Trump really thinks America is in the 1950's. He thinks people want to work at factories doing manual labor. He doesn't understand that we DON'T want to work at factories. Americans like our plush corporate office jobs building intellectual property. We aren't oxen doing physical labor.
And we designed it that way. We pay thousands of dollars to each citizen in our public schools to teach them calculus, literature, world history, and science, so that they DON'T work at factories doing manual labor like we were oxen. We're supposed to be doing more valuable jobs in intellectual property and services.
It's going to be hard lesson to be learned by Trump and his working class supporters when the inflation hits them because our economy doesn't have any workers that want to work at factories, but it'll have to be a lesson they learn the hard way.
The correct economy is to let people do labor they're best at. If a foreigner can make a shirt cheaper than an American can, LET THEM. Our economy is already taken by the people that design the shirts.
Especially given the luxury lifestyle that even the poorest suburban 20-something American male lives in today. They get to play video games all day and watch any movie at home with any food from around the world that can show up at their doorstep of their parents home at a moments notice. The aristocrats of 150 years ago could NEVER imagine such luxuries.
And Trump expects our population of suburban aristocrats to work hard at factories...
Well, the unfortunate beauty of touching the incredibly hot stove of Tariffs is that the pain is immediate and obvious. So assuming that these tariffs go through as is, we'll immediately launch into one of the worst recessions we've seen with price increases unlike anything Americans are used to.
A tariff of some +x% doesn’t cause a +x% increase in retail prices. The ratio is somewhere between 2:1 and 10:1 for most products, depending on the markup, local value add, taxes, etc…
The real damage is business uncertainty, inefficient capital allocation, etc… all of which takes years to fully impact the economy.
Uncertainty will be priced into the price of things moving forward, I’ve already started adding 10-15% to my BoM over today’s prices to account for the possibility of future price increases and I’m definitely not the only one.
This is only true in the ordinary situation of using tariffs. Such as targeting specific markets or exports in order to bolster the local market.
Tariffs on literally everything have an immediate outsized impact as businesses need to rapidly readjust and renegotiate prices on everything. Not only that but there's the second order effects too, such as Trump's interactions with Canada resulting in destroying tourist and seasonal travel from up north to the border states.
Yes. They - or other poor countries - are. And it's their responsibility to grow their citizenry in a neoliberal world. Economics doesn't care about liberal concern tools.
China eliminated poverty through neoliberalism. The rest of the world can, too. This is the benefit of neoliberalism: it lifts the world out of poverty through free trade and self-selected efficiency.
China didnt eliminate poverty, it merely shifted dirty work to other poor countries (other SE asian countries). Just like the US did. Just like all countries will do until they run out of poor countries and the pyramid scheme of globalization collapses.
Not everyone gets to have a cushy intellectual office job. Somebody has to do the coal mining.
So, none of that matters to what I said, since I specifically talked about eliminating poverty. That's what a "straw man" argument actually is, when you decide to argue against something else entirely, like foreign intervention, instead of poverty.
Now you're getting it. Adamantly trying to focus on "eliminating poverty", when my original comment was about the morality of neoliberalism, is a straw man argument. I'm glad that after enough contemplation you have come to understand this.
So, if you'd like to address my original comment, I'm all ears, otherwise this discussion is a complete waste of time. Before you do that, though, it would be prudent to learn about what neoliberalism actually is, and why foreign intervention is directly related to it and your original premise. Once you do that, we'll be able to have a fruitful discussion.
An excerpt from The Divide:
> People commonly think of neoliberalism as an ideology that promotes totally free markets, where the state retreats from the scene and abandons all interventionist policies. But if we step back a bit, it becomes clear that the extension of neoliberalism has entailed powerful new forms of state intervention. The creation of a global 'free market' required not only violent coups and dictatorships backed by Western governments, but also the invention of a totalizing global bureaucracy – the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and bilateral free-trade agreements – with reams of new laws, backed up by the military power of the United States
You are fixated on a straw man, clearly too ignorant of the subject material to have a discussion on this.
I provided resources. Read them and get back to me, otherwise there is no reason to continue, since your aim seems to be controlling the narrative and not actually engaging in substantial discussion.
This doesn’t sound like you want to eliminate poverty?
You complain I brought up the straw man of poverty, but that's the entire point of neoliberalism: to make people wealthy. It's NOT to start wars or bring disease or famine or whatever. It's an economic system designed to bring about wealth, as demonstrated by neoliberal policies that removed poverty from much of the third world.
This is why I don’t trust socialist: I have never heard a socialist say “I want to eliminate poverty”. And in fact, they seem to take pride in being impoverished while being ashamed of any bit of wealth.
It’s Ok to have nice things. You DON’T have to be poor.
We don't care if people are rich. We are if they are poor, and we believe that's a problem.
And our track record of eliminating poverty around the world over the last 50 years through neoliberal free trade should be celebrated, not discouraged.
Again, I have no interest in engaging with someone who is clearly extremely ignorant about neoliberalism and US foreign policy, and who is fixated on engaging in straw man arguments. Stop embarrassing yourself and let it go.
Instead of congratulating yourself on your sheer brilliance all the time and how you like to declare yourself to be superior, maybe look at why your arguments aren't convincing to others?
I'd recommend you take a point-by-point look at what you're saying vs what I said and see if what you said had any relevance to any of my literal sentences.
Let it go. You're not even discussing the subject matter anymore, and are arguing about the meta. No one is thinking in terms of superiority except yourself. This is a toxic discussion, and it is over. Have your compulsive last word.
Look at what you wrote. Nothing you stated had any relevance to neoliberalism. I talked about neoliberalism eliminating poverty, and you brought up invasion.
Neoliberalism is what I say it is, not what YOU say it is.
Additionally, you have yet to answer why you believe poverty shouldn’t be eliminated.
You said america worked hard to get rid of manual factory jobs and then you gave the example of China as a state that followed their neoliberal example. But China is the Earths factory and they have hundreds of millions doing manual factory work. You contradicted your own arguments. Not sure what you are asking me right now.
I agree with this. People seem to forget that factories and other manual labor positions were hard to fill. No one wanted to do them anymore in America. I don’t remember the timing, but there were articles about the whole situation. Well, those jobs went to other countries.
Bush Jr. was all about outsourcing to India and other countries. The India population were thrilled to take office gigs for Microsoft and Google and any other tech company.
The whole “put me to work” in middle-America doesn’t exist anymore. They don’t want to do that type of work.
I do think a missed opportunity is not increasing defense manufacturing in the US. That could mean a lot of jobs and skill-based jobs. NASA is another failed opportunity where it could be a huge skill and labor opportunity for America. I remember the thousands of workers on the shuttle program being devastated. I’m not saying we need another shuttle program, but the next evolution of NASA, aerospace, and defense would be great for jobs and America.
We have no one left thinking about the long-term big picture for America - and we now have a president trying to destroy America. Any current politicians are focused on just staying in power, more so than they ever have.
I think Bill Clinton was the last president to focus on America.
Even Obama failed to deliver to the American people. He was too focused on drone strikes.
> Even Obama failed to deliver to the American people. He was too focused on drone strikes.
I agree how Obama continued Bush's "war on terror" was a disappointment, but to state that as the reason for his relatively limited accomplishments is profoundly unserious. The Mitch McConnell's strategy was to do anything Obama did for no other reason than to make him look bad, because McConnell realised that Obama had the potential to be the most consequential president since FDR, with broad public support.
They used every trick in the book to hold up votes, to not schedule votes, voting against popular policy they themselves supported just a few years ago out of principle, etc.
I don't know how anyone could have forgotten this; the Republican party was not serious good faith participant in the democratic process long before Trump came along.
And we designed it that way. We pay thousands of dollars to each citizen in our public schools to teach them calculus, literature, world history, and science, so that they DON'T work at factories doing manual labor like we were oxen. We're supposed to be doing more valuable jobs in intellectual property and services.
It's going to be hard lesson to be learned by Trump and his working class supporters when the inflation hits them because our economy doesn't have any workers that want to work at factories, but it'll have to be a lesson they learn the hard way.
The correct economy is to let people do labor they're best at. If a foreigner can make a shirt cheaper than an American can, LET THEM. Our economy is already taken by the people that design the shirts.