341–350 of 704 posts
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The fundamental question is who gets to start, control, own and grow businesses. Who makes those decisions? If it’s not private citizens, it is government functionaries. The latter has been tried many times. It can just about work, but only barely, and it has all the same problems of patronage, cronyism, monopolisation and labour abuse as capitalism but x10.
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The hiring slowdown predates tariffs. For various reasons CEOs either believe they can do more with less people, or that they can hire cheaper people in other geographies, or both. Businesses (tech or financials) don't seem to be telegraphing uncertainty, S&P 500 revenue is at all times high and trending up, earnings/profit all time highs and trending up, valuations all times high and trending up.
That was the entire point of hiking interest rates, to slow down the economy and stop inflation. Tariffs are universally acknowledged to cause inflation, and we would be in a recovery path if it weren't for the delays that tariffs are causing right now. It is rather interesting to see the difference in standards of accountability for different presidents. Some are responsible for the economy even if its behavior is n…
Before tariffs, in the post-pandemic recovery, we also didn't see hiring go back to pre-pandemic levels. There are other forces like AI adoption.
I don't have good intuition around the connection between tariffs and jobs. Yes, higher inflation may require cooling down the economy. But right now it looks like rates will be going down and anyways rates haven't really slowed down the economy that much. Inflation did come down. Inflation can have some benefits too for employers, it erodes the employee's salaries (and potentially other costs). If companies can raise prices and not pass that on to employees or to their suppliers (as they've seemingly done during this last inflation cycle) then it can be a win for them. A weaker dollar can also help US companies compete globally.
If companies are doing well and growing, and they seem to be, why aren't they hiring more? The largest US tech companies are sitting on piles of cash and making huge profits, for some time now. Is it just that they've become more productive and need less people? Maybe they don't have anywhere to put more people towards? Maybe they're hiring outside the US (this one is not a maybe- they are). Is the uncertainty related to progress in AI? to other macro factors?
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The fundamental question is who gets to start, control, own and grow businesses. Who makes those decisions? If it’s not private citizens, it is government functionaries. The latter has been tried many times. It can just about work, but only barely, and it has all the same problems of patronage, cronyism, monopolisation and labour abuse as capitalism but x10.
> Repricing, though, isn’t as easy as changing a tag—in part because suppliers and big-box stores are engaged in an epic tussle over who will pay what. > Retailers, including Lowe’s and Home Depot, buy Thompson Traders’ wares and set the retail price themselves. And they have been reluctant to pay Thompson Traders more. It seems like this sort of scenario would benefit from some kind of risk protection, like insuranc…
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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…
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In the end it's the biggest leopard ate my face moment ever: China has very high growth momentum that surpasses American living standards soon, and not long before it will surpass American security standards too. China's purchasing power is probably more comfortable than most western countries, with extensive housing and high speed rail and electric cars etc. When a country becomes rich, inevitably other countries as…
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The ironic thing is that tariffs are the right tool to reindustrialize America (over the period of ~a decade) but theyre being wielded with the skill and grace of a crack addled ferret by somebody who thinks it's a magic wand.
Reindustrializing America requires people that are actually willing to work in a factory.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fundamental question is who gets to start, control, own and grow businesses. Who makes those decisions? If it’s not private citizens, it is government functionaries. The latter has been tried many times. It can just about work, but only barely, and it has all the same problems of patronage, cronyism, monopolisation and labour abuse as capitalism but x10.
Capitalism is a morally reprehensible way to distribute resources in a society, but still better than any of the alternatives.
Is it though?
For many of our current societies I would say that we have failed to distribute the available resources. And even more so if we look at how we have failed distributing resources between societies and countries.
> Capitalism is a morally reprehensible way to distribute resources
Agreed!