Comment by OGEnthusiast
4 months ago
The fact that this is even plausibly true means that the non-AI (and maybe even non-tech) American economy has been stagnating for years by now.
4 months ago
The fact that this is even plausibly true means that the non-AI (and maybe even non-tech) American economy has been stagnating for years by now.
Almost all my money goes to mortgage, shit from China, food, and the occasional service. It does make me wonder some times how it all works. But it's been working like this for a long time now.
Real estate. The US economy floats on the perpetually-increasing cost of land. Thats where your mortgage money goes, to a series of finacial instruments to allow others to benifit from the eternally rising value of "your" property.
Well, it is much worse elsewhere.
You should look at other countries where pay is much less and real estate is at similar levels of cost: from Europe, Canada, China, Australia and India.
Condos in Mumbai are priced similar to those in the major cities in the US.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mumbai/comments/zxsl8l/mumbai_real_...
And Mumbai is one of the more affordable cities globally.
Much worse the case in Canada & Australia unfortunately
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Maybe this is our "resource curse"? We just happened to get rid of all the other resources first to get to stuck with this remaining?
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Why are you buying shit from China?
Apparently it's even hard to make molds in the US. China seems to be the top dog in the production chain. From design, to mold, to production, to packaging.
Fstopper has one or two nice videos about it. Can't even buy US made glass bottles that fits his needs in the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xewpuM1eJRg
It's very difficult if not impossible to avoid. Just how many hours do you want to spend doing research for _every single_ household item? It'd be genuinely difficult, and even plenty of stuff which claims to be "made in the USA" is actually just assembled here. It's possible to look these things up, but that takes time and it's difficult to get absolute certainty. And not all stuff from China is terrible, either. It's just an opportunity cost which is nearly impossible to avoid given just how common so much of the crap from China is.
A normal person who doesn't want to upend their life might have a few easier baby-steps: buy as little stuff as possible, and buy used whenever possible. The original country doesn't see any real direct benefit when you buy used.
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Why, don't you? How would you have posted this message if you hadn't?
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I've started buying clothes from China. Quality and style is starting to really improve.
Makes you wonder how much we've been ripped off for years.
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It cuts the middleman, supermarkets and online stores are 90% Chinese dropship these days. Why pay the 50-500% markup?
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That's partially a euhpemism for imported stuff. But more to your general meaning the point of the article is that there's not a lot of slack. The US is pretty close to fully utilized and there's not a lot of slack to start making stuff here instead.
It's better quality. The people there are skilled and well-educated, and the factories and machinery are modern.
Where are you getting your shit from?
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why not? I like high quality products at reasonable prices
I am delighted to hear from the actual FedEx’s own Chuck Noland! Getting this post to appear on this website using only vellum and iron gall ink is an incredible feat. Could you share some about your process (in many months time obviously)?
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Prices going up 20-25% due to excessive money printed and hence high inflation during last administration don't help.
The stimulus spending started under the administration prior to the last one.
In the United States, elections were held on November 2020. A new administration would’ve started in January 2021.
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Are you ignoring the inflation from COVID that occurred globally on purpose? Trump won, there is no need for you to keep spreading MAGA propaganda.
Federal taxes are #1 expense for most people. People forget to think about it because of direct deduction.
This isn't true. At 70k (much higher than the median income), the effective federal tax rate is under 10%. People generally spend more than 10% of their income on housing. If taxes are your number one expense you likely have a significantly larger than average income.
Pretty sure the stagnation has a cause beginning in 2025 and that has to do with things like: Canada refusing to buy ALL American liquor in retaliation. China refusing to buy ANY soy beans in retaliation. In retaliation for what you might ask? I leave that as an exercise for the reader. If you are unable to answer that question honestly to yourself you need to seriously consider that your cognitive bias might be preventing you from thinking clearly.
Also EU moving away from US weapons. We're destroying all our exports.
I think the reason could also be a lot of countries and companies started to diversify more and depend less on the USA
The tariff wars certainly didn't help.
depends, on which side, of the tarrifs an economy happens to be and where, geopoliticaly.
AI, or whatever a mountain of processors churning all of the worlds data will be called later, still has no use case, other than total domination, for which it has brought a kind of lame service to all of the totaly dependent go along to get along types, but nothing approaching an actual guaranteed answer for anything usefull and profitable, lame, lame, infinite fucking lame tedious shit that has prompted most people to.stop.even trying, and so a huge vast amount of genuine human inspiration and effort is gone
The thing about tariffs is you’re guaranteed to be on both sides because the other side retaliates.
Farmers get screwed twice because our tariffs increase the costs of their inputs and the retaliation reduces the value of outputs.
If I was a farmer I’d be tearing my hair out about now.
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The fundamentals behind the 2008 financial crisis didn't come from nowhere and the "solution" to 2008 did little more than kick the can down the road.