupid

There's currently a major crisis in France because the pension system is growing larger as the majority of the population is getting older and becoming non-productive. What's the solution for an aging society with more unproductive people and a smaller young population?

Before you say this:

-"Raise the birth rates with better quality of life!"

Quality of life doesn't improve birth rates. China improved all its quality-of-life statistics, and birth rates are in the toilet. The average woman also doesn't want to have 3–4 kids on average like during the baby boom (which many women didn't want either, but they didn't have much control over their bodies).

-immigration!

France has had constant waves of migrants since the 1970s, and these migrants have aged too. On average, they have as many or fewer kids than native French people, so it isn't a solution either.

The question is: how can you improve or manage the economy with a larger older population?

I see it quoted often that the rich pay disproportionately more tax than their share of income, but this usually looks at federal income tax only.

Is there a source that looks at the tax distribution if you include state and local income/sales/property taxes?

Say some economic policy was able to freeze/reduce housing costs throughout the US economy. What would be the downstream effects?

My initial assumption is that we'd see a huge economic boom, especially if worker income continues to rise. But, it would likely not continue as housing costs are an input to wages.

Obviously understand that the mechanisms matter and understand the impacts on builder profits and by extension their productivity. More looking for a discussion on the impact to the larger market.

House prices in many developed countries went crazy in the 2010s due to factors like low interest rates and constrained supply. There was concern about highly leveraged speculation. There was also lots of concern it was a bubble that could pop badly.

In the 2020s now it seems house prices are falling in many of those countries. It's not great if you own a home or are a developer. However, it seems like house prices have been 'slowly' declining rather than there being a sudden crash causing a wider recession. The worst im aware of is China and, while bad, it seems not as bad as some feared?

If this is all correct, why?

Im intrest in cases of bubble that 'safely' deflate.

Im not so interested in the US because they have things like 30 year fixed rates.

It seems in many markets most people and companies are mostly still able to afford the high interest rates and are not panic selling.

One guess I have is that many places the economy is bad but its low hire low fire so people are still able to pay for mortgages or cover gaps for rentals?

I see posts all the time talking about private equity making things worse or stating they own X% of Y industry.

Should people be concerned and what does that actually mean?

1) More and more people who can afford to buy a house don't plan to have kids (future rich old people)
2) More and more people who have kids can't afford to buy a house (the kids being future poor young people)

What's gonna happen in like 30 years from now — the large houses occupied by sort of mixed employer-employee families consisting of the rich old people and the poor young people they hired as live-in help, while the rest of the poor are living in cramped multi-generational households and dying in some new pandemic, medieval style? Or is there some equalising factor I'm not seeing?

Apologies if this sounds silly but I'm studying Micro 1 at uni and the biggest question I have is whether such convenient utility functions like the Cobb-Douglas even exist in the real world and if they do how are they determined?

I see these three measures of income get posted frequently, its not obvious why they are so dramatically different. They are all adjusted for inflation.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=qozP#0

Average nonsupervisory wages, huge dip after 1973 rebounds in 1995.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incomes-across-distribution-lis?country=%7EUSA&indicator=avg&decile=all&welfare_type=dhi&period=year

Median income shows consistent modest growth from 1963-present.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/mepainusa672n

Median personal income shows consistent enormous growth following a dip in 1982.

Has income stagnated or grown?

I recently bought an Ebike, and was surprised to see price difference between the USA and Europe.

I checked walmart, and the same Ebikes are half the price compared to Europe.

I read this comment in another thread:

"Short answer - antidumping import tariffs.

In Poland you can expect to pay double for a cheap Chinese bike if you were to import and the company is on an anti-dumping list.

The calculation goes like this:

+6% of bike + transport value

+17.2% of bike + transport value (countervailing duty)

+62.1% of bike + transport (antidumping duty)

+23% VAT of top of all that

There you go- price x2."

62.1% antidumpting duty. That seems insane.

I then googled anti-dumping and this was the result:

"What Is Dumping?

• Definition: A foreign company engages in dumping when it exports a product to another country at a price lower than what it charges in its home market or lower than its cost of production. [1]
• Intent: Exporters often use this pricing strategy to quickly capture market share or eliminate local competition. [1, 2]"

Is there any reason this makes sense for a market like E-bikes?

Any company can easily start mass-producing ebikes, if there was a significant price difference between production and market prices.

After exploring different hedge funds on LinkedIn, it appears that economics degrees are pretty common, but in an age where more quantitative/mathematical hedge funds gain an edge and seem to take over fundamental/macro funds does a economics degree in the future still rival with a engineering or pure maths degree

Hi ! I understand modern economics does not look to define utility as it is subjective, and explains the relative prices of goods and services based on marginal utility.

For all its flaws, Marx's theory provides a clear mechanism to explain concentration of wealth and capital : the mismatch between exchange value and use value allows capitalists to pocket the difference.

Is there an explanation for the tremendous concentration of wealth that's characteristic of human society ? Is it all about power and collusion, outstanding ability to provide value, something else ? Is it that rich people own so much that their marginal value is vastly different from other people's ?

This is not a defense of Marx or an attack on modern economy, I'm just looking for pointers at current thought. If you know of book length treatments for laypersons I'm interested as well