The sad thing is, investment into new manufacturing was actually up -- WAY up -- under Biden, as you can see in this chart: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRMFGCON

Now that Trump is president, looks like it's starting to decline again.

Whenever I tried to explain that quote is true anywhere in the world, it was never well received.

"a hard working guy can't get ahead any more because xyz"

It is ironic there are many very hard working guys in China, Philipines, Vietnam ...

Fact is that service jobs don't pay as well, or well at all, and some not even not enough to live on your own, or enough to save for retirement, or to start a family. This resentment is from the young working class males, and the rage is building. You can look at the election in Canada, to see how the younger people voted, and its totally opposite of the boomers they increasingly want to MAID. Populism isn't necessarily bad, It's what gave birth to America. Raging hillbillies rebelling is kind of a thing though out humanity. But particularly successful in America, thanks to the constitution it spawned. And probably many more examples since ...

Half a million extra deaths of despair over the last twenty years or so.

https://www.takimag.com/article/deaths-of-despair/

>"But the more I study the White Death of the past two decades, the more I am instead reminded of the tragic trajectory of a now much less publicized American race, Native Americans. Like American Indians, working-class white Americans seem to be living, and dying, like a defeated people, quietly offing themselves with so little to-do that nobody even noticed what was happening to working-class white lifespans for the first fifteen years of this century."

I think a lot of it is: feels good to think that you're smarter than most than to acknowledge the reality that you're probably not.

My intuition is that this type of thinking is becoming more and more entrenched in American culture. I think by the time the culture as a whole wakes up, things will be significantly worse and many of the people who tried to prevent it will have been pushed out or willfully left.

Can you connect that statement to the pursuit of dignity?

Correct, if you are living in the USA. As someone living in Germany I would think tariffs levied by the EU and/or Germany are bad for me, because it is going to raise prices in the EU and Germany.

I'd wish that the EU would just shrug at the tariffs and not counter them, at least not on consumer goods, because in the end US tariffs cost the US consumer not the EU consumer. Obviously it is not that easy, because of jobs, refusal to be insulted and bullied, etc.

I think this is actually the precise correct thing.

If the EU instituted tariffs on let's say, software and certain kinds of services, then we would reduce our unemployment, develop those sectors etc.

Whereas the large-scale oil trade and how its conducted in practice mean that non-Americans will be holding dollars and that the US will be able to have lower interest rates than its competitors, this money, which the US thus can sort of print cheaply can then be used to buy goods from abroad, to get high-quality products in a way that is effectively cheap.

So tariffs for the US were always something that would shake things up. I don't think they're necessarily terrible in the very long run, but this system is something like 50 years old and the US won't be able to switch to a sensible system where it itself actually builds real things and gets what it needs that way quickly. So switching to a sounder approach to production should probably have been allowed to take more time if disruption was to be avoided, but it wouldn't have been possible for political reasons, and now the US politicians are sort of flip-flopping because they see that this transition will not be smooth at all.

If it were almost any country other than the US it would have been a different matter. If the EU wanted to reduce import of finished goods from low-wage countries, that would probably be fine and would probably benefit ordinary people without a long transition, but the US is a different matter. Wages in the US are as high as they are in large part because of these weird trade and investment flows.

It has been way more common for Republican administrations and Congress to explode the deficit than when the Dems controlled things.

Consistently, for longer than I've been alive.

Are we pretending Clinton democrats were not passionate free traders before?

Why is free trade good? Isn't competition easily attacked via subsidation, for example, if trade is unregulated (why Chinese cars are not bought in EU)?

Right now, cult of ignorance perfectly describes Trump and his supporters. It is just true.

Was there some policy reason to follow the US lead ? Follow the Leader does not sound like a valid rationale.

Until you have to change the battery a few years later and it’s cheaper to buy a new bus.

Even if they cost a bit more, they are more reliable, better for the environment and air quality, and are so much quieter.

If there is a federal tariff on Canadian vehicles that applies then everyone including states has to decide if they want to purchase what they intended or keep the budget they planned.