Hi Aemilianus,

Of course, my pleasure. I enjoy these discussions because it gives me a chance to write out to a similar crowd some of the conclusions I've come to over the years reading a lot about this to try and make informed voting decisions, and of course writing clarifies. So doing it in a respectful way on both sides is of course the lynchpin and I'm grateful for the forum.

A lot of our disagreement seems to stem from differing views on whether GDP numbers, especially the household share of national income and consumption as a % of GDP, viably (if imperfectly) capture a country's economic picture. I would argue that indicators you mentioned such as corporate profit margin, SG&A expenses, and labor and pension expenses, add up in the end to the share of income which goes to corporations/owners and workers/employees, respectively. So for me, the household share of national income (and then by extension subtract the savings rate and you have the consumption rate) is a fairly good, if rough, composite of the data you cite. But I am happy to reevaluate that, do you have any recommendations for the best analysis of the problems with using GDP, the household share of national income, etc, that I might be able to look at? I will try to find some sources as well that would bring me more around to your view. On the difference between 10% and 7% as savings, we've discussed at length and my view is dependent on the household share being a viable statistic, which if it is, a 3% difference in household savings rate explains only a small fraction of low consumption (with the household share of income being a much more important factor), but as we've noted, you feel those stats don't capture the full picture so we can leave it at looking further into those stats, I think. I've also mentioned that I haven't gotten the impression from economists that household and credit card debt are sufficiently small factors to be not as important as the overall household share, but admittedly I haven't looked into those that much so I will try to do so.

Lastly, I like Dalio and his theory of boom and bust cycles, but his belief that the dollar as a reserve currency causes US debt is basically exactly the view I've been laying out, as in conventional theory currencies should adjust so that surpluses don't exist, but since surplus countries have lots of excess money since households receive relatively less, and corporations and financial institutions get more, but have insufficient investment opportunities at home to invest all of it due to low domestic demand from households, so they recycle it into dollars. This props up the dollar "unnaturally" (it's the reserve currency of course and that's the phrase Dalio uses), preventing balancing and causing US debt as China/Germany/Japan essentially lend back their surplus money to the US so the US can consume the surplus production of those economies. This causes the debt bubbles Dalio talks about and, in my understanding, it's why he's so concerned about the dollar as reserve currency (and I've become convinced by his view). Since his book is obviously too long to cite, here is a good interview summary with him laying out some of these points: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ray-dalio-on-changing-world-order-and-rise-of-china-213141716.html

Don't know Drunkenmiller, will look into him.

Soros afaik is famous for his theory of reflexivity, I haven't seen his views on global trade imbalances as much, happy to look at them! He is very concerned by Chinese debt, and the narrative as I said that I've become convinced by attributes that rising debt in large part to the low share of household income, but I haven't seen him talk directly about the causes of that Chinese debt, just the consequences, so I'll have to look for that to get his precise views on the ideas I've been talking about.