Overall unemployment rate of recent graduates is also 4.2%

I’ve just been reading an article from Duflo and Bannerjee in the January 2020 issue of Foreign Policy magazine entitled “Why Poverty Ends.” (Found it in a pile of books and it looked interesting. Aware it’s out of date lol). 

They make a number of persuasive points about measuring economic growth and the difficulty of correlating growth to any specific policies. 

But I am often baffled by the fact that the discourse on these issues makes certain broad assumptions: namely that the delta in an economy is the most important measure of its “success” at any given point in history. 

duflo and Bannerjee point out that (in 2020) of course the growth of China’s economy would have to slow. Originally China was starting from a “lower” point than other more established economies (viz resource allocation and productivity) so they had nowhere to go but “up”. Whereas economies whose markets were already more efficient and productive—well it’s harder to grow from there, and growth would be incremental and not as fast. 

But this has to be true all around, right? An established, already-productive economy (let’s say with full employment, well-allocated resources, and a high standard of living) simply cannot experience the kind of growth of an economy with farther to go in these areas. Nothing can grow forever (I guess cancer).  Isn’t there a theoretical “goal state” at which you could say, yes this economy is operating as efficiently as possible? 

And… Why should we rate the prosperous country’s slow growth (or lack of growth altogether perhaps) as a warning sign or a bad thing, when it’s still the developing country’s lag to catch up, that’s actually a problem in their people’s lives?

I hope this makes sense. I’m a layperson, non-economist and general ignoramus, but well-read and understand freshman-level macroeconomics. I hope you’ll bear with me if I have asked stupid questions.

I'm not an economist or financial expert. I work in marketing for a real estate brokerage, so a big part of what I do is pay attention to trends, consumer behavior, and things that could eventually affect the housing market.

I've been thinking about something for a while and wanted to hear what people who understand economics better than I do think about it.

What happens when AI allows companies to increase productivity and continue growing without hiring as many people?

The Federal Reserve's October 14 Beige Book caught my attention because it mentioned businesses in five districts reducing staffing through attrition, delaying hiring, or anticipating fewer jobs because of AI-related productivity gains.

Now the IMF is also discussing how AI could increase productivity while potentially widening economic inequality.

It makes me wonder whether we could eventually have an economy that looks healthy on paper, with growing GDP and strong corporate earnings, while everyday people are actually struggling to find well-paying jobs.

And here's where my real question comes in.

If inflation and economic growth remain strong, but employment opportunities weaken, could this make the Fed's interest-rate decisions more complicated?

From a housing perspective, even if mortgage rates eventually come down, that doesn't necessarily help people who no longer have the income or job security to qualify for a mortgage.

I know the Fed looks at more than just GDP and unemployment, and I'm not suggesting AI is already responsible for high interest rates.

I'm also not trying to make this political or predict some doomsday scenario. I'm genuinely just looking at trends and wondering how they might connect.

Could AI eventually change the relationship between productivity, employment, and interest rates enough that we need to rethink how we measure economic strength? Or am I missing something important?

I'd really love to hear different perspectives.

Federal Reserve Beige Book:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/beigebook202610-summary.htm

https://penwardenreview.com/2026/10/16/britain-house-price-obsession-economic-growth/

What I mean is, China is in God mode in shipbuilding, with more than 73 % new ship hull orders going to Chinese shipyards. China in three decades have emerged as global powerhouse in shipbuilding, in terms of all metrics, quality, quantity, speed, innovation, delivery on time, cost, whatever metric you choose.

But how much beneficial the dominance in this industry is for China, in terms of creating profit? Is the dominance a high value chain dominance? Or it is just an important sector to dominate in terms of Strategic and geopolitical calculation but not that important when generating profits?

Why I ask this question is , why Europe and all the developed nations , except SK really let the shipbuilding culture and industry of thier nation die altogether? Is it similar to like assembling Iphones, electronic products and manufacturing of Automotives, the real money lies in owning the propriety Rights and some high end manufacturing and not just dominating in volumes?

The sheer lack of apathy and urgency of other nations in trying to maintain and improve the shipbuilding industry of their nations is baffling to me? Is it simply not a high value chain venture that requires much attention to preserve, like something 2nm or high end chip manufacturing requires?

Can someone explain in terms of value chain so that I can get clarity that how just China and SK takes this seriously? Is it just like automotive manufacturing that giving manufacturing to third party source isn't really that noticable?

Public debt in developed countries increases every year. When I ask ChatGPT about it, I am told that, on average, public debt will reach 200% of GDP by around 2035, with Japan already having a much higher debt level. Then, by around 2075, Western countries will reach 300% of GDP.

But I have the impression that this will never stop, and that seems strange to me. Countries cannot borrow money indefinitely.

If I take a household as an example, if a family keeps accumulating debt, eventually it becomes unmanageable. The family will go bankrupt because it can no longer repay what it owes.

I feel that nobody is asking the fundamental question: how are these debts ever going to be repaid? We cannot keep increasing public debt forever. At some point, it has to come down.

This seems to me like a short-sighted approach in the long term. I get the impression that everyone is simply passing the buck, thinking that someone in the future will be forced to deal with the problem.

Why does nobody seem to be seriously worried about a problem that will eventually have to be addressed?

Why don't they put the unemployed youth to work building housing?

My thought process is that high payouts to share holders force real taxable money out of company accounts and into circulation.

This is probably a pretty basic question but it puzzles me. The most obvious explanation I can come up with is that people attach greater authority to the brand name, but overall it just feels like buying the cheaper generic drug is the obvious choice when there is a price discrepancy, which I would think would lead to equalization.

How AI can replace workers if big chunk of worker will be fired, wages will just drop until replacing human with AI stop became economically profitable? How it even possible?

Recently read about UPS raising mailmen’s annual salaries to $130K and it got me thinking, in the past jobs like these which are hard honest work, and benefitted society, paid well. I remember when construction and manufacturing were respectable careers. You were a family man and raised a family off the backs of one of these careers. Hell even being a janitor wasn’t bad. You were a part of the community and the community took care of you.

Nowadays a janitor have to work 2 jobs to feed themselves. Recently I saw a listing for a ‘HR executive’ for $2.1K and it got me thinking like, when the hell did things go so wrong? I know about supply and demand and how that affects wages but in the past the idea was that you work hard, you contribute to society, you get paid well. It’s just not that way anymore. In the past maybe we weren’t so well off on average as now, but there were no people that were starkly poor. Nowadays you can work one, two, jobs and still be poor.

The job listing was stuck in my head for days because i felt it wasn’t just a reflection of low wages, it’s a reflection of how our country stopped providing dignity for the less well off. That salary feels like whoever posted it is saying to the applicant that they don’t deserve to live. How has it become so bad? Whose responsible?

Douse Syria have any hope of developing into a stable or even advanced economy? I know that gulf state investment is now flowing in, but what douse their future holds assuming they stabilize as a country?

I've been studying demographics and population recently, and one of the more interesting discoveries I've made was the latest Russian census in 2021. Along with being held after COVID ended, the census was controversial due to claims of overcounting and over-inflating numbers.

These claims were largely done by Alexei Raksha, a former Rosstat worker who was fired and later labeled as a "foreign agent" by the Kremlin. Despite this, Raksha made several (claims) that the true population of Russia (excluding Crimea) is 140 million. This is a sharp contrast to the current prediction of 146 million (including Crimea) that Rosstat made, and several publishing agencies in the West (including YouTubers) have used Raksha as a reference to describe the demographic standing of Russia.

I've done some research into this, and found little evidence or calculations to support Raksha's claim that the census overinflated 5-5.5 million people. So if he did make such calculations, he hasn't actually published them (only spoke about his numbers). While I agree that problems in a census may exist, I'm not sure who exactly is right in the debate.

In your opinion, whose estimate should be considered more accurate? Rosstat's 146 million or Raksha's 140 million?

I'm struggling to think of a great way to ask this question in the way I want, but I'm just thinking like.

Let's say I have 100 employees with 1M profit. Well due to some sort of automation I'm able to produce the same amount with 50 less people thus generating let's say 1.5M profit.

If those 50 people say wanted to compete directly with my business and make their own using the same automation for similar/same output wouldn't that make sense and thus drive down costs if I didn't lower my prices? Assuming there's no additional demand? I feel like I did not ask this question super well but I'm definitely struggling to formulate the exact question.

Major cities attract workers and resources from across the country, including both skilled and low-wage workers. However, the benefits of their growth seem to flow mainly to nearby, often already developed regions.

Why don’t the regions that supply much of the workforce benefit as much? Should less-developed regions that continuously lose workers receive some form of compensation? Are there any studies or examples of fairer regional redistribution policies?

#RegionalInequality #LaborMigration #UrbanEconomics #EconomicGeography #SpatialJustice #RegionalDevelopment #FiscalRedistribution

my friend is taking a game theory class. for extra credit, everyone in the class (40 people) were asked to guess a number between 1-100. the person who guesses closest to ⅔ of the average gets their guess as extra percentage at the end of the year.

some friends and i came to the conclusion that the nash equilibrium here is 1.

the twist i added for fun that has us stumped is what if you only get the extra credit if you are the sole person to guess that number.

two scenarios:

1. any number which is guessed more than once is disqualified for selection (i.e., still included in the average, but you are no longer eligible for the extra credit).
2. if multiple people guess the number which is closest to the nash equilibrium, nobody gets the extra credit.

for each scenario, what number would you guess and why?

EDIT: assume only integers and no cooperation between people

Suppose North Korea converts to Democracy & Capitalism (Mixed Economy), half of NK with stronger socialist policies & half of NK with stronger market friendliness. Suppose they adopt Euro as the national currency. Could the experts describe to me how this is gonna pan out with pros & cons?

I mentioned specifically North Korea cause it has access to sea logistics and lots of inland water. Also, Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asian, Indian, South Korean, Western American markets are pretty nearby.

I know mixed economy means practically socialism + capitalism. Suppose that NK will be in 2 different economic regions: half of NK with stronger socialist policies & half of NK with stronger market friendliness. And both regions are mixed economy capitalism, just in different degrees of socialist policies and tax rates.

When comparing a potential AI bubble with the dot-com bubble, how much does the distinction between public and private markets matter?

Public markets allow expectations to be repriced continuously, whereas private valuations are negotiated through funding rounds. To what extent can existing investors sustain those valuations by providing follow-on capital, limiting the price discovery that might otherwise trigger a correction?

I’m particularly interested in whether this gives investors enough control to keep financing companies until their earnings justify their valuations, or whether capital constraints and the eventual need for liquidity make that adjustment unavoidable.

If so, will their then be no Ai bubble?

How increasing interest rates leads to an increase in bond yields?
Also is that the reason why an increase in interest rates will increase a government’s budget deficit, because more tax revenue will go towards servicing the debt (bond yields)?
I recently saw a graph that showcased that an increase in interest rates in the USA will increase the federal government’s budget deficit and I began to wonder.