At what point will we look at these numbers with skepticism? When not one worker is left who can afford their services nor one customer left who wants anything to do with their utterly shit “products” - but they still blow out the quarter with 100 billion? At what point will society recognize that this money can’t possibly represent anything actually real? Will it matter if all of us starve to death and only billionaires are left if the Microsofts of the world will still be able to post 200 billion dollar “profits”?
I’m actually curious. Because I personally think that’s increasingly what all this is. Fake as shit. Some combination of algorithms, cryptocurrency, dark pools and I dunno, the Illuminati I guess.
Business contracts and licenses are MS’s bread and butter. They don’t give a shit about individuals, they know we pirate Windows, and they don’t care. But if a business pirates Windows…
I wouldn’t say it’s fake, it’s the money other companies steal from their workers by not paying a fair wage being given to Microsoft to burn at the pyre of ai.
I mean, I don’t disagree that that’s historically what it’s been. But increasingly, it seems like record profits just keep going through the roof no matter what. And record stock market numbers. And record everything. Nothing goes down, not substantially. Negative news seems to have no (net) effect anymore.
It’s because they’re concentrating all the wealth. The wealth in the US used to be far more distributed, with the majority existing in the large middle class. Reagan started the policy by Republicans to pass laws and regulations designed to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, and then Clinton got the Democrats on board with the same strategy. We’re approaching the end game now where the middle and lower classes are nearly bled dry and the rich will start cannibalizing each other to be the last fattest rat in the garbage pile while the entire US economy collapses around them. Be on the lookout for the smarter rats to start fleeing the ship by transferring as much wealth as they can into foreign assets that will survive the collapse of America.
In theory the line should go up, population increases, technology allows us to become more efficient, inflation etc. That said what’s going down is at least the standard of living, employment, adjusted wages. Personally I’d put money on the AI bubble popping and crashing the market eventually but who knows how long that’ll take
The money is real. Perhaps you don’t work somewhere that pays to use Microsoft Enterprise services, but there are many and a lot are huge. Those companies build and/or do tangible things that others or consumers buy.
If we’re going to get into a debate about what money is and represents, you might have an argument. If we accept that we use currency to exchange for goods, services, and labor, it is real money.
The stock market is a way to publicly trade partial ownership of companies. The value of a stock is whatever people are willing to pay for it. That’s based on speculation but at least somewhat anchored in the companies’ revenues and profits/losses.
The revenues and profits/losses are real values reported quarterly. Projected revenues are just that - estimated future predictions. Of course there can be fraud, but that’s unlikely from a company as large as Microsoft.
Event DJT, which has a valuation based on nothing but speculation and political loyalties still reports that they are losing money hand over fist.
The stock market is a way to publicly trade partial ownership of companies. The value of a stock is whatever people are willing to pay for it. That’s based on speculation but at least somewhat anchored in the companies’ revenues and profits/losses.
Sometimes it is but no the stock market is often very unanchored from any real sense of value and as a result all of the money involved becomes a part of something unreal that will catastrophically collapse at a later point.
Exhibit A) See Uber, it isn’t even a business in any pure capitalist sense since it has never or almost never turned a profit.
No, the macro-economic function of the stock market is to determine the capitalist value of things, the stock market IS the hallucination at the center of the value of currencies like the US dollar.
You clearly believe in some magical power of rationality to the stock market like people believe in God, I can only debate you so far before your rhetorical defenses become purely emotional and based on feelings not facts.
The only one making irrational arguments is you. I think you have some ideological points you want to score and are therefore not looking at what is being commented or grasping the reality of financial reporting.
How do you know Uber isn’t profitable? Because Uber is reporting it is not profitable. The question that started this thread is whether Microsoft is accurately reporting its profits. It is. So is Uber.
Whether the stock prices are irrational is irrelevant to the question.
Big companies are subject to constant audits. You, too, can check their balance sheets that are released and scrutinize the numbers.
While you may personally dislike MS products, most of the world’s businesses and governments run on them. That’s licensing money every month without fail. They can literally charge whatever they want because companies with staff want Office and Windows Server backend.
At what point will we look at these numbers with skepticism? When not one worker is left who can afford their services nor one customer left who wants anything to do with their utterly shit “products” - but they still blow out the quarter with 100 billion? At what point will society recognize that this money can’t possibly represent anything actually real? Will it matter if all of us starve to death and only billionaires are left if the Microsofts of the world will still be able to post 200 billion dollar “profits”?
I’m actually curious. Because I personally think that’s increasingly what all this is. Fake as shit. Some combination of algorithms, cryptocurrency, dark pools and I dunno, the Illuminati I guess.
Business contracts and licenses are MS’s bread and butter. They don’t give a shit about individuals, they know we pirate Windows, and they don’t care. But if a business pirates Windows…
I wouldn’t say it’s fake, it’s the money other companies steal from their workers by not paying a fair wage being given to Microsoft to burn at the pyre of ai.
I mean, I don’t disagree that that’s historically what it’s been. But increasingly, it seems like record profits just keep going through the roof no matter what. And record stock market numbers. And record everything. Nothing goes down, not substantially. Negative news seems to have no (net) effect anymore.
It’s because they’re concentrating all the wealth. The wealth in the US used to be far more distributed, with the majority existing in the large middle class. Reagan started the policy by Republicans to pass laws and regulations designed to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, and then Clinton got the Democrats on board with the same strategy. We’re approaching the end game now where the middle and lower classes are nearly bled dry and the rich will start cannibalizing each other to be the last fattest rat in the garbage pile while the entire US economy collapses around them. Be on the lookout for the smarter rats to start fleeing the ship by transferring as much wealth as they can into foreign assets that will survive the collapse of America.
In theory the line should go up, population increases, technology allows us to become more efficient, inflation etc. That said what’s going down is at least the standard of living, employment, adjusted wages. Personally I’d put money on the AI bubble popping and crashing the market eventually but who knows how long that’ll take
The money is real. Perhaps you don’t work somewhere that pays to use Microsoft Enterprise services, but there are many and a lot are huge. Those companies build and/or do tangible things that others or consumers buy.
That doesn’t mean the money is real.
If we’re going to get into a debate about what money is and represents, you might have an argument. If we accept that we use currency to exchange for goods, services, and labor, it is real money.
Then what is the function of the stock market for the economy?
You are arguing for an extremely simplistic vision of money that does not exist.
The stock market is a way to publicly trade partial ownership of companies. The value of a stock is whatever people are willing to pay for it. That’s based on speculation but at least somewhat anchored in the companies’ revenues and profits/losses.
The revenues and profits/losses are real values reported quarterly. Projected revenues are just that - estimated future predictions. Of course there can be fraud, but that’s unlikely from a company as large as Microsoft.
Event DJT, which has a valuation based on nothing but speculation and political loyalties still reports that they are losing money hand over fist.
Sometimes it is but no the stock market is often very unanchored from any real sense of value and as a result all of the money involved becomes a part of something unreal that will catastrophically collapse at a later point.
Exhibit A) See Uber, it isn’t even a business in any pure capitalist sense since it has never or almost never turned a profit.
No, the macro-economic function of the stock market is to determine the capitalist value of things, the stock market IS the hallucination at the center of the value of currencies like the US dollar.
You clearly believe in some magical power of rationality to the stock market like people believe in God, I can only debate you so far before your rhetorical defenses become purely emotional and based on feelings not facts.
The only one making irrational arguments is you. I think you have some ideological points you want to score and are therefore not looking at what is being commented or grasping the reality of financial reporting.
How do you know Uber isn’t profitable? Because Uber is reporting it is not profitable. The question that started this thread is whether Microsoft is accurately reporting its profits. It is. So is Uber.
Whether the stock prices are irrational is irrelevant to the question.
Big companies are subject to constant audits. You, too, can check their balance sheets that are released and scrutinize the numbers.
While you may personally dislike MS products, most of the world’s businesses and governments run on them. That’s licensing money every month without fail. They can literally charge whatever they want because companies with staff want Office and Windows Server backend.