Basic view of the economy

Thread Starter

tom66

Joined May 9, 2009
2,595
I want to know if this view of the economy is basically correct:

When it boils down to it, money is just work done by individuals. You can get paid £1/day in a poor third world country or £30,000/day like some *cough* professional footballers.

So how are we in so much debt? Last I checked in the UK it was £900 billion. Which is a lot. And it's more in other countries, like the USA.
 

sceadwian

Joined Jun 1, 2009
499
Yes, and the changes are gonna keep coming, it'll be intersting to see how things up up 15 years from now. As bloated and wasteful as us Americans are and a lot of other developed countries as well I think when the belts start to tighten there will be surprises.
 

Kermit2

Joined Feb 5, 2010
4,162
When the fat cat investors start advertising on TV that something is a 'good investment', you can bet the fat cats are SELLING and need ignorant patsies to continue buying so the price stays high while they sell off.

Lucent Technologies @ 60-70 dollars a share. The company pushed hard on employees to enroll in the stock option-payroll deduction plan to buy these stocks for themselves. Meanwhile, the big executive were selling off the huge shares they recieved as bonuses. Six months later, Lucent stock plunged to less than 5 dollars a share. Lots of employees had been paying 65-70 dollars per share, and ended up having perhaps $100 dollars worth of stock for which they paid thousands of dollars.

Don't trust people who tell you about 'good' investments. The 'good' part is gone by the time you find out about it.
 

Kermit2

Joined Feb 5, 2010
4,162
My 401K was needed to keep me and the family in this house. It took me 9 months to find work, and the 401K was just big enough to cover the mortgage for one year.

I guess I'll be working until I drop dead at my workstation now. No modest weekly retirement funds will be available for me now.

Of course, when the sunflareasteroidearthquakevolcanowar ends this world as we know it. I won't need it.

:)
 

sceadwian

Joined Jun 1, 2009
499
He must have invested in either a really bad 401k or went with an aggressive gains oriented stock portfolio. 401ks should in my opinion always be conservative. My wife's at least maintained it's value with inflation, until she had to liquidate it for our house. Did I mention I love my wife very much and that she loves my credit? =) Oh yeah, she loves me too. But we're getting a house! =) Yeahhh...
we close in less than two weeks... talk about nerves.
 
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sceadwian

Joined Jun 1, 2009
499
That's because many people with 401k's see only high percentage yields on risky stock packages, and forget with increased profit margin POTENTIALS risk goes up exponentially.

It's nothing wrong with investing it's just poor investing choices. People see high gain rates and think it's free money. Those people were wrong. It's reflected in their negative gains. The same money invested in a conservative 401k would be slightly positive now.

Keep in mind my wife had her 401k liquidated before the entire real estate bubble and all it's repercussions hit the wall, even a savvy investor wouldn't have been aware of that. So called safe bonds back then were actually just monetary shells. Then again this is why you need to know EXACTLY in what your money is invested, because that bust was because of bad labels and much likely illegal terminology. The money owed that couldn't be repayed was just wrapped and re-wrapped so many ways it didn't look like it used to, too many stupid lenders. Mind you almost all of them got off ahead of the game monetarily.
 

Thread Starter

tom66

Joined May 9, 2009
2,595
Sheeple.....

This is getting off topic.

Is my basic view of the economy, that money = labour, correct?

I mean, if you buy a TV for £400... you can break it down into the individual components, maybe the SMT resistors on the main board, £0.001 each, but the money has to go somewhere. Maybe some of it goes to the carbon/metal refineries, some of it goes to the precision laser trimmer manufacturer for trimming the resistors, some of it goes to the laser etching machine, some of it goes to electricity to run all of these devices... and the energy came from a power plant which might burn coal... somebody had to dig the coal up (probably using fuel powered machinery)... and someone got paid to do that.
 
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