331–340 of 704 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And again, even if you assume that all of that is true, you're still making a leap of logic that these changes are because of the tariffs.
What else changed?
The big, blinking, obvious YoY change for anyone here is tech employment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The craziest thing about all this is that Chinese exports to the US aren't even that big a part of the Chinese economy (3% or so). Sure, it'll hurt and there's multiplier effects, but the entire rest of the world is more than happy to take up the slack. So the tariffs really are the US cutting its own nose off to spite its face.
What do you mean “the rest of the world will take up the slack”? Is the rest of the world suddenly going to start buying something they haven’t in the past? Why? And the US consumer market is 2x the size of the next biggest (EU). How exactly is the the rest of the world going to replace the demand of something several times its size?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Decimation was way worse than reduction by a tenth. It was a punishment in the Roman army where the offending unit was divided into groups of 10 and each group had to draw straws. Whoever drew the short straw must be stoned or clubbed to death by the other 9. If you threatened me with death if I didn't cut off my feet, I wouldn't consider that "reduction by 10%" even if mathematically it might be.
Could be worse, you could be stabbed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about it makes it dishonest? What do you think would be an honest comparison? And, if you do it, what numbers do you get?
Where to start? Comparing a 10 year US period to a 20 year period? Seems awfully selective. Let's do a side by side comparison? 2018 to 2023? 2023 is the last year with solid numbers. US: 12% real GDP growth China: 26% real GDP growth Sounds impressive, until you account for the base. US: +$2.4T USD China: +$3.64T USD Yikes! 4x the number of people, but 0.5x the GDP growth.
I’d like to lay out an argument about why tariffs are good. The only businesses that are derailing with tariffs issues are those that import goods to sell. The argument against tariffs is that they make goods more expensive. Of course, this argument is true. But that’s not the end of the story. Because prices are higher for imported goods, demand for domestically produced goods increases. This increase in demand lead…
Except for one little thing: countries have comparative advantage in the production of different goods and services. Boeing is great at turning aluminum and steel (low in the value chain) into jetliners (at the top of the value chain). Because of this, Boeing gets to make thousands of jetliners and sell them all across the world and America gets to be one of very few places that can do this. I think you'll find that…
Comparative advantage is not innate. China was a rural country and didn't have a comparative advantage in manufacturing, they developed it and are now a powerhouse.
Nothing worth doing is easy. I don't know why Americans think that if its not easy, it's not worth doing. Americans 80 years ago would hate us for what we have become today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Insurance tends to do really badly in ‘black swan’ type situations. Which pretty much are what Trump is doing.
Isn’t the point of insurance to provide protection against black swan events? If it’s more likely to happen then it’s not really a black swan?
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
Don’t worry, Trump can just keep firing the people who make the statistics until he’s proven right :-/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The craziest thing about all this is that Chinese exports to the US aren't even that big a part of the Chinese economy (3% or so). Sure, it'll hurt and there's multiplier effects, but the entire rest of the world is more than happy to take up the slack. So the tariffs really are the US cutting its own nose off to spite its face.
What do you mean “the rest of the world will take up the slack”? Is the rest of the world suddenly going to start buying something they haven’t in the past? Why? And the US consumer market is 2x the size of the next biggest (EU). How exactly is the the rest of the world going to replace the demand of something several times its size?
OT: Solar is awesome! 18 panels are generating 2/3 of our load, despite it being late winter. And a 16kWh battery means the grid power we import is all off-peak. In summer we're going to be exporting enough that we may even cover our winter grid import. Plus it gives us the best UPS system we've ever had, including zero-second cut-over (c.f. Tesla's half-second glitch).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
See this is what I don't understand. Everything you just said about China is a positive. Everything you said about China is achievable in the USA, and we at least HAD a head start on soft-power influence. Instead we should just have tariffs instead of actually making the lives of Americans better while FIGHTING affordable housing, high speed rail, and EVs. We've got an entire team of goons who would rather rack up pe…
[flagged]
[flagged]
As a wealthier person (income of ~1m/year, give or take), I could not more strongly support Mamdani (no 'h' in Zohran's last name afaik). I want a candidate like him in my city to vote for.