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American Disruption

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Re: American Disruption

#51

Post by dylan604 »

spacemadness wrote: post #27
morsecodist wrote: post #13

Talking about the merits of these tariffs kind of misses the point. The person who wrote this article is very smart. I am sure they are smarter than I am. He has produced a pretty solid analysis of trade policy. But in articles like this people ascribe their own motivations and goals to the tariffs that aren't actually there. Buried in this article is the assumption that the motivation of tariffs and trade policy is…

Thank you. I see these coping strategies everywhere, from sources I would never imagine would try to find reason within the damage these will do. People want to feel like these are rational well thought out choices with experts behind the reasoning and that they must be missing something. Because how could the POTUS willingly cause so much harm to the country? So there is cope instead of coming to terms that this man…

> So there is cope instead of coming to terms that this man is single handedly destroying the economy and their future.

Now I'm imagining new posters in the style of Obama's Hope but with Trump and Cope underneath

Re: American Disruption

#52

Post by intended »

bregma wrote: post #41
morsecodist wrote: post #13

Talking about the merits of these tariffs kind of misses the point. The person who wrote this article is very smart. I am sure they are smarter than I am. He has produced a pretty solid analysis of trade policy. But in articles like this people ascribe their own motivations and goals to the tariffs that aren't actually there. Buried in this article is the assumption that the motivation of tariffs and trade policy is…

> It is like the administration adopted a policy of jailing all Capricorns and only Capricorns and people started writing think pieces about how the criminal justice system would be more efficient if they focused on programs to reduce recidivism. I was born on January 19. Should I be concerned?

No, Just say January 19th is a leap year.

Re: American Disruption

#53

Post by renewiltord »

samtp wrote: post #43
renewiltord wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxis still exist and are still more expensive. You pay for them to use bus lanes in SF and so on. Uber prices are not beyond the competition.

At least in Seattle, it's actually about 50% cheaper to get a taxi from SeaTac to the city than to take a Lyft or Uber.

Ah then it’s regional. In SF it’s typically 30% more expensive in a taxi from the airport to 4th and king.

Re: American Disruption

#54

Post by bregma »

turnsout wrote: post #29
af78 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Behaving irrationally, intentionally or not, is scaring investors away rather than attracting them. Seen from abroad, trust in the rule of law and property rights has been eroded. Today Trump sends randos to El Salvador, maybe tomorrow he will nationalize enterprises or other assets, with no meaningful opposition from the Congress and the judiciary? Germany is already pulling gold from the US, that had been stored th…

Amazingly, this is exactly what Russia has been trying to do for years now: introduce chaos and uncertainty. Capitalism can handle bad news all day long, but it can't withstand prolonged unpredictability and ambiguity.

It just took a while for Russia to get their stooge in place.

Re: American Disruption

#55

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

samtp wrote: post #43
renewiltord wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxis still exist and are still more expensive. You pay for them to use bus lanes in SF and so on. Uber prices are not beyond the competition.

At least in Seattle, it's actually about 50% cheaper to get a taxi from SeaTac to the city than to take a Lyft or Uber.

I'm curious as to why that is. A few months ago I took a taxi from the airport in Austin (because I had neglected to book my Uber/Lyft before I got to the rideshare area and there was a significant wait) and I vowed "never again". It was about 50% more than Uber/Lyft, and everything about the experience was worse in the ways taxis have always been worse - payment is much more of a pain in the ass, you don't know how much it costs until the end, and the cab smelled.

I can wholeheartedly understand complaints about Uber and Lyft, but I don't understand at all when I sometimes see this collective amnesia about how much taxis sucked before rideshare came on the scene.

Re: American Disruption

#56

Post by rqtwteye »

jonnat wrote: post #25
morsecodist wrote: post #13

Talking about the merits of these tariffs kind of misses the point. The person who wrote this article is very smart. I am sure they are smarter than I am. He has produced a pretty solid analysis of trade policy. But in articles like this people ascribe their own motivations and goals to the tariffs that aren't actually there. Buried in this article is the assumption that the motivation of tariffs and trade policy is…

Worse than projecting one's values onto a rationalization of the new tariffs is to simply take the administration's rhetoric at face value. That other countries are "taking advantage of us" is just a talking point. We have to look at how the tariffs fit historical conservative programs. Republicans have long wished to replace our progressive income taxation with a flat tax system, but that's simply not achievable, ev…

That's my feeling too. The tariffs are just another variation for the plan to replace income tax with sales tax. You could argue tariffs are a little better because in theory they result in more jobs at home.

Re: American Disruption

#57

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

throwanem wrote: post #36
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #10

> There is one other very important takeaway from disruption: companies that go up-market find it impossible to go back down, and I think this too applies to countries. There's a lot of talking past each other here. This observation, framed a bit differently, is precisely the argument for radical disruptive change. If there's a structural ratchet mechanism, where outsourcing a particular kind of manufacturing work me…

In which metaphor the thesis would implicitly be that we can't for some reason disassemble the "ratchet" and carefully retract or remove the "pawl," but have to chuck a "lit stick of dynamite" into the "workshop." No, there is still a lot of work to do before we get close to making this make any sense.

I agree, and the reason I don't support the dynamite is precisely because I think there are less destructive ways to reshore manufacturing if we want to. The author seems to be making the opposite point, that the problem is so intractable the US must not "seek to own supply, but rather control it". (Which is clearly true for some things - it's very silly to have nonzero tariffs on coffee and bananas - but he seems to intend it more broadly than that.)

Re: American Disruption

#58

Post by freeone3000 »

gman2093 wrote: post #45
clodushid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary architect of trumps tariff strategy in his first and second term is Peter Navarro. If you want to understand the tariffs today, just go read one of his many books. His goals are pretty simple: reindustriaize America No more free trade China is evil and the worlds enemy It should be no surprise to anyone observing trump since he took office that the end goal was always to decouple from China.

If this were a goal, the USA would not want to push other countries into China's sphere of influence. The simpler explanation is that non-tariff taxes require congress and are not fully under control of the executive branch. This allows the executive branch to seize the power of the purse.

Tariff taxes also require congress. It’s a constitutionally enumerated power of Congress specifically to levy import duties.

Re: American Disruption

#59

Post by jasode »

samtp wrote: post #43
renewiltord wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxis still exist and are still more expensive. You pay for them to use bus lanes in SF and so on. Uber prices are not beyond the competition.

At least in Seattle, it's actually about 50% cheaper to get a taxi from SeaTac to the city than to take a Lyft or Uber.

>, it's actually about 50% cheaper to get a taxi from SeaTac to the city than to take a Lyft or Uber.

That type of ride from a "hub" where a bunch of taxis congregate to take the next passenger -- such as SEATAC airport -- is optimal for traditional taxis and can be cheaper. But using Uber for suburb-to-suburb routes away from any hubs is cheaper than taxis and I tried to explain why that happens: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30660517

Re: American Disruption

#60

Post by exe34 »

matwood wrote: post #24
exe34 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The administration characterizes trade imbalances as countries taking advantage of us. it seems likely to me that they know their voting base is too dumb to understand, so they make up stuff that sounds good to get the support.

Like how they keep incorrectly characterizing VAT.

It's interesting how they kept changing their excuse for not putting tariffs on Mother Russia, and finally landed on something they thought was plausible.
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