> At some point there is simply too much capital and because of the reinvestment dynamic it's all in the hands of the people with the lowest time preference.
> everyone else whose involvement in the economy keeps shrinking
> Wars create the need for growth
This sounds very similar to a book that was recently recommended to me. [1] I've not yet read it, but I understand it makes the case that, historically, an eventually diminishing middle class is the natural state of things and wars and other disasters have been the only things to effectively reverse that trend.
I'm not necessarily so pessimistic just yet. Certainly there are other things than war we could spend money on to get the same desired macroeconomic effects, and I think there is a general understanding among (some portion of) the establishment of the economic issues at hand. And even if enough low-hanging investment fruit has been picked so that companies have trouble finding profitable investments at 0%, if enough demand is produced that will increase the number of profitable investment opportunities (factories etc) and eventually raise interest rates again (and that path probably makes more sense than interest rates that are substantially negative, do you really want "investments" that return less than the resources they cost?).
The infrastructure and families bills seem like steps in the right direction, the proposed families bill is ~1.5% of (current) GDP/yr, which while not close at all to WWII is substantial compared to most recent policies.
But even if we could navigate the post-0% environment it doesn't mean we will. I think there's a reasonable risk that political dysfunction will prevent us from addressing (potentially solvable) economic problems, leading to further dysfunction, in some sort of self-reinforcing process.
> everyone else whose involvement in the economy keeps shrinking
> Wars create the need for growth
This sounds very similar to a book that was recently recommended to me. [1] I've not yet read it, but I understand it makes the case that, historically, an eventually diminishing middle class is the natural state of things and wars and other disasters have been the only things to effectively reverse that trend.
I'm not necessarily so pessimistic just yet. Certainly there are other things than war we could spend money on to get the same desired macroeconomic effects, and I think there is a general understanding among (some portion of) the establishment of the economic issues at hand. And even if enough low-hanging investment fruit has been picked so that companies have trouble finding profitable investments at 0%, if enough demand is produced that will increase the number of profitable investment opportunities (factories etc) and eventually raise interest rates again (and that path probably makes more sense than interest rates that are substantially negative, do you really want "investments" that return less than the resources they cost?).
The infrastructure and families bills seem like steps in the right direction, the proposed families bill is ~1.5% of (current) GDP/yr, which while not close at all to WWII is substantial compared to most recent policies.
But even if we could navigate the post-0% environment it doesn't mean we will. I think there's a reasonable risk that political dysfunction will prevent us from addressing (potentially solvable) economic problems, leading to further dysfunction, in some sort of self-reinforcing process.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Great-Leveler-Inequality-Twenty-First...