This sounds like a sort of Malthusian trap like argument. The economy is de-materializing while continuing to grow so I don’t think this paradox is a stable truth.
housing is a market so low vacancy == price increases. That's the actual story. This is the case in markets more generally (eg, wage increases tend to be higher when unemployment is low).
Yea, exactly. Housing price increases and low vacancy rates "should" be correlated (eg, not enough supply in the market) and in fact are, which the original article's argument completely ignores and instead implies that the right vacancy rate is 0. If those circumstances ever happen, good luck finding a place to live.
This author made a small amount of fame a few years back (2012) claiming the dx format is dead. He was obviously wrong about that. He’s wrong about this, too.
I'd suggest 90-100% creating software; 0-10% algorithms. The percentage on algorithms should be directly applicable to what you're working on. In practice, algorithmic knowledge primarily helps when dealing with performance issues or complex architectural decisions.
I wouldn't suggest totally ignoring algorithms, but it's at best secondary. Being proficient at solving performance problems or architectural issues are very valuable skills in the marketplace. That said, even those are mostly practical and about pattern recognition (which you get from writing software).
The issue is that distributional losses historically have been significantly underestimated in terms of scale and persistence or glossed over as insignificant. Economists traditionally have held that workers who lose their jobs to free trade, while losing their job in the short term, find a new job elsewhere and ultimately are better off. This is turning out to not be the case, some workers persistently remain worse off.
While no economist is yet advocating tariffs, except perhaps Peter Navarro (who's not taken that seriously), the attitude among economists that free trade is unequivocally a good thing is starting to change. There is traction for the work of David Autor where he argues that the effects of trade are unevenly distributed and thus some people do not benefit from free trade. The policy ramifications of this gaining traction could wind up with economists favoring tariffs in some cases.
The grocer example isn't really applicable. We both use the same currency so the grocer can use the local currency I pay for groceries to buy goods elsewhere or pay their employees. With foreign trade you have different currencies and a current account, the trade equation isn't as straightforward. An accurate analogy would be buying groceries via a barter system where I'd exchange good or services for groceries or a promise for future goods or services (eg, "luke-bucks") in exchange for groceries.
> There will always be demand for interest bearing risk free government debt.
This is really naive. Question is always at what price? I could argue there is always a demand for the common stock of a company in bankruptcy, just at a really poor price :-). More pertinent, Late 70s US bond market saw a huge decline in the value of government bonds... Though they were never defaulted upon, holding them was not exactly risk free. Fluctuations in price of "risk free" govt bonds can bankrupt traders/investors, eg, LTCM.
> higher interest rates lead to higher net income to the private sector which is a bit inflationary.
There a paper for this? low interest rates tend to be associated with poor economic conditions, in the extreme liquidity trap or secular stagnation, so this conclusion makes sense though the causal effect is the opposite of what is suggested by your comment... As an example, interest rates (ex fed funds) were really low during the great depression!
Foreign demand for USD does in effect lower US govt borrowing costs given our situation of having a fairly large trade deficit as well. Petroleum is one example of foreign USD demand (china buys oil with USD, for example), as are central bank reserve holdings, real estate transactions in Argentina, and I'm sure there are other examples as well. These foreign demands for USD in effect lower our borrowing cost as it prevents the USD from being dumped, eg, prevent a devaluation of the USD by foreign holders of USD, which allows us to keep interest rates low and thus finance a large deficit cheaply (so the govt keeps doing it).
There's a saying "90% of life just showing up". Being consistent is more important than anything else, so the only suggestion I can give is to find something you actually do consistently, even if it's as low intensity as walking. Over time the reward / misery ratio, even as you workout, should get better.
Of course luck and any inherited privilege matter a ton when considering all factors.
I'm thinking of trajectory, some people keep on advancing in their careers, others get stuck or spin their wheels. Over time this difference adds up, though, as you say, it is not completely fair to the those who never got a shot in the first place because of circumstances.
re: "tough, persistent, high-character, talented people are poor & suffering"
This is covered in the article about how the educational system is failing the poor and points it back to an overemphasis on cognitive ability / IQ smarts.
ex: "Even if we refuse to prevent poverty or provide superb early education, we might consider one other means of addressing the average person’s plight. Some of the money pouring into educational reform might be diverted to creating more top-notch vocational-education programs"