economics - where to begin?

I wasn't thinking of it in terms of stealth price differentiation, but it makes sense.

I assume the following:

they charge more, or they charge some sort of fee for using the service
they charge for missed payments, making the whole endeavor worthwhile

i don't think its the price discrimination thing. cause it's the same price to buy on layaway at 0 interest. its actually cheaper cause you could lend the money in the interim and make the interest. interest rates are low and no one would realistically do that for retail purchases, but still

fizzles is otm here:

the obvious benefit is that they will sell more because more people can afford it on a per month basis. even without factoring in fees it’s worth the margin hit.

the buy-now-pay-later service gets fees from the retailer directly, about 5% per sale according to this. that's where the bulk of the money comes from. the article says fees are a minority of the revenues. is it worth it for the retailer? they still get 95% from each sale. so if the price stays the same, they lose 5% on people who would've purchased anyway, and gain 95% on people who wouldn't have purchased without buy-now-pay-later. so as long as there is 1 person who was induced to buy by buy-now-pay-later for ever 20 who buy-now-pay-later'd but would've purchased anyway, it's worth it for them

retailers may be raising prices in response to this; it is a positive demand shock. i doubt by very much, but i could be wrong

1209 to 2019

The Bank of England governor says that cryptocurrency investors should be prepared to lose all their money 🤡 pic.twitter.com/OgNk143iIC

— Aleksandra Huk (@HukAleksandra) May 8, 2021

Wow can’t believe the standard of living of your average £1/year laborer has declined so much in the last 800 years

???????

That graph is 100% accurate and completely useless as a means of understanding economics, finance or money.

Yeah, a lot of crypto supporters think low inflation is a bad thing.

I haven't read the book this is reviewing, so the review may be deeply unfair, but I agree with the review's argument that much of what gets criticised in 'economics' is really just 'the right'. https://t.co/C9qi7XqrIx

— Lafargue (@Lafargue) May 20, 2022

https://www.epi.org/anti-racist-policy-research/disparities-chartbook/#laborcharts

I note that this thread on economics already existed.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/extravagances-of-neoliberalism-kunkel

Only understood it in bits, don't know if I get supply-side economics.

if i’m not mistaken, her point about supply-side economics was that there was a sort of rhetorical sleight of hand beginning in the ‘70s and ‘80s among conservative economists and the politicians who cited them. when it comes to the state’s budget, whether you increase expenditures (social programs) or reduce revenues (from taxes), the effect is functionally the same on the budget (i.e., “spending”). but social programs get cast as wasteful and “expensive,” whereas tax incentives (which disproportionately help corporations and the rich) are politically feasible from the standpoint of right-wing policymakers.

sorry, i think i spoke to soon -- that's just one of her points. i've just gotten to the part where she's delineating the difference b/w Virginia school neoliberalism and supply-side economics. will maybe report back. but overall i've really enjoyed this article, thanks for sharing

On the flip side, a world of socialized finance would cut out the middle men that currently make public investment so laborious: instead of coaxing private actors and asset managers into investment projects with tax expenditures and instead of forcing “users” to subsidize their returns into the far future, public investment projects would revert as far as possible to direct government spending sustained by a progressive tax system and an accommodative central bank. We cannot avoid the tax issue, as Modern Monetary Theory sometimes does, because we need to actually eliminate tax subsidies to private investment. This would allow us to accelerate urgent projects such as renewable energy transition that are currently failing not because they are too expensive but because they are too cheap and provide too few opportunities for private profit making and rent extraction.

!

re: her discussion of supply side, i wish she had elaborated on the "floating dollar" as it relates to global markets and how that effects US public spending and domestic economic policy more generally. it gets particularly interesting an as explanation for why the US spends extravagantly in some domains but must adhere to austerity in others.

i think this is quite a separate point from what i had understood "supply side" to mean, i.e. a technique or theory within neoliberalism that seeks to achieve a certain kind of austerity through tax cuts and "promoting the free market"

Yeah it furthered my understanding of neolib somewhat where there is cash for defence spend but not, say, education. I focused on the political outcomes, so got something out of it.

re: her discussion of supply side, i wish she had elaborated on the "floating dollar" as it relates to global markets

i think this is quite a separate point from what i had understood "supply side" to mean, i.e. a technique or theory within neoliberalism that seeks to achieve a certain kind of austerity through tax cuts and "promoting the free market"

The other day I attended a city hearing where the other item on the agenda had to do with affordable housing and the government people were basically saying that tax credits were essential to the developers doing the building of the housing…