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US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

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Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I've cut back on fast food because both product and service quality have declined dramatically, likely due to staffing shortages. Long wait times, cold food, and incorrect orders have pushed me to the point of staying away. It's a weird time, and it's hard to untangle all these additional factors. That said, I'm sure higher prices are having an impact as well.

Fast food is pricing itself out of the market. I think it's a great example of a sector that failed to innovate and is now incapable of providing a product worth buying at prices that are profitable. McDonalds et al. probably should've been investing a lot more in automating their kitchens. The fact that a huge percent of locations -- and all drive-thrus -- still use humans for the ordering process is, similarly, ine…

If McDonalds can't afford to pay a living wage at the local cost of living, nobody will immigrate to work for them.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#422
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ownership" is morphing into paying rent. all property is becoming more like "intellectual property" with both time components and a public interest.

Ownership of products (especially software) is turning into a license that allows you to use the product as long as the manufacturer allows it (i.e., under certain conditions which of course are revocable or amendable at the corporation's whims). I'm pretty sure that if they could get away with it (today), some companies would love to sell you a license to breathe the air inside their buildings. On account, of course…

it's called oxygen as a service (oaas) and if you've seen total recall you'll know bezos and musk are working towards it.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#423
post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the other side claims you can control them to score points when they go up, why would you not point out when they go down?

Integrity?

It's not lacking in integrity to point out your opponent's criticism is no longer valid, even if - especially when - that criticism was made in bad faith.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

There are many people, including me, that are happy with Trump's Supreme Court nominees. As originalists and textualists they are more likely to do their job of keeping the other branches of government to the bounds of the their Constitutional power. Biden's nominee also claims to be an originalist and a textualist. So, I really don't see the point of your complaint. Unless your complaint is that 3 judges were nomina…

We'll see when a fourth amendment case comes across their docket how true they are to the constitution and limiting government. I'm not holding my breath.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a lot longer explanation but deleted it. Suffice it to say other systems are good enough that functionally no-one wishes they had the US system instead, and it'd sure be weird if every single other OECD state had been relying on price controls this long if they weren't having some beneficial effect. My short-version argument would be—and I'm a little annoyed at having to explain this, because I've been explai…

I am asking you to define "good effect" precisely because it seems to be subject to the kind of cherry picking you don't like. I'm a median to upper-middle American, and I get great value from my healthcare. It's not obvious to me that a system that raises the experience for mean, or even the bottom end, of the distribution would be a good thing for me in many respects: emergency wait time, access to top percentile s…

> It's not obvious to me that a system that raises the experience for mean, or even the bottom end, of the distribution would be a good thing for me in many respects

Ah—I usually assume the Rawlsian "Veil of Ignorance" POV when it comes public policy issues, personally, as I think is fairly common. Sure, if that's your perspective, literally nothing matters except how a policy affects you, personally, right now, so my analysis may not hold—but that's not an especially useful perspective from which to consider public policy when discussing it with strangers, and I'm not really sure why you'd even engage on this in public if the only thing you care about is whether a policy is good for you, right this second (circumstances are subject to change, after all)

At least you're up-front about it, rather than hiding it. I don't mind that when it's made explicit—I just also, again, don't get why you'd engage, and wonder whether you might have guessed in advance the sort of more-typical POV I was taking, so really could have understood what I meant by "good effect" without my needing to explain it. What were you trying to accomplish here?

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody pretended to be bothered by it How often do you get to a successful resolution of a dispute when you start from the position that one side's concerns are made up (pretended, imagined, etc)? > There hasn't been any notable effort to discredit flu vaccines because they don't offer permanent, or even particularly reliable immunity in the many years that they have existed. These are the reasons that I never opte…

> How often do you get to a successful resolution of a dispute when you start from the position that one side's concerns are made up (pretended, imagined, etc)? There are times when one side's concerns are nonsense. Brainwashed Russians believing Ukraine is overrun by Nazis. People who believe that the 2020 election was stolen. I choose not to gaslight myself into entertaining that nonsense and entertaining the notio…

> There are times when one side's concerns are nonsense

I envy your confidence. I also hope I never find myself under your authority.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#427

I personally think we're in recession and the reason is datapoints outside of this GDP print, what companies are saying, and the fact I know people that have been laid off already. What I find pathetic is that saying we are in a recession is now a political stance. I think we all know that if a Republican were President the entire narrative would shift, with most of the press saying we're in recession while Fox, etc…

That's why it is important to have some verifiable agreed upon definitions. "Two quarters of negative growth" is something that anybody can understand and validate. Too simplistic? OK, make it more complex formula, whatever - but make it a formula, and make it fixed, so people can be sure neither Rs nor Ds can game it (at least not easily).

Instead what we're getting is "holistic criteria" which means pundits can argue on TV for hours (which they probably love to) and everybody gets to keep their partisan views and there's no objective meaning to any terms anymore. No wonder people have low confidence in "experts" and grasp at whatever they find on the internet to find some clarity.

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#428
post #43

> Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.9 percent in the second quarter of 2022 (table 1), according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 1.6 percent. That makes two back-to-back quarters of real GDP contraction. To some, this is a recession, but it's the NBER that puts the stamp on it. AFAIK, NBER has never failed…

> inversion of the eurodollar futures curve

Can anyone enlighten us non-specialists as to how that particular contract works?

Re: US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

What? Biden and other world government officials placed massive sanctions on Russia exports of oil. They seized hundreds of billions of dollars of their deposits at the federal reserve. Forget about the fact that his administration had already been driving up the price of fuel, this had a huge effect on the futures prices, driving them up to where they are now. Their actions do have effects and sometimes a corrupt gr…

> a situation where Russia is likely going to end up controlling all of Ukraine

Not gonna happen. They might keep what they grabbed, especially if the West is going to continue dragging their feet and giving Ukrainians aid at the current "attrition war" rates, but they are at the peak of what they could achieve, at least at this round. The question now is - would they be able to keep it, not whether they can grab more.

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