Earlier quoted context omitted.
New York is teeming with what appear to be newly arrived "immigrants" who do no speak a word of English (and frankly are rather aggressive about their refusal to do so) yet are employed in various crafts. We had fairly substantial renovation recently in our building. Every single worker was clearly a recent arrival. How do we know how many jobs were actually created if so many of them are not "officially recorded"? (…
You can be an immigrant and xenophobic, they aren’t mutually exclusive.
Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything
561–570 of 704 posts
Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything
#562In 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
This is, in some sense, exactly what Trump wants -- to hurt the cities/liberal regions that oppose him. It's going to be a bumpy ride.
When you look at GDP, it's coming from California, NYC, etc. Even in red states, like Texas, it's Dallas and Austin carrying everyone else.
Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything
#563In 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
New York is teeming with what appear to be newly arrived "immigrants" who do no speak a word of English (and frankly are rather aggressive about their refusal to do so) yet are employed in various crafts. We had fairly substantial renovation recently in our building. Every single worker was clearly a recent arrival. How do we know how many jobs were actually created if so many of them are not "officially recorded"? (…
Latino voters swung 20 points towards trump from 2020-2024 after being told that Trump would deport all of their illegal family members. A majority of latino men straight up voted for Trump and Latino women was like 47-53.
Legal immigrants hate illegal immigrants. Most legal immigrants are wealthy and well connected and have never had to do the shit jobs that their illegal brothers do. It's pretty hard to legally immigrate without lots of money/skills or at minimum beauty (i.e. for green card marriage). Illegals are usually dirt poor and will do anything for a better life.
I'm getting far more willing to defend making English the official language of the USA for this reason. You want to pretend like you're a WASP legal immigrants? Act like one then!
BTW - Americans don't see the distinction between "european latino" and "Mestizo". You're all Latinos and are treated the same way by WASPs.
Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
That has me shaking my head. He fired the BLS person claiming they were reporting inaccurate stats to make him look bad. A claim of partisan bias - could maybe be some truth to that. But to fire them and replace them? Then it will certainly be biased reporting. I suppose that makes sense if all you care about is image and not actually making things better.
She had been doing crap job going back to Biden. I don't think she was fired for optics.
Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything
#565In 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…
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…
Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
rental prices are driven by P/E redirecting funds to the purchase of housing stock, which they then use to jack up the rent. Fuedalism is returning by stealth.
If there’s demand for 5 million units and supply of 6 million prices will go down as 1 million units will be empty If there’s demand for 5 million units and supply of 4 million, prices will go up and 1 million will move out of the city
In your second case they increase rent and people are forced into having roommates.
Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
>China will ALWAYS be better than us 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.
China had a comparative advantage in labor costs that they have turned into an advantage in manufacturing. Plenty of Americans want factory jobs to exist - almost no Americans want to work them. Sure, nothing worth doing is easy, but not everything hard is a good use of time and resources.
Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything
#568Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of the most surface-level understandings of national economics that I have seen. Sure, all of that would be great, if not for two things a) these tariffs are not targeted and b) your country could produce everything that it is tariffing. What is the plan for cocoa beans? bananas? aluminum and steel? These thinly veiled pro-trump people are much too common the internet and I'm getting tired of it.
The US makes both aluminum and steel FYI. I don’t think banana tariffs are going to make a huge difference either way.
Bananas may not matter (to you), but coffee certainly will.
Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything
#569Earlier quoted context omitted.
China had a comparative advantage in labor costs that they have turned into an advantage in manufacturing. Plenty of Americans want factory jobs to exist - almost no Americans want to work them. Sure, nothing worth doing is easy, but not everything hard is a good use of time and resources.
I’m sure plenty of Americans would love to work a factory job if it meant they could provide a comfortable life for their family. Unfortunately, due to decades of anti-labor practices, that isn’t possible anymore. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t attempt to rectify the situation.
Now, its true that there have, within that, been a few decades of regression in tax and other policy effecting a worsening of the distributional situation, such that labor gets a smaller share of the returns that are returned. But even with that, basically every segment of society is better off in absolute terms than when manufacturing was more dominant: working against comparative advantage and regressing on the US’s industrial mix would only reduce aggrgeate output and do nothing to improve distribution. And that's the point, because its a policy proposed by those who don't want to deal with distribution, and in fact want to take further steps to worsen it, because they expect the benefit their narrow group will receive from that will outweigh, for them, the impact of shrinking the total output.
Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything
#570Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's be clear on who has these different standards: primarily Republicans, members of the party whose lifeblood is hypocrisy.
Remember what straws they had to grasp at to critique obama? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controve...