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Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

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Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#281

Post by righthand »

monero-xmr wrote: post #194
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would note that the data the New York Times cited are seasonally adjusted [1]. The assumptions of those adjustment models may not currently apply. It’s going to be difficult to suss out a signal from employment data until October or November, by when we should have about half a year of post-tariff data [2] to compare with ‘24. (We may not know anything surely for a year.) [1] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/omb/downloads/…

[flagged]

Mamdani advocating that the state gov tax millionaires 2% more is not the same as having the power to tax millionaires. You should look up what a mayor actually does (hint: balance budgets with city council and strike new initiatives and work with the police department).

2% is hardly worth fleeing.

And Mamdani hasn’t even been elected yet.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#282

Post by thunderfork »

trebligdivad wrote: post #202
denismi wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This pre-election BBC summary - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy343z53l1o - pretty clearly spells out what has eventuated, describing it as a "central campaign pledge": > Trump has made tariffs a central campaign pledge in order to protect US industry. He has proposed new 10-20% tariffs on most imported foreign goods, and much higher ones on those from China.

I don't think there's that much surprise at the tariffs on China; it's the tariffs on the rest of the world, especially friendly countries like Canada that are the big surprises. Also, who believes politicians campaign pledges?

[dead]

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#283

Post by arunabha »

monero-xmr wrote: post #263
danans wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The average European is poorer than the average person from Mississippi, the US’ poorest state Mississippi has a GDP per capita of $53k. 11% of Mississippi's population has no health insurance. Mississippi is one of the highest inequality states in the US. Its median income is $30k. It's Gini Index is 49%. It has poor physical and social infrastructure by advanced country standards. Spain has a GDP per capita of $3…

I know several Spaniards who emigrated to the US, including my sister-in-law. The situation you describe is… one of statistics and not reality

Undoubtedly, but the corollary 'statistics is not reality' doesn't really hold. I'm sure people here would know many Americans who moved to Spain.

Statistics might not be ideal, but making policy decisions based on anecdotes is far, far worse.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#284

Post by tombert »

alecst wrote: post #278
tombert wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is measurably untrue and it took me about ten seconds of searching to find it. https://www.billmeridian.com/articles-files/inflation.htm and many others. Historically I know you tend to argue pretty dishonestly but this was pretty easy to find and so either you're lying or didn't bother doing any research past reading Ayn Rand. Also, prices spiking up from incompetent threats of tariffs and not coming down are c…

I think you might have been a little harsh on Walter. Perhaps the answer is more of a "yes and no" depending on your point of view. It does seem like inflation/deflation kind of canceled each other out before moving off the gold standard. https://www.businessinsider.com/chart-inflation-since-1775-2... > It is probable that in 1913, while financial panics were not uncommon, high inflation was still largely seen by the…

I am harsh on Walter because he tends to argue in bad faith in order to support some weird pro-business libertarian world view. He's super active on HN (as am I) so I have argued with him and there are multiple times he has said things that are outright dishonest (like once claiming that incompetent workers immediately get fired from corporations, a post I can't find quickly but is in my history somewhere, or trying to paint me as some alien-believing UFO fanboy which I am not).

So when he makes absolutist statements like "there was no inflation in the US before 1914", which is a typical springboard for libertarians to start complaining about the federal reserve and propose some idiotic Ayn Rand nonsense, I have trouble not being literal here.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#285

Post by mxkopy »

bobsomers wrote: post #259
monero-xmr wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fine if you accept that you can’t force the rich at gunpoint to stay, or seize their wealth upon exit. But if they do choose to leave, or at least stop expanding their businesses, you can’t deny the rational self interest

> But if they do choose to leave, or at least stop expanding their businesses, you can’t deny the rational self interest "If you tax the rich, they will leave" is a myth created by the rich so that you won't tax them. In the middle of the 1900s, the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans was 91%. Nobody is going to leave over Mamdani's extremely modest proposal.

This statement is also supported by the fact that despite the relatively high taxes in NYC billionaires will jump through all loops necessary to effectively still live there just not on paper

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#286

Post by RhysU »

lazarus01 wrote: post #69

In NYC, for the first 6 months of 2025, 994 new private sector jobs were created [1]. During the same period last year, there were 66,000 new jobs created. Higher cost of doing business from tariffs has frozen hiring. With a frozen job market, there’s less revenue coming in. NYC is a leading indicator for the rest of the country. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/nyregion/nyc-jobs.html

I do not trust NY job numbers. Their unemployment system remains a disaster from the Covid years.

Source: Me trying to use it and encountering prior fraud. Light reading suggests many have experienced it.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#287

Post by margalabargala »

RhysU wrote: post #286
lazarus01 wrote: post #69

In NYC, for the first 6 months of 2025, 994 new private sector jobs were created [1]. During the same period last year, there were 66,000 new jobs created. Higher cost of doing business from tariffs has frozen hiring. With a frozen job market, there’s less revenue coming in. NYC is a leading indicator for the rest of the country. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/nyregion/nyc-jobs.html

I do not trust NY job numbers. Their unemployment system remains a disaster from the Covid years. Source: Me trying to use it and encountering prior fraud. Light reading suggests many have experienced it.

Shouldn't that be roughly constant across the year though? We don't need to trust the numbers to be exact, to observe a precipitous drop.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#288

Post by anecdatas »

RhysU wrote: post #286
lazarus01 wrote: post #69

In NYC, for the first 6 months of 2025, 994 new private sector jobs were created [1]. During the same period last year, there were 66,000 new jobs created. Higher cost of doing business from tariffs has frozen hiring. With a frozen job market, there’s less revenue coming in. NYC is a leading indicator for the rest of the country. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/nyregion/nyc-jobs.html

I do not trust NY job numbers. Their unemployment system remains a disaster from the Covid years. Source: Me trying to use it and encountering prior fraud. Light reading suggests many have experienced it.

Normally I'd be quippy about the plural of anecdote not being "data", but this isn't even plural. This is a single anecdote. The claim you have made is "I have encountered fraud, personally, so the system is a disaster."

Well run systems experience fraud. It's something you generally want to minimize, but like, it's not necessarily an indicator that the system is broken. Like... AWS has tons of fraud. AWS is still very much not a disaster. (Well, it kind of is a disaster, but mostly because it's a machine that chews up humans via oncall, which is unrelated to their fraud.)

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#290

Post by LeafItAlone »

mancerayder wrote: post #269
Refreeze5224 wrote: post #200

[flagged]

Fantastic. And tax levy for the city goes down, and cuts are made while middle class people pick up the rest of the burden. Notice your statement is a broad morale, and I'm presenting a consequence out here in the real world. The math of booting wealthy people from the city doesn't play out well for the city.

This argument has been made time and time again.

It seems reasonable at first glance, but I’ve seen no proof of it. California, usually mentioned as having high taxes, still has a large percentage of the ultra-wealthy in the USA. Same with NYC. Sure some notable persons have changed their addresses, but overall, they are they hurting?

Is there any documented case of a rich-popular municipality increasing taxes on the ultra wealthy and seeing the tax levy go down?

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