I don't see any taking off actually

I think they meant the stock market more generally? S&P 500 is up what, like 4x in the last 10 years?

If I would drink 4x more beer that would concerning, but the number going up 4x should make things better how exactly?

This was said in the context of a person predicting a stock market bust, so of course a stock market index price is the relevant number here.

Yeah, fair. I still can't shake off the nagging feeling most of it being a scam somehow and not the business as usual scam. The gut feeling that things proclaimed and observed don't add up.

That's just inflation, which is primarily controlled by the government via the money supply. It doesn't mean anything. What does mean something is the severe deflation in wages and consumer goods - why is all the money printing remaining in the rich person's realm instead of trickling down?

Peasants aren't picking up enough shit after the rich to distill traces of gold from it, that's why

Inflation is not up 4x in the last 10 years...

Depends what you measure. I already said it hasn't been affecting wages or consumer goods and that's weird.

Very, very few things even in isolation have inflated 4x in the last 10 years.

But as for this

> why is all the money printing remaining in the rich person's realm instead of trickling down?

Always has been, it's kinda one of the defining features of capitalism

> Very, very few things even in isolation have inflated 4x in the last 10 years.

The assets in the S&P 500 have, that's what was brought up.

Right, but that's a separate thing from inflation, so I don't think you can describe it as "that's just inflation".

Prices going higher is the definition of inflation.

Prices of stocks going higher is not the definition of inflation, no.

I think in a way we have seen a take off, by detaching the hype bubble from success metrics. Companies making products being bought by companies making products, that are hyped by machines, bought bymachines and evaluated for viability by machines. If economy is to hack the API of VC this has taken off! For now.

As a bear that's been very confused by markets failing to exhibit mean reversion in 2019 and 2022, and now with the Hormuz energy crisis, I've thought a lot about this. There's a lot of new things happening. Fed/QE intervention that has never stopped, just been more well disguised. Fiscal/government spend intervention. I think Mike Green's work on the rise of passive investing is really good, in particular explaining how it prevents mean reversion in absence of changing net cash flows into passive instruments. Passive will also induce or worsen the bust if net cash ever starts to flow out passive. Green's youtube interviews are great.

All to say, your SO's dad would have been right at any point prior to the current financial cycle. Knowing what's changed doesn't make forecasting easier though.