Ask HN: Are We in a Bubble?
&gt; yet we are in the middle of pandemic, millions get sick every day, inflation 30yr high<p>&gt; is the economy is broken? should we be expecting a crash&#x2F;crisis soon?<p>The question assumes that the real conditions on the ground are going to change the values we assign to stuff, but what if those are no longer meaningfully coupled?<p>Ford sold about 20% fewer vehicles at the end of 2021 than at the end of 2019, but its stock price is 2.5x what it was then. Ford is producing less actually useful stuff, but we pretend it&#x27;s more valuable.<p>What if the economy is &quot;broken&quot; but not in a way which produces a &quot;crash&quot;?
Prices are higher now, but many companies have improved margins; they&#x27;re raising prices faster than their costs are increasing. Money is moving faster from the population at large to companies&#x2F;investors. If the rich can keep getting richer by siphoning more out of everyone else, and the rich are the ones that own stock, real estate, invest in startups etc, then a lot of metrics can show those assets as increasing in value even if the median person&#x27;s income or wealth are declining in real terms.<p>If the economies experienced by the rich and everyone else are decoupling, then I think the question is less &quot;are we in a bubble&quot; and more &quot;will we enact reforms to decrease wealth and income inequality?&quot; and at least in the US given structural political issues, I think the answer is &quot;No.&quot;