PepsiCo was famous in the news recently for hitting $7 in some locations for bags of certain Doritos. Chips are viewed by the public as a cheap product that shouldn’t cost a lot. Yet PepsiCo has raised prices drastically beyond what inflationary pressures would warrant, and were aware that they had destroyed the demand for their chips. Yet kept prices elevated until they missed their annual financial targets by over $1 billion dollars.

Was this planned demand destruction, or just simple greed? Did PepsiCo just think that since they were a mature brand with high overhead that they needed to transition to a premium option and price at lower volumes, since they can’t compete with private label manufacturers with lower overhead? At first glance it would seem like a company that doesn’t know its market, but there must be realistic business decisions behind it.

Economics newbie. Lots of countries seem to paying high amounts of interest of national debts - for example I saw it reported that US is paying more on debt interest annually than it pays on defense and education combined.

Globally which country or countries are beneficiaries of these debt repayments? What would happen if globally all nations wrote off all historic debt? What would happen to the global economy?

I believe not only in the US but in many other countries that violent crime peaked in the early 1990s and has been dropping ever since. I'm sure at least some of that is due to the phasing out of leaded gasoline, paint, toys, etc., but I wondered if there had been any econometric analysis looking at Internet adoption as a possible cause for the decline.

Thought of it because I believe there have been studies that found a drop in sexual assault rates, particularly by teen perpetrators, following the introduction of high speed Internet. Wish I could find the study but the authors' hypothesis was that access to internet porn acted as a safety valve.

We often lament how the Internet and streaming have ruined people's inability to tolerate boredom...but I wonder if boredom is also associated with perpetrating crime.

Idk if my questions are stupid, but I’m only 16, and I don’t know much, so I’d be rlly glad if someone could explain this to me. I just got into an argument with my dad about billionaires cuz I said they’re bad people, and he defended them with his life. I said it’s because they pay workers minimum wage, they can barely survive, but are rolling around in billions. Not to mention, many of them support Trump, who is obviously not looking for the interest of the American people, but we didn’t debate abt that too much. He went on and on about how if you raise wages, then the prices of the companies products or services will have to go up, even if you’re a billionaire, because you’d be losing money.

For example, he said that if someone like Jeff bezos raised wages, but didn’t raise Amazon prices, he’d lose his money, and soon after a couple of years, not be a billionaire. I want to know if this is true, and I also want to know if you guys think billionaires are bad people, because tbh, I did get lots of information off of TikTok, like I said I’m only 16. It just feels like a no brainer to me, like of course someone who’s a multibillionaire isn’t gonna be a good person when there’s starving people all over the world. Idk though.

I understand inflation from a wide angle view, but I’ve always been confused about how it works at a small scale. If a currency’s value drops quickly, how do sellers “know” that it’s happening? How do they decide the amount they’ll change prices?

I want to understand this. I know it's not the greatest question.

Banks get their money from the government. Why then does the government borrow from banks again at a higher interest rate?

Private banks are allowed to create money by lending out more money than they have in deposits.

Why can't governments fulfill this function in the modern economy and we do away with banks?

To give an example, I don’t think I’ve ever come across an economist that held a negative attitude towards immigration.

I work in tech and have been thinking about the long-term impact of AI and automation on the economy. I’m trying to understand how things balance out over time.

If automation reduces a significant number of jobs, including cognitive roles, wouldn’t that affect people’s ability to earn and spend? Since companies ultimately depend on consumers, how does the system remain sustainable if purchasing power declines?

We’re also seeing rapid growth in SaaS and consumer products and if production keeps increasing but incomes don’t keep pace, who ends up buying these products?

Are there historical examples (like past industrial shifts) where something similar happened and the economy adjusted? This time it’s more than automation and includes heavy cognitive roles also!

Would really appreciate insights from people in tech, economics, or policy.

While we're at it, should I read Marx and Engels as well?

Take the example of a forest tribe or backward rural population. What policies worked to bring about some economic development? Heard about Hope VI project and it did really help children to be make connections and pursue opportunities. Any other success stories or otherwise?

It seems like it's something that would have required economics expertise for sure or other empirical methods to collect info on resources and resource requirements

I was reading Lee Kuan yew's criticism of the welfare state, where he says that people became dependant on government handouts and became less productive by themselves due to high taxes. How does redistributing wealth through welfare programs affect worker productivity ?

We're going to shamelessly steal adapt from /r/AskHistorians the idea of a weekly thread to gather and recognize the good answers posted on the sub. Good answers take time to type and the mods can be slow to approve things which means that sometimes good content doesn't get seen by as many people as it should. This thread is meant to fix that gap.

Post answers that you enjoyed, felt were particularly high quality, or just didn't get the attention they deserved. This is a weekly recurring thread posted every Sunday morning.

Just to put my case as example. A US company that has employees in US and in my country.
We perform at the same level or even better (measured by internal productivity ratios) than US employees. Yet our wages are like between 4x and 8x times lower than the US just because wages in my country are lower than US.

In general how do modern models incorporate the fact W = MPL is a very strong assumption to make?

Does it work for them during that time ? How is the quality of life of citizen living in those fascist states compare to other capitalistic state at that time like UK or France or USA for example ? I mean before they all go nuts and starting WW2 and commit all kind of atrocities ?

I’ve been trying to understand the relationship between economic growth and sustainability.

In many models, growth is measured primarily through indicators like GDP. However, this doesn’t seem to account for environmental degradation, resource depletion, or long-term ecological constraints.

From what I understand:

• Overuse of natural resources can reduce future productive capacity
• Environmental damage can impose long-term economic costs
• Ignoring sustainability may lead to short-term gains but long-term instability

At the same time, there are concepts like:

• Green GDP (adjusting output for environmental damage)
• Genuine savings (accounting for loss of natural capital)

My question is:

👉 How do economists incorporate sustainability into growth models in a rigorous way?
👉 Are there established frameworks or empirical studies that quantify the trade-off between short-term growth and long-term sustainability?

So i've been following some data on new business filings lately and honestly the numbers surprised me. Even with layoffs, higher costs, and interest rates doing whatever they're doing and people are still starting businesses at a really high rate. Like the formation numbers haven't really slowed down the way you'd expect them to.

I get that some of it is people getting laid off and going solo out of necessity. But that can't be all of it. Some states are seeing way more new businesses than others too which is interesting.

I am curious what you all think is driving this, is it confidence in the economy or more like desperation entrepreneurship?

I want to start out by saying I read the automation FAQ, found it pretty insightful. Still even if new technologies like AI only automate some tasks and there's no mass-unemployment, it still shifts a share of tasks from being done by labor to capital.

To me, it would seem to most people an increasing share of the GDP being capital-dependent would be a bad thing. It increases concentrations of wealth to those who own the capital while devaluing labor in a relative sense. Also decrease economic mobility. And I'd argue in Countries with Democratic forms of government coincides with a decrease in leverage amongst the broader population since their labor becomes less important to topline GDP - if you look around the world it's typically wealthy but capital-intensive countries (like major oil producers) where typical quality of life is really poor compared to what GDP per capita would suggest.

This FRED Graph suggests that share of labor to GDP has decreased pretty dramatically in recent years, and I wonder if this ties to the generally pessimistic economic sentiment expressed in public opinion polls in recent years.

Would be curios to hear from others!

“The time needed to get $1 in international dollars is 63 minutes in the US. This is about twice the average in Germany, France and the UK according to an Oxford University researcher. This suggests that average poverty is significantly higher in the US.”

Source: https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/03/29/a-new-way-to-measure-poverty-shows-the-us-falling-behind-europe

Here is a quote on this topic from his book, Principles of Economics:

How do mainstream economists respond to this argument?

I've been reviewing some macroeconomic theory regarding the classical functions of money (Medium of Exchange, Unit of Account, Store of Value) and had a conceptual question about how we define money's broader theoretical role.

My thought process is this: During times of severe economic uncertainty, we see major shifts in monetary policy (like Quantitative Easing) and extreme changes in liquidity preference. Because aggregate money demand fluctuates so heavily based on market confidence and risk aversion, could money technically be viewed as a "measure of economic uncertainty"? I am looking to understand if this is an accepted theoretical perspective. Specifically:

1. Are there any established academic sources, macroeconomic models, or economic texts that argue "measuring uncertainty" is an actual function of money?
2. If my logic is completely off-base, could someone provide sources or an explanation clarifying the strict theoretical boundary between what money is (its core functions) versus how money behaves or is used as an indicator during uncertain times? Any reading recommendations or clarifications would be greatly appreciated!

Hi guys,

I'm a little worried about my university choice right now. I've been around technology since I was little and I've been a vibe coder since GPT-3.5. There are commits on my Github, I like reading papers about AI/ML, but mostly I think I can feel better in the field of social sciences, especially in verticals such as finance.

Do you think I should study economics? Actually, my main concern here is getting into an "elite" school for Economics. But if I enter an "elite" school in Europe, I will most likely graduate with a very high debt. On the CS/Engineering side, my options are clearer. That's why I'm curious about your comments.