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US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war

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Re: US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war

#461

Post by rstuart4133 »

watwut wrote: post #453
rstuart4133 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect Europe is looking at Ukraine mass producing enough $2K drones to bring the Russia to its senses, and thinking the worlds next big advanced arms supplier is right next door. And unlike the USA, is grateful for the EU's continued support in their hour of need. Just like renewables, EV's and a lot of other technologies, the expensive toys the US arms producers are hawking are starting to look like relic from a…

Europe bought and already paid missiles for Ukraine from USA. USA are not delivering. So, Ukraine cant produce what USA sells ... but USA is refusing to follow its contracts.

> So, Ukraine cant produce what USA sells ... but USA is refusing to follow its contracts.

Interesting. So Urkaine and the EU have been denied USA weaponry, and yet Ukraine is turning the tide of the war anyway.

I guessing this isn't how the current USA administration expected that would turn out. I imagine they thought the collapse of Ukraine would reinforce the USA piston as leader of the western world.

Judging by the West's silence when Trump appealed for help with Iran, that isn't what happened. Instead it looks like the Wests reaction to Trump's USA threatening to the leave their club is "don't let the door hit your arse on the way out".

Urkaine successfully waging war with weapons that cost several orders of magnitude less than what the USA is offering probably has something to do with that, particular given they are right next door and will be greatly appreciative of the EU's support for them through the war. Friendship and helping a mate out in a time of need brings it's own rewards.

Re: US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war

#462

Post by jvanderbot »

ajross wrote: post #423
jvanderbot wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, well that's your point. My point was just that entering the war is consistent with the principle of ensuring bad actors can't act badly, esp re: trade and allies. So we both made our point.

> principle of ensuring bad actors can't act badly That's... not a principle though? Who else pursues geopolitics by that principle? When else has the US? It's... not a thing, unless you mess with semantics to define "bad actors" as "whoever we dislike" and "badly" as "whatever we dislike". Iran hasn't fucked with Hormuz since before most of the commenters here were born. Arguing that we somehow "had to" goad them in…

I was being pithy - the principle was free trade and some mixture of "we dont negotiate with terrorists", as mentioned in top of thread. If you're going to take the weakest version of whatever I say, I'll end up writing paragraphs to lawyer my way into expressing myself at the strength required to justify a war, and that's just unfun.

The entire global war on terror was basically a "We dont allow terrorist states to exist", and Iraq war 1 was pretty close to the same principles in action - feel free to shock and awe a state out of existence if it threatens global trade/oil.

And you're wrong about Iran. They have two grievous sins in USA/EU's eyes. 1) they have launched increasingly severe attacks on shipping in the last 10 years (not to mention 100s of attacks on civilians through funded terror networks), and 2) they are a key supplier and ally for Russia's invasion of Europe and former Soviet states, and their shahed drones are killing a lot of civilians.

1 https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/23/iran-deliberate-attacks-...

2 https://2017-2021.state.gov/irans-history-of-naval-provocati...

Re: US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war

#463

Post by mapt »

watwut wrote: post #97
mapt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually very difficult to implement a change in our timeline on such a complex issue without causing a mix of positive and negative effects relative to your desired goal. It's very hard to impute whether anyone in the White House actually had a successful causal motive->plan->implementation->effect loop deliberately, but there are always high points, even of grotesque failure. Obviously it's not NET positive, b…

> It is now in a widely acknowledged catastrophic munitions stockpile crisis which Congress will have to fix via large, sustained investment; How exactly is it positive to waste munition and thus force the congress to buy new munition? You will spend a huge amount of money to ... get where you was.

You rule Elbonia. Your military have a stockpile of 10,000 arrows, and you are paying a small village to produce 1 arrow per day, which is what you lose in regular training. This village was a planned development in the last Great War to produce 500 arrows per day at an exorbitant cost of 10,000 elbomarks a year, but peace has brough dividends; While you still fund an expensive (2,000 elbomarks/yr) retirement home in the village to keep the expertise in arrow construction literally alive, you have diversified its economy to to the point that it's actually bringing in some net tax revenue, rather than requiring an entire province worth of taxes of to hold up. The consensus is "Arrows are fucking expensive now. We could never afford to build 10 arrows per day, it would obviously break our budget".

You ask your military experts what would happen if your border region would get invaded by your rival neighbor, and they say that any scenario where the castle there holds out and breaks the siege would require upwards of 300,000 arrows to be expended in the first month, and you say "I hope my rival doesn't invade then. I'm so happy they're friendly now after the Great War." You're also happy that the regional lords under you are happy that they don't have to pay so many taxes.

Ten years in the future, the situation has changed a bit. Your neighbor is building a massive army. You say "I hope my rival doesn't invade. It doesn't look like they're close to my military yet. I'm increasing arrow production to 2 per day," at a nominal cost of 4000 elbomarks/day, but an actual cost of considerably less. You achieve this budget change... barely. Can't ask for more - can't disrupt the regional lords right now. None of them seem to think there's a threat right now.

Ten years after that, your rival is fortifying its border and building siege equipment, but your walls are high and it would need a couple more generations of larger siege tower to reach them. You hold a jousting and archery competition, and deplete your stockpiles, shooting 9000 arrows at a target in a weeklong circus of an event. This was all your idea and basically everybody criticizes you. Former supporters start talking about you retiring.

You tell the regional lords through a budget request "We're completely defenseless now. You HAVE to give me the elbomarks to rebuild the arrow-making factories and start producing 300 arrows per day, starting immediately and for the next five years, or there will definitely be war.

I'm not saying for sure how deliberately this scenario happened. It's unlikely that it failed to occur to every single advisor to Donald Trump, but whether it was part of Trump's personal decisionmaking calculus is impossible to say.

Re: US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war

#464

Post by ifyoubuildit »

mgfist wrote: post #430
ifyoubuildit wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe you The Trump admin has pretty low approval ratings. If some very hostile country bombed the US, is your default assumption that the folks who despise Trump would somehow support the bombing? You could probably find a few crazies that would, but wouldn't you assume people would prioritize their hate towards the people blowing up their friends, family, and property?

> If some very hostile country bombed the US, is your default assumption that the folks who despise Trump would somehow support the bombing? You're missing some very important context, which is that the IRGC slaughtered between 6,000-36,000 people in January during the protests. And they would've continued for as long as the protests lasted, and still execute people to this day. > You could probably find a few crazie…

> You're missing some very important context

If we're talking context, isn't there more to include? Like why those protests were happening in the first place? Did the hostile government cripple your economy first and potentially fund and arm agitators within the legitimate protest movements?

> This isn't an excuse, but it's to clarify the situation.

How confident are you that will clarify anything for the families of those children?

There are no good guys in this situation. Just the people supporting this calamity and the growing number of people affected by it.

Re: US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war

#465

Post by stasomatic »

Outside of ethics of any war or "Iran good" / "USA bad" or vice versa, I am really pissed off at the imbeciles in our (US) intelligence. What did these half wits were hoping for? For decades we were painted a totally different picture of Iran's capabilities than the reality. Now the US willingly and the rest of the world unwillingly are paying for this idiocy. I don't want to. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say this war was lobbied for by big oil and legacy automakers, for chrissakes.

Re: US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war

#466

Post by ajross »

jvanderbot wrote: post #462
ajross wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> principle of ensuring bad actors can't act badly That's... not a principle though? Who else pursues geopolitics by that principle? When else has the US? It's... not a thing, unless you mess with semantics to define "bad actors" as "whoever we dislike" and "badly" as "whatever we dislike". Iran hasn't fucked with Hormuz since before most of the commenters here were born. Arguing that we somehow "had to" goad them in…

I was being pithy - the principle was free trade and some mixture of "we dont negotiate with terrorists", as mentioned in top of thread. If you're going to take the weakest version of whatever I say, I'll end up writing paragraphs to lawyer my way into expressing myself at the strength required to justify a war, and that's just unfun. The entire global war on terror was basically a "We dont allow terrorist states to…

> the principle was free trade

Trade was free in the gulf, pre-war.

> and some mixture of "we dont negotiate with terrorists"

Negotiate for what? Iran was making no demands.

Pithy or not, you seem to be just being obtuse. You're taking as a prior that there was a threat, something for which you (and the administration) have absolutely no evidence.

And to repeat, in a PRACTICAL sense, even nodding to your incorrectly framed "principled" stance, the EFFECT of the war was 100% opposite to the thing you claim to be... defending? It's just insane, to be blunt, and I genuinely can't understand why a reasonable person could hold these opinions. It seems like trolling, honestly.

Re: US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war

#467

Post by wing-_-nuts »

kccqzy wrote: post #414
alistairSH wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employers will increase your wages just enough to keep you from leaving. With structural disincentives to leaving (medical coverage in the US), that is almost always a less-than-inflation amount. Do employers even call it a COL increase any more? My employer "rebranded" the annual raises as "merit increases" many years ago.

All of my employers, current and past, have or had only merit increases. COL increases are unheard of.

How big are your merit raises, typically?

Re: US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war

#468

Post by AntiUSAbah »

jvanderbot wrote: post #402
AntiUSAbah wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to endulge in a good discussion. My argument is not that deep for sure, but you are only referencing Bretton woods. The problem with US petro dollar is always the same: we don't know what would have been if it wouldn't exist. But my main point was very specific to the strait of hormuz and how it was flowing without the help of the USA, now stoped because of the influnece of the USA and how the USA can't res…

Playing devils advocate, the results are not always intended. I think the intent was to secure the area / prevent a state from becoming hegemonic, esp a state which has proven to be prone to harassing shipping and allies in the area (to say the last), as well as a state which is directly aiding an invasion of Europe/former USSR independent states. So, circling back to my original comment, the Iran war is in line with…

Lets be honest here, Trump attacked Iran for 2-3 basic reasons: 1. he thought it would go like venezuela 2. he did this for his business partners.

Iran in its pre Trump state existed with the Khamenei family for quite a long time.

Re: US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war

#470

Post by jvanderbot »

ajross wrote: post #466
jvanderbot wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was being pithy - the principle was free trade and some mixture of "we dont negotiate with terrorists", as mentioned in top of thread. If you're going to take the weakest version of whatever I say, I'll end up writing paragraphs to lawyer my way into expressing myself at the strength required to justify a war, and that's just unfun. The entire global war on terror was basically a "We dont allow terrorist states to…

> the principle was free trade Trade was free in the gulf, pre-war. > and some mixture of "we dont negotiate with terrorists" Negotiate for what? Iran was making no demands. Pithy or not, you seem to be just being obtuse. You're taking as a prior that there was a threat, something for which you (and the administration) have absolutely no evidence. And to repeat, in a PRACTICAL sense, even nodding to your incorrectly…

You're ignoring Iran's negative effects on the world, and their increasing harassing of shipping, and their support of Russian wars and terrorist actions throughout the middle east (at least). Those are worth opposing, and fall under the "peaceful" part of the statement.

The effect is to (at least temporarily) cause a war, which has diminished trade. If trade was the only thing anyone cared about, we'd acquiesce to any demand anyone with a boat made. (e.g. Somalian pirates). That's clearly not the stance anyone has here.

This is an exercise in good faith. You have to assume there's a consistent set of beliefs that are not crazy that lead to this outcome, or else you fall into the trap of just assuming anyone who disagrees with you is crazy.

So, I have not claimed any effect intended or otherwise, only an intent. You can with all love of peace intend to depose a terrorist regime (even violently), and have the effect of disrupting trade. All at once, and all without violating your intent, and from a consistent set of principles about peace, love, and free trade and all that.

OK, that's just circling back to my prior comments, so I think we're done here.

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