The fraying of the U.S. global currency reserve system

> 40 people coming from Mexico is highly unlikely to lead to 230,000 US cases/day.

Contagions have exponential growth. 40 people coming from Mexico after you've lifted the lockdowns means you need to continue them to keep the 40 from turning into a thousand and then hundreds of thousands. Which means lockdowns of the severity Australia used are useless here because you can never get below the floor necessary to lift them again.

> The contention isn't that overall funding was cut, it's that certain groups within the CDC saw significant cuts, and those cuts reduced readiness.

The problem with this kind of claim is that it's always the case. Priorities shift, staff gets reassigned etc. Which means that of the 1000 different units, 700 of which grew and 300 of which shrank, you'll be able to find in the list that shrank something that sounds like it might have helped against a given problem. It's just cherry picking.

> Regardless of whether Trump's missteps were politicized, they were still missteps. Doubling down on something after someone calls you out doesn't make them responsible for your actions.

The point is that they weren't missteps. Calling out someone for not actually doing something wrong in order to stir up controversy and ratings and politicize a public health issue is contemptible. Defending yourself against a baseless personal attack is not.

The problem, which CNN should have been able to predict, is that if you politicize an issue, people take sides, even if there was never any reasoned disagreement to be had. But maybe they did predict it and did it anyway, so that when less savvy political opponents predictably started making less supportable claims, it would give the instigators something to shoot down and mount on their wall. Even if people died.

If legislation came against it, it would have it's value damaged. No one seems to use it for actual transactions. It uses enormous amounts of electricity.

I wish prices were directly proportional to value of currency. But it isn't.

In the oil price example, drop in value of USD could cause prices of oil to increase (by how much? We don't know. There are entire commodities industries who hire quants to figure this out every day).

Assuming price of oil increases by 10%, price of chicken feed would increase by a%, causing an increase in price of chicken by b%, causing an increase in price of shipping chicken from farm to factory by 10%+a%+b%, the factory whose workers need higher wages now (by a total of c%) because of higher cost of living, factory will now have to sell their chicken for 10%+a%+b%+c% to a shipper who will need to pay another 10% who will pass this cost on to McDonalds who will have to pay 10+a+b+c+10 to get a chicken patty.

The dollar menu suddenly become a $5 menu.

As contrived as this example may sound, this is the reality in many "emerging" markets and smaller developed markets. We are so oblivious to real inflation and price fluctuations simply because we are used to getting stuff for cheap from whereever it is available because we can import any time. No shortages for any industry or any consumers here.

While I agree that having healthy domestic manufacturing is good, we need to be careful what we wish for because losing the reserve currency status is the last option of them all. It's truly devastating and you only need ask United Kingdom and how they lived for decades with rationing in order to pay debts and earn foreign reserves.

> How does this harm a working class American that derives all of their income from working wages as opposed to assets?

Their wage-dollars will now buy less stuff.

> Cite and example where a country did not default/print money for their debt payments and inflation went to 30%

The US has the world reserve fiat currency, so there are no examples because a fiat reserve currency has never existed before, but we know hyperinflation is a likely outcome. Now, from the experience we do have, ~30% inflation like in the 70s is the best we can hope for. A zombie economy like japan's would frankly be fantastic given the conditions.

>How does this harm a working class American that derives all of their income from working wages as opposed to assets?

Their wage-dollars will now buy less stuff.

> Lastly, address how any of the above prevents an increase in manufacturing jobs, which was the intent of the measures originally listed.

Don't worry, americans will have plenty of $1/hour manufacturing jobs like asians do now (or the nominal equivalente to $1 in a hyper-inflationary world). The US doesn't have the technical capacity or workforce to compete in high paying manufacturing any more and will take decades of pain to build.

Actually, all you have to do to dodge inflation is dump your idle currency into literally anything else. Rich people hang in the circles where these plans are made so you'll never take them by surprise. (It'd be interesting to look at Cyprus' banking records and see who would have been impacted had the haircut happened suddenly, two months earlier.)

So inflation is irrelevant for the little guy, and easily dodged by the rich, leaving the middle-class to get shafted.