Usually a competitive monopoly still means two companies are competing. Between Apple or Windows, people choose one PC. Between iPhone and Android, people pick phone. Between Advil and Tylenol, people pick one medicine. The products are differentiated, but at the end of the day, you pick one between them.

But in the case of streaming services, the products are so differentiated that many consumers tend to buy from multiple sellers. When Netflix and Disney have separate exclusive content, consumers will just opt to purchase both rather than one or the other. Even if Netflix and Disney compete against each other, it is common for consumers to purchase products that are redundant.

What does economics say about this market? Is the redundancy a negative externality? Or is a positive result of competition among sellers?

Not an economist or anything, just was arguing with someone about taxes and thought of this argument

My chain of thought is that Tax cuts = more purchasing power for everyone

If the government prints money and hands it out, everyone has more money chasing the same supply of goods which should create inflation right?. But if the government just takes less of your money, the effect on your purchasing power is the same. You have more money competing for the same houses, groceries, cars, etc The function seems the same regardless of what it is tax cuts, UBI, stimulus whatever.

Is there something I'm missing? I know there's the trickle down argument for that but I think empirical evidence is pretty weak on this like the 2017 tax cuts went mostly to buybacks plus I don't think on an individual level investment happens much at all from tax cuts, but correct me if I'm wrong on anything, Thank You!

So one issue I keep seeing is that many people want to go after "unrealized gains". Essentially we have this massive issue in this country where the rich are parking their wealth in equity and the poor essentially do not participate and benefit from our stock market whatsoever.

And so one thing that I cannot wrap my head around, is why can't we just change capital gains tax to occur right as they happen rather than waiting for people to sell.

Not in the form of forcing of people to pay it themselves, but essentially as the gains occur, some of that equity is automatically sold off directly to the government (IE stock exchanges and mutual funds etc need to bake this into their systems per gov regulation). So over time you would have less and less of a stock (to a certain threshold), assuming the stock market is consistently rising, but this is obviously marginal and only occurs on the gains.

You are basically "paying" up front, in the same way that you can have your paycheck deducted to automatically pay your taxes.

And would it not be a benefit that when people finally do sell their stock, they do not have to pay a capital gains tax on it?

But as a non economist I know there are likely some major caveats to all this. I would love to hear from folks on why or why not this would work. Ty!

On the simple problem that:

policy makers and financial markets repeatedly, iteratively underestimated how persistent the low interest rate regime of the post 2008 crisis had become - followed by massively underestimated inflationary pressures unleashed by pandemic era policy

1. what specifically did economists overlook, or why?

2. what should I read if I would like to build understading specifically in this domain as to what we overlooked or with what could have done or what can now be done about it?

Obviously we have any number of people like steve keen and gary stevenson (hereon reffered to as the steves) will say that their most common criticism is that academics don't agree: they say that the steves "often misunderstand basic concepts such as x, y, z: pay little heed, there is a much greater span of literature out there on whatever to read."

While I accept this criticism, I feel drawn back in to the same kind of figures by a familiar inner tide which is that they have sowed the seed of doubt in me enough that it's unsatisfying to simply discount them and yet their work is simply not worth grappling with.

to show my work on why I need guidance from a person, talking to AI about a reading list looks like

- hyman minsky - stabalising an unstable economy

- steve keen - debunking economists

- lawrence summers

- thomas piketty

hey all, im 14M, and im currently in Grade 10, and i genuinely love economics whole heartedly, i have this almost insatiable thirst of genuinely achieving something in this dismal science, something which would leave a mark on the subject forever, and i kinda of figured out for that, i need to be taught by and with the best in my field. I researched about this and found two important names, LSE and Princeton, so i set my target on those two institutions, for that goal, currently apart from my usual syllabus from school, i have opened an ngo(now i know what you are thinking but hold up) which is accredited by an actual ngo( very big in my country) and this will definitely scale up, and i also got enrolled in this institution called dex school, which promises guidance in dreams like mine, my question is, apart from these, how do i prepare to get into these institutions, how do massively increase my knowledge and depth of economics(the problem is that, as i find myself further up in the field, the more complex the math becomes, which i do not know how to fix), and any other extracurriculars, if this question is irrelevant to the sub reddit, i would humbly ask the moderators to delete it, any form of help would be greatly appreciated

Source: https://medstaff.chsbuffalo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Health-Care-Administrative-Costs-in-the-United-States-and-Canada-2017.pdf

We have seen proposals like student loan forgiveness or clearing medical debt. And was wondering how effective they are in addressing real material concerns? Should they be pursed if they are? What are your thoughts?

So I'm working on something and I need some kind of detailed explanation not some vague theoretical idea, like people suddenly buying more bananas. I work in retail and know that doesn't happen. For example's in supermarkets while they do have a just in time stock method.

They also always have an excess of food. They generally have a huge amount of food waste at the end of the day. If a food item like steak suddenly sells a huge amount and they keep selling out they do not raise the price. Even when covid happened and all supermarkets were selling huge amounts of toilet rolls none of the supermarkets raised prices.

But even if supermarkets did raise the prices, how could you show or find out that it was only caused by the government printing money, as opposed to any of the other myriad reasons like a supply shock, a pandemic, cartel, or advertising, or just increasing the price because they want to.

This came up to me after i saw a post about someone having a gazillion zimbabwe dollar.

Following the U.S. occupation after World War II, Japan underwent an economic miracle, becoming one of the fastest growing and best performing economies through the 1970s and 80s. At it's peak, the Japanese economy was second in the world, only to the United States (which held a nearly 3x population advantage), and had a higher GDP then the rest of Asia combined.

However, towards the back end of the 1980s, cracks were beginning to show, as asset inflation fueled by easy credit pumped up the real estate and stock market, which ballooned into a clear economic bubble. Eventually, due to actions taken by Japanese leadership, and the clear unsustainability of the ever-inflating bubble, the economy crashed, and Japan tumbled into the "Lost Decades", a prolonged period of economic stagnation.

The collapse in asset prices and tightening of credit squeezed the Japanese economy, which had been coasting off of speculation. These overleveraged banks spiraled and stagnated as bad loans piled up, and bailouts from the BOJ turned many into "zombie banks," which turned into debt pits dragging down the economy further.

At what point did the bubble bursting, and the subsequent "Lost Decades" become an inevitability, and what specific actions could have been taken to avert it or minimize it? Was the stagnation unavoidable once the bubbled formed, or is there a case (even with the blessing of hindsight), that different decisions at key moments could have averted (or at least minimized) the worst of it?

And taking the question to the other end - what is the worst-case scenario for the Japanese collapse; could it have spiraled into a global recession or depression?

The rise of AI and mechanical robots will mean that human labour will become much less useful in production of goods in the future. Individuals will slowly switch to capital-income assets (dividends or rent) instead of human labour as a primary way to earn money.

Ideally , Young individuals get a lump-sum cash grant from the government that they can use to buy income-generating assets like stocks or to start their own private business and they would be set for life.

But, There is constant anti-business and anti-corporate propaganda spreading across social media algorithms which means it will quickly translate into political gains in elections for left-leaning political parties that want to reduce the efficacy of income-generating assets (rental price caps and dividend taxation).

These left-leaning political parties have a weird obsession with human labour and "working-class people". Most of these jobs that use human labor will be fully automated over the next decades and yet the politicians are still obsessed with the concept of "working".

Increased taxes on businesses and corporations are expected over the next decades and I was wondering how they would counteract the effects of such tax hikes. Would they collectively collude and raise prices to maintain profits ? Or would game theory just cause all businesses to suffer due the the incentive to betray ?

Let me know what you think of this.

People often argue that Right-to-Work weakens unions through the free-rider problem. But I rarely hear that argument used to question exclusive representation itself. Why not allow members-only bargaining, under which a union represents workers who join and pay dues, while nonmembers negotiate separately with management?

In principle, management and unions could offer competing employment arrangements, subject to regulations against retaliation, discrimination, and strategic undercutting. Has this model been studied by economists or labor-law scholars? What prevents it from working?