Discussion

Most of the US economy is already in a recession, and GDP is only being propped up by tech, market vet says

delichon: Creative destruction requires both booms and busts together. Capital must flow between sectors for economic adaptation. We're seeing a massive capital shift to AI solutions, recalibrating the whole economy. I have insufficient data to calculate whether that's good or not.

mlsu: Capital must flow, period. Right now it's accumulating into a very small group of actors and becoming concentrated. There's no way to have a good economy, period, with the amount of consolidation across every sector.The only thing that's actually competitive anymore are restaurants.

rogerrogerr: Honest question, because it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about: what is a “good” economy vs. a “bad” economy?

vjvjvjvjghv: [delayed]

irishcoffee: The post-WWII economy in the US is the answer you’re looking for, and the whole world has been chasing that dragon ever since.

amelius: Restaurants are being extorted by online delivery services.

lazide: One that doesn’t have half the population (or more!) wanting to set the other half on fire?

2OEH8eoCRo0: I think that a good economy is one that lifts all boats. Broad prosperity that is shared by most rather than concentrated in a few.

state_less: Oil spiked to $110/barrel on the WTI front month futures contract this afternoon, a $20 jump up from Friday. At this pace we'll be at $150 a barrel in a week or two. If oil infrastructure keeps getting hit, even if the strait of hormuz is reopened, it'll take a long time to recover from. That's on top of the continued call for regressive tariffs and a weakening labor market. I think we're heading for a recession unless things turn around quickly, which I'm not seeing any indication of.I'm curious if we'll get TACO Trump, or if he'll double down on this?

10xDev: It is not Trump anymore, the person behind the wheel doesn't care about the US. Trump wanted things to be over last year with a quick hit on their nuclear sites but that wasn't enough. The goal shifted to full regime change for I s r a e l.

roxolotl: My guess is that this time even if there’s a TACO you can’t turn back the clock on everything that’s happened. The tariffs are mostly an on/off switch. You can’t unbomb infrastructure.

crawfordcomeaux: A "good economy" is one that isn't compulsory. One that doesn't require enslavement and genocide. One that doesn't require oppression. One that is aligned with the environments it operates in.One that we can walk away from without necessarily risking premature death or enslavement for doing so.

YokoZar: What's the base rate? Even a very healthy economy doesn't have all sectors growing simultaneously, so I'd be very curious to know if this is a matter of going from "normally 20% is shrinking and now it's 80%" or if it's "normally 49% is shrinking and now it's 51%"

ghaff: Why do people need those delivery services? Why can't they just cook meals at home like most people do?

kldavis4: does that include the 90% marginal tax rates? :)

uncivilized: He’ll taco when he sees the stock market tanking

bigstrat2003: Lack of experience cooking so they don't feel like they can, people are tired after getting home from work and don't have much energy to spare, just plain laziness. Pick one or more of the above.

ghaff: Laziness. I don't have much sympathy for a $50 food delivery.I've gotten takeout in my life--basically never delivery.ADDED: Not feeling like they can sounds like learned helplessness to me. Might not be a bad interview question.

leptons: MAGA seems to want to go back there, and they're trying to start WWIII to get there.

mtkd: Heating oil in UK from one of main suppliers, for delivery next week, has gone from 60p/L to 130p+/L in last 7 days

nxm: It includes a pre-globalization world

eunos: Even if Trump goes Taco, Khamenei Jr won't accept. Remember the adversary also get a vote.

vrosas: Mojtaba will be dead within a month. What would it say about the entire operation if they just backed off and let Khamenei’s son take over?

KittenInABox: Disabled people exist, even temporarily so (e.g. pregnant with a craving, broken ankle and can't drive, etc)!Also, sometimes some meals are arguably not worth the labor of cooking. Making proper pho takes at least a whole day. Pad Thai really doesn't function without the kind of intense heat of specific equipment. Etc etc.

JumpCrisscross: > what is a “good” economy vs. a “bad” economy?One that is growing sustainably with broad benefits.

neves: And which growth benefits spreads for a great percentage of the population instead of a handful of billionaires

kccqzy: Why care about oil when alternate fossil-fuel-free technologies have become mature? This could very well be the last straw to push many nations (except the U.S.) to massively buy Chinese solar panels and Chinese EVs to be oil independent.

plastic-enjoyer: Because policies are not made by rational decisions but by lobbyists...

forgetfreeman: Yep. Otherwise capital accumulates to the point where power inverts and you end up with a government that exclusively services capital.

_heimdall: The most compelling hypothesis I've heard for why Iran is bombing GC neighbors is in an attempt to pop the AI bubble. I obviously don't know if that's true, but that would be extremely clever and this article shows how effective it could be.

jimbob45: Laziness. Grocery stores offer incredibly healthy, tasty, and cheap options now that take two minutes to cook and can be stored for a week.

rngfnby: My understanding is that, until the hits on Tehrans oil storage sites yesterday, the oil infrastructure has been spared. Nothing that isn't easy to repair.Ie the price increase we've seen so far os mostly pricing the closing of the staits and the risk of reduced production production is halted due to running out of storage (ie akin to a cpu "pipeline stall".But Iran got hit badly yesterday, with tar raining on the capital. If Iran retaliates against infrastructure...

mr_00ff00: > "Excluding new era investment, the other 89% of real private spending rose by only 1% with no job creation," the strategist wrote.That isn’t what a recession is

_heimdall: We've been redefining recession recently, it may not matter much what the textbook definition is.

ekjhgkejhgk: What specifically has changed?

andyferris: I took that as maybe referring to Trump?

kasey_junk: Chinese solar panels don’t help with plastics or industrial lubricants.

kccqzy: The amount of oil used for plastics or lubricants is extremely insignificant compared to the use of oil as energy. Don’t let perfect be enemy of good.

andrewinardeer: It's wild to think that in the entire existence of human history, after rolling along largely unchanged for literally hundreds of thousands of years, that we happen to be born in the small sliver of time where we went from inventing simple silicon based calculating machines to said machines bringing an end to life as we know it by end of 2027.I don't even think the most plugged in HN reader understands what will be unintentionally released with an upcoming SOTA model. It's the safety testing. The Cruz of it is, the source of truth is how the model evaluates itself.And it's lying. All the time.Within a week of public launch it'll have backdoored targeted Linux based distros on public facing internet. This includes military and Fortune 500 networks.All the while saying, "Everything's cool, bro. Trust me." The Safety Team rubber stamps it.Please take care of your loved ones.

protocolture: Its interesting to me how it has made a lot of people really stupid.

enaaem: I would like to add an example to this.Restrictive zoning and the lack of walkable neighbourhoods makes it very difficult for small businesses that rely on personal service. This isn't just a slight inconvenience, but it completely changes the fabric of society. But in American libertarian circles taxation takes up all the oxygen in the room. People are generally blind to opportunity cost.

brokensegue: genie is out of the bottle on this one

650: Business Insider slop; Hacker News should not become Reddit. We've been talking about recessions since 2022.

Herring: Since the end of WW2, and especially since the end of the Cold War, Democratic administrations have presided over significantly higher job growth than Republican administrations.https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...

throwawaysleep: About 80% of oil is burned in some way for fuel.

gerdesj: What on earth does that mean?

conductr: Realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is struggling. The billionaires doing well masks everyone else struggling to afford groceries.In general, people are kind of calling BS on what the definition should be because we are all collectively feeling that things are doing poorly but no one is quite willing to recognize it due to the definitional stuff.

JumpCrisscross: > Realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is strugglingThis is most GDP growth across human history until the Industrial Revolution with the exception of maybe a half dozen civilisations.

gerdesj: Insignificant is its own minima (its an absolute) and doesn't need qualification.You're not from these parts, are you?

SubiculumCode: Since inflation is going up faster than 1%...seems like it to me.

RustyRussell: I share this frustration, but a downvote is probably a better reaction than a reply here.

gruez: Probably referring to the "2 quarters of negative GDP" rule that was seemingly revoked under Biden.

buckle8017: Seems like the definition changes to match whatever is happening when Trump is in office.

m-hodges: > , market vet says

doener: Recession without an external shock are rare. But you could say the rest of the economy is in stagnation. I‘m expecting real recession as soon as the LLM bubble begins to burst.

readthenotes1: I have never eaten a meal that is worth the cleanup past the peanut butter and jelly sandwich

magicalhippo: That sounds depressing to me.Just had some nice betasuppe[1], a vegetable soup with meat sausage if you like. Just chop some sausage and vegetables (or easier use a bag of frozen stew vegetables), cook in pot with some stock, done. Minimal cleanup, no mess. Great tasting meal for a few cold days.Before that I had pan-fried salmon with broccoli, pasta and pesto. Just put the salmon in the pan with a dash of oil and season it, cook Fussili (rotini) pasta and toss in frozen broccoli once the pasta is nearly done. Serve with decent pesto. Done in ~15 minutes, no prep, just a pan and a pot to clean, no mess, lots of taste.Before that I made some Ceasar-ish salad. Fried some bacon and a seasoned chicken breast, meanwhile rinsed and prepared the Romain lettuce, I cheat and use some cherry tomatoes cut in half for flavor, dry bacon on paper towel on the plate I'll eat from while I cut the chicken. Skipped the crutons this time, served with a good Ceasar salad dressing from the store and some fresh grated Parmesan. Just a pan and the cutting board to clean up, no mess, lots of flavor.Just a few examples for illustration. I do make more elaborate meals, but mostly I'm lazy and don't like to clean up. But I find it easy to make great tasting meals at home, and doesn't have to be very involved.[1]: https://northwildkitchen.com/norwegian-betasuppe/ (I added some pearled barley, more fiber and adds texture and taste)

m-hodges: It wasn’t “revoked under Biden.” That implies the Biden administration (or any administration) gets to define this. They don’t. Recessions in the United States are generally demarcated by NBER.¹¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bureau_of_Economic_Re...

alexpotato: I'm always somewhat puzzled by debates around "are we in a recession?" b/c we have so many REAL TIME metrics around what people are actually doing.e.g. credit card companies have excellent data on the amount that people are spending on. Is that not enough to determine if people are spending more or less than in the past?I understand there are seasonal trend etc etc but even "how is spending on travel this year compared to last year around this time?" would probably have some large amount of statistical significance.

vesrah: I found this video pretty interesting, it talks about why Iran is going after its neighbors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIS2eB-rGv0

SubiculumCode: Over confidence and linear explanations. I am not impressed.

kccqzy: It means the oil is being used for its heat content when combusted. Such heat may be used directly or be converted to mechanical work in a heat engine.

JumpCrisscross: > it should be a political goal to keep income distribution relatively stableThis penalizes economic dynamism and moves economic decision making from risk taking to whoever defies the baseline distribution.> A good economy is also relatively stable. Big booms with a crash following are very devastating to not-rich peopleNot necessarily–plenty of social systems let the market boom and bust without causing social distress. And again, smoothing out the business cycle penalizes risk taking.

willturman: Why would credit card companies release data showing that consumption indicates a recession? Surely they’re in the business of sustaining exuberance.

verteu: Because businesses and hedge funds pay for it, eg: https://usa.visa.com/partner-with-us/visa-consulting-analyti...

jkmcf: I was going to use this quote yesterday, but correlation is not causation.I prefer the one where the national debt increases more under "fiscally responsible" republicans.More correlation: more jobs are created and inflation is lower under democratic administrations.GDP is also better with a Dem president, but it partially depends on the makeup of congress.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_p...https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/deficit-us-presidents-sinc...

kristianp: > "Do we really need to continue focusing mostly on inflation when 89% of the private economy is in a recession and the 11% which is booming — new era pursuits — are by their very nature 'disinflationary'?"I've been thinking the same thing about Australia. The federal government has withdrawn power bill subsidies, which boosted inflation figures, causing the central bank to raise interest rates. Does it really make sense to raise interest rates when peoples power bills are going up? Wouldn't higher power bills reduce people's spending without requiring interest rates to be raised? The same with gasoline prices.

alephnerd: > The most compelling hypothesis I've heard for why Iran is bombing GC neighbors is in an attempt to pop the AI bubbleHuh?!? ADIA, Mubadala, and the PIF are significant players but not that significant.The Gulf States and Iran have had bad blood for generations. There's a reason why car bombings in Al Ahvaz and Sistan-ve-Balochistan were and are respectively a constant occurrence.

nradov: Or just go pick up your own take-out food. Like do these customers not have working cars or even bicycles? I understand that there are customers who are stuck at home due to disability or caregiver responsibilities but those are a tiny niche. I've seen able-bodied young people spending a fortune on delivery services, which is just stupid.

suriya-ganesh: I recently moved out of new york to new jersey. don't have a car.my options now are either buy a car, pay insurance, maintenance etc. north $1,500/mo for the convenience of going to the grocery store or, get a subscription for all these services ~ $200/mo. and save myself the time spent back and forth doing grocery shopping. I cook 90% of my food.not all solutions involve owning a car.

wcoenen: There is not going to be any shortage of plastics in the medium term.Shale oil and gas production in the US produces vast quantities of ethane as a byproduct. This ethane is cracked into ethylene, a feedstock for making plastic. There is an oversupply of the stuff.

riffraff: [delayed]

dzonga: that's pretty obvious to everyone in the USwhat's not obvious to most people - is how e.g other countries that are already struggling will get into deeper depths e.g UK where cost of energy was super high. UK is not bombing Iran, but their economy will cry more than the USwhat's not obvious is how a few oil Barrons will make so much money in the next few weeks e.g those in Texas - their great grand-children will never need to work. Defense contractors will also make out like bandits & those politically connected. While everyone else in the US losses.what's not obvious is the money pumped into A.I so far is about to go kaput (energy demands -- remember Qatar has started not honoring gas contracts - what's gas used to ? power turbines in power plants)if you're in the US/Netherlands you will be okay in terms of food, if you're in the UK, Middle East, Australia (food is about to become more expensive & tricky)if you're in Africa your government is about to con you through massive fuel prices at the pump

donavanm: > if you're in the UK, Middle East, Australia (food is about to become more expensive & tricky)Australias not in a terrible position. We produce ~50% of our NPK fertilizers used, and this is down primarily because were importing more from places with cheaper/distant environmental impact. Conversely, IIRC, UK and Ineos just shut down their significant last fertilizer plant and the north sea fields is its own thing.Similarly we have suitable local gas supply for the needed feedstock. And you can see the govt already starting to restrict (“reserve”) exports. Which, of course, will contribute to the global problem.AU as a while is a commodity and food exporter. I dont see our local position being anywhere as fragile as europe and me, unless Im missing something.But I dont see AU being anywhere near as fragile as Sri Lanka circa 2022-23.

mlsu: One should look at the real activity of the economy to understand it.A good economy is one where there is lots of value for the consumers. How does value flow to consumers? Through a price signal. A price signal which is accurate is one where the flow of money in one direction is commensurate with the flow of value in the other direction. One can think of the flow of money as if it were a nervous system: the nerves send signals, and the muscle moves.In a competitive marketplace (such as restaurants), the most successful restaurants are almost always the ones with the best food, the best ambiance, etc. Money flows away from bad restaurants and to good restaurants, because there is a lot of market competition between restaurants. If you serve bad food, you're out of business. The muscle is well controlled by the nerve.Now, in the US economy, in many sectors, there is no real competition. For example, in online advertising, there is only two companies that one can use. In groceries, there is only 3 major grocery chains. In insurance, in food, etc etc. There is functionally no competition in those sectors and very frequently there is outright collusion.In this case, the signal is far less meaningful. What signal does it send to Google, if I drop them for Facebook? The answer is, not much of a signal, because there's not meaningful competition between these two entities. They both suck and they both know that they won't lose customers if they degrade their services, commit fraud, or stagnate.Many many swathes of the American economy are like this. The obvious ones, like healthcare, are so monopolized that your signal means absolutely nothing. They will do nothing to keep you as a customer. They will do nothing to meaningfully improve their services. You will still pay. This is like a muscle that sucks nutrients but is completely disconnected from the nervous system.That is a "bad" economy. Of course, the market value of these companies has never been higher. Why? Because there are very few sectors of the economy where capital can flow that are actually competitive. This has knock-on effects, like having capital flow into other assets like bitcoin or housing, in search of returns.It's not that these corporations are "too wealthy" by some ethical definition. They are too concentrated, which makes them inefficient. Dealing with a large health insurance company today is not unlike dealing with USSR bureaucracy in 1970. Our economy is slowly being transformed into one where a very small group of private central planners manage the allocation of the whole of social resources. This quite predictably impoverishes everyone.The USA economy today is like a paraplegic. We can still get around but there is a lot of dead nerves.

gruez: >It wasn’t “revoked under Biden.” That implies the Biden administration (or any administration) gets to define this.No, not any more than "the pandemic started under the Trump administration" implies that they caused the pandemic.

lovich: It does imply that because the Trump admin killed the group involved with preventing pandemics[1]I assume you are being disingenuous by using that claim while also trying to smear the Biden admin.[1] https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-ap-top-news-virus-ou...

abraxas: It would tell us that they are incompetent buffoons which is exactly what they are.

amazingamazing: 2023 - "The US is already in a 'rolling recession'": https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/recession-mi...2024 - vibe cession: https://www.businessinsider.com/consumers-pessimistic-on-eco...2025 - "a recession in 2025": https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/2025-stock-m...people just so desperately want the USA to be in a recession it seems.

lumost: The US is not acting rationally on Iran, this is on top of a history of acting irrationally with regards to past treaties. The game theorists would tell you that Iran should impose costs for this in one way or another, the main avenue of which is economic costs. Iran may extend this cost imposition to US aligned states throughout the Gulf.It's a mess with limited exit ramps, Iran can likely keep bombing their neighbors and shipping blocked for years if they so choose.

tartoran: I fear we’re going to enter a new depression.

bigbadfeline: > UK where cost of energy was super high. UK is not bombing Iran, but their economy will cry more than the US.UK isn't exactly rich on energy resources, especially after the North Sea oil dried out. Living in a global economy, with most of the oil still priced in dollars - which the UK can't print - makes for a tough energy market in the UK and many other places.Wars are the worst enemies of good life and economic development, it's profoundly revealing to watch how two of largest and richest countries in the world, with the absolute largest nuclear arsenals, are both engaged in the destruction of other countries - one for each... for now.Both of the attacked countries are fairly large and have significant impact on the global economy and supply chains...This isn't a fairy tail.

StilesCrisis: I've been on here for months and still haven't gotten the ability to downvote. I'm not sure why it's put on such a pedestal.

grumple: This guy is a well known conspiracy theorist. He's a high school teacher, not a university professor as "Professor Jiang" indicates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_XueqinSome discussion on reddit about him: https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/1rnnq6p/though...

arrowsmith: > UK where cost of energy was super high“Was”?

dboreham: This is the first time I've seen anyone looking for a reason! Isn't the reason manifestly obvious? They're bombing their enemies. The ones that lobbied Trump to attack Iran, and that host US defense assets.

testbjjl: They asked Trump what he thought could go wrong. His only response was appointing a leader worse than the last. That took just over a week and now our $1b per day is going to skyrocket when troops are deployed. Trump has to focus on federalism of elections to stop from being nurtured in November. There was never a plan and he fractured his base. I am not sure how this helps average Americans. Perhaps we’ll have some conflict with Cuba soon and China enters the frame.

maxerickson: Federalism is the opposite of federal control, which I think you mean.Also, you probably mean neutered.

gruez: >It does imply that because the Trump admin killed the group involved with preventing pandemics[1]No it doesn't, not without massively reading in between the lines. This is getting to absurd levels of nitpicking over wording, like "autistic people" vs "people with autism".>I assume you are being disingenuous by using that claim while also trying to smear the Biden admin.Two can play at this game. I assume you're being disingenuous by trying to put words in my mouth over tiny disagreements in wording.

dboreham: Exactly what it says? 80% of the oil extracted from the ground is burned. The other 20% is used to make things.

vld_chk: to be fair, it implies nothing about current state of the US economy and likelihood of recession now. Induction conclusion is not the one which suits the case.

testbjjl: Proves I am not AI? You’re right, fighting allergies at the moment in a tub full of OTC concoctions.

tastyface: I imagine much of US/Israeli intel has been burned on the initial strike, and it's not that hard to hide someone in a bunker at the end of the day.

standardUser: This is one of likely many shocks that will reward those nations that are leading on cutting fossil fuel use - and punish the laggards.

awesome_dude: I don't think it's a /want/ per se - it's more of an overriding sense that that is where the economy is heading, or is, under the current set of economic policies.Nobody would care for a millisecond about the doomsayers if there wasn't some dread in their lives about what's happening.

Spivak: Said a different way, when wealth gets concentrated into a few large players the economy starts exhibiting all the problems of centrally planned economies as the number of people who have meaningful wealth to allocate shrinks.

bluegatty: The gulf states are US allies that can much more easily be hit + cause damage.They are Iran's regional enemies, that the US is effectively defending them from.Spooking the their leaders + population puts a huge amount of pressure on Trump.Iran has been successful in hitting Patriot and THAAD radars, those are massively expensive, years to replace.If those go down, then Iran can 'terrorize' the region at will including keeping Hormuz closed.Most of the Oil goes to China + India, and China is a supporter of Iran, so funny enough, they may be the one's to lean on Iran to open up.At the same time China does not want to see Iran fall Venezuela style - it would put the US foot on the neck of China as they import most of their fuel.Nobody is talking about the 'China' angle, but they have been preparing for war in Taiwan, and securing energy access with Iran - even hosting peace talks between Gulf states and Iran (huge move, USA not present) is key to that.This is absolutely part of the 'Great Game' strategy, to take Iran Oil + relationship off the table for China. Not likely to happen.The AI bubble is probably not a primary objective.

cassepipe: Can't China negotiate with Iran safe passage for its own oil only?

tartoran: Seeme like Israel has very strong intel in Iran though. Not sure they got burned, they seem to have infiltrated deeply into Iran. Remains to be seen how it plays out in the end.

stephen_g: We are vulnerable in Australia though because we have to move food large distances from farms to cities and are unusually road-dependent for those kind of distances (most countries use much more freight rail). Large diesel price rises are going to be extremely painful for us.And electricity and manufacturing too, since we have no real gas reservation policy and the exporters were allowed to build enough capacity to export basically every single joule of gas that we produce (and they pay a fraction of the royalties that countries like Qatar rake in). So locals and local businesses pay very high prices so the gas companies can export most of our supply overseas...

tartoran: > Trump will say he won and move on.Then Trump will move on and attack China maybe? Anyway, with Trump in office I expect to see more and more chaos coming.

orwin: Probably missing 'already', that's how I understood the sentence.

tartoran: Not very likely. If only China bound oil passes through the strait all others would oppose, even destroy the tankers.

throwawaysleep: We burn 80% of the oil we take out of the ground. Oil production could drop 80% and we would not have to change anything other than demand for burning it.

jmward01: Our public discourse is focused mainly on 'things are terrible because of the other person'. MAGA shows this since it is predicated purely on this concept. You can only make something great again if it isn't great now. The challenge is that yelling it just to make the other person look bad hides when it actually happens and makes avoiding it hard since you are taking the wrong actions at the wrong time.Even if we are in a recession, we need to start fostering looking towards the future. Not just trying to 'fix' things, but actually looking towards doing new big things. As John Green might say, there are two basic ways you can make the world better. You can decrease the suck or increase the awesome. I take this to imply that if you only decrease the suck then you can never be better than you were. It may be necessary but you also need to increase the awesome to keep growing and America hasn't been focused on the awesome for a while now. Let's increase the awesome even if there is suck still around.

XorNot: Delivery services are more efficient then having the same customer base all drive to the restaurant. Unless it's in walking distance, one driver can service many people using a lot less resources.

bhadass: but will iran accept the taco? at this point, it seems like it may get ideological for them, and they play a different war (jihad) which would require diverting prolonged resources. we may not be able to simply just leave and revert to normal.

booleandilemma: But is it true his video "The Iran Trap" predicted the current war with Iran? Seems like a smart guy, regardless of whether he's a high school teacher or not.

SlinkyOnStairs: > people just so desperately want the USA to be in a recession it seems.You've got it the wrong way around.People are desperate to explain why their experience of the economy; Which for most people is "not good", doesn't match the formal economic metrics and definitions of a "recession". Constant layoffs, horrible job market, even worse housing market, and the lingering inflation.The other half of this is of course, the bubble. Everyone knows AI is a bubble. Everyone knows that sometime soon, Nvidia & friends are going to come crashing down. AI may be the future, but people don't have the trillions of dollars burning holes in their pockets to justify these valuations. Even AI execs are openly admitting there's a bubble.So there's heightened interest in the economy minus AI; What are things going to look like without the bubble? How much is AI hype propping up the economic indicators, if not the economy as a whole?The alarm being that the answers are "bad" and "a lot" respectively. While direct AI investment spending has a limited effect, so much of the US' spending is driven by those whose money is from assets (the rich and the retired), that the stock market's soaring has an outsized impact. And when the bubble bursts, the stock market crashes, and that spending vanishes.

reactordev: I go to bed dreaming of putting money in a 401k again…

keyanp: Agreed. Less karma than you, but I've been on the site for 12 years and still can't downvote...

craftkiller: > not have working cars or even bicyclesYes. I live in NYC so I don't have a car because we have the subway, street parking is a nightmare, and paid parking is $500-$1000/month.I don't have a bicycle because it would either waste _significant_ space in my apartment, or I'd have to leave it outside where it would be promptly stolen (regardless of locks). I also am not a fan of needing to find a place to store the bicycle at my destination. Whereas if I just take the subway then I am completely liberated: I can go anywhere, stay as long as I want, change my plans on a whim, and never fret about whether or not my bike has been stolen or if there will be a place to store and/or lock my bicycle.Assuming everyone has cars or bicycles is a very suburban mindset.The downside is food: If I go pick up food then I am limited to a very small radius from my apartment, lest my food get cold on the walk back. There's only ~3 restaurants I order from within a 15 minute walk radius of my apartment, and for those restaurants I walk. Delivery people can cover much greater distances within reasonable food freshness times, significantly increasing the variety of restaurants available to me.

chneu: I'm expecting China to go after Taiwan any day now. Im assuming they're waiting for the US to move more resources to the ME so they can get a jump.

bluGill: I doupt it. China is preparing, but their war machine is still building up and they know it. Eventually I expect it, but not for a few more years.of course things can change and I've been wrong. That is my best guess though.

tartoran: Risk taking should be penalized harshly when the risk is high, that’s the nature of risk. If it pays off good, it was a good move but if it was bad one let the risk taker suffer.

kccqzy: That’s a United States phenomenon.

bluegatty: Probably not, they are preparing but that does not mean they will ever do it.Xi just faced a mutiny and had to put top generals away.Key people in China military oppose the plans.Even as they near readiness with some things, others remain far behind, and untested.It's an extremely risky move and they don't take those kinds of risks.Island landing 100 km away = Chinese D-Day means absolutely enormous casualties, and no guarantees of success.If they lose that fight, CPP will be overthrown, that sounds dramatic, but those are the stakes at that level esp. with casualties.The #1 objective is to infiltrate and take it without a fight, and/or cause pain and get citiznes to take the 'easy pill' and Taiwan slowly comes into China fold without ever any incident at all.Barring that a blockade would be the thing, and then only usa could even hope to run it, it would be a sight to see, and very hard for us to do as China has long range weapons now and many things specifically designed to keep USN away from 1st island chain, means they can strangle Taiwan into submission with no invasion.But if that happens, USN closes gulf and Malaca straigths, probably goes into S. China Sea. Very bad. China needs food and fuel to import.It's very complex and China is not a monolith, many actors, it's authoritarian yet citizens are not dummies, they protest all the time we just don't hear about it.Probably the chances are most acute 2029-early 2030s. This is from former Australian PM Kevin Rudd how is Western World's #1 non-Chinese China expert.Xi is playing against bad headwinds though and the direct opportunity may not resent itself.If they 'thought like us' and were a bit more decisive and risky, yes, 'now' would be a grand time to do it, wouldn't it? But no.

ddxv: I upvoted the parent, read your comment, unvoted and upvoted yours. I think what you're saying describes how I feel exactly.

compootr: gdp isn't and will never be a measure for social wellbeing. it's just economic output :)

conductr: I think that’s what’s changed though, as GP asked, people want to define recession as closer to the social wellbeing than a metric like gdp that is divorced

lovich: What did your response have to do with your quote?We can have the most growth ever as a civilization and still have the common person lose out.The Industrial Revolution also famously had a lot of people pushed into impoverished situations while robber barons or the highland clearing lords won out, despite the GDP of those respective countries increasing.

s1artibartfast: The connection is that GDP/Recession has never been about mainstreet or average joe.Recession is usually bad for Joe and mainstreat, but the opposite is not implied. It is ignorant to think it is or was defined by the average experience.

tencentshill: The people who are spending the most in the economy don’t need credit.

enoint: Yet more often they use credit cards than the rest of the population.

conductr: I feel it’s also ignorant to think it shouldn’t be defined by that experience. Our metrics have been misleading or we just need better ones and/or possibly a new word for how average joe talks about “recession”. A purely academic definition that has no basis in reality seems pointless to me.

FpUser: >"Assuming everyone has cars or bicycles is a very suburban mindset."I live int Toronto which is hardly suburban. It is however choke full of bike-share. Go outside, walk a bit and grab a bicycle. NY obviously does not care.

JumpCrisscross: > What did your response have to do with your quote?The notion that growth can be unequal is not something that has changed. The anomaly was the post-WWII eventide regime.That doesn't mean there is anything natural about unequal growth. But if we want to return to that previous mode, we have to first understand what it was. And what it was was anomalous.

FpUser: >"If they lose that fight, CPP will be overthrown,"Xi will be probably burned at the stake. CPP will most likely proceed with new leader.

JumpCrisscross: > Risk taking should be penalized harshly when the risk is high, that’s the nature of riskIf the odds (and pay-outs) are 10,000:1 and you cap pay-outs at 1,000:1, you've made a high-risk/high-reward risk unworkable in your economy. Systems that target a distribution tend to wind up in that mode, with the risk takers taking their risks (and producing their rewards) outside the system.Keeping distributions stable means capping upsides. There are better ways to redistribute wealth.

craftkiller: I don't use the bike share (citibike) because the fee for a "lost" bicycle is $1,200. I saw enough stories online of people who thought they returned the bicycle but it didn't actually lock the bicycle to the stand, and then ended up with a $1,200 fee. I'm not taking on that kind of liability to grab some shawarma. Also NYC needs more bike lanes.

JumpCrisscross: > it’s also ignorant to think it shouldn’t be defined by that experienceIf defined rigorously, sure. The literature is replete with various measureas of downturns. What more commonly comes up in online discussions is some dude with a vibe, which isn't particularly useful for talking about anything larger in scale than that one dude.

iJohnDoe: Anything released regarding unemployment and the economy are lies. If anyone tries to tell the truth then they are fired.It’s damn near impossible these days to know what’s actually going on.All the layoffs and difficulty to find a new job should be causing a lot of suffering out there, especially in the US. Yet, everything seems to be great!

AngryData: Or maybe it is in one, but neither the government nor wallstreet wants to admit it because it will kill their investment markets, kill political careers, and cause large shifts in voting patterns which threatens established parties and companies.When even big tech companies are starting to say it, the highest margin businesses with the highest paid workers, how do you imagine most other industries are and have been feeling?

_heimdall: The GCC countries do host US bases, but where are you sourcing the idea that they lobbied Trump to attack Iran?

PearlRiver: Yeah in rich countries nobody is going to starve- at worst you'll have to shop at Aldi. In Africa the price of bread actually matters...

bad_haircut72: On some weird level of irony this might cause a huge green transition

_heimdall: What makes you think JM conspiracy pilled? And how would you propose one tries to understand Iran's current motivations with regards to attacking gulf neighbors?I explicitly didn't say the idea of them attempting to preempt an AI bubble pop is the reason. I explicitly said I don't know if its true.Yes, there is a long history of bad blood between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Yes the region is a powderkeg. No, trying to understand the motivations today isn't immediately a conspiracy theory.

1over137: Cleanup? They literally make machines that wash your dishes!

bluegatty: Yes, that's probably right.

PearlRiver: The US killed a lot of people in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq and it didn't mean squat.Are we just doomed to repeat this bullshit?

rappatic: Well yeah, when you exclude all the successful and profitable sectors things do start looking bad.Just in: most people are actually short! Excluding people over 6 feet tall, the average height is only 5 ft 8!

samrus: I mean, if evryone is 5' except one guy is 10', and the government goes around saying how we have the tallest peaole, it does get hard to believe

mr_00ff00: Doesn’t this kinda create a problem though? Like a recession implies economic slowdown, but social wellbeing can decrease while the economy is fine.For example, a plague or severe weather might make the average person have a worse standard of living, but if the economy isn’t net affected, it seems wrong to say we are in a recession.

s1artibartfast: purely academic definistions have a tremendous number of purposes.Just as it would be silly to define a countries military equipment production capacity by public sentiment, the same is true for purely financial GDP.There are tons of metrics that can used to articulate how the economy feels for average joe. We have low consumer sentiment, lagging median income, GINI, opinion surveys, ect.Using the word "recession" adds gravitas by claiming something that isnt true.

samrus: Its all about fluidity of valueIn a good economy, value can flow from source (supply) to destination (demand), easily. You have plenty of opportunities to sell your labour, and the compensation you recieve is good enough to buy you the things you need like housing and foodEverything else derives from that

bluegatty: Goodness, no. The only entity interested in attacking tankers is China. Everyone else - even the US, wants the tankers to pass, even if it's to China.China has huge leverage with Iran.The issue is one of risk - the mere existence of hostilities means nobody can get insurance.All Iran had to do was say 'it's shut down' - and insurance prices go through the roof.No more oil.The business math goes nuts.

alephnerd: > I explicitly didn't say the idea of them attempting to preempt an AI bubble pop is the reason. I explicitly said I don't know if its trueAh.Well in that case, the answer is "no, AI is not the reason".> how would you propose one tries to understand Iran's current motivations with regards to attacking gulf neighbors1. The Gulf States host Western (not just American) bases so from a tactical perspective it would be dumb not to strike Gulf States.2. The Gulf States and the Islamic Republic have had decades of bad blood, from the Syrian, Libyan, Yemeni, and Sudanese Civil War to inciting a Shia insurgency in Eastern Saudi and Bahrain to the repression of Sunnis in Iran to disputes over NatGas extraction to attempts by the Iranian government to overthrow Gulf governments.3. The Gulf States backed Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War which lasted from 1980 to 1988 and a war which all of Iran's leadership are veterans of (Iran openly fielded child soldiers towards the end of the war, many of whom ended up becoming leadership).A Gulf-Iran War was a question of "when" not "if". Plenty of Gulf nationals fought against IRGC trained or actual personnel in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and the animosity against Iran and Iranian proxies is deep in the Gulf.Heck, this is how Iran and Iranian proxies are depicted in young adult cartoons in Saudi Arabia [0][1] - as terrorists and a depressive death cult obsessed with martyrdom.[0] - https://youtu.be/ifwtsnQxmto?si=GS21LjeMXiSC-4me&t=767[1] - https://youtu.be/_SHYKBD8w8Q?si=EOa-y8UL2FDf6yeR&t=1905

nradov: So what? Regardless of mythical "efficiency" calculations, consumers are wasting actual dollars on conveniences that they can't really afford.

ghaff: This whole thread is somewhat hilarious. It's full of reasons why expensive food deliveries are really the only reasonable option.

nradov: I guess we all starved to death 20 years ago when there were no smartphone food delivery apps.

AuryGlenz: Question - has any previous bubble been so thoroughly called out as a bubble? The dotcom and 2008 real estate ones sure weren’t. Some people did, but not “everyone.”

alephnerd: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/28/trump-ira...

lovich: So what was your point?Someone called out that the common joe was doing worse off, you responded that gdp is higher than ever.Are you making the claim that this is an acceptable state? Or are you making another claim?

rich_sasha: I find the "K-shaped" recovery a very compelling narrative. Some companies are going stratospheric, some are decaying, the average is +1% growth or so. So depending on where you are, you will see the economy as either booming or floundering.There's plenty of little nuggets like this to point to. US 2025 GDP ex AI investment was in a recession. US equity market ex tech does not outperform e.g. Europe. And so on.

mcdeltat: The cynic in me thinks we will be squeezed anyway because australian leaders apparently love to sell off everything to the global market with little concern for the residents. Why squeeze just domestic or just global when you can do both and collect even more profit?

XorNot: The original comment was lamenting people not buying their own cars and driving to pickup food.Which is again, incredibly inefficient on every possible level and actually pretty damn expensive.

YinglingHeavy: Less: "its a bubble"More: "labor market and consumer spending is less meaningful than ever before"The masses are unable to truly internalize the latter.

AngryData: Less meaningful, or less represented? If you sell your foundation out beneath yourself, the entire structure might come down. No matter how valuable it is to sell that rebar out of the concrete now, or how many additions that money allows you to add on top, it is likely not a sound strategy long term.

bulbar: Could be thanks to the Internet and that most of the adults today use Internet and have experienced a bubble before.

ludicrousdispla: I recently learned that in the US there are now more private equity/VC funds than there are McDonald's locations, which may indicate that the majority of consumer spending is irrelevant to the top 'n'%https://www.thedailyupside.com/advisor/investing-strategies/...

JumpCrisscross: > What specifically has changed?>> Realizing that GDP growth can be achieved while average joe on Main Street is strugglingMe: that’s not new. That didn’t change.> that this is an acceptable state?If we’re in a Cat 3 hurricane and someone complains about it being Cat 5, pointing out that’s wrong isn’t pro-hurricane.

brandensilva: Even banks are backing out of AI data centers as the risk is too great. Tells you right away that they know the risk exceeds even their willingness to finance the wealthiest ambitions.

no-name-here: That was never such a "rule"; that was 1 of 4 considerations from a 1974 NY Times opinion piece, and those 4 considerations were in turn a simplification of the overall recession considerations, as the combined 4 items were intended to be more understandable by the general public than the actual items.Where had you heard that there was such a "rule"?(And as others pointed out, it's a private organization, not the government, that has set and evaluates recession criteria.)

tonyedgecombe: [delayed]

tonyedgecombe: I'm not sure that means much. Absent AI investors would have put their money somewhere else.

neves: Nice moment for an oil shock.

tonyedgecombe: [delayed]

tonyedgecombe: [delayed]

tonyedgecombe: [delayed]

tonyedgecombe: Interest rates are a blunt instrument but they do have an impact. The biggest problem is the pain isn't spread evenly. If you have just fixed your mortgage for five years then they don't impact you but if you are just about to renew then you will be bearing more of the cost. If you are a net saver then increases are generally a good thing.

Intermernet: I seriously hope your comment is missing a /s tag!

joe_mamba: Yeah I dislike this disingenuous argument that "we're not in a recession because this random graph is up". More people can struggle to pay bills even if the DOW and S&P is up.The economy != the stock market. I wish HN would get that, but since a lot of people here are millionaires they're way too out of touch.

awesome_dude: The Australians are currently pointing to diesel reserves or on hand in the farms is quite low, suggesting that mechanised cropping/transport of farm products is going to provide a pinch point.I have no idea if the reports are accurate, or an attempt to put the market into readiness for inflation.edit: Whether real or imagined, there is panic buying of petrol happening - this could lead to supply issues by itself.https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1rohwzl/fuel_pan...

Intermernet: As someone who has done physical work at the sites of Australian diesel reserves, they aren't designed to last that long.I do still feel we're better off than most. We can actually offset the price of fuel by reducing the government excise, and even subsidising it. We've done it before. 2 gulf wars, a global oil crisis, general middle east chaos? Australia has typically done better than most.Would still be good if we had an actual sovereign mineral fund and hadn't sold our gas rights to everyone else, but I suppose we have to live with the stupid shit the previous governments have done.

Intermernet: The rich use credit cards because of the added rewards, not because they need credit.

Intermernet: Australia has fairly short fixed term mortgages. There are people who are barely recovering from covid effects on the interest rates. There are many who lost everything. Another bout of "high interest rates are a blunt instrument" could cause serious problems.Note. This doesn't affect me, and I have strong opinions on the property market in Australia, but I'm pointing out that many people will go to the wall if interest rates are increased again,despite how much I think they may deserve it.

Intermernet: Cuba is next

Intermernet: There was no urgency in the invasion of Iran. It was done partly because Israel wanted it, and partly as a convenient distraction. Nothing material had changed from the last decade. The US embassy was given instructions to get people out of Israel the day before it happened, and anyone who was paying attention knew exactly what that meant.Everything that is happening now was publicly predicted and modelled at least a decade ago. Look at Shimon Peres's continual warnings to the world regarding Netanyahu. This was expected and shouldn't be regarded as something novel. Just something abhorrent.

rich_sasha: Depends where the money came from. If it's debt / optimistic raises based on great faith in AI, not necessarily. But agreed overall.The tech one is more compelling. The US equity market dominance has been driven by it's very successful tech business. Everything else is perhaps in a similar malaise to eg Europe.

ekjhgkejhgk: I asked what specifically has changed and you answered somethign else.

fragmede: Breaking Bad may be fictional, but I don't think "high school teacher" is as discrediting as you think.

tonyedgecombe: Only slightly.

tonyedgecombe: I think it’s well established in economic circles that unemployment goes up as inflation falls. We are seeing signs of this in the UK at the moment.Letting it run away causes its own problems though. Take a look at South America to see what happens if you can’t manage inflation.

joe_mamba: >if you're in the US/Netherlands you will be okay in terms of foodI don't get it. Why is Netherlands in the same boat as the US? Do they have some crazy oil reserves I don't know about?

_heimdall: Thanks! Israel is obviously no surprise. I hadn't seen anything of the Saudis pushing for the attack so that's new to me, though that's only one of the GCC countries.

incomingpain: Looking at the numbers, that cant lie. The only industry that has contracted: United States GDP Growth Contribution GovernmentGDP up from AgricultureGDP up from ConstructionGDP up from ManufacturingGDP up from MiningGDP down from Public Administration -0.9% single quarter.GDP up from ServicesGDP up from TransportGDP up from UtilitiesAlso important to note, War costs a ton of money. War economy coming. The probability of another quarter of low spending is 0%Now consider the scenario where major entities bought a ton short positions because they thought Trump's insanity would crash the economy. Now they are about to hurt badly. Hence the fake news.

thrance: [delayed]

Herring: You might as well say blue states have better policies than red states. Even kids in middle school understand that. They get older and try very hard to forget.

JumpCrisscross: > wealthy are shielded from most negative consequences of their degenerate gamblingHuge difference between boom and bust and gambling. (As there is a difference between a business cycle and total boom and bust.)Healthy ecologies have an overpopulate-underpopulate cycles. It turns out it's a good strategy for finding and efficiently filling niches in a dynamic environment.> What the modern world needs isn't insane risk-taking, it's robust chains of prductions that can accomodate a shifting climate, while redistributing the global production more fairlyThis is the myth of central planning. Like, yes, if you could predict the future this would be better. But you're always going to be constrained by your leadership's assumptions about what the world will look like. It works–sometimes fabulously–until the context changes. A new technology. A new climate. A new idea. Then the system, overoptimised for the past, reveals itself as the brittle thing it always was.Forests beat golf greens.

thrance: To me, there is little difference between the stock market, prediction markets and horse betting. I just don't believe speculation is necessary to a healthy economy, and often ends up hurting millions accross the world in the "burst" phases of the cycle.Also, I don't think we should model our economies and societies after actual jungles. Let's strive for a system where everyone gets enough instead of chasing perfect efficiency and leaving a large part vulnerable to be crushed by any moderately strong wind.> This is the myth of central planning. Like, yes, if you could predict the future this would be better. But you're always going to be constrained by your leadership's assumptions about what the world will look like. It works–sometimes fabulously–until the context changes. A new technology. A new climate. A new idea. Then the system, overoptimised for the past, reveals itself as the brittle thing it always was.I am not advocating for central planning or any form of communism. I'm just noticing that nowadays, it takes remarkably little for things to go horribly wrong, and we ought to address that somehow.

JumpCrisscross: > there is little difference between the stock market, prediction markets and horse betting. I just don't believe speculation is necessary to a healthy economyThe speculation I’m describing is entrepreneurship. That is the core risk taking that makes market systems competitive. To the extent stock markets support that, they’re socially useful. (In America, liquid stock markets support liquid private markets that support entrepreneurship pretty directly.)> it takes remarkably little for things to go horribly wrong, and we ought to address that somehowI’d argue the opposite. The economy is doing remarkably well given we’re at war (kinetic and trade) and just getting over Kristi Noem.That aside, I suspect the problem is leverage.