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Critical flaw on your baseline assumption, males desire females aka much more then one. Given number of nubile, attractive females limited. Ipso facto even in a post scarcity society, skull bashing of males on other males will still occur to deprive/deny said males from females, so as to aquire more females cause its a Zero sum game. Capiche alls Y' all Therefore key surival trait/skill of any societies that can surive, ability to create, sustain, grow your skull bashing societal attritube and capacity vis a vis other societal competitors. That now today does not bode well for the continunity of human technological civilization.
Like a King, who wants to fund his own Swimming Pool. Instead of helping Farmers, when there's a Drought. (Not to be political: But there's a reason why Imperial Russia was the most Unequal Society, in all of History.)
@@arnaudvanderlinden4459 the Spanish flu did exactly that. 50 to 100 million people died from that globally. The US saw a crazy amount of death particularly from it.
Jack Ofoldraids quite well ? Look at a country like ours. Germany. Doing pretty well. The US is no comparrison to that. Just look at the sheer numbers. Even when considering population it doesnt ad up. Also the lack of public education really shows atm...
I'm a simple man. I fought to conquer all my Ferraris, jets and houses in GTA Online, I am proud of all my wasted hours and man power imputed to create my non existent empire...
but you spending this time probably fullfilled higher needs on the laslow scale, so potentually it was time well spend. yes you couldve worked and made more money, but as discussed onces at a certain point of wealth (often put at 80k a year) ur financial needs are met, so you should spend ur time gaming if it fullfills other needs
As my Econ professor once said "economics is the study of people and their habits applied" Looking back, it's kinda a no doy thing, but at the time it was mind-blowing to see economics as a dynamic study vs. looking at endless graphs n numbers
I'm in political science; in my opinion psychologists, sociologists, economists, political scientists, historians, and philosophers basically study the same thing at different levels of resolution. Learning from the other fields has enhanced my understanding of my own and I would encourage anyone in any of them to look into the others, it's a great source of perspective.
Economics lacks the diversity that psychology has (or perhaps had, it's a lot less diverse nowadays thanks to the rise of CBT - cognitive behavioral therapy) to truly be considered simply "psychology with numbers". Psychology understands that people differ quite a bit, and even has (or had?) a variety of approaches to deal with them. Economists mostly think of people in one very narrow fashion, and over time has steadily consolidated around a small set of central tenets on how to model them. There used to many many many kinds of economics (no, not just marxist socialism, but other models too), now there's far fewer, with any people holding onto the other approaches (collectively known as "heterodox economics") having been pushed to the margins.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn CBT you say ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). But I also think there has been a resurgence, if not just a schism shift, considering that Freakonomics has made it's entire brand on "the hidden side of everything" applying economics to sports, to marriage prospects and hell even the original Roe vs Wade result correlating heavily with a lower crime cohort population.
8:46 "Our economy is not based on limited resources trying to fulfill unlimited needs but rather creating needs to facilitate resources" I really think this is an underrated insight
I think it's bullshit. John Maynard Keynes said a lot of dumb stuff like that. The economy is made up of millions of transactions, each builds wealth in a tiny way. Advertising is the only one of those transactions that's actually zero-sum, you make someone happier by making the thing more prestigious and therefore more expensive. Keynesian economics was disproved in the 1970s in America because we had high unemployment and high inflation at the same time.
@@captainmaim I think you should have a look into Freudian psychology in early advertising in the post war USA. It's fascinating to look how needs where created artificially through cognitive manipulation
Someone that understands how there's such an abundance of food in the US. Grocers throw out perfectly good produce with a mere dark or soft spot on the skin. Starbucks and donut shops throw out all unsold sandwiches and pastries when the store closes for the day.
It's sad. I know France has made great strides in clearing up food waste. I live in the UK and there's quite a few places that donate unsold food to the homeless or food banks. Like you say, it's perfectly edible just a little stale or something.
I used to work at CVS. Anyone who goes there will know it's just as much a candy store as it is a drug store. At the end of every season, we used to throw away garbage bags full of candy. I kid you not. Imagine a typical 13 gallon garbage liner full of candy. Now imagine 20+ of those bags being thrown away after Valentine's, then after Easter, then after labor day, then after Halloween, then after Christmas. And that's just candy. On a regular, eggs, milk, cookies..... If frozen foods are approaching their date, the merchandiser will give you credit, then throw them right in the dumpster. Half a shopping cart of frozen foods every week.
@@firas1409 Sadly enough, no he's not because then you have the FDA and health inspectors breathing down your neck and potentially fining your company if homeless people dies by eating your slightly stale bread or day-old veggies because now it's a matter of liability. Vicious cycle eh?
Since nowadays it's cool not to pay taxes when you're a big company I decided to look it up and... it appears Ferrari pay their taxes honestly. So this is actually a good idea.
once upon a time, I told myself I'd buy a Ferrari. Now that I'm working in the real world and realizing how substantial wealth is accumulated, I don't have this dream anymore. It's like if you ask a kid if he wanted ice cream, he would not say no. But had he known what eating ice cream all the time would do to his health and how many miles would he have to run to burn off the sugar, he'd learn to say no every now and then. People often have this notion that they "deserve" to own some luxury thing, whether it's a car, a swiss watch, or a top notch iphone pro, LV bag. They don't think of it as, "I deserve to have no money left for an emergency fund, or no money left for a sudden loss of employment, or I deserve to be stuck in credit card debt".
Don Lee Interesting point Don. Do you think the expectation (deserving aspect) comes from the messages of the marketers described in the video? Or society, or parenting? It seems marketers did a good job to influence you earlier in your life and now that you know a little bit more about what’s really going on and the consequences, you’re dissuaded now. What do you think?
As a car person, it's not "extremely" expensive to own one with proper financial management. A baby Ferrari (or dare I suggest even used one) for 200k can be bought by many people if they focus it. No need for credit card debt, burned emergency fund or anything. Assume you dont have student debt, if you can save a lot by living with roommates or owning a multi family home which will bring a very extreme cost down. Once you have shelter solved for as cheap as possible, the last necessity is food which with home cooking I personally keep around 150$-200$ a month with fresh healthy produce and even steaks, so you can even go cheaper. Everything else is a luxury after. Does it make sense to go that extreme for a silly car? No. But the point is if you can hit those needs and realize the difference between them and wants, you will be able to save up for almost anything that you want in the future. Hopefully investments, but also Ferrari's and lambos if you really want
Check out the documentary "Century of the Self" it documents how marketing starting with Edward Bernays in the early 1900s worked to shift American society from a need based society to a want based society. Resulting in the consumerism of the present.
The secret is to think this way. I dont want to be guy that buys the Ferrari. I want to be part of the company and organization that sells him the Ferrari. Eventually, the Ferrari will appear in your Garage. Macro = consistency,patient, invest Micro = learn, adapt, change
Don Lee i think this slightly misses the point. People dream of owning a Ferrari because it's financially irresponsible. They want to be so fuck-you wealthy that wasting a million dollars on a car makes no difference to their security.
“Riffraff like psychology.” As a psychology student I take offense sir! It also was the subject of a third of the video! All kidding aside, I’ve really been enjoying your videos. I wish economics was more of a thing because of how much it is in our everyday lives. I love finding out why things happen the way they do and I appreciate your due diligence when researching these things. Keep it up!
Psychology is a pointless subject though....most of it just retarded theorizing not actually productively benefiting society at all....neurology is psychology but actually useful
You may like Peter Zeihan. There are many videos like this where different groups hire him to present. The first part is cut off where he talks about how the Imperial-Colonial system was effective in it's time because there were enough parallel empires that competed with each other. Since there was no global hegemon and nobody trusted each other they needed to have separate systems. It came to an end in World War 2 when everybody but the United States was destroyed. ruclips.net/video/jT6HFCAFDgU/видео.html
I mean, behavioral economics was developed when economists had to learn the hard way what sales people knew for centuries: that people don't make hyper rational decisions with all known knowledge that'll give the greatest value for themselves. Instead people are very stupid and selfish and have very little restraint in paying for shit they won't even use the day after.
I wish more comments were like this. Too many times one sees a person taking offence on a 1 second section of and 30 min talk without considering the rest of the talk's points and ideas. Society as a whole would be more stable and forgiving if people processed before reacting. After all, we pride ourselves on being the more intelligent species don't we, so why not act the part.
@@hogrideeeeer Neurological studies have provided evidence reinforcing the benefits of such psycho, cognitive- behavioral, amounst other forms of psychological therapy.
@i like turdles How is this relevant?? go spew your anti-american agenda elsewhere. (edit: also thats an incredibly simplistic view of some an incredibly complex issues)
During the 2008 financial crisis, I recall Mike Huckabee observing that the modern US economy seemed to be driven mostly by people buying things they don't need with money they don't have. I thought those words captured the gist of the matter. Even more true today.
One thing you didn‘t mention: It‘s pretty much impossible to have unlimited resources because there is one resource that will always been limited in terms of the capacity to exploit it, and it’s the most important resource because it determines allocation of all other resources: time. No productive factor can do everything at every instance of time; therefore, we have to decide how factors should be allocated at particular times. This is why market demand is absolutely preeminent and irreplaceable as the driving allocative mechanism because it tells us the correct signals for how we should allocate productive factors‘ time.
Jorge Ávila Balmaceda But they literally cannot do everything at once at any moment, nonetheless every moment. It‘s a physical impossibility. Therefore we need a way to decide how to allocate machines‘ time.
Also, even if we have machines that harvest the resources, machines cost resources, power costs resources, etc. So even the gathering and utilizing of resources costs a certain amount of resources. So there can never be unlimited resources, because the more resources we can access, the more resources we need to invest to access those resources. It can be functionally limitless, but not actually limitless. Which is the state of the USA today.
I wouldn't define the US as a "post scarcity economy" strictly speaking, but it's certainly an economy with more supply capacity than demand for most of the goods, hence "engineering" consumer behaviours to increase demand through marketing campaigns is THE way to go for the economy to keep going, this video explains it very well.
As someone who's studied marketing and advertising: Every single product or service is designed around solving a problem that the customer either has or anticipates having. Food solves the problem of being hungry. Shelter solves the problem of being homeless. A vehicle solves the problem of needing to get from point A to point B. A phone solves the problems of being unable to contact people and being able to use the internet. This channel solves the problem of the consumer needing to know more about economics. The job of marketing and advertising is to match the product/service to the problem, and with many products/services there is no need, meaning the marketing/advertising people need to invent one.
@Star Wars News and Memes RE: ". . . and with many products/services there is no need, meaning the marketing/advertising people need to invent one." Frankly, I am surprised that you, as a marketing/advertising person, are being so candid about the "organized lying" that is the basis of the field. I commend you.
No, you're wrong. In a way. The job of marketing is to solve a problem for sure, but that's just part of it. The job of marketing is also to CREATE a problem. Not as in making life worse, but as in finding things people didn't know they may want. Say a person doesn't have a great vacuum cleaner: you tell them they have a dust problem, and suddenly it does become a problem in their head. Create an issue to solve the issue.
Marketing is about CREATING need. (Actually desire.) Do you REALLY need that new car? Do your teeth REALLY need to glow in the dark? Do you NEED makeup or designer jeans? None of these things solve a problem. They create a problem to sell the "solution", which most often is not a solution because no problem existed in reality.
I think most marketing and sales departments are simply designed around the problem that company X needs to increase their sales figures which is only possible by convincing more people to buy the products and services the company offers. So the wants and needs of the consumer are just tools that the sales people will leverage as much as possible. After all, the end goal of the sales people is not the happy consumer, but the commission that is payed at the end of the month. So a savvy sales person will always try to sell the products that earn them the highest commission, and not the products that would make the consumer most happy. This is not lying, it's just part of the job. Of course this is only possible if there are plausible arguments for why a consumer should buy a product, so not even the most savvy sales person will be able to sell things that absolutely nobody wants or needs, but finding ways to create desire is a must for success for these people.
The fact that most people have more material things than they need in the US doesn't imply that it's a post-scarcity society. For it to be a post-scarcity society they would have to get everything they need and more at 0 (opportunity) cost. This is not the case in the US or anywhere, since people have to sacrifice almost all of their time to work to be able to purchase even the most basic needs such as housing and food.
Wrong, You are also mistaking absolute wealth with relative wealth. The amount of time the average citzen in US gotta sacrifice to cover basic needs is 80% less than the average citizen in the world. And the quality is also superior.
@@rickroll9705 even if people in the US in theory have to work less to cover their basic needs, they still have to work to cover their basic needs. Things like housing, clothing, food and medicine are not free. One of the most basic facts in Economics is that the reason most goods are not free is because they are scarce. People don't have to pay for the air that they breath, for example, because it is not scarce. They do have to pay for food because it, or the resources needed to produce it, is.
@@Martindebenitogellne Post-scarcity society cannot happen until we have AI and automation developed to the point where we don't need to invest human resources into production of basic things.
there will never be 0 opportunity cost because the entire ideia of having things is flexing on other humans. There's no point in being rich if there's no not-rich-persons.
That's because many of us still aren't fulfilled in the 1st and 2nd rank in the hierarchy of needs -- although I do think we should try a less debt based economy, just doing what we can in our means. I have to wonder if countries like korea or Japan also have credit based economies, because having credit cards as a "necessity" seem to be more of a USA thing.
@@zjzr08 RE: "I have to wonder if countries like korea or Japan also have credit based economies, because having credit cards as a "necessity" seem to be more of a USA thing." According to the Wolter's World RUclips channel, in Japan cash is necessary for many day-to-day small purchases; however, there are ATMs all over.
We do have considerable safety from pandemics. In any other era before now, the pandemic we are are facing would be at least 3 times more devastating. Although, I do get your point.
@@arjunsatheesh7609 I mean, our poor handling of this pandemic has more to do with shitty politics rather than economy. The shitty politics put the economy at risk when they handled it poorly. Couldve been nipped in the bud but nooo our glorious leader had to be a shit head and prolong this sht
I’ve never heard someone correlate groups of people financing large amount of debts as part of the economic boom & bust cycle but it makes perfect sense now. Thanks.
The Netflix show "Dracula" actually touched on this. Dracula showed up in a lower middle class home and described the owner, a young woman who probably worked at a supermarket, as incredibly rich.
@@Tonius126 Simple, it doesn't generate any revenue, but costs money to both acquire and own (gas, maintenance), and depreciates in value over time. Ergo, it's a liability.
@@otacon1024 Collectors Ferraris can go up a lot in value, many older ones go up millions of dollars in a few years. Depending on the circumstance, a Ferrari can be an excellent investment. Of course you would have to be rich to afford it in the first place but if you sell it you would be even richer.
Something I would like to critique is, that wealth is a relative term. So the amount of wealth you have is a percentage of the entire amount of stuff. A King had, at least in an absolute monarchy, all of the stuff in a Kingdom he had complete control of capital, land and labor, in the form of serfs, but he did not own everything on the Old world (the old world and the new world were basically two closed systems). So there was still competition. A King who had a better administration, could thus pay better armies, could thus win more wars and could thus own more. So the only thing important to a King would be the amount of Serfs, Soldiers, Generals and strategic resources. There were other things as well which had demand, but the amount was not necessarily fixed all the time. Sometimes there was more sometimes there was less and sometimes there were more resources available for a King to spend so the price would fluctuate quite a lot, but the amount consumed did not necessarily change. This is when the industrial revolution hit and we have been riding a wave of growth that is unimaginable to people that came before us, but there is still only 100% of stuff. This stuff is still shared between different entities: States, Nations, People, Corporations, Socialist States which represent modern Monarchy from an economic stand point. During this time we have had some really wacky exceptions to the rules commonly seen as a pretty good approximations of reality. For example the Nazi regime an up and down and mixing between capitalism and State run economy. The state was basically printing money to a ludicrous extent, but this money was based in debt. The money still technically became more and more worthless, but because the state run part of the economy focused all of the Nations efforts into war (thus strategic interest like synthetic fuel and rubber, producing iron at a completely stupid cost) there was nothing to spent your money on. The money was still given out and thus served as a motivation, but was simply put into bank accounts and thus it made an infinite line instead of the expanding circle which capitalism produces. This way the state held full control over all recourses that Europe had to over, with some complications of course, but generally the Nazis had a finite post scarcity society. Everything had no cost effectively. What many nowadays confuse for post scarcity is just rapid growth (I don’t mean rapid growth growth, but absolute growth) with such infinite money. The USA is in a special position, as it is from a local perspective able to print almost infinite money to buy finite resources without diluting its currency. Globally it is just dumping money in a ginormous hole which might at some point start to fill, up to this point it will be fine. (Of course America is not the only large holder of important currencies, which could take the place of the dollar, there is still the EU and China two powerful entities which could also serve if not necessarily to the same extent but to a similar extent as the backing currency of the world) What a post scarcity society would be, is a society that functions with unlimited resources but not necessarily with unlimited money. Large institutions could simply own everything by default (like a King) and thus grant some of their assets to smaller or bigger entities (a Bank that owns everything lending to a Nation) in this way it would act in the same way as Nazi economics, but the other way around. people would try to get limited capital with unlimited goods thus giving to the common people motivation, the job of the institution would be to dictate a price they are willing to lend capital for in goods and services. Thus only the institution would own capital and would have complete control over all of the economy. If this would work would depend on the faith in the system, just like in Nazi Germany where people would be paid with limited amounts of unlimited money, creating the illusion of worth. I hope this is understandable. I apologize for any harm that might be caused by my limited English capabilities, but I am thankful for anyone willing to chew through (durch kauen, a German saying that references the strain that is caused by repeatedly having to read the same text over and over in order to understand it, similar to chewing on something that is very tough) my less than perfect English. If you have thoughts and or critique on what you just read I would be happy to her them/it. Thank you in advance.
This was SUCH a thoughtful video! Every time I see a video about the US, I prepare for some anti-american sentiment. But you explained things that I have felt myself. I really liked your point about the US being a post scarcity society according to Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs. I would argue that marketing, demand, and debt are tricking people into getting things that they don't need, which is stressing the planet. The solution is to fight this consumerism, fight debt, and be grateful for the privilege that we experience.
dectec Sure, the rich are getting richer. But guess what? So are you, me, and entire lower and middle class of America. The rich just get richer faster because they are able to invest large sums of money at a time, which also benefits us because it brings us jobs. The wealth gap certainly isn’t a problem.
@John Alejandro So basically everyone who wants an universal health care is a communist? The USA are the only developed country in the world with no universal health care. Blaming it on "the citizens who voted for lefties" does not make any sense, when you have a republican government for the last years. If you can smell communists through the internet, maybe consider to see your doctor.
@John Alejandro Don't you think the wealth hoarding by insurance companies and drug companies is causing an exacerbation of the system? It's no surprise that US healthcare on average is twice as expensive per person than most other advanced countries in the world. While I can understand your reservation to have tax dollars allocated to the health needs of vulnerable people, do you then condone the use of your tax's to go towards government investments in corporations which then don't pay back tax? I think the US has more than enough wealth to provide cheaper or free healthcare to all, and considering all western nations have free healthcare. but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. Also just to clarify, wanting strong social programs is not a communist thing, many capitalist or "market economies" do it..
Loved this video. I've been a big supporter of systems claiming to get us to a post scarcity society and the way it is talked about here made me think of it in a different way. Thank you.
pspdude231 You are right. Average income is 53k, the median income however is 17k. We have 40 million poor and 100 million living at or near poverty. Hundreds of thousands die each year because of it. Never trust economists who talk about “averages” instead of median when talking about the population at large.
Stephen Roberts Instead of being an asshole, why not try to do a simple Google search about the U.S median and average income? No, I’m not a Bernie supporter. I was a Yang supporter though, whatever that has to do with anything.
Artruis Joew the fed takes more money from Cali than it gives to the extent that the fed would fail without Cali. Essentially any backwards Bible Belt state in the US wouldn’t get it’s necessary federal funding without Cali and would crumble from infrastructure failure
I really appreciate all of your videos I've watched this far, but as a former psychology major, this is the most eye opening. I had an "AHA!" moment watching this. I've digested more information from your videos than I did for both my micro and macro-economics classes.
That is an interesting point about the US being a rough approximation of a post scarcity of society with the theoretical capabilitie to provide just about everything that everyone in the US needs with resources leftover for some luxuries.
"At the bottom are real basic things. Physiological needs like air, water, food, shelter, sleep. The things that are really denied to the real bottom levels of the modern society. ...like grad students." 6:43
You take this consumer-demand economy way more positively than expected. For me this is a core critique of modern capitalism; why do we take it for granted that needing more things is a positive development? Does more consuming actually increase our well-being and life satisfaction? I will press x for doubt. We should start seriously think about a post-capitalist society where the focus is not on productivity and wealth but rather solidarity and collective happiness. This system is deeply flawed
"Collective happiness" is wishy washy bs dreamed up by people who don't even know their neighbors but worry way too much about kids in Africa from some NatGeo cover. The only people who have a right to make the value judgment on whether or not they're satisfied with life is themselves, and the only system that has granted the majority the ability to pursue satisfaction for satisfaction's sake is capitalism. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a want-based economy, specially not once we manage to solve the issues caused by the two truly limited resources that are land and time.
Yeah, I was also surprised at how positive the tone of this video was. Capitalism is built on labor exploitation and resource extraction from a literally collapsing environment. Any video about the US in the 21st century that leaves out discussion of climate change doesn’t look deeply enough at the problems capitalism has created and that capitalism continues to paper over.
Hey, i really like your videos. They are really educative and interesting to watch. Your videos are well written and enjoyable to listen. Keep up the good work!
Yeah cuz all these freeloaders know they can get handouts by not doing shit. (obviously, there are major mental health issues amongst the homeless population but im not talking about them.)
I'm only a mere Postgraduate psychologist but I've always understood human desire for material things to be mediated by their peers. People tend to purchase material things to signify their status in the social hierarchy, if they believe they are nearer to the top of that hierarchy than the bottom they tend to be more satisfied. The key thing is their position among their perceived peers rather than their level of material wealth. When this understanding is applied practically, it explains why someone who is rich by the standards of the DRC may be more satisfied than someone who is far richer but not by the countries standards in the US/Uk ect.
Or you know we buy a car to travel and explore the world like humans tend to do, buy tents or kayaks to do the things we like to do. Halfway decent food to survive and thrive. Homes we can be proud of filled with things that are of use to us.
@@justinallen2408 What I'm talking about is only a trend a macro level, human social behaviour is never explained by any one phenomena. Although it is worth noting that you mention pride, as this is in effect a social emotion, that takes stock of your position amongst your peers and lends itself well to the theory I was describing.
I'd like to recommend Asperger’s from experience. Social hierarchies look ridiculous to us, we don’t care what other people own, that’s completely uninteresting, and we are very interested in learning for its own sake. Just don’t care about your crazy ranking systems based on owning things. Very interested in art, all the sciences (even psychology ;p), music and cooking, basically any craft that requires well honed skills, history, anthropology, literature, all the liberal arts, and even some sport. Do not care what the neighbour are doing as long as it is not too noisy. Perfectly happy with owning very little, rarely buy new clothes, perfectly happy sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Huge acquisition this year though: blender! Might need to make a will!
Yeah, if he wanted a good example of a "post scarcity" society in this sense any north European social market state would probably be a better example.
Yep... It's just a very bizarre point of view, considering that something like 30% of the US population is working very long hours and/or more than one job, while a majority of that group is still hard-pressed to afford higher education or proper healthcare. It also elevates the US way beyond what it actually is. They do a lot of things fairly well, but post-scarcity implies a level of wide-spread wealth and safety that is really not visible for the lower-end of the society. Other nations with vastly smaller economies are way ahead in that regard.
@@prophetsspaceengineering2913 I'm not sure you quite understand, what makes the US different is the fact that wealth is very easily available because it is plentiful. That doesn't mean you have 300k in the bank, but it means that someone with 10k can buy things worth 300k with loans. Leverage like this is unprecedented in many other countries, developed or otherwise.
Screaming Person No they understand but that’s not the point. When the maker of this video makes a statement like 8:20-8:45, when that’s simply not true. And millions of Americans struggle to afford healthcare, need food stamps to feed their family, or have to work 2/3 jobs to not become homeless. That statement feels like a slap in the face to the millions that live below the poverty line. Especially considering many countries with a smaller economy score way better on these aspects.
I believe it's quite accurate. The US is very diverse and requires a certain amount of nuance when comparing it to more homogeneous societies, but generally different peoples tend to do better in the US than anywhere else in the world when taking into account demography (comparing things apples to apples per say). For example Iranians and Indians in Norway earn about 32k usd and 40k usd on average but on the other hand their American counterparts make quite a lot more at around 100k usd each respectively, a trend repeated with almost every other demography in the US. Generally, whomever you are and wherever you came from you would grossly benefit being alive in the US than anywhere else in the world. Even if you are from nations with perceived 'higher living standards' like Norway or Sweden, data shows that you would still grossly benefit from being in the US.
The concept you described as the rise and fall of the business cycle, with consumers taking on debt to then consume less later, is actually a phenomenon known as consumption smoothing. Consumption smoothing is the idea that people will buy more when times are good, and less when times are bad. For example, if someone is willing and able to buy a new flat screen tv, they will. But say later on, that individual falls on hard times and is no longer able to afford to buy a new tv, so instead he saves up. The same is true if you live in near poverty and lose your job, you might take on some debt to finance your cost of living. The rise and fall of the business cycle has to do with the macroeconomic performance of an economy, taking into account times of prosperity and recessions, as opposed to a microeconomic view of the individual, buying and consuming more or less. The two phenomena correlate, but to say that there is a causal relationship from consumption smoothing to the business cycle is a stretch. Overall a very educational and thought provoking video though, keep up the good work!
I really thought you would talk more about the relationship between the size of the American economy vs the level of debt it keeps accumulating as a country or citizens themselves, and mention facts about it endlessly printing money
Not enough people realize that people do make a good amount of money. It's all about managing debts and appreciable assets. Obviously there is people who simply can not afford basic things like food, diapers, necessary household goods, etc. But too many people buy iPhones, new cars, own pets, eat out, and clothes. When things that are much cheaper can achieve the same purpose for a lot less. I see a lot of people talking about living pay check to pay check in the comment section. But if people actually budget and do spreadsheets, they would see how much they waste. I'm guilty of it too. I'm a college student who is grateful my parents pay for my college education (with a hefty scholarship). I'm a full time student but I make about $850 bucks a month while spend ~710 on rent a month. Rather than buying food for dinner I usually eat out and that extra $140 goes to waste. If I was smarter I'd have a lot more money.
Unfortunately, it is pretty hard to function in places like America without a phone or laptop, or a car depending on the location. And better look still sometimes mean more than brains or skill or hard work. We kinda did it to ourselves.
@Bernard. Right on, the only "Solution" to people making bad choices is taking those choices away. And I, for one, prefer freedom to security. There should be a balance between freedom and planning, and I am not for anarchy, but mostly we should err on the side of freedom.
And one more thing that people might not realize: The U.S. DOES have guaranteed heath care, it's just not very extensive. You can go into practically every emergency room in the U.S. and see a notice that critical lifesaving care is required by law and will be provided regardless of a patient's ability to pay. That is not a lot by our modern wealthy standards, but it is a far cry from even one lifetime ago. And for those about to tell a horror story of someone dying outside a private hospital emergency room: Yes, and chances are someone went to prison at the end of the story. Those laws are enforced. Hospitals are fined and leaders go to prison in the moat blatant cases. It's one reason emergency rooms are so expensive. You are paying for homeless people and young, uninsured people and foreign visitors without adequate insurance, etc. Our health system is much better than most critics will admit.
I think it's extremely important to note that when accounting for wealth inequality, which heavily skews most statistics, Americans really aren't exceptionally rich, because the vast majority of statistics are /heavily/ skewed because of just how rich our upper classes are, as we boast the largest numbers of billionaires and millionaires in the world, and they are also the most wealthy among them. When taking this into account, the /actual/ average american citizen is quite poor, and going further, given our lack of basic rights such as healthcare, housing, etc, I would argue that most americans live very poor lives when compared to most european, and a good handful of asian countries.
I really enjoyed this video. I am a double major in psychology and Economics so this video was totally in my wheelhouse. Fantastic job on the video as always!
7:00 exactly, ee! Safety/security. It does not just mean security against stabbings, but against starvation and other ills caused by *poverty* , a possible result of debt. Your whole tangent about how great the US people have it, is made null. Watch this scenario unfold. Part I: A man takes out an auto loan. He already has a student loan. He then makes a really dumb mistake at work, and gets fired and life-sized pictures of him are "crucified" outside of the building. He now has no job. Because he was written up before he was fired, no unemployment for him. He desperately tries to hold onto his house, but it is inevitably foreclosed on by the bank. The sheriff (or mercenaries if you live in a state like Texas) raids the house and drags you out of the house at gunpoint Part II Consider this comment I have made on why ghettos exist, and you will see why debt and foreclosure is so dangerous for the debtor. "For any EE staff, read this. First, you deter the homeless from using public places as their home. Now they have nowhere to sleep in proximity to middle class folk and small businesses they can do work for employment. And they don't just disappear at this moment. This makes them poorer. This makes them more food insecure, as well. Now they must congregate in areas where the city has not sent them away. Now there is a higher ratio of homeless to middle class folk, which makes the average wealth, and thus the opportunity level, go down. Not to mention many leave the neighborhood, as, with the exodus of homeless folk, and the decrease in the average wealth, crime naturally goes up as the only way the homeless can afford food. This cycle rolls and rolls as more and more public places are made "only middle-class and rich allowed" (By the way, no insult to the middle class, they are not the problem, in fact they are the lifeblood of our nation). Eventually almost the entire population of the neighborhood (now slum, as no homes are occupied), is homeless. In other words, foreclosure is "Go directly to ghetto. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200". If you are foreclosed on, you will [almost, this is not Nigeria] inevitably be in the obituary a few years later as the next victim of poverty-inspired violence." I may have slightly overstated it there, but you get the idea. The man goes to the ghetto (the only place in the community that tolerates homeless people, and the 5 to 15 years later, he is seen in the obituary. One last comment must be made on the title of this video: "The Land of Debt and Demand" should be replaced by this, more informative title: "The Land of Fear, Intimidation, and Violence." But maybe that won't appease the algorithm, I don't know.
This is likely one of the most one-sided assessments of modern economics I've come across. It's not that he's wrong per se...but what he omits is stunning.
Yes. I agree. I'm sitting here watching this gritting my teeth at it and that's exactly what I was thinking. The stuff he's saying isn't necessarily wrong, but this is not good healthy economics.
@@gamer-ff6mh To my mind this video is like an assessment of a princess married to a king. It all sounds wonderful until one finds out the king is a tyrant and the queen was faking it out of survival! But, yes, on the surface the marriage looks enchanting but in reality, it is poison...
@@andrewmarkmusic Care to elaborate a bit? Im no economics expert and frankly not familiar with the american system at all (other than hear-say). But Im wondering at what you refer to in particular.
I especially like how he had referred to psychology earlier in the video, and anyone who's seen a LOT of this guy's videos knows he uses psychology for his economic analysis. It's like a 2 level joke.
As a Psychology student I agree with you, and that's why we have dozens of psychology model, some based on natural science, some based on social science, some based on philosphy and religion, and some based on statistics and numbers
@@malikfaisal416 Would you actually prefer the reverse, where one line of thinking predominates and all the rest have been pushed to the margins? Cos that's the state of modern economics (the others are collectively known as 'heterodox economics', and mostly dismissed despite coming from trained economists (so not just crackpots)). I'm not sure which situation is really better, given that people aren't quite so uniform and predictable as economics often treats them as.
One of the first principles of economics is that consumers are drive unlimited wants, but perhaps living under this consumer driven society we are taught to seek these higher needs (love, actualisation, identity, existential purpose) from goods and products - materials. It's like with junk food we enjoyed the first time so we go back and keep eating but the utility only depletes. Imagine you were stuck on this, thinking that all you could do to please yourself would be eat junk food and so you did. You'd be discontent - insatiably discontent. This is what we experience today, there is no escape from the marketer and advertiser telling us and associating these basic material goods with our real higher needs and they make them expensive so cause we are also taught that the more we may the more we get. So we waste our money trying to fill this hole, a need for love, a need for an identity, a need for self respect, a need for passion and real enjoyment with a car, a watch, clothes this or that because the marketer teaches us that if we wear this we will have respect. There is nothing more inefficient about our economy today than this. That we are tricked into working 5 or 6 day weeks for products that satisfy no real need.
A few things to mention here. As you mentioned, Maslow's hierarchy show's us that material goods do not get us to the higher levels of the pyramid. It might satisfy the basics, but happens when demand becomes equalized and commoditized? Uniformity in demand occurs and interest rates increase thus creating an equilibrium. Essentially, these material goods and services require a proportionate amount of resources to acquire. Secondly it's important to note that the postmodern perspective of quality of life metric for happiness is not linked to material goods and resources. There may be better accessibility to material goods and services, yet some studies show that feeling of well-being is on the decline (don't ask me which articles) I think one was pointed out on TED and some other published materials. Lastly, the flourishing of an economy does not make it morally ideal. The intertwining of the basic elements of the Pyramid to facilitate commerce is predatory. The average human being does not have the critical thinking skills or wisdom to choose wisely when expending resources. Thus, those which utilize psychology to manipulate demand for products are taking advantage of the populace.
The fact that most elected officials on top refuse to acknowledge any flaws that the US economy may have right now will ensure a victory for bernie in november
If this "bernie" (I'm not from the US) is the new meme president then he may have a greater chance of winning... Well, idk how memes affect the mainstream society nowadays but if it's still like that from the past US election then it could significantly(?) boost a candidates popularity...
You pay almost half of your income for tax, student loan for Bachelor's degree around 120k and if u are unlucky got injured in a car accident that requires surgery, good luck on the medical bill another 100k so you are basically broke after you graduate from college
no social security if 6 percent and medicare tax is 1.9 percent and income tax is 10 percent and a another if you have a 100k student loan debt that means you were stupid because the average Americans graduate has 30k in debt but when I graduate I will have none because I was not rich by any means I was low middle class but I went to community college and then transfer to my state flagship University and I also had a part time job and internship so I you have student loans its your fault
I've said this for years, Increasingly, people working in marketing, HR, and law are about supply, dedicated to generating a corresponding demand. 25 years ago, there were NO HR departments or "professionals". Then, we got PC's, and instead of being used to benefit the populace, corporations used these to increase wealth of its officers and shareholders. Secretarial and support personnel were out in the dust, so HR was created to provide them jobs. Of course, no one's salaries, except corporate officers and shareholders, have had a REAL salary increase in 30 years!
The problem with this idea that salaries haven't increased in the last 30 years is it only looks at one side of the equation. The other side is what are the cost of goods. People's income may have not gone up but there quality of life has.
I'm from Russia, and even we have free insurance for everyone, it's just normal (I can't imagine what is to PAY for a visit to a doctor) And also Universities, first bachelor is free But even after, because our Universities oriented on sth like schoolarships (every University has budget seats, that anyone can go) For me the idea of not free hospitals, or not free education, is a complete absurd 😂 I just can't understand how it works, and why 😂 (The same with empirical system)
The series is great at explaining the USA from an economics point of view, which is, after all, its purpose. The bigger picture is the view from psychotherapists, social workers, divorce attorneys, weight loss consultants, solid waste engineers, climatologists, wildlife conservationists, and debt collectors. Economists have made a nice, cushy job for themselves by externalizing all other measurements of economic system impact on so many other aspects of quality of life on earth. Unfortunately, those externalized costs have compounded during this period of unprecedented wealth generation and the bill for these costs is starting to come due. As that happens, there will simply not be enough real discretionary wealth with which to pay for a soft landing to a more sensible & sustainable civilizational lifestyle that will be resilient to both climate change & re-structured globalization while simultaneously deploying renewable energy & maintaining aging infrastructure. Advertising driven hyper-demand fueled by a globalized debt bubble won't continue to prop up The System forever. Then what?
If our economy is really fueled so much by demand, then wouldn't a UBI (like what andrew yang proposed) be a good thing for the economy? If so then it means that a UBI is the next logical step of our civilization. I could be wrong though and it could instead be a heavy burden on the economy... What do you guys think?
MechanizedMan ubi is expected to have a positive effect, however it’s more the argument of whether spending 2trillion would be worth the expected 6-12% growth over 8 years ( paraphrasing can’t remember accurately) or would 2 trillion also get a greater growth on subsidies etc, then there is the problem of raising an additional 2 trillion
It depends on hows it's implemented, America's pension( or social security) works as a scheme where today's workers pay for today's retirees, however in Norway their fund works as an investment fund, and yes I do note that they had big bucks with their oil, but still, they invested it in their people, I think most government run funds in America should follow a similar idea, social security would be killed but the new money would be under a UBI investment fund, and maybe an additional healthcare fund, this would be partisan, as it would benefit all of america without raising taxes as money going to social security would go to this new fund
Mashed Tomato I understand where you are coming from however in order for the us to have a sovereign wealth fund they would need to have a government surplus in order to accommodate, Norway does this through taxation they have a very progressive tax system which reaches 50% or higher on income tax, this is huge difference to us who opt for around 30-40%
it is very clear that the engine of modern economy is consumption which must be increased constantly, but our sources are limited, this is big paradigma needed to be solved
I think you confuse western world with the developed world, Japan, South Korea, half of China have exactly the same problems as the example you used (the US) with its own peculiarities and in Guatemala and Venezuela, despite being western do not have the same structures as any other post scarcity society
Western world is a pretty vague term that isn't exactly defined by geography. When used it often includes places such as Australia/New Zealand despite them being very much 'eastern' geographically, and often excludes LatAm/Sub-Saharan Africa despite being in the 'west'.
Az4212 knowledge thirsty western means politically western (based on the British common law model or other European legal model). Japan, Aus, etc are all a part.
@@GavConnn but the west is a cultural term, Latin America is fully western, there are few regions more western than latam and China, at least half is very developed and faces the same problems despite not being close to any idea of western
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Wish you would calm down on the commercials.
But how did the usa achieve this?
Can you please link to the first two videos in the three part series?
always great
Critical flaw on your baseline assumption, males desire females aka much more then one. Given number of nubile, attractive females limited. Ipso facto even in a post scarcity society, skull bashing of males on other males will still occur to deprive/deny said males from females, so as to aquire more females cause its a Zero sum game. Capiche alls Y' all
Therefore key surival trait/skill of any societies that can surive, ability to create, sustain, grow your skull bashing societal attritube and capacity vis a vis other societal competitors. That now today does not bode well for the continunity of human technological civilization.
"Humans take being unsatisfied to an art form." Damn that's such a hard-hitting phrase.
True.
I know people who shop just because they are bored.
He meant women.
@@bluegoka no
He’s got a pretty solid point though.
Like a King, who wants to fund his own Swimming Pool.
Instead of helping Farmers, when there's a Drought.
(Not to be political: But there's a reason why Imperial Russia was the most Unequal Society, in all of History.)
If you turn the volume off it's basically a Getty images slideshow
Nice
Fellow silent watcher? I watch the subtitles at work just because I don't like using headphones and I don't want people listening to me.
The founder getty images is a grandson of one of richest oil tycoons ever John Getty (richest man of his time)
"they have more safety from things like famine and pandemics"
that did not age well
yap
It would be 10 times as devastating a hundred years ago then it is now
@@arnaudvanderlinden4459 the Spanish flu did exactly that. 50 to 100 million people died from that globally. The US saw a crazy amount of death particularly from it.
@@kabloosh699 the corona virus is just starting to infect people, but its mortality rate is much lower
Jack Ofoldraids quite well ? Look at a country like ours. Germany. Doing pretty well. The US is no comparrison to that. Just look at the sheer numbers. Even when considering population it doesnt ad up. Also the lack of public education really shows atm...
I'm a simple man. I fought to conquer all my Ferraris, jets and houses in GTA Online, I am proud of all my wasted hours and man power imputed to create my non existent empire...
but you spending this time probably fullfilled higher needs on the laslow scale, so potentually it was time well spend.
yes you couldve worked and made more money, but as discussed onces at a certain point of wealth (often put at 80k a year) ur financial needs are met, so you should spend ur time gaming if it fullfills other needs
*Global EMP blasts* NOOOOOO My empire!!!
I duplicated a bunch of cars and now I can't fulfill my higher needs 😔
But I bet you won some good money from Michael's therapy sections.
It isn’t “non-existent”. It’s “virtual”.
EE, we all know Economics is just Psychology with numbers
As my Econ professor once said "economics is the study of people and their habits applied" Looking back, it's kinda a no doy thing, but at the time it was mind-blowing to see economics as a dynamic study vs. looking at endless graphs n numbers
I'm in political science; in my opinion psychologists, sociologists, economists, political scientists, historians, and philosophers basically study the same thing at different levels of resolution. Learning from the other fields has enhanced my understanding of my own and I would encourage anyone in any of them to look into the others, it's a great source of perspective.
But Psychology do have numbers and statistics (I'm a Psychology student btw)
Economics lacks the diversity that psychology has (or perhaps had, it's a lot less diverse nowadays thanks to the rise of CBT - cognitive behavioral therapy) to truly be considered simply "psychology with numbers". Psychology understands that people differ quite a bit, and even has (or had?) a variety of approaches to deal with them. Economists mostly think of people in one very narrow fashion, and over time has steadily consolidated around a small set of central tenets on how to model them. There used to many many many kinds of economics (no, not just marxist socialism, but other models too), now there's far fewer, with any people holding onto the other approaches (collectively known as "heterodox economics") having been pushed to the margins.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn CBT you say ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). But I also think there has been a resurgence, if not just a schism shift, considering that Freakonomics has made it's entire brand on "the hidden side of everything" applying economics to sports, to marriage prospects and hell even the original Roe vs Wade result correlating heavily with a lower crime cohort population.
8:46 "Our economy is not based on limited resources trying to fulfill unlimited needs but rather creating needs to facilitate resources"
I really think this is an underrated insight
I think it's bullshit. John Maynard Keynes said a lot of dumb stuff like that. The economy is made up of millions of transactions, each builds wealth in a tiny way. Advertising is the only one of those transactions that's actually zero-sum, you make someone happier by making the thing more prestigious and therefore more expensive.
Keynesian economics was disproved in the 1970s in America because we had high unemployment and high inflation at the same time.
Basically playing with people emotions to make them wake up from the couch and work
@@captainmaim I think you should have a look into Freudian psychology in early advertising in the post war USA. It's fascinating to look how needs where created artificially through cognitive manipulation
@@jackmadden4744 not even Freud could have explained the pet rock...
@@captainmaim What's you take on lassize faire I mean neo-liberlaism sorry got mixed up there.
Someone that understands how there's such an abundance of food in the US.
Grocers throw out perfectly good produce with a mere dark or soft spot on the skin.
Starbucks and donut shops throw out all unsold sandwiches and pastries when the store closes for the day.
It's sad. I know France has made great strides in clearing up food waste. I live in the UK and there's quite a few places that donate unsold food to the homeless or food banks. Like you say, it's perfectly edible just a little stale or something.
I used to work at CVS. Anyone who goes there will know it's just as much a candy store as it is a drug store. At the end of every season, we used to throw away garbage bags full of candy. I kid you not. Imagine a typical 13 gallon garbage liner full of candy. Now imagine 20+ of those bags being thrown away after Valentine's, then after Easter, then after labor day, then after Halloween, then after Christmas.
And that's just candy. On a regular, eggs, milk, cookies..... If frozen foods are approaching their date, the merchandiser will give you credit, then throw them right in the dumpster. Half a shopping cart of frozen foods every week.
@@ultimatetadpole9607 Well in the U.S. many companies won't let give away food to the homeless
@@flamedragon283 you're kidding right? Please tell me you're just kidding.
@@firas1409 Sadly enough, no he's not because then you have the FDA and health inspectors breathing down your neck and potentially fining your company if homeless people dies by eating your slightly stale bread or day-old veggies because now it's a matter of liability. Vicious cycle eh?
I'm form Italy. As you know our economy is not doing great, so go and by Ferraris.
How about tomato sauce? That helps right?
Since nowadays it's cool not to pay taxes when you're a big company I decided to look it up and... it appears Ferrari pay their taxes honestly. So this is actually a good idea.
I buy pasta, does that help?
I'm also amazed that you alone form Italy, are you an influential figure down there?
Something what do you think Italy is? An African nation? They have the internet dumbass.
EE: "Today, debt in the western world drives demand."
*Dave Ramsey would like to know your location*
once upon a time, I told myself I'd buy a Ferrari. Now that I'm working in the real world and realizing how substantial wealth is accumulated, I don't have this dream anymore. It's like if you ask a kid if he wanted ice cream, he would not say no. But had he known what eating ice cream all the time would do to his health and how many miles would he have to run to burn off the sugar, he'd learn to say no every now and then. People often have this notion that they "deserve" to own some luxury thing, whether it's a car, a swiss watch, or a top notch iphone pro, LV bag. They don't think of it as, "I deserve to have no money left for an emergency fund, or no money left for a sudden loss of employment, or I deserve to be stuck in credit card debt".
Don Lee Interesting point Don. Do you think the expectation (deserving aspect) comes from the messages of the marketers described in the video? Or society, or parenting? It seems marketers did a good job to influence you earlier in your life and now that you know a little bit more about what’s really going on and the consequences, you’re dissuaded now. What do you think?
As a car person, it's not "extremely" expensive to own one with proper financial management. A baby Ferrari (or dare I suggest even used one) for 200k can be bought by many people if they focus it. No need for credit card debt, burned emergency fund or anything.
Assume you dont have student debt, if you can save a lot by living with roommates or owning a multi family home which will bring a very extreme cost down.
Once you have shelter solved for as cheap as possible, the last necessity is food which with home cooking I personally keep around 150$-200$ a month with fresh healthy produce and even steaks, so you can even go cheaper.
Everything else is a luxury after. Does it make sense to go that extreme for a silly car? No. But the point is if you can hit those needs and realize the difference between them and wants, you will be able to save up for almost anything that you want in the future. Hopefully investments, but also Ferrari's and lambos if you really want
Check out the documentary "Century of the Self" it documents how marketing starting with Edward Bernays in the early 1900s worked to shift American society from a need based society to a want based society. Resulting in the consumerism of the present.
The secret is to think this way.
I dont want to be guy that buys the Ferrari.
I want to be part of the company and organization that sells him the Ferrari.
Eventually, the Ferrari will appear in your Garage.
Macro = consistency,patient, invest
Micro = learn, adapt, change
Don Lee i think this slightly misses the point. People dream of owning a Ferrari because it's financially irresponsible. They want to be so fuck-you wealthy that wasting a million dollars on a car makes no difference to their security.
“Riffraff like psychology.” As a psychology student I take offense sir! It also was the subject of a third of the video! All kidding aside, I’ve really been enjoying your videos. I wish economics was more of a thing because of how much it is in our everyday lives. I love finding out why things happen the way they do and I appreciate your due diligence when researching these things. Keep it up!
Psychology is a pointless subject though....most of it just retarded theorizing not actually productively benefiting society at all....neurology is psychology but actually useful
You may like Peter Zeihan. There are many videos like this where different groups hire him to present. The first part is cut off where he talks about how the Imperial-Colonial system was effective in it's time because there were enough parallel empires that competed with each other. Since there was no global hegemon and nobody trusted each other they needed to have separate systems. It came to an end in World War 2 when everybody but the United States was destroyed. ruclips.net/video/jT6HFCAFDgU/видео.html
I mean, behavioral economics was developed when economists had to learn the hard way what sales people knew for centuries: that people don't make hyper rational decisions with all known knowledge that'll give the greatest value for themselves. Instead people are very stupid and selfish and have very little restraint in paying for shit they won't even use the day after.
I wish more comments were like this. Too many times one sees a person taking offence on a 1 second section of and 30 min talk without considering the rest of the talk's points and ideas. Society as a whole would be more stable and forgiving if people processed before reacting. After all, we pride ourselves on being the more intelligent species don't we, so why not act the part.
@@hogrideeeeer Neurological studies have provided evidence reinforcing the benefits of such psycho, cognitive- behavioral, amounst other forms of psychological therapy.
EE: The United States is post-scarcity civilization.
Isaac Arthur: Interesting....
No shit though. Our problem is that people are obese as hell.
@@hemprope4326 your people
*intewesting
@@hemprope4326 Having 'unlimited food' can be problematic.
Question: How would economics work if the world was one nation?
i like turdles ouf
@i like turdles that's not realistic
So much better
@i like turdles How is this relevant?? go spew your anti-american agenda elsewhere. (edit: also thats an incredibly simplistic view of some an incredibly complex issues)
it would have to be extremely totalitarian
During the 2008 financial crisis, I recall Mike Huckabee observing that the modern US economy seemed to be driven mostly by people buying things they don't need with money they don't have. I thought those words captured the gist of the matter. Even more true today.
One thing you didn‘t mention:
It‘s pretty much impossible to have unlimited resources because there is one resource that will always been limited in terms of the capacity to exploit it, and it’s the most important resource because it determines allocation of all other resources: time. No productive factor can do everything at every instance of time; therefore, we have to decide how factors should be allocated at particular times. This is why market demand is absolutely preeminent and irreplaceable as the driving allocative mechanism because it tells us the correct signals for how we should allocate productive factors‘ time.
This is arguable as there potential to remove time from our lives.
Inb4 immortality is achieved
Jorge Ávila Balmaceda But they literally cannot do everything at once at any moment, nonetheless every moment. It‘s a physical impossibility. Therefore we need a way to decide how to allocate machines‘ time.
I want a massive star cruiser watching the galaxies fly by outside the windows.
Also, even if we have machines that harvest the resources, machines cost resources, power costs resources, etc. So even the gathering and utilizing of resources costs a certain amount of resources. So there can never be unlimited resources, because the more resources we can access, the more resources we need to invest to access those resources. It can be functionally limitless, but not actually limitless. Which is the state of the USA today.
8:03
States: The United States is a post-scarcity civilisation
Writes: The United States is a post-scarcity *civilsation*
shows: *Istanbul*
You're wrong, it's actually called Tsargrad
@@markdombrovan8849 constantinople*
I still call it Byzantium. Yes I'm that old.
@@JimmyMon666 ah, yes, I remember the timed when it was a small greek fishing village ...
@@mylordandsaviour4786 apparently full of drunk sailors
I wouldn't define the US as a "post scarcity economy" strictly speaking, but it's certainly an economy with more supply capacity than demand for most of the goods, hence "engineering" consumer behaviours to increase demand through marketing campaigns is THE way to go for the economy to keep going, this video explains it very well.
As someone who's studied marketing and advertising: Every single product or service is designed around solving a problem that the customer either has or anticipates having. Food solves the problem of being hungry. Shelter solves the problem of being homeless. A vehicle solves the problem of needing to get from point A to point B. A phone solves the problems of being unable to contact people and being able to use the internet. This channel solves the problem of the consumer needing to know more about economics. The job of marketing and advertising is to match the product/service to the problem, and with many products/services there is no need, meaning the marketing/advertising people need to invent one.
@Star Wars News and Memes
RE: ". . . and with many products/services there is no need, meaning the marketing/advertising people need to invent one."
Frankly, I am surprised that you, as a marketing/advertising person, are being so candid about the "organized lying" that is the basis of the field. I commend you.
No, you're wrong. In a way.
The job of marketing is to solve a problem for sure, but that's just part of it. The job of marketing is also to CREATE a problem. Not as in making life worse, but as in finding things people didn't know they may want. Say a person doesn't have a great vacuum cleaner: you tell them they have a dust problem, and suddenly it does become a problem in their head. Create an issue to solve the issue.
Marketing is about CREATING need. (Actually desire.) Do you REALLY need that new car? Do your teeth REALLY need to glow in the dark? Do you NEED makeup or designer jeans? None of these things solve a problem. They create a problem to sell the "solution", which most often is not a solution because no problem existed in reality.
I think most marketing and sales departments are simply designed around the problem that company X needs to increase their sales figures which is only possible by convincing more people to buy the products and services the company offers. So the wants and needs of the consumer are just tools that the sales people will leverage as much as possible.
After all, the end goal of the sales people is not the happy consumer, but the commission that is payed at the end of the month. So a savvy sales person will always try to sell the products that earn them the highest commission, and not the products that would make the consumer most happy. This is not lying, it's just part of the job.
Of course this is only possible if there are plausible arguments for why a consumer should buy a product, so not even the most savvy sales person will be able to sell things that absolutely nobody wants or needs, but finding ways to create desire is a must for success for these people.
Many products or services are designed to solve a problem that marketeers create in the head of people.
The fact that most people have more material things than they need in the US doesn't imply that it's a post-scarcity society. For it to be a post-scarcity society they would have to get everything they need and more at 0 (opportunity) cost. This is not the case in the US or anywhere, since people have to sacrifice almost all of their time to work to be able to purchase even the most basic needs such as housing and food.
Wrong, You are also mistaking absolute wealth with relative wealth. The amount of time the average citzen in US gotta sacrifice to cover basic needs is 80% less than the average citizen in the world. And the quality is also superior.
@@rickroll9705 Erm..how exactly am I mistaking absolute wealth with relative wealth?
@@rickroll9705 even if people in the US in theory have to work less to cover their basic needs, they still have to work to cover their basic needs. Things like housing, clothing, food and medicine are not free. One of the most basic facts in Economics is that the reason most goods are not free is because they are scarce. People don't have to pay for the air that they breath, for example, because it is not scarce. They do have to pay for food because it, or the resources needed to produce it, is.
@@Martindebenitogellne Post-scarcity society cannot happen until we have AI and automation developed to the point where we don't need to invest human resources into production of basic things.
there will never be 0 opportunity cost because the entire ideia of having things is flexing on other humans. There's no point in being rich if there's no not-rich-persons.
I live in the Philippines and im happy.
Life so simple and my cells jumping in happiness!
I carry no credit cards.
Nahihibang ka na ba? "Cells jumping in happiness?"
Lots of people from the Dave Ramsey crowd would agree. Debt is dumb, cash is king! Not all americans live their lives drowning in debt
The people there is also sh*t
That's because many of us still aren't fulfilled in the 1st and 2nd rank in the hierarchy of needs -- although I do think we should try a less debt based economy, just doing what we can in our means. I have to wonder if countries like korea or Japan also have credit based economies, because having credit cards as a "necessity" seem to be more of a USA thing.
@@zjzr08
RE: "I have to wonder if countries like korea or Japan also have credit based economies, because having credit cards as a "necessity" seem to be more of a USA thing."
According to the Wolter's World RUclips channel, in Japan cash is necessary for many day-to-day small purchases; however, there are ATMs all over.
"nice respectable study like economics..."
"Riff Raff like psychology"
Oh God the irony
“Riff raff like psychology”... then goes to use Maslow’s theory anyways
@@guitarherops31 he’s clearly joking
@@wc6046 obviously
Time Square is the heart ...... 😮😳it blacked out last year
@God Bless America It'll happen eventually. That's inevitable.
"safety from...pandemics" Well, this aged poorly.
I was jut about tp comment that...
Lol
We do have considerable safety from pandemics. In any other era before now, the pandemic we are are facing would be at least 3 times more devastating.
Although, I do get your point.
@@arjunsatheesh7609 I mean, our poor handling of this pandemic has more to do with shitty politics rather than economy. The shitty politics put the economy at risk when they handled it poorly. Couldve been nipped in the bud but nooo our glorious leader had to be a shit head and prolong this sht
@@arjunsatheesh7609 The current problem with the US is that it is run by a moronic asshole.
I’ve never heard someone correlate groups of people financing large amount of debts as part of the economic boom & bust cycle but it makes perfect sense now. Thanks.
It opened my eyes to many frontiers in modern economics. Thank you again for this series.
The Netflix show "Dracula" actually touched on this. Dracula showed up in a lower middle class home and described the owner, a young woman who probably worked at a supermarket, as incredibly rich.
...economies rises...economies falls...not any different with this..
A Ferrari, just like any other expensive car, is just an expensive liability.
How is that? If it's within your means then it's just a symbol of that 'means' realized. It's all to show oneself that not everyone is equal.
@@Tonius126 Simple, it doesn't generate any revenue, but costs money to both acquire and own (gas, maintenance), and depreciates in value over time. Ergo, it's a liability.
Its a depreciating asset
@@otacon1024 Collectors Ferraris can go up a lot in value, many older ones go up millions of dollars in a few years. Depending on the circumstance, a Ferrari can be an excellent investment. Of course you would have to be rich to afford it in the first place but if you sell it you would be even richer.
@@harshjain3122 comment above ^
Wow, this episode was deep. I wasn't expecting this level of depth. 👍
Something I would like to critique is, that wealth is a relative term. So the amount of wealth you have is a percentage of the entire amount of stuff. A King had, at least in an absolute monarchy, all of the stuff in a Kingdom he had complete control of capital, land and labor, in the form of serfs, but he did not own everything on the Old world (the old world and the new world were basically two closed systems). So there was still competition. A King who had a better administration, could thus pay better armies, could thus win more wars and could thus own more. So the only thing important to a King would be the amount of Serfs, Soldiers, Generals and strategic resources. There were other things as well which had demand, but the amount was not necessarily fixed all the time. Sometimes there was more sometimes there was less and sometimes there were more resources available for a King to spend so the price would fluctuate quite a lot, but the amount consumed did not necessarily change. This is when the industrial revolution hit and we have been riding a wave of growth that is unimaginable to people that came before us, but there is still only 100% of stuff. This stuff is still shared between different entities: States, Nations, People, Corporations, Socialist States which represent modern Monarchy from an economic stand point. During this time we have had some really wacky exceptions to the rules commonly seen as a pretty good approximations of reality. For example the Nazi regime an up and down and mixing between capitalism and State run economy. The state was basically printing money to a ludicrous extent, but this money was based in debt. The money still technically became more and more worthless, but because the state run part of the economy focused all of the Nations efforts into war (thus strategic interest like synthetic fuel and rubber, producing iron at a completely stupid cost) there was nothing to spent your money on. The money was still given out and thus served as a motivation, but was simply put into bank accounts and thus it made an infinite line instead of the expanding circle which capitalism produces. This way the state held full control over all recourses that Europe had to over, with some complications of course, but generally the Nazis had a finite post scarcity society. Everything had no cost effectively. What many nowadays confuse for post scarcity is just rapid growth (I don’t mean rapid growth growth, but absolute growth) with such infinite money. The USA is in a special position, as it is from a local perspective able to print almost infinite money to buy finite resources without diluting its currency. Globally it is just dumping money in a ginormous hole which might at some point start to fill, up to this point it will be fine. (Of course America is not the only large holder of important currencies, which could take the place of the dollar, there is still the EU and China two powerful entities which could also serve if not necessarily to the same extent but to a similar extent as the backing currency of the world) What a post scarcity society would be, is a society that functions with unlimited resources but not necessarily with unlimited money. Large institutions could simply own everything by default (like a King) and thus grant some of their assets to smaller or bigger entities (a Bank that owns everything lending to a Nation) in this way it would act in the same way as Nazi economics, but the other way around. people would try to get limited capital with unlimited goods thus giving to the common people motivation, the job of the institution would be to dictate a price they are willing to lend capital for in goods and services. Thus only the institution would own capital and would have complete control over all of the economy. If this would work would depend on the faith in the system, just like in Nazi Germany where people would be paid with limited amounts of unlimited money, creating the illusion of worth.
I hope this is understandable. I apologize for any harm that might be caused by my limited English capabilities, but I am thankful for anyone willing to chew through (durch kauen, a German saying that references the strain that is caused by repeatedly having to read the same text over and over in order to understand it, similar to chewing on something that is very tough) my less than perfect English.
If you have thoughts and or critique on what you just read I would be happy to her them/it. Thank you in advance.
you just explained the entirety of whats causing issues for us in the western world today.
Yea mordern economics is bullshit.
This was SUCH a thoughtful video! Every time I see a video about the US, I prepare for some anti-american sentiment. But you explained things that I have felt myself. I really liked your point about the US being a post scarcity society according to Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs.
I would argue that marketing, demand, and debt are tricking people into getting things that they don't need, which is stressing the planet. The solution is to fight this consumerism, fight debt, and be grateful for the privilege that we experience.
I really appreciate what you’re doing and I think you are one of the most underrated RUclipsr
Damn this guy really is underrated. Keeps on pointing deep and thought-provoking concepts.
Student loans? No healthcare? Increasing wealth gap? Must be America :D
dectec Sure, the rich are getting richer. But guess what? So are you, me, and entire lower and middle class of America. The rich just get richer faster because they are able to invest large sums of money at a time, which also benefits us because it brings us jobs. The wealth gap certainly isn’t a problem.
@John Alejandro So basically everyone who wants an universal health care is a communist?
The USA are the only developed country in the world with no universal health care. Blaming it on "the citizens who voted for lefties" does not make any sense, when you have a republican government for the last years.
If you can smell communists through the internet, maybe consider to see your doctor.
*DID SOMEBODY SAY **_C O M M U N I S M?_*
loads freedom gun
@John Alejandro somebody has gotten propaganda into their head.
@John Alejandro Don't you think the wealth hoarding by insurance companies and drug companies is causing an exacerbation of the system? It's no surprise that US healthcare on average is twice as expensive per person than most other advanced countries in the world. While I can understand your reservation to have tax dollars allocated to the health needs of vulnerable people, do you then condone the use of your tax's to go towards government investments in corporations which then don't pay back tax?
I think the US has more than enough wealth to provide cheaper or free healthcare to all, and considering all western nations have free healthcare. but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. Also just to clarify, wanting strong social programs is not a communist thing, many capitalist or "market economies" do it..
Loved this video. I've been a big supporter of systems claiming to get us to a post scarcity society and the way it is talked about here made me think of it in a different way. Thank you.
“Clean” drinking water readily available?
Have you ever heard of Flint, Michigan?
Check your local water report... Flint isn't the only place
I was looking for this.
My Stupid Opinion sounds callous but it’s an anomaly
65k a year per capita but most people live paycheck to paycheck and it comes to 65k bcus of all those billionaires upping the average
pspdude231 You are right. Average income is 53k, the median income however is 17k. We have 40 million poor and 100 million living at or near poverty. Hundreds of thousands die each year because of it.
Never trust economists who talk about “averages” instead of median when talking about the population at large.
@@bluesrockfan36 what the heck is your metric? 100 million lives in near poverty is too much exaggeration.
Lol to the guy who said those averages. You completely made up those numbers. I’m pretty sure you’re a Bernie and AOC supporter.
Stephen Roberts Instead of being an asshole, why not try to do a simple Google search about the U.S median and average income? No, I’m not a Bernie supporter. I was a Yang supporter though, whatever that has to do with anything.
Evan Kurniawan Shocking isn’t it? Unfortunately its true. www.povertyusa.org/facts
Nailed this one, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else explaining current economics as well
We don't have access to shelter in California!
Sorry this video is talking about the US not commiefornia.
Artruis Joew Virginia is next.
Artruis Joew the fed takes more money from Cali than it gives to the extent that the fed would fail without Cali. Essentially any backwards Bible Belt state in the US wouldn’t get it’s necessary federal funding without Cali and would crumble from infrastructure failure
Michael Rogers move lol
André Blackaller I'm Virginian.
Post scarcity noobs be like "oh cool I'm in creative mode, that means I can build my house out of diamond blocks."
Donald Trump and other low intelligence rich people be like:
@@machinerin151 I installed a mod that lets me go to space in my minecraft! haha
I really appreciate all of your videos I've watched this far, but as a former psychology major, this is the most eye opening. I had an "AHA!" moment watching this. I've digested more information from your videos than I did for both my micro and macro-economics classes.
That is an interesting point about the US being a rough approximation of a post scarcity of society with the theoretical capabilitie to provide just about everything that everyone in the US needs with resources leftover for some luxuries.
Pls do a video on export led industrialization policies of tiger economies like south korea,Taiwan,Singapore, Hong Kong in the 50s and 60s
Stability, low taxes, low regulations, educated, cheap and hardworking work-force.
@@mikerodrigues9822 Wrong. Theres is something common in all these countries mentioned.I will let you guess
@@manas142 marxism?
Instructions unclear accidentally hacked life and now am a billionaire.
Yeah i wish it was that easy 😭
You'll get bored of it in a few weeks ;)
You put all economists, economics and economical education in your pocket. You have literally explained everything
“It blurs the line between a nice, respectable subject like economics and the riff-raff like psychology.”
Brilliant 😂
So glad I found this channel
economics "stock footage" explained
*footage
@@guitistic ye u rite
Underrated comment 👀😂🙏
Well it's either stock footage or Mr. EE can show us some equations and graphs.. Which we all know is not what the Algorithm wants..
Best Video yet, explains the world in a nutshell, not just the US.
"At the bottom are real basic things.
Physiological needs like air, water, food, shelter, sleep.
The things that are really denied to the real bottom levels of the modern society.
...like grad students."
6:43
What a true intro. I lived in Europe half of my life and the lack of A/C in most building sucks.
You take this consumer-demand economy way more positively than expected. For me this is a core critique of modern capitalism; why do we take it for granted that needing more things is a positive development? Does more consuming actually increase our well-being and life satisfaction? I will press x for doubt. We should start seriously think about a post-capitalist society where the focus is not on productivity and wealth but rather solidarity and collective happiness. This system is deeply flawed
You're absolutely on the money. It's the job of marketing to create fleeting wants that people didn't have.
"Collective happiness" is wishy washy bs dreamed up by people who don't even know their neighbors but worry way too much about kids in Africa from some NatGeo cover.
The only people who have a right to make the value judgment on whether or not they're satisfied with life is themselves, and the only system that has granted the majority the ability to pursue satisfaction for satisfaction's sake is capitalism. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a want-based economy, specially not once we manage to solve the issues caused by the two truly limited resources that are land and time.
Yeah, I was also surprised at how positive the tone of this video was. Capitalism is built on labor exploitation and resource extraction from a literally collapsing environment. Any video about the US in the 21st century that leaves out discussion of climate change doesn’t look deeply enough at the problems capitalism has created and that capitalism continues to paper over.
This is an impressive video. Extremely well worded and communicated, the concepts here are very important. Thanks for this.
Just discovered your channel today and I've already binged through like 5 vids.
As someone who is fascinated by economics, keep up the good work!!!
Hey, i really like your videos. They are really educative and interesting to watch. Your videos are well written and enjoyable to listen. Keep up the good work!
drinking water? i have to buy a new filter each month because fort wayne can't afford to replace the lead pipes.
Don't even get started on Flint, Michigan, or the huge number of reserves in Canada on boil water advisories.
I've been waiting for a video like this for agesss😩
Homelessness is a huge issue in the US tho
Last i checked (like a year ago) homelessness seemed to be on a decline
we have more empty houses than homeless people, easy enough to fix, but the banks gotta make their money
Yeah cuz all these freeloaders know they can get handouts by not doing shit. (obviously, there are major mental health issues amongst the homeless population but im not talking about them.)
@@sgtdoughnut3612 I don't see how those two are connected. Care to explain?
@@TheHeroicNinja Don't question him he's uneducated
Love your videos. Very simple and detailed explanation on economics.
I'm only a mere Postgraduate psychologist but I've always understood human desire for material things to be mediated by their peers. People tend to purchase material things to signify their status in the social hierarchy, if they believe they are nearer to the top of that hierarchy than the bottom they tend to be more satisfied. The key thing is their position among their perceived peers rather than their level of material wealth. When this understanding is applied practically, it explains why someone who is rich by the standards of the DRC may be more satisfied than someone who is far richer but not by the countries standards in the US/Uk ect.
Or you know we buy a car to travel and explore the world like humans tend to do, buy tents or kayaks to do the things we like to do. Halfway decent food to survive and thrive. Homes we can be proud of filled with things that are of use to us.
@@justinallen2408 What I'm talking about is only a trend a macro level, human social behaviour is never explained by any one phenomena. Although it is worth noting that you mention pride, as this is in effect a social emotion, that takes stock of your position amongst your peers and lends itself well to the theory I was describing.
I'd like to recommend Asperger’s from experience. Social hierarchies look ridiculous to us, we don’t care what other people own, that’s completely uninteresting, and we are very interested in learning for its own sake. Just don’t care about your crazy ranking systems based on owning things.
Very interested in art, all the sciences (even psychology ;p), music and cooking, basically any craft that requires well honed skills, history, anthropology, literature, all the liberal arts, and even some sport. Do not care what the neighbour are doing as long as it is not too noisy. Perfectly happy with owning very little, rarely buy new clothes, perfectly happy sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Huge acquisition this year though: blender! Might need to make a will!
Thank you to RUclips recommendations for recommending the third part of a three-part series. I shall go watch the other two and return!
well, that was a very rose tinted view of USA which they present outward but which isn't particularly close to reality
Yeah, if he wanted a good example of a "post scarcity" society in this sense any north European social market state would probably be a better example.
Yep... It's just a very bizarre point of view, considering that something like 30% of the US population is working very long hours and/or more than one job, while a majority of that group is still hard-pressed to afford higher education or proper healthcare.
It also elevates the US way beyond what it actually is. They do a lot of things fairly well, but post-scarcity implies a level of wide-spread wealth and safety that is really not visible for the lower-end of the society. Other nations with vastly smaller economies are way ahead in that regard.
@@prophetsspaceengineering2913 I'm not sure you quite understand, what makes the US different is the fact that wealth is very easily available because it is plentiful. That doesn't mean you have 300k in the bank, but it means that someone with 10k can buy things worth 300k with loans. Leverage like this is unprecedented in many other countries, developed or otherwise.
Screaming Person
No they understand but that’s not the point. When the maker of this video makes a statement like 8:20-8:45, when that’s simply not true.
And millions of Americans struggle to afford healthcare, need food stamps to feed their family, or have to work 2/3 jobs to not become homeless. That statement feels like a slap in the face to the millions that live below the poverty line.
Especially considering many countries with a smaller economy score way better on these aspects.
I believe it's quite accurate.
The US is very diverse and requires a certain amount of nuance when comparing it to more homogeneous societies, but generally different peoples tend to do better in the US than anywhere else in the world when taking into account demography (comparing things apples to apples per say).
For example Iranians and Indians in Norway earn about 32k usd and 40k usd on average but on the other hand their American counterparts make quite a lot more at around 100k usd each respectively, a trend repeated with almost every other demography in the US.
Generally, whomever you are and wherever you came from you would grossly benefit being alive in the US than anywhere else in the world. Even if you are from nations with perceived 'higher living standards' like Norway or Sweden, data shows that you would still grossly benefit from being in the US.
The concept you described as the rise and fall of the business cycle, with consumers taking on debt to then consume less later, is actually a phenomenon known as consumption smoothing. Consumption smoothing is the idea that people will buy more when times are good, and less when times are bad. For example, if someone is willing and able to buy a new flat screen tv, they will. But say later on, that individual falls on hard times and is no longer able to afford to buy a new tv, so instead he saves up.
The same is true if you live in near poverty and lose your job, you might take on some debt to finance your cost of living.
The rise and fall of the business cycle has to do with the macroeconomic performance of an economy, taking into account times of prosperity and recessions, as opposed to a microeconomic view of the individual, buying and consuming more or less.
The two phenomena correlate, but to say that there is a causal relationship from consumption smoothing to the business cycle is a stretch.
Overall a very educational and thought provoking video though, keep up the good work!
I really thought you would talk more about the relationship between the size of the American economy vs the level of debt it keeps accumulating as a country or citizens themselves, and mention facts about it endlessly printing money
Not enough people realize that people do make a good amount of money. It's all about managing debts and appreciable assets. Obviously there is people who simply can not afford basic things like food, diapers, necessary household goods, etc. But too many people buy iPhones, new cars, own pets, eat out, and clothes. When things that are much cheaper can achieve the same purpose for a lot less. I see a lot of people talking about living pay check to pay check in the comment section. But if people actually budget and do spreadsheets, they would see how much they waste. I'm guilty of it too. I'm a college student who is grateful my parents pay for my college education (with a hefty scholarship). I'm a full time student but I make about $850 bucks a month while spend ~710 on rent a month. Rather than buying food for dinner I usually eat out and that extra $140 goes to waste. If I was smarter I'd have a lot more money.
Unfortunately, it is pretty hard to function in places like America without a phone or laptop, or a car depending on the location. And better look still sometimes mean more than brains or skill or hard work. We kinda did it to ourselves.
In simple world “ use things and enjoy it with people you love “
In So called Modern world “ love things and use people to collect them “ 🙏
Isn't a post-scarcity civilization supposed to have health safety though?
Only the individual can secure their health. If u wanna stay healthy take care of what u eat and exercise.
Bernard Brunu scuse me my while I hold myself responsible for my genetics. The us doesn’t have health safety grow up
@Bernard. Right on, the only "Solution" to people making bad choices is taking those choices away. And I, for one, prefer freedom to security. There should be a balance between freedom and planning, and I am not for anarchy, but mostly we should err on the side of freedom.
And one more thing that people might not realize: The U.S. DOES have guaranteed heath care, it's just not very extensive. You can go into practically every emergency room in the U.S. and see a notice that critical lifesaving care is required by law and will be provided regardless of a patient's ability to pay. That is not a lot by our modern wealthy standards, but it is a far cry from even one lifetime ago. And for those about to tell a horror story of someone dying outside a private hospital emergency room: Yes, and chances are someone went to prison at the end of the story. Those laws are enforced. Hospitals are fined and leaders go to prison in the moat blatant cases. It's one reason emergency rooms are so expensive. You are paying for homeless people and young, uninsured people and foreign visitors without adequate insurance, etc. Our health system is much better than most critics will admit.
@@BrozusFilms The fact that u have a problem doesn't mean there has to be someone to blame.
Ngl this has got to be one of your best videos yet
I think it's extremely important to note that when accounting for wealth inequality, which heavily skews most statistics, Americans really aren't exceptionally rich, because the vast majority of statistics are /heavily/ skewed because of just how rich our upper classes are, as we boast the largest numbers of billionaires and millionaires in the world, and they are also the most wealthy among them. When taking this into account, the /actual/ average american citizen is quite poor, and going further, given our lack of basic rights such as healthcare, housing, etc, I would argue that most americans live very poor lives when compared to most european, and a good handful of asian countries.
A very nice, three-part series! Warmest compliments. Thank you, sir. :)
could you make a video about economy of vietnam
Incredible series. Really opened my eyes to a new perspective on my own life.
Thank you!
Last time I was this early, college debt didn't exist
Thanks for the video! The connection of post-scarcity society and to the Maslow pyramid is very interesting indeed.
1:40 Everything that Monsanto provides.
I really enjoyed this video. I am a double major in psychology and Economics so this video was totally in my wheelhouse. Fantastic job on the video as always!
@Hernando Malinche Nope when I finish my undergrad next year I will have one degree that is both a BAPsych and a BAEcon
EE: doesn’t want to pay for copyright-free music
*uses classical music because it is in the public domain*
I teach economics and I wish every American could watch this....
7:00 exactly, ee! Safety/security. It does not just mean security against stabbings, but against starvation and other ills caused by *poverty* , a possible result of debt. Your whole tangent about how great the US people have it, is made null. Watch this scenario unfold.
Part I: A man takes out an auto loan. He already has a student loan. He then makes a really dumb mistake at work, and gets fired and life-sized pictures of him are "crucified" outside of the building.
He now has no job. Because he was written up before he was fired, no unemployment for him. He desperately tries to hold onto his house, but it is inevitably foreclosed on by the bank. The sheriff (or mercenaries if you live in a state like Texas) raids the house and drags you out of the house at gunpoint
Part II
Consider this comment I have made on why ghettos exist, and you will see why debt and foreclosure is so dangerous for the debtor.
"For any EE staff, read this.
First, you deter the homeless from using public places as their home. Now they have nowhere to sleep in proximity to middle class folk and small businesses they can do work for employment. And they don't just disappear at this moment. This makes them poorer. This makes them more food insecure, as well. Now they must congregate in areas where the city has not sent them away. Now there is a higher ratio of homeless to middle class folk, which makes the average wealth, and thus the opportunity level, go down. Not to mention many leave the neighborhood, as, with the exodus of homeless folk, and the decrease in the average wealth, crime naturally goes up as the only way the homeless can afford food. This cycle rolls and rolls as more and more public places are made "only middle-class and rich allowed" (By the way, no insult to the middle class, they are not the problem, in fact they are the lifeblood of our nation). Eventually almost the entire population of the neighborhood (now slum, as no homes are occupied), is homeless. In other words, foreclosure is "Go directly to ghetto. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200". If you are foreclosed on, you will [almost, this is not Nigeria] inevitably be in the obituary a few years later as the next victim of poverty-inspired violence."
I may have slightly overstated it there, but you get the idea. The man goes to the ghetto (the only place in the community that tolerates homeless people, and the 5 to 15 years later, he is seen in the obituary.
One last comment must be made on the title of this video:
"The Land of Debt and Demand" should be replaced by this, more informative title:
"The Land of Fear, Intimidation, and Violence."
But maybe that won't appease the algorithm, I don't know.
"Riffraff like psychology" Shots fired sir!
This is likely one of the most one-sided assessments of modern economics I've come across. It's not that he's wrong per se...but what he omits is stunning.
Yes. I agree. I'm sitting here watching this gritting my teeth at it and that's exactly what I was thinking. The stuff he's saying isn't necessarily wrong, but this is not good healthy economics.
@@ZaDowlan The internet has devolved into propaganda...
Glad to know people like you exist :)
@@gamer-ff6mh To my mind this video is like an assessment of a princess married to a king. It all sounds wonderful until one finds out the king is a tyrant and the queen was faking it out of survival! But, yes, on the surface the marriage looks enchanting but in reality, it is poison...
@@andrewmarkmusic Care to elaborate a bit? Im no economics expert and frankly not familiar with the american system at all (other than hear-say).
But Im wondering at what you refer to in particular.
The episodes on this channel are presented like educational segments. Good presentation.
16:50 best joke ever
i dont think he's joking ;)
I especially like how he had referred to psychology earlier in the video, and anyone who's seen a LOT of this guy's videos knows he uses psychology for his economic analysis. It's like a 2 level joke.
Psychology is indeed a mess
As a Psychology student I agree with you, and that's why we have dozens of psychology model, some based on natural science, some based on social science, some based on philosphy and religion, and some based on statistics and numbers
@@malikfaisal416 Would you actually prefer the reverse, where one line of thinking predominates and all the rest have been pushed to the margins? Cos that's the state of modern economics (the others are collectively known as 'heterodox economics', and mostly dismissed despite coming from trained economists (so not just crackpots)). I'm not sure which situation is really better, given that people aren't quite so uniform and predictable as economics often treats them as.
One of the first principles of economics is that consumers are drive unlimited wants, but perhaps living under this consumer driven society we are taught to seek these higher needs (love, actualisation, identity, existential purpose) from goods and products - materials.
It's like with junk food we enjoyed the first time so we go back and keep eating but the utility only depletes. Imagine you were stuck on this, thinking that all you could do to please yourself would be eat junk food and so you did. You'd be discontent - insatiably discontent.
This is what we experience today, there is no escape from the marketer and advertiser telling us and associating these basic material goods with our real higher needs and they make them expensive so cause we are also taught that the more we may the more we get. So we waste our money trying to fill this hole, a need for love, a need for an identity, a need for self respect, a need for passion and real enjoyment with a car, a watch, clothes this or that because the marketer teaches us that if we wear this we will have respect.
There is nothing more inefficient about our economy today than this. That we are tricked into working 5 or 6 day weeks for products that satisfy no real need.
The Economy of GTA Online please!!!
A few things to mention here. As you mentioned, Maslow's hierarchy show's us that material goods do not get us to the higher levels of the pyramid. It might satisfy the basics, but happens when demand becomes equalized and commoditized? Uniformity in demand occurs and interest rates increase thus creating an equilibrium. Essentially, these material goods and services require a proportionate amount of resources to acquire. Secondly it's important to note that the postmodern perspective of quality of life metric for happiness is not linked to material goods and resources. There may be better accessibility to material goods and services, yet some studies show that feeling of well-being is on the decline (don't ask me which articles) I think one was pointed out on TED and some other published materials. Lastly, the flourishing of an economy does not make it morally ideal. The intertwining of the basic elements of the Pyramid to facilitate commerce is predatory. The average human being does not have the critical thinking skills or wisdom to choose wisely when expending resources. Thus, those which utilize psychology to manipulate demand for products are taking advantage of the populace.
15:48 I feel like that could be a whole video on its own.
Really, you just watched it. I think it's the central thesis of this video
This was a very impressive series. Warmest compliments. Thank you, sir. :)
The fact that most elected officials on top refuse to acknowledge any flaws that the US economy may have right now will ensure a victory for bernie in november
ToLWaM that’s exactly what I was thinking. When you don’t take care of your people. They will do something about it
If this "bernie" (I'm not from the US) is the new meme president then he may have a greater chance of winning... Well, idk how memes affect the mainstream society nowadays but if it's still like that from the past US election then it could significantly(?) boost a candidates popularity...
Gold is money. Dollars are debt
You pay almost half of your income for tax, student loan for Bachelor's degree around 120k and if u are unlucky got injured in a car accident that requires surgery, good luck on the medical bill another 100k so you are basically broke after you graduate from college
no social security if 6 percent and medicare tax is 1.9 percent and income tax is 10 percent and a another if you have a 100k student loan debt that means you were stupid because the average Americans graduate has 30k in debt but when I graduate I will have none because I was not rich by any means I was low middle class but I went to community college and then transfer to my state flagship University and I also had a part time job and internship so I you have student loans its your fault
I've said this for years, Increasingly, people working in marketing, HR, and law are about supply, dedicated to generating a corresponding demand. 25 years ago, there were NO HR departments or "professionals". Then, we got PC's, and instead of being used to benefit the populace, corporations used these to increase wealth of its officers and shareholders. Secretarial and support personnel were out in the dust, so HR was created to provide them jobs. Of course, no one's salaries, except corporate officers and shareholders, have had a REAL salary increase in 30 years!
The problem with this idea that salaries haven't increased in the last 30 years is it only looks at one side of the equation. The other side is what are the cost of goods. People's income may have not gone up but there quality of life has.
Imagine having to pay for an education
(This post was made by non-American gang)
I'm from Russia, and even we have free insurance for everyone, it's just normal (I can't imagine what is to PAY for a visit to a doctor)
And also Universities, first bachelor is free
But even after, because our Universities oriented on sth like schoolarships (every University has budget seats, that anyone can go)
For me the idea of not free hospitals, or not free education, is a complete absurd 😂
I just can't understand how it works, and why 😂
(The same with empirical system)
Lee Oswald think you mean imperial, not empirical.
Imagine having the tax rate and take-home pay of almost any non-american country. I like KEEPING the money I worked for.
@@garretteckhardt6665 laughs in *GERMAN* *50%* *TAXES*
@@garretteckhardt6665 They know america is the best
The series is great at explaining the USA from an economics point of view, which is, after all, its purpose.
The bigger picture is the view from psychotherapists, social workers, divorce attorneys, weight loss consultants, solid waste engineers, climatologists, wildlife conservationists, and debt collectors.
Economists have made a nice, cushy job for themselves by externalizing all other measurements of economic system impact on so many other aspects of quality of life on earth. Unfortunately, those externalized costs have compounded during this period of unprecedented wealth generation and the bill for these costs is starting to come due.
As that happens, there will simply not be enough real discretionary wealth with which to pay for a soft landing to a more sensible & sustainable civilizational lifestyle that will be resilient to both climate change & re-structured globalization while simultaneously deploying renewable energy & maintaining aging infrastructure. Advertising driven hyper-demand fueled by a globalized debt bubble won't continue to prop up The System forever.
Then what?
If our economy is really fueled so much by demand, then wouldn't a UBI (like what andrew yang proposed) be a good thing for the economy? If so then it means that a UBI is the next logical step of our civilization. I could be wrong though and it could instead be a heavy burden on the economy...
What do you guys think?
MechanizedMan ubi is expected to have a positive effect, however it’s more the argument of whether spending 2trillion would be worth the expected 6-12% growth over 8 years ( paraphrasing can’t remember accurately) or would 2 trillion also get a greater growth on subsidies etc, then there is the problem of raising an additional 2 trillion
It depends on hows it's implemented, America's pension( or social security) works as a scheme where today's workers pay for today's retirees, however in Norway their fund works as an investment fund, and yes I do note that they had big bucks with their oil, but still, they invested it in their people, I think most government run funds in America should follow a similar idea, social security would be killed but the new money would be under a UBI investment fund, and maybe an additional healthcare fund, this would be partisan, as it would benefit all of america without raising taxes as money going to social security would go to this new fund
Mashed Tomato I understand where you are coming from however in order for the us to have a sovereign wealth fund they would need to have a government surplus in order to accommodate, Norway does this through taxation they have a very progressive tax system which reaches 50% or higher on income tax, this is huge difference to us who opt for around 30-40%
@@mashedtomato2079 Yeah as an Amurrican I think SS is going to go broke so I'm just throwing money into a fire.
MechanizedMan Ecpnomics Explained already talked about this in a different video, where he supports the concept of UBI.
it is very clear that the engine of modern economy is consumption which must be increased constantly, but our sources are limited, this is big paradigma needed to be solved
I think you confuse western world with the developed world, Japan, South Korea, half of China have exactly the same problems as the example you used (the US) with its own peculiarities and in Guatemala and Venezuela, despite being western do not have the same structures as any other post scarcity society
Western world is a pretty vague term that isn't exactly defined by geography. When used it often includes places such as Australia/New Zealand despite them being very much 'eastern' geographically, and often excludes LatAm/Sub-Saharan Africa despite being in the 'west'.
Az4212 knowledge thirsty western means politically western (based on the British common law model or other European legal model). Japan, Aus, etc are all a part.
@@GavConnn but the west is a cultural term, Latin America is fully western, there are few regions more western than latam and China, at least half is very developed and faces the same problems despite not being close to any idea of western
@@bruhice6058 then why does these problems happen in China and Singapore and other illiberal yet rich countries?
I think "west" and "east" were more used to define ideologies and their sphere of influence during the cold war.