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Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

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Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#111

Post by mschuster91 »

KETHERCORTEX wrote: post #107
mschuster91 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm all for a country subsidizing food to ensure sufficient domestic production but I am not for pretending it's good for a "price stability" reason. Price stability itself is a valid goal. Yes, consumers may pay a liiiitle more for their eggs, milk or bread, but the price of the good can be relied upon which is very important for low-income households and their financial planning.

> Yes, consumers may pay a liiiitle more for their eggs, milk or bread > very important for low-income households and their financial planning. Paying more is beneficial for low income households, I see. That looks like expert level mental gymnastics detached from the reality.

> That looks like expert level mental gymnastics detached from the reality.

Bro, I literally used to be homeless for a while many years ago. Believe me, I know how reality looks like, and there was nothing more frustrating than finding out, whoops, you don't have the 20 fucking cents to buy the groceries you wanted because they decided to raise the price of butter over night. Price reductions are announced in ads all the time, but price hikes? You can only find that out when you are in the store but then it may be too late and you gotta reschedule what you buy at a moment's notice.

Grocery prices must be stable and not subject to arbitrary games.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#112

Post by mschuster91 »

vanattab wrote: post #95
mschuster91 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm all for a country subsidizing food to ensure sufficient domestic production but I am not for pretending it's good for a "price stability" reason. Price stability itself is a valid goal. Yes, consumers may pay a liiiitle more for their eggs, milk or bread, but the price of the good can be relied upon which is very important for low-income households and their financial planning.

you must not be buying eggs lately

I'm European, we don't hold chickens in such absurdly large farms as Americans, my eggs come from the farm next door...

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#113

Post by mschuster91 »

roenxi wrote: post #99
mschuster91 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm all for a country subsidizing food to ensure sufficient domestic production but I am not for pretending it's good for a "price stability" reason. Price stability itself is a valid goal. Yes, consumers may pay a liiiitle more for their eggs, milk or bread, but the price of the good can be relied upon which is very important for low-income households and their financial planning.

Are you absolutely sure that low prices wouldn't be more important to low income families? It seems like low prices-low income is a better match than slightly high prices-low income. My understanding of the situation was that low income shoppers are typically extremely keen for a bargain and are quite happy to shop around. And on paper they can just pretend the price is higher than it really is if stability matters t…

See my reply to another person raising a similar question. Price discounts are a good thing for consumers, but what particularly sucks is over night price hikes for basic staples.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#114

Post by maxwell »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #90
maxwell wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smoot-Hawley and the Buy American Act, which protected/enabled the Arsenal of Democracy to win the Second World War. Europe's Common Agricultural Policy. Voluntary Export Restraints. Steel and aluminum tariffs. Tech/IP restrictions from the U.S./EU on communist Chinese firms.

Smoot-Hawley was passed while America was a net exporter of industrial products and hurt American manufacturers. I don't see any way to skew it as having helped win WW2.

It decoupled us from foreign markets.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#115

Post by Animats »

lesuorac wrote: post #71
bushbaba wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or schemes similar to agriculture where the government buys excess production for price stability. Which is good for consumers and businesses alike.

To be clear, "price stability" in this case means a higher price compared to absence of government intervention. I'm all for a country subsidizing food to ensure sufficient domestic production but I am not for pretending it's good for a "price stability" reason. We are also well beyond sufficient domestic production. Our population has doubled in the past 50 years [1] while food production has tripled. We do not need…

> To be clear, "price stability" in this case means a higher price compared to absence of government intervention.

Depends on how it works. There are a few different cases.

One is for a commodity where increased supply and lower cost does not increase demand much. Rare earths are like that. The cost of the metal is a small part of the cost of the finished product. A drop in rare earth prices will not increase motor sales much. So overproduction from multiple sources will crash the price. This is why commodity prices are so volatile, despite relatively constant supply and demand. A slight imbalance in supply and demand produces huge price changes.

Here's the historical price of copper.[1] The price has varied over a 4x range in the last 15 years. 2x in the last 5 years.

Futures trading can help stabilize prices, but too much futures trading relative to the actual commodity can increase volatility.

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#116

Post by roenxi »

mschuster91 wrote: post #111
KETHERCORTEX wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, consumers may pay a liiiitle more for their eggs, milk or bread > very important for low-income households and their financial planning. Paying more is beneficial for low income households, I see. That looks like expert level mental gymnastics detached from the reality.

> That looks like expert level mental gymnastics detached from the reality. Bro, I literally used to be homeless for a while many years ago. Believe me, I know how reality looks like, and there was nothing more frustrating than finding out, whoops, you don't have the 20 fucking cents to buy the groceries you wanted because they decided to raise the price of butter over night. Price reductions are announced in ads all…

This is an argument that you felt bad. Is it an argument that you were worse off? Homeless people tend to have a huge stack of problems and how they feel isn't #1 as I understand it. And while I'd expect it to be a reasonable guide I don't trust the instincts of a homeless person to work out what is in their own best interests when those instincts are saying "systemically push the price of food up, that'll help". Frankly, it sounds like a traumatic experience and the response to the trauma would lead to bad policy.

I don't want to thoughtlessly minimise feeling bad, but between (having more food), (shelter) and (feeling good), society would be doing better to prioritise in that order when it comes to trying to help. We're talking about a situation where you have 20 cents; a 2% average reduction in the price of butter means you get around 2% more butter and associated calories. If we trade off price increases for higher average prices you'd literally just have had less butter to eat. Those differences will add up over a month, even if sometimes there is a tough shopping trip.

If the price stability thing is for poor families there are many better policies than pushing up the average price of food. Like pushing the price of food down, then finding ways to communicate what is cheapest this week. Ie, solving the "You can only find that out when you are in the store" part.

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