Friday, September 30, 2022

The Exponential Path to Dystopia

The following chart shows the natural log of the dividends to wages ratio. When using natural logs, constant exponential growth is seen as a straight line. I have added two trend lines in red (one for the peaks and one for the troughs).


The two trend lines can be traced back to where they meet. The year was roughly 1971. Doubt it's a coincidence. I'm tempted to say that falling off of the gold standard is when the illusion of long-term prosperity truly began. Kind of makes me feel like a prosperity chart archeologist.

As disturbing as that is, I'm not done yet. Note that:

1. Bad things often happen when we move towards the troughs.
2. We've been moving towards a trough lately.
3. Very bad things have been happening lately.
4. Should we ultimately reach the next trough, there's still a very long way to go.

6 comments:

Who Struck John said...

Dividends have a long way to fall, which means stock markets have a long way to fall.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Stock market crushed. Bond market crushed. High inflation. Mortgage rates very high. Home prices very high. Unemployment rate projected to rise. Fed raising rates until something breaks, again. There’s certainly great potential for a Greater Recession.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=UkUs

Who Struck John said...

Welcome back to 1979.

Stagflationary Mark said...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xZzEzDkeHzI&feature=share&si=EMSIkaIECMiOmarE6JChQQ

Who Struck John said...

Carter made his "bad luck" overseas. Biden makes his "bad luck" at home.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Who Struck John,

And I made my bad luck by taking 2 weeks to approve your comment. Sorry about that!