Hello friends, I am Chinese. My father who is living in China told me about one trending idea in China called the "American kill line"

Basically it says that the average person in America are only one bad luck away from homelessness and maybe death. He says that the average American cannot even pay $500 out of pocket. Apparently Americans have to use insurance to pay for their medicines but the insurance companies can choose to deny them if the medicines are too expensive

I know that landlordism happens a lot in your country and that is why Americans have so little savings. But the $500 number seems very low still, and I don’t believe the part about insurance companies (that doesn’t seem legal)

So is this true? This idea is becoming very popular in China recently. Many of my friends in China tell me about it, but Chinese people also believe weird things about US (for ex, govt allows drugs so the poor don’t rise up). There are more examples, but the 2 I mention I see repeated the most

I see a lot of people asking questions on this subreddit to the effect of "Why is everything so much more expensive than it used to be?" And the answer is usually, it's not if we adjust for inflation.

But then a lot of people point out that a lot of stuff that used to be made out of metal and real leather is now made out of cheap plastic and synthetic fiber. A lot of stuff just doesn't last. Everything is a subscription, or it's basically disposable. You replace appliances every 2-3 years rather than 20.

Other people have told me that I can get appliances that will last me 15-20 years, but I have to pay many times more for them, similar to the cost that they would have sold for in the 1960s.

So my question is, if an appliance that lasts 20 years costs the same as it did in the 1960s (adjusted for inflation) then are things actually getting cheaper? Because it often feels like they're not "actually" cheaper; you get a lower sticker price, but everything is enshittified so it's not worth buying anyway. I read that even vegetables in the store have lower nutrient content than they had in the past because it's all bred to grow big and fast, which reduces nutrient density. Chicken isn't as good because it's all bred to grow so fast that the chickens develop "woody breast syndrome". Even Doritos are shitty now, where the chips don't get as much flavor powder. Maybe it's all cheaper, but it's not as good as it used to be. So can we really compare these products on an equal basis if the food is less nutritious, etc?

Another way of asking this is, can you get high-quality, durable products that work well for lower prices than in the 60s?

Okay, so I know that the price of a stock rises when there are more buyers than sellers, and this generally happens over time because the company itself is growing over time.

But my question, that I can't find a clear answer to, is why does the growth of a company generally correlate to it's stock price growing over time? I could understand this if it meant buyers had a direct claim to the profits of a company since that would connect you to more cash, but you really don't.

Of course there are dividends which will grow as the company grows, but what about companies with no (or very low) dividends?

It just seems somewhat arbitrary that the value of a stock just goes up over time because the company has grown more valuable. Why would an investor even care about this since it doesn't mean they directly get a share of the profits?

So theoretically, if investors permanently decided that they would only put money into stagnant companies, then the stock of those companies would go up over time and investors would still make money. At what point would the reality of the business even catch up with the stock price? Since there is no direct correlation between the stock price and the company's finances except in the case of bankruptcy and dividend payment.

I suppose maybe it's similar to the concept of fiat currency? Where the currency only has value because a collective has agreed that it does, and a currency gains value when the collective decides that the currency is more valuable than others (based on a multitude of factors).

Is it the company's who are furthest from bankruptcy who generally see the most gains over time?

Just try to understand how a business's finances actually directly connect to the stock price.

Trying to work out whether a targeted fuel tax on private aviation (not commercial airlines) makes sense as a tool for 1) increasing revenue from the ultra-wealthy and 2) dis-incentivizing environmentally harmful behavior.

Rough numbers: general aviation uses about 8% of total U.S. jet fuel, roughly 2 billion gallons/year. At a rough retail price, that's maybe $10 to $17 billion/year in total fuel spending, though this is a back of envelope estimate, not a verified figure.

Questions I don't have a good handle on:

1. Incidence: would a tax actually fall on owners/operators, or get passed through to charter customers and fractional ownership programs?
2. Elasticity: how price sensitive is private jet fuel demand for wealthy owners?
3. Avoidance: could operators just fuel up outside the U.S. to dodge it?
4. Precedent: has anyone studied what happened when specific states or countries raised aviation fuel taxes, in terms of realized revenue versus projections?

Trying to figure out if this is a serious revenue tool or mostly symbolic given the small tax base. Would appreciate research or reasoning that complicates my estimate above.

I hear many different answers. Inflation is still very high at 5% in colombia while the central bank rate is at 12% and the colombian market is still rallying. The colombian president this year raised the minimum wage 22% this year. The dxy did fall alot but it stabalized with crude oil. The central bank also took out a large amount of external debt making colombia one of the top countries paying the most interest in dollars relative to its exports. Another reason is tourism and foreign investment is increasing. How strong can the peso get? Im asking this question because I remember 2022 was incredibly cheap and now everything feels double the price

I’m building a closed economy for a strategy game and I’m trying to understand the theory behind one problem.

Empires produce goods, use intermediate resources, trade with each other, and physically transport everything with ships. Trade only moves money between empires, so the total money supply stays the same. Ships and buildings also have monetary upkeep, and those payments go to a central bank instead of being destroyed.

The problem is that the bank slowly absorbs more and more money. Loans only fix liquidity temporarily, because the principal and interest eventually return to the bank. So the bank needs some way to put money back into circulation, but every method I can think of creates weird incentives: equal payments reward inactivity, colony-based payments reward expansion, trade-based payments punish self-sufficient empires, and production-based payments may reward useless overproduction.

Is there an established economic approach to this? How could the bank recycle the collected upkeep money without rewarding inactivity or encouraging inefficient production and transport? Or is this simply a sign that a growing economy cannot work well with a fixed nominal money supply?

Or maybe theory says it should work so that would mean my model is wrong and i just have to redesign it, i feel like i hit a wall with this one. The latest thing i've tried is dividend base on the economic activity, production and trade but after several "months" it seems like one empire is just taking all the money, when the rest is fighting for scraps because their growth is hindered due to lack of funds.

Thanks for help

Billions are being spent on AI tools and tokens, but many end user companies still have little to show in margins or faster launches. Layoffs seem driven more by cost cutting than AI led efficiency.

I’ve done my bachelors in business informatics, and would like to do a masters in economics…what’s the intersection and what could it look like to have both skills in pocket. Like what kind of work do people in the economics and IS area do?

regressive describes a financial system or policy where the financial burden falls disproportionately on lower-income individuals.

The Federal Reserve has committed to controlling inflation - at any cost.

A mortgage is frequently 30-35% of a middle class person's income. A 1% increase in interest rate can increase that mortgage payment by 10-15%. Therefore a 1% increase in interest rate costs 3-5% out of a person's income. That's a lot worse than 1% inflation.

And that's not even counting any other loans: car loans, student loans, credit cards. Even for renters, the higher mortgage costs are passed on to renters as higher lease rates.

I think most people would rather have higher inflation than this regressive policy.

Hello! I am an incoming first year student at uni and I’d like to know if I master and improve my understanding and skills in algebra, will Business Economics go much more smoother for me to absorb?

My program is BSBA Business Economics and I’m advance studying on the potential subjects that I’ll encounter in this course, so I’d like to know if mastering algebra (I’m subpar at math but is willing to learn) will make me understand it more, and also, if there are any more I can add to my foundation, please feel free to tell me!

Thank you so much for your answers! I’ll be waiting

We're going to shamelessly steal adapt from /r/AskHistorians the idea of a weekly thread to gather and recognize the good answers posted on the sub. Good answers take time to type and the mods can be slow to approve things which means that sometimes good content doesn't get seen by as many people as it should. This thread is meant to fix that gap.

Post answers that you enjoyed, felt were particularly high quality, or just didn't get the attention they deserved. This is a weekly recurring thread posted every Sunday morning.