Neither of which is true in the real world.
The assumptions are only bad if they prevent the simple models from being useful, and the existence of a scenario where a model's simplifying assumptions prevent it from being useful does not prove that the model is worthless.
It's like doing physics where you assume perfectly uniform spherical objects in a vacuum. It isn't worthless just because that isn't how the real world works, but depending on the circumstance it can also give you incorrect results, and sometimes even be way off.
This…is not true. What theory are you referring to?
Its a long time known flaw in economics. Im sure there are better models but i still agree with GP, the scientific field of economics is still a joke on par with psychology.
This is incorrect. Lack of information is priced in as "risk".
Classical economic theory predicts literally the opposite. It predicts the prices will go up exactly as if the base materials became more expensive. Classical economic theory predicts that free market produces lowest possible prices and thus any tarif means price up.
Insurance companies totally operate on evaluating and quantifying risk.
In real world markets economics considers elasticity, arbitrage, and distribution of market information between producers, wholesalers, retailers, buyers etc. But very little of that finds its way into op-eds or blogs aimed at a non-academic audience.
... Wait, why on earth would businesses do that? "Yeah, we're in the business of buying X for a dollar and selling it for 90 cents". What economic theory are you referring to that makes that in any way plausible?
When input prices go up, output prices go up, and usually consumption falls.
Also farmers can’t sell anything because retaliation has destroyed international demand (I’d say decimated but it’s way worse than reduction by a tenth)
If you threatened me with death if I didn't cut off my feet, I wouldn't consider that "reduction by 10%" even if mathematically it might be.
That said, I had sweet breads recently. And a cat being a deer sounds strange in English now, but deer is still the word for animal in other Germanic languages today, even if it faded in English, so it doesn’t sound completely archaic.
Not true. At least not yet.
Q2 agricultural exports were roughly flat to Q1 [1].
“Overall, export sales of this fall’s (U.S.) soybean crop are down 81% from the five-year average,” Brasher reported.
When it comes to soy, America has enormous leverage and China already accepted they're negotiating from a position of weakness.
…Basse says soybean importers aren’t just snubbing U.S. soybeans. They are specifically being told by the Chinese government to not buy U.S. beans.
“So, if you’re a Chinese importer or a Chinese crusher, you’ve been told by the government not to buy U.S. soybeans until they tell you to. This is how China works. Today the Chinese have a stronghold on buying United States soybeans, even though our prices are nearly $1 a bushel cheaper than what they’re buying in Brazil. This is the pressure that I believe the Chinese government is trying to apply on the Trump administration during a trade negotiation,”…
You either have to find a way to consume what is already in the pipeline or go without. Governments are very sensitive to the food security implications because there isn’t much slack politically to “go without”.
The american public asked for it loud and clear for it last november. We should respect that.
36% of voters said: I support every outcome of the election, no matter what.
And we are now about half a year into his term and I see some complaining, but not one single person seriously opposing him and his politics. If the things he does were really that unpopular, he would not be able to do them. To me it seems like he has the full support of the american public.
The question is whether and how much these policies are supported, and the popular vote is obviously relevant in this regard.
> 36% of voters said: I support every outcome of the election, no matter what
That's not really true, for all you know those voters didn't support either outcome. You would expect a "loud and clear" victory not to leave one third of people unconvinced enough to avoid voting altogether.
> but not one single person seriously opposing him and his politics
Almost four hundred lawsuits have been filed against his administration, thousands of public protest events are happening, and the tariffs themselves were just ruled illegal. What does "serious" opposition look like to you? In any case, this is certainly not what "full support" looks like.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/projects-series/trials-of-the-t...
https://time.com/7312601/anti-trump-administration-protests-...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgj7jxkq58o
> If the things he does were really that unpopular, he would not be able to do them.
What is the logic behind this?
They are supported by the election. The american puplic accepted the result. Popular vote is not relevant for Trump.
> That's not really true, for all you know those voters didn't support either outcome. You would expect a "loud and clear" victory not to leave one third of people unconvinced enough to avoid voting altogether.
Maybe they had different reasons, but unfortunately thats not how not casting a vote works in a democracy. If you do not vote, you support the winner, no matter your intentions.
> Almost four hundred lawsuits have been filed against his administration
Trump has every branch of the government in his hand, law does not matter to him. Besides, he is a convicted criminal already. A few more lost lawsuits don't matter.
> Thousands of public protest events are happening
And millions of americans are not attending. Feels more like a vocal minority to me than a real movement.
> the tariffs themselves were just ruled illegal
I have not followed closely, but someday it gets to the supreme court and they will say "the president can do whatever he want", like they have said in the past.
> What does "serious" opposition look like to you?
Something that prevents Trump from executing his plans. Something that prevents Trump from just doing whatever he wants.
> time.com: "...thousands of protesters attended demonstrations on Independence Day..."
Thousands? Thats a fraction of a fraction of the american population. I am sorry, but I fail to see how that supports your point.
I will have to admit I am a little jaded when it comes to the US, but you must forgive me: when the US threatens your country with war, a lot of nuance goes out of the window. If an american clusterbomb kills me and my family tomorrow, I won't care that it has been ruled illegal by some lower court (Trump won't either).
It’s great if you want to grant yourself the power to exempt those who please or pay you.
If you want companies to invest in your country, the tariff has to make doing so make financial sense, and for the long term.
A lot of these tariffs are going on things that would require a whole factory to be built in the USA which doesn’t currently exist at all, and has no supporting infrastructure or workforce.
Companies can’t just decide right now, “oh shit there’s a tariff. Better but it in the USA right away!”
Odds are it hasn't been updated for 20+ years
OP might not be wrong, but let's at least follow SOP for disclosing security failures (30 days pre-disclosure)
> Retailers, including Lowe’s and Home Depot, buy Thompson Traders’ wares and set the retail price themselves. And they have been reluctant to pay Thompson Traders more.
It seems like this sort of scenario would benefit from some kind of risk protection, like insurance, or a futures market
This would be a claim by a large amount of insurance clients at once
It’s the difference between getting cancer (calculable, but perhaps not high probability), and getting hit by a meteorite (not actually calculable, very severe consequence).
Asteroid hits New York, insurance won’t pay out.
You’d insure against a specific product from a specific country being hit with a tariff. Tariffs are going up and down, sometimes in a way that may as well be random. (India not recommending Trump for a Nobel prize.) On its face, this doesn’t seem uninsurable.
Is there a market need great enough for price stability to offset the risk? It seems tariff whiplash will be an ongoing problem
https://www.wired.com/story/senators-probe-cantor-fitzgerald...
Yeah, complicated, costly and always changing regulations are great for doing business... /s
The underlying issue is complete chaos and confusion caused by this situation, not just any specific actual Tariff or not.
EDIT: You had years of corporate stimulus and ZIRP expanding M2, but the inflation floodgates only opened after a paltry return of a small fraction of the real wage losses the middle class and lower sustained over that period? Live by the macro grift, die by the macro grift. And I wrote-in Bernie both times.
Iwata took a paycut. The least our guys could do is take responsibility.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/13/nintendo-ceo-once-halved-sal...
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
That's true, but it didn't predate the election of a man who has made his understanding of tariffs and economics crystal clear in the months and years leading up to January 2025.
> Trump has made tariffs a central campaign pledge in order to protect US industry. He has proposed new 10-20% tariffs on most imported foreign goods, and much higher ones on those from China.
Only all the people who voted for them and all the people who voted against them?
See also: Harris is an elite! (Trump is more elite), Trump knows business (he's a pretty bad business man), Harris did nothing in office! (She was VP), Trump is the underdog! (He's literally already been president)
https://www.deseret.com/politics/2024/09/09/harris-policy-pl...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-harris-campaign-promises-...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/...
All of the above were posted prior to the 2024 election.
Edit: did you read these links?
“ The American people lacked any concrete policy positions from the presumptive, and then official, Democratic presidential candidate for seven weeks following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race.
Despite the absence of clarity on key issues, Vice President Kamala Harris quickly rose in the polls compared to Biden”
Or continue on with your willful ignorance.
It's no skin off my nose either way.
Trump was a terrible candidate and could've been beaten if a good candidate running against him.
My point being: at some point the American electorate has to take responsibility for picking the worst available person. The Democrats did not compel them to vote for Trump.
Perhaps i didn't make my point clear. Indeed ur statement is true. I was referring to those who hated Trump but also hated Harris and so DIDNT VOTE. My point being that if the Democrats had fielded a compelling candidate many of those who didn't vote may have voted for them. Enough to win. The Democrats learned nothing when they fielded Hilary Clinton and lost. Joe Biden barely won. And only because they were sick of Trump and also how he handled Covid. Also don't forget the Democrats tried to run with Joe for a second term when he was clearly unfit. Huge turn off.
So yes, my argument is the Democrat Party is partly at fault for Trump 2.0. They did not field a worthy candidate.
"Vote Blue no matter who" is a failed strategy. And rightly so.
That's slightly revisionist. He won the popular vote by almost 5 percentage points. That's a lot. He also got more electoral college votes than GWB (both times) and Trump in 2016. His victories in the battleground states were also by a higher margin than Trump's in 2016, though still close. "Barely won" is a shade of true.
I honestly don't blame the guy for believing it was his responsibility to the country to run for re-election and keep Trump out of office. His heart was in the right place, even if the rest of him wasn't up to the task anymore.
So anything a lot kess than that looks to me like ”barely". Perhaps im too harsh?
I get why Michelle Obama wont run but i think she would've trounced trump in 2020 or 2024.
The democrats need to field a candidate that has her kind of appeal to beat trump.
What is wrong with my logic?
It sounds like ur logic is: if u don't want trump then u have to vote for the (shitty) democrat candidate.
My point of view is based on those who DIDN'T vote at all, not people who voted for trump because they didn't like harris.
Oh wait, its entirely their (non voters) fault trump won, is what u would argue, correct?
So the democrats have no responsibility to field a candidate worthy of a vote except their not trump or Republican?
* Groups like Project 2025 spent years preparing an assault on our legal system
* This time Trump populated his administration with sycophants from day 1, instead of starting out with establishment figures
* The GOP has spent the last 8 years reconfiguring themselves into supplication
This time, Trump is fully unhinged and unfettered, and he knows the legal peril he faces if the White House isn’t GOP-held for the rest of his life.
This combined with the utter self-emasculation of the Republican Party to Trump's incoherent, or at best self-serving, garbage is the most worrisome thing of all.
People who actually understand politics and who realize that the extent to which politicians keep their campaign pledges is usually related to how their parties end up performing in the legislature, rather than just being dishonest.
That uncertainty makes it very hard to manufacture goods or buy raw materials.
You now have a situation where one week the cost of a commodity is X and the following week it could be 2X. The butterfly effect across industries also cannot be predicted.
Many industries also seem to be still recovering from the pandemic period with supply of spare parts still being de-prioritised over making parts available for new units. :/
It is rather interesting to see the difference in standards of accountability for different presidents. Some are responsible for the economy even if its behavior is not sure to their actions. Others are not responsible for poor economic performance even when taking actions universally agreed to harm the economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controve...
Before tariffs, in the post-pandemic recovery, we also didn't see hiring go back to pre-pandemic levels. There are other forces like AI adoption.
I don't have good intuition around the connection between tariffs and jobs. Yes, higher inflation may require cooling down the economy. But right now it looks like rates will be going down and anyways rates haven't really slowed down the economy that much. Inflation did come down. Inflation can have some benefits too for employers, it erodes the employee's salaries (and potentially other costs). If companies can raise prices and not pass that on to employees or to their suppliers (as they've seemingly done during this last inflation cycle) then it can be a win for them. A weaker dollar can also help US companies compete globally.
If companies are doing well and growing, and they seem to be, why aren't they hiring more? The largest US tech companies are sitting on piles of cash and making huge profits, for some time now. Is it just that they've become more productive and need less people? Maybe they don't have anywhere to put more people towards? Maybe they're hiring outside the US (this one is not a maybe- they are). Is the uncertainty related to progress in AI? to other macro factors?
How do you bid on a big project if you don't know what materials will cost next month, or 6 months, or a year from now? It's fucking impossible. And with inflation, labor cost is spiking. It's hard for people to get buy, so they're asking for more. It has investors and banks spooked to loan money for projects, because they could easily fail with so much volatility.
Nobody mentioned yet the drop of the dollar making every single import 10% more expensive since the start of the year. That is on top of every tariff and is inflationary.
Government spending went up by a surprising amount while tariff revenue rolls in. I suspect one reason there is no detailed budget is to create the space to move things around without much notice. If a large swath of the tariffs would be ruled illegal (already happened twice, one step to final) the situation could become interesting.
I imagine to make American exports cheaper.
It will take years to make America an exporting nation. In the meantime many many businesses will go bankrupt. This administration doesn't care as they just see it as a cost of fulfilling their longer term plan to make America an exporting nation.
For example in France their own Le-Trump aka Marine Le Pen had 41% votes last election cycle, so nothing really happened and system centrists won again, politics remained moderate and predictable. But if she or her ideological successor even takes 50%... hooboy, EU will see some Orbanification just like USA does today.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/22/trump-tariffs-replace-income...
Imagine trying to get a loan from a bank to make a USA manufacturing plant, pointing to the 150% Chinese tariff. A week later the tariff is 25%. Does your math still work? Probably not. Will that bank continue the loan? Nope. Will the bank even entertain a similar proposal from someone else right now? Nope.
If you want to grow USA manufacturing you need to subsidize it, or give private industry confidence it's not going to lose them money. If you can't do that, your relying on charity / non-profit / philanthropy... And I don't see many of those in manufacturing.
I don’t believe most if not all of us have experienced such an immature and erratic administration. We are taxing trade partners, flip flopping on rules and nobody knows what to make of it.
Also we need to remember that the guy responsible for the numbers was fired for allegedly political reason and that could have been political and no one will ever be sure. So how can one trust the numbers in that situation? It has been... Weird
You can't wave this away with "NYC is a leading indicator for the US economy". To the extent that it's true at all, you could say it about any large city in the US.
[1] Like, say: interest rates, the business cycle, AI, the slowdown in software hiring, or the minimum wage increase that NYC implemented on January 1, 2025.
“Ignore this data point, NYC is special.” Color me skeptical.
I'll put it this way: if I were ignoring it, I'd be ignoring one more data point than you are in cherry-picking a single example.
The big, blinking, obvious YoY change for anyone here is tech employment.
> “Right now, we have zero bushels of soybeans on the books with China for this fall harvest that has begun in the Deep South,” Ragland said. “Normally by this time, close to 40% of our sales for the marketing year are on the books. And with zero on the books right now, it is alarming for American soybean farmers.”
https://www.farmprogress.com/soybean/us-soybean-exports-to-c...
The first time that Trump screwed over with tariffs, they got tons of bailout money that we all paid for.
Not all sectors of the economy are so lucky. The big man at the top must be paid with either bribes or allegiance or both.
For example you can tariff bananas all you like, that won't spark widespread banana production in a climate that can't grow them.
Not arguing one way or another, but your reduction isn’t quite accurate with the affects tariffs can have
Unless you turned over all the islands exclusively to bananas, and forget about tourism, pineapples or anything else, you’re not even going to get close.
Also, shipping to continental US is limited by the Jones Act and the lack of capacity in US built, owned, and crewed shipping lines. Assuming a desire to produce things in the US, I don't think it's sensible to tarrif bananas to grow them in Hawaii, and then relax the Jones act so they can be shipped to the continental US on foreign carriers.
[1] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/omb/downloads/pdf/sa-methodology-...
It’s going to be difficult to suss out a signal from employment data until October or November, by when we should have about half a year of post-tariff data [2] to compare with ‘24. (We may not know anything surely for a year.)
[1] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/omb/downloads/pdf/sa-methodology-...
[2] https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2025/trumps-tariff...
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.
The president and his defenders are playing us when they appear to want a growing economy. They don’t.
Source: Me trying to use it and encountering prior fraud. Light reading suggests many have experienced it.
One of the following is true:
- The numbers somewhat-accurately reflect the trend of employment
- Fraud levels were reduced 66x in one year
If it was the second one, that's a sufficiently massive reduction that news stories would be written about it. There would be stories about this great victory over fraud.
A quick search showed no particular anti-fraud measures or claims of effectiveness unique to that time period.
Well run systems experience fraud. It's something you generally want to minimize, but like, it's not necessarily an indicator that the system is broken. Like... AWS has tons of fraud. AWS is still very much not a disaster. (Well, it kind of is a disaster, but mostly because it's a machine that chews up humans via oncall, which is unrelated to their fraud.)
"NY's COVID unemployment fraud topped $11B, partly due to system failures..."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nys-covid-unemployment-fraud-topp...
It looks like fraud rate was typically 5-10%, which might be high, might be "fine". In 2020-21 and 21-22 fraud rate jumped way up to 20%, which is obviously way too high.
But in 2023-24 fraud rate is back down below 10%. We don't have 24-25 data yet, but it looks to me like we had a couple of unusual years during the pandemic, but audit controls seem to have reigned a lot of that back in.
I'd say, evaluate this year's data and then decide if this was a blip or not, then revise your mental model with data.
Edit: typo
(I am an immigrant myself (via the legal means) lest you take my observation as a xenophobic expression.)
Assuming someone speaking another language is both a “recent arrival” and working illegally is… something. Apparently it’s not xenophobic, but it’s not a good look.
Why is Spanish singled out? Why was "bilingualism" being promoted so heavily? Meaning no offense, wtf has the Spanish speaking community contributed to American history to get this special perch? So yeah, there are all sorts of little pockets here and there, and grandpas and grandmas of various flavor speaking the old country's tongue but only one was promoted.
The phenomena is obviously political in nature and to construe is as anything else, including "prejudice" or "xenophobia", is disengenuous.
> Meaning no offense, wtf has the Spanish speaking community contributed to American history to get this special perch?
About half of the total land area of the US was formerly colonized by the Spanish. What “history” are you referring to?! And what “special perch”?
> The phenomena is obviously political in nature and to construe is as anything else, including "prejudice" or "xenophobia", is disengenuous.
This is innuendo. Say what you want to say, and don’t couch it behind a passive “political”. Who’s driving what outcome, and for what ends. Go on!
Special perch is clear: this is a nation of numerious ethnicities with an equal number of distinct 'mother tongues'. The special perch is the recent push to normalize having an entire subset of the society speak a langauge that many of us do not speak and have no desire to learn.
And again, this is pretty localized. Salt Lake City has less Spanish than Los Angeles. Flushing, Queens has more Mandarin than Spanish or English.
It remains unclear who is being harmed here. And what solutions are you advocating for?
Since these are online-only versions of the NYTimes, and immigration sources change throughout history, no. This particular market did not exist 100 years ago.
However, the portion of non-English speakers has remained about the same since the 1910 census began asking about this. ~100 years ago, German was the most prominent non-English language spoken in the U.S., and there were over 500 German-language newspapers in circulation. Yiddish newspapers were common in New York. And Spanish newspapers were widely read in Texas. In Chicago, Polish newspapers were common. San Francisco had the Chinese World (世界日報) newspaper.
Your idea that, 100 years ago, everyone spoke English, and we didn’t support non-English speaking is just flatly wrong.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_Stat...
> Assuming someone speaking another language is both a “recent arrival” and working illegally is… something. Apparently it’s not xenophobic, but it’s not a good look.
I do not care if it is not a "good look" by some standard. What I care about is cultural and value system continuity and national cohesion.
Good news! We share the value of "be cool about it, we're all just trying our best"
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.
I don't think not doing tariffs would have had much of an effect.
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.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/climate/trump-internation...
Communism has a real definition. NK is not communist. China is not communist either.
You can believe communism is evil. You can't believe communism is evil because you just attribute everything evil to communism.
That's just bad reasoning. Like, really really bad reasoning. Like, I think most small children have higher reasoning capabilities than that.
The country could get hit by a meteor tomorrow, and nobody else would notice.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/us/politics/trump-modi-in...
On https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... you can see that mainstream solar panels have returned to their all-time low price of €0.100 per peak watt from November, while low-cost solar panels have fallen to a new all-time low of €0.055 per peak watt, an all-time low first achieved last month, and a 21% decline from a year ago. The "mainstream" category price is down 17% from a year ago. This is driving down the prices of complementary products and enabling new low-cost installation methods that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
Because it's so astoundingly cheap, last year China installed 277 GW(p) of solar power generation capacity: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65064. This compares to a total electrical generation capacity in the US of 1189 GW, albeit with a higher capacity factor: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-.... This year the projection is that China will have installed another 380 GW of solar capacity, giving it more solar electrical generation capacity than the US has total electrical generation capacity from all sources: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/07/10/china-on-track-to-dep...
Consequently we're seeing reports that, for Chinese AI startups, energy is a "solved problem", while US companies worry they'll be unable to get enough energy to compete: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell....
This is one of the most historically important things happening in the world today, but it's surprisingly little known even among people who are otherwise well informed.
Even if Trump could strong-arm other rich countries into imposing US-style prohibitive tariffs on Chinese solar panels, he certainly won't strong-arm China, so the cat is out of the bag; that would just make those countries economically uncompetitive with Chinese products produced with superabundant solar energy. And panels are already being mass-produced overseas with Chinese technology at prices fossil fuels can't compete with.
"Solar is cheaper than fossil" does not look at the whole picture, it completely ignores that solar is not scalable quickly enough to meet rising energy demands. It also is a dark laugh towards consumers, who do not see prices lowering, but exponentially rising, ironically while the so-called cheap power sources are being rolled out.
For coal, the "started construction" number there isn't the same metric as began operation. You want to look for "commissioned" and you get 30 GW. From https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/when-coal-wont-ste...
> Note: In 2024, 66.7 GW of new coal power capacity was permitted, a decline from previous years but still above the subdued pace seen earlier in the year. New and revived coal power proposals totaled 68.9 GW, down from 117 GW in 2023 and 146 GW in 2022, indicating a potential slowdown in project initiation. Meanwhile, construction started on 94.5 GW of new coal capacity — the highest since 2015 — suggesting continued momentum in project development. However, the pace of new coal plants entering operation has been more moderate, with 30.5 GW commissioned so far in 2024, down from 49.8 GW last year but in line with 2021 and 2022 levels.
China is well positioned to do solar + storage, but a lot of that coal is probably (a) for base load, (b) for steel production and (c) to keep the coal miners in business. From the same write up:
> In 2024, more than 75% of newly approved coal power capacity was backed by coal mining companies or energy groups with coal mining operations, artificially driving up coal demand even when market fundamentals do not justify it.
> Hey n00bs: the up‑and‑to‑the‑right charts people fling around about China’s coal tell you almost nothing you think they do. Here's what actually matters:
> 1/ China’s electricity supply exploded over the last decade (versus stagnant for US)
> 2/ new growth is now being met mostly by clean power, coal is at all time low % of total
> 3/ grid delivery got a lot better (bigger and more efficient)
> 4/ China’s power‑sector emissions look like they peaked or are peaking, like 5 years ahead of its official deadline
> So if you reply with “BUT COAL PLANTS!!1!” without talking about utilization, per‑capita numbers, or the grid, you’re, uh, auditioning for the quote‑tweet (thx ChatGPT for this insult).
> More details below for those who have more than half a brain cell available: ...
Coal plant approvals in China last year ended up even lower than the 66.7 GW number you give, only 62.24 GW: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat... That's for all of 02024, not (as you said) the first half.
Contrary to your assertion, that is the peak ("(p)") or nameplate capacity of the coal plants in question. However, coal plants do have a higher capacity factor than solar plants, which may have been what you were trying to say. In the US, which has the best data available, coal plants are operated with an average capacity factor of 42% (much lower than historical averages around 75%) while PV is down at 23%: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183680/us-average-capaci... but I think that in China the gap is wider. From memory, I think I worked out that China's average solar capacity factor has been around 10%, while coal is nearly 50%.
So 62GW(p) of coal capacity built would be about 30GW 'permanently available'. Moreover, However, not all of those regulatorily approved projects will actually come to fruition. You can see from boulos's numbers that only about half of approved plants ever get built. So 62GW approved is more like an average of 15GW actually produced—for the few short years before the plants are shut down.
I'm not sure what you mean by "not scalable quickly enough to meet rising energy demands". China was indeed having a hard time scaling electrical generation quickly enough to meet rising energy demands, back when they were more heavily coal-dependent. They had a full-blown crisis in 02021 with widespread blackouts. But that's because fossil fuels aren't scalable. That's why they installed 500 GW (half a terawatt) of new electrical generation capacity last year, half of which is solar and 80% of which is renewables. As Lauri Myllyvirta says in https://xcancel.com/laurimyllyvirta/status/19603213250099530..., it's probably also why they're still building even the small amount of coal-fired generation capacity they are:
> Permitting of a massive wave of new coal plants was a knee-jerk response to early-2020s power shortages and grid challenges from rapid wind and solar growth. The coal industry marketed itself as the solution, showing its entrenched influence. Since then, better grid operation and storage have largely addressed those issues, while the coal projects approved at the time are still under construction. A huge pipeline of already permitted projects remains.
He cites https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/chinas-coal-is-los... for further information.
I don't have a good handle on consumer electricity prices in China, but from Rui Ma's figures in https://xcancel.com/ruima/status/1960397673921699955, they don't seem to be exponentially rising; the average residential rate she gives is 0.542 RMB/kWh, which is US$0.076/kWh. That was for 02019. According to https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-e..., in 02024, Chinese consumers were paying US$0.08/kWh for their electricity, so they basically haven't seen a price increase in five years. And they're paying less than half the average in the US, where solar deployment is so much less advanced.
By the way, my comment you were replying to cited 5 sources of reliable information. This comment, in reply to yours, cites two reliable sources, plus Statista, World Population Review, and two people on Twitter. Your comment disagreeing with mine cites zero sources, and unsurprisingly virtually every assertion in it is wrong. I corrected five factual errors in your four-sentence comment, and I suspect there are more. Don't you have any information to contribute? Do you just not care whether what you're saying is true or not? Do you think that insufficient ignorance is a big problem in the world, so you'd like to create additional ignorance?
Solar energy production is great - but the problem is not "we have too little solar", it is "we need to lower CO₂ emissions". If China keeps piling up coal power plant capacity, it is irrelevant for the main problem if they also install lots of solar.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Annex-...
Whenever I import goods the HS codes are provided for each item, so it shouldn't be hard to collect the correct amount of money for tariffs.
The only businesses that are derailing with tariffs issues are those that import goods to sell. The argument against tariffs is that they make goods more expensive.
Of course, this argument is true. But that’s not the end of the story.
Because prices are higher for imported goods, demand for domestically produced goods increases. This increase in demand leads to increased demand for labor, which can increase wages. Additionally, the money multiplier effect is higher when money is kept domestically vs paid to offshore parties.
Finally, I think it’s ridiculous to expect that this nation can maintain its wealth without producing anything. We act as if the producers of food are fungible cogs that businesses can swap out. But I think we’ll find that management is the fungible part. Anyone can sell a quality good. Knowing how to make it is what’s important. I’m surprised that mindset doesn’t resonate more with software engineers.
You can let bad be the enemy of both good and perfect.
Investment in manufacturing structures is down in ‘25 [1]. Manufacturing activity in the northeast is down, with “the new orders index dip[ping] into negative territory” [2].
Tariffs can reduce trade imbalances and incentivize domestic production. We’re not doing that. Our tariffs are too volatile. They tax manufacturing inputs. Tweets grasping for the straws of a Nobel prize cede prized export markets like India to China [3]. Cancelled licenses for nearly-complete projects add risk [4].
The policies of a degrowth leftist who wanted to reduce our industrial output and pivot to manufacturing would be virtually identical.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/C307RX1Q020SBEA
[2] https://www.philadelphiafed.org/surveys-and-data/regional-ec...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/us/politics/trump-modi-in...
[4] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/us-orders-orsted-ha...
Also, your second link generally paints a mixed picture, not an outright negative one:
> On balance, the firms indicated an increase in employment, and the price indexes rose further above their long-run averages. The survey’s broad indicators for future activity suggest that firms continue to expect growth over the next six months.
I think it’s misguided to interpret current data as evidence either for or against the current policies. This is something that’s going to take a decade plus to play out. Trying to use data to call winners 6 months in isn’t really possible.
Sure, it’s down in ‘25 and has stalled a multi-year trend. The most-recent data show that trend spreading.
> something that’s going to take a decade plus to play out
Won’t get there. One, the policy is changing on a week-to-week basis. And two, there is no bipartisan buy-in to this policy.
The tariffs could have worked were they sensibly implemented. They weren’t. As structured, they are politically and economically infeasible for their aims. (Great if you’re an intermediary, though.)
There's more than one commenter in this post that talks about "other countries walking all over the US", or claiming that capitalist free trade allowing American consumers to purchase ridiculous amounts of stuff is somehow a scam?
It's as infuriating as it is mindboggling how people can fall for it. It's completely baseless.
Both Obama & Biden deported more illegal immigrants than Trump.
Due Process is a Democratic Party position that Republicans don't value.
Actually, considering the lack of real penalties for employers of illegal aliens, I'd say that the acceptance by both parties of white-collar crime is the real problem.
Properly prosecute rich criminals & illegal immigration will dry up real fast.
Also, the number of deportations does not tell the whole story. The number of illegal crossings under Biden was astronomical compared to both Obama and Trump.
I thought it was about keeping local law enforcement out of immigration matters. Because otherwise undocumented people would be afraid to report crimes or be witnesses, and that's worse for local crime. Which is what city governments care about.
Trump has used tariffs as leverage against India for buying Russian oil, as leverage against Brazil for domestic politics he dislikes, against Mexico to pressure actions against drug cartels, and against Canada and others for recognizing a Palestinian state.
There is no sound economic logic to these schemes. The rates change as Trump likes or dislikes the praise he hears; deals are announced without signed agreements or details; rates, justified by "returning manufacturing" are changed faster than you could dig a foundation for a new factory, let alone actually make anything; industries are targeted for political reasons (like climate change denialism) and not economic reasons; deals are reached to exchange dollars for US-based manufacturing (like the china chip buying kickbacks).
The only logical consistent aspect of the tariff scheme is as unrestrained (and likely illegal) power play for Trump to get what Trump wants.
There is no meaningful path to restoring much of the US’s lost manufacturing capacity. The rent is too damn high, and the cost of goods is rising quickly as well. Labor is expensive and becoming moreso daily. Manufacturing in the US can never compete with SE asia even with 50% tariffs due to the gigantic disparity in the cost of labor.
It’s not going to increase wages, it may even result in even more offshoring due to the increases in cost for raw materials.
But even if you could wave a magic wand and put the USA on equal footing in terms of skills and experience and capability, it would still cost several times more to make the same goods in the USA due to the labor costs (and labor-adjacent overhead costs like workplace safety).
Both would need to be solved, and I think that solving either one alone is already basically impossible on any short- or medium-term timescale. A tiny bandaid like tariffs isn’t going to move the needle.
So if the idea is to be more self sustaining: we cannot.
Also, read this: https://www.molsonhart.com/blog/america-underestimates-the-d...
Basically, there is no way we "win" this economically through tariffs. Nor can we power through it by trying to throw labor at the problem, because the labor cost is cheaper everywhere else.
Plus, with the fickle and chaotic application of trumps tariffs, you’d be insane to invest in domestic production.
Because of this, Boeing gets to make thousands of jetliners and sell them all across the world and America gets to be one of very few places that can do this.
I think you'll find that steel and aluminum are a lot more fungible than jetliner factories. Why are we kneecapping what we're good at for the sake of things that China will ALWAYS be better than us at?
> Finally, I think it’s ridiculous to expect that this nation can maintain its wealth without producing anything.
The total value of US exports has only ever gone up (see above).
I do get the argument for moving manufacturing expertise back onshore, I really do. But tariffs are not gonna lower the minimum wage and if manufacturing is gonna come back to the US, it'll come back in a highly automated form with a boatload of government support.
The govt of India has already put one small order on hold and the word in aviation circles is to switch to Airbus as far as possible.
Military purchases now also won’t happen.
Peter Navarro in one of his rants inadvertently leaked this out on TV: his specific issue was a demand for mandatory tech transfer and manufacturing in India.
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.
Honestly, I’m surprised by this, especially here on HN. This is/was a place where builders congregate. Building new things is never easy. Sometimes all you have is a belief that you can do it. It’s sad to see that go.
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.
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.
Imagine you invest $1000 in the stock market and the market is growing at 10%. But when you open your brokerage account, you see only 5% growth, and it turns out someone has been pocketing the difference. When you confront this person, they say: don’t be angry, you’re still better off than you were before. You would be right to be angry and you would be right to demand policies that force this person to give you your fair share.
That's literally what I said, and why the solution is to undo the things that produced that instead of undoing the things that fueled the aggregated growth while doubling down on the sources of inequality.
It's not 1910 anymore. The US is integrated into the global economy and many if not most jobs export to a global audience. Do you want to hurt the labor arbitrage that allows us to support advanced manufacturing?
This is a well-known problem with factory jobs: https://fortune.com/2025/04/15/americans-want-factory-jobs-r...
It's not possible because you simply cannot afford to pay manual factory workers a competitive wage AND sell the goods from the factory for competitive prices.
Factory work coming back to America would have to look like car factories do right now: highly automated, highly skilled work that takes full advantage of cheap inputs and advanced technology. It will not be helped by raising the price of inputs, deporting engineers, and defunding research.
I think there are some categories of goods where protectionism makes sense for national security reasons, but for most goods, I don't really see the value of propping up less productive domestic production and causing increased prices for consumers. Do we need to make underwear in America? Or toys?
And of course tariffs are not one-sided, so retaliatory tariffs hurt the domestic industries where our exports are competitive, which tend to be high-value.
These thinly veiled pro-trump people are much too common the internet and I'm getting tired of it.
Bananas may not matter (to you), but coffee certainly will.
Even with triple digit tarrifs Chinese goods would still be cheaper.
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 ask for their help. That's why China's growth must be curbed, fast > tariff them to their death or so. But I really don't think it will work at all. And personally I don't even think it's a good idea at all to begin with.
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 penalty minutes than score goals. These freaks think we are competing with China in an MMA fight instead of a Hockey game.
It’s the zero-sum mindset of leadership that only ever learned to excel by cheating and stealing, not cooperating, building, or synergizing.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRMFGCON
Biden was inaugurated in January 2021 and Trump won the election in November 2024.
Part of the problem is that it runs up against the corporate lobbies who would rather take a higher short term profit margin, let American industry hollow out and buy gold + a luxury bunker in New Zealand to prep for the worst case scenario.
Like in Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegone, where all of the children are above average.
It all comes down to a lot of people in other parts of the world being willing to work for far less, for far longer hours, under far worse conditions, than Americans. Anything you can make in the USA will thus be more expensive, and until you’ve re-acquired all the domain knowledge lost to other nations, these quality will also be worse. As most people don’t want to buy something worse for more, you’ll need to force them to by making it unreasonable to import foreign goods (which is already happening), but that also means you limit the market to domestic. I fail to see how that is a viable strategy, unless you aim to wage war on the rest of the world and can’t trust anyone.
Why they don't do it now? One could easily replace 90% of consumed good with US made.
Tax breaks, grants, physical infrastructure, creation of entire markets - those are better tools.
The issue with tariffs is non-competetive companies aren't required to become more competitive.
I mean consider it, a tariff is a tax on those buying a specific competitors goods. Even if tariffs were done surgically, still it seams like a tax benefit is a better tool
Yes they are. They are required to compete on a level playing field domestically and they still have to compete with marked up foreign goods.
This means domestic cars and many other goods will get a tariff markup on a large proportion of their parts anyway. In many cases it will be cheaper or roughly equivalent to pay a single tariff on a finished product from abroad.
In theory it should be possible to bring in staged tarrifs, and use tax breaks and subsidies on on-shore necessary domestic production over time to transition the industry, but that’s not happening and there’s no sign it will happen. The administration doesn’t seem to be aware this is even an option.
No, it's not. The US making not enough steel is not an immutable law of the universe. It is a result of the same kind of industrial decline which tariffs would reverse by making it more economic to produce steel locally.
It only wouldn't work on products which the US has no fundamental ability to make like bananas (which yes, Trump did...).
>This means domestic cars and many other goods will get a tariff markup
Yeah, that's kind of how tariffs work - there's always a markup.
>In many cases it will be cheaper or roughly equivalent to pay a single tariff on a finished product from abroad.
That depends entirely on how you structure your tariffs. If it is the case you've structured them incredibly poorly.
>In theory it should be possible to bring in staged tarrifs, and use tax breaks and subsidies on on-shore necessary domestic production over time to transition the industry, but that’s not happening
I believe I covered that when I said that the tariffs were "being wielded with the skill and grace of a crack addled ferret".
Well, nu-uh! The "level" playing field concept is flawed here. Second, if everyone else becomes less competitive, that does not mean you are 'more competitive'. In a relative sense yes, but in an absolute sense no. A tariff is like a track meet where your competitors get whacked in the knees.
Now, I did say "tend" to be the wrong tool. If another country is actually flooding your market with cheap products (at a loss), in order to drive you out of business, tariffs make sense there. So, tariffs can be good against government subsidized industries. Tariffs countering other tariffs is simplistic, there are other countries in the world and global markets are large and well.. global.
When you even mention building ourself, you are accused of being anti American simply because you point out a deficiency in our current development.
As long as they are cooperating with Russia at least European countries will have a hard time to accept China's advances.
More than that, I think China would be mad not to step into the vacuum the US is creating with it's isolationist policies. For years US aid has been extremely influential around the world, doing a huge amount of good (e.g. USAID) and buying relatively cheap influence in many countries. Countries that were reliant on that aid are going to be understandably jaded by their experience with the US and looking for more reliable allies.
I think American are partially blinded by the crazy negative propaganda against China you see all the time in the US. They significantly underestimate where China stands and overestimate the impact American tariffs can have.
The constitution of the People's Republic of China and the CCP constitution state that its form of government is "people's democratic dictatorship".
The current president has done much to make his appointment for life, so it is a dictatorship that is on the road towards having a dictator.
Cue comparisons to what is currently happening in the US.
A socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.
I think you're ignoring some of the poetic intention of those words, the idea is that the Marxist collective is the dictator. It's turning the concept on its head to put the people at the forefront.
In other contexts such as casual conversation here in the West the term dictatorship means something quite different and you seem to understand that too because you say they're "on the road towards having a dictator" which is surely an admission that they currently do not have a dictator and are ergo but currently a dictatorship.
I'll certainly grant you that Xi has made moves to consolidate power in the individual but that's a separate discussion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletaria...
China is different in all these cases, even after the significant moves by Xi to consolidate power. You could argue that I'm the days of Mao there was a dictatorship in place but things have radically changed since Deng Xiaoping took the helm.
The point of Hockey is to score the most points, not win the most fights. If fact, you are penalized for fighting. The more violent team often loses the game.
The point of MMA is to win the fight by using violence.
The people who watch this metaphorical hockey game for the violence have a 4 letter acronym that they label themselves with.
Before everyone jumps in with GDP per capital with PPP, what quality at that low price means is tofu dreg buildings, cancerous food items, waist high flooding every summer in cities, ghost buildings, and unsafe water (recently one of the most prosperous city, Hangzhou, had sewage seeped into the water for weeks, which the local government denied responsibility).
China’s ‘25 GDP per capita on a purchasing-power parity basis is $29k to America’s $90k [1]. American real GDP per capita grew at 1.7% a year from 2015 to 2025 [2]. (American PPP GDP/c grew 4.5% a year from 2014 to 2024 [3].)
From 2004 to 2024, Chinese PPP GDP/c grew 7.4% a year [4]. If China and America keep growing at their respective rates, we wouldn’t expect convergence for 20+ (40, using America’s PPP GDP/c) years. That’s too long for our if condition to be expected to hold.
There is not a strong argument for Chinese GDP/capita, PPP-adjusted or not, approaching America’s within a generation. There is a risk China’s economy becomes bigger than ours in aggregate.
> what quality at that low price means is tofu dreg buildings, cancerous food items, waist high flooding every summer in cities, ghost buildings, and unsafe water (recently one of the most prosperous city, Hangzhou, had sewage seeped into the water for weeks, which the local government denied responsibility)
Your comment loses credibility with this rant.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PP...
[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA/
[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...
[4] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?locat...
From 2004 to 2024, Chinese PPP GDP/c grew 7.4% a year [4].
What an incredibly dishonest comparison!
Let's do a side by side comparison? 2018 to 2023? 2023 is the last year with solid numbers.
US: 12% real GDP growth
China: 26% real GDP growth
Sounds impressive, until you account for the base.
US: +$2.4T USD
China: +$3.64T USD
Yikes! 4x the number of people, but 0.5x the GDP growth.
Yes, I chose the strongest form of the other side’s argument to show that even then, it’s difficult to argue that Chinese PPP GDP/c is approaching American levels within a generation. (Though China’s numbers don’t vary much between 10 and 20 years, America’s do since we had a lot of war and then economic stimulus in the 2000s.)
> 2018 to 2023?
You want to make multi-decade projections off a pandemic baseline?
> 4x the number of people, but 0.5x the GDP growth
Per capita means per person. Purchasing power means real production. The question was about potential living standards, not aggregate might.
Is the rest of the world suddenly going to start buying something they haven’t in the past? Why?
And the US consumer market is 2x the size of the next biggest (EU).
How exactly is the the rest of the world going to replace the demand of something several times its size?
https://www.chiangraitimes.com/china/china-export-dumping/
Obviously the profit margin will be less than selling to the US, but it does mean that the 3% of GDP mentioned above is not going away entirely, just shrinking to (say) 2 or 2.5%.
The article also mentions transshipment, where Chinese goods get routed to the US via a third country. Although Trump's strategy of "tariff everybody for all the things" is putting a damper on this too.
OT: Solar is awesome! 18 panels are generating 2/3 of our load, despite it being late winter. And a 16kWh battery means the grid power we import is all off-peak. In summer we're going to be exporting enough that we may even cover our winter grid import. Plus it gives us the best UPS system we've ever had, including zero-second cut-over (c.f. Tesla's half-second glitch).
So the world needs to absorb almost half a trillion of new supply.
That's unlikely to be true. They might buy less, but the numbers won't fall to zero.
It also overlooks the detail that the component parts of items "made in the usa" also come from other places. Clothing made in the US, doesn't necessarily use fabric made in the US.
In the short to medium term, the increased cash-flow requirements (tarrifs are paid before sales) will favor large importers with access to abundant cash over smaller importers.
Yes, the purchasing power of US consumers will go down as retail prices of goods go up. Yes global producers will seek out alternate markets.
The current uncertainty causes US purchasing to prefer not to commit to long-term orders. Global suppliers will prefer orders from stable customers, even at somewhat lower prices. Once those long-term contracts are in place, it may be hard to reenter the global marketplace, especially on the currently favorable terms.
In other words tarifs are doing long-term reputational damage that will not be easily undone in a few years time.
On the up side the world is about to observe, for the first time in a couple generations, the effects of an isolationist policy. It is a valuable lesson that needs to be reinforced from time to time.
The US has made friends with a lot of countries based on the goodwill generated by strong trade ties. That goodwill is being eroded in the short term, and will linger as a reputation for "unreliability". 80 years of work is being undone in months.
And unfortunately it won't be as simple as "in 4 years we can go back to normal ". It's obvious that congress supports this, and the American people voted for it, so it's not just one man's policy.
China does not have “very high grow momentum”, in fact growth has been seriously slowing since Covid
I’m not sure sure what “growth momentum” is what it has to do with living standards.
China’s PPP is not more comfortable than the US because it’s still 1/4th that of the US.
China has very serious growth problems, a massive debt overhang from real estate (that is still slowing the economy), a supply planning model that is leaving it with an oversupply of things like cars and batteries.
It would be possible to develop domestic supply capacity, starting with the inputs necessary to feed that development, and then nurture and encourage the process with a targeted ramp up of tariffs. That’s not happening though, instead domestic investment is collapsing.
Industrialization, like deindustrialization, is a continuous process. Every industry suffers from depreciation and decay which means that pace of industrialization per unit time matters.
That said however, the US economy relies quite heavily on the international USD hegemony, and China being a bigger economy does threaten that quite directly. It would be surprising for them to drop the USD, but it is a significant risk.
The USA spearheaded integration of China with the international trading system. Their development was an intentional goal.
You’re not “tariffing them to death”, you’re hurting yourself. This would only work if the USA was the main importer of goods from China, which it is not - only about 14%.
U.S. per-capita income is roughly $80,000, while China’s is about $13,000. Adjusted for purchasing power it would take decades (at current trajectories, which may be slowing due to EU backlash etc.) to converge.
China leads in high-speed rail and EV adoption. These don’t automatically translate into higher overall living standards — healthcare, wages, pensions, and social safety nets matter more.
China’s lending practices have also led to accusations of “debt-trap diplomacy,” and some countries are now cautious about overreliance on Chinese help. This is why China negativity amongst all of their immediate neighbors is so high.
U.S. aid was about Cold War geopolitics, China’s BRI is about long-term economic influence via infrastructure debt.
This is a Premier Cru Red Herring.
80% of economic activity imports nothing? 80% of economic activity doesn’t involve on oil, cars/trucks, or computers?
But if they do choose to leave, or at least stop expanding their businesses, you can’t deny the rational self interest
We've done fine without them in the past, and we'd be better off without them now. At the end of the day, labor and its fruits are the primary origin of value in an economy, not the handful of individuals that have had the immense luck and/or dubious ethics required to capture that value for their personal gain.
"If you tax the rich, they will leave" is a myth created by the rich so that you won't tax them.
In the middle of the 1900s, the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans was 91%.
Nobody is going to leave over Mamdani's extremely modest proposal.
You forgot to mention that only half of capital gains were subject to tax. So the highest marginal rate was 45.5%.
In any case, this is all a major deflection resulting from the lie that the low job creation rate is due to "the threat" of a possible future mayor rather than tariffs.
1) That we're at the threshold for taxes that the wealthy will accept. I would bet many wealthy folks feel attached to their homes as their identity, and it would take some amount to price them out. Like, clearly a billionaire would leave if the cost to stay was a 100% of their wealth, but would probably stay if it was $10 more in taxes. So there's a very nebulous line somewhere in between. I suspect we are not close to that line.
2) That wealthy people living in an area are storing their wealth or declaring that area as their home. Plenty of ways to shield wealth from local taxes, and plenty of ways to claim a place as your home without being taxed by it.
3) That having wealthy people in your community is a net positive for the community. Wealthy people tend to use a lot more resources and distort local politics for their personal gain rather than the gain of the community. Maybe we'd be better off if they weren't around, and several families moved in to take their place. Wealthy people don't ride public transit, normal folks do. Wealthy people can push city council positions to reduce transit, normal folks don't have that influence. Maybe we need more normal folks around.
4) That businesses owned by the wealthy are a net positive compared to, e.g., workers co-ops. Maybe we could be a bit more collective in our approaches and a bit less lionizing towards the wealthy person who got lucky. Maybe we need more community oriented businesses run by members of the community they live in and fewer wealthy business owners racing to the bottom.
Oh good. Then we can ignore your baseless assertions / talking points / propaganda and outright [non-truths].
Also, on a purely pragmatic note, capital is mobile. If you penalize the rich, they just move, and then the new system will stop class mobility.
<meme>hahahaha no</meme>
There are countless places that are more than happy to accept capital with few questions asked. Including, funnily enough, the US itself.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/america-becomin...
the US has the highest class mobility among western nations
The nation V. nation median ranking of class mobility is hardly the Nation V. {many nations} average of wealth.
Mississippi has a GDP per capita of $53k.
11% of Mississippi's population has no health insurance.
Mississippi is one of the highest inequality states in the US. Its median income is $30k. It's Gini Index is 49%.
It has poor physical and social infrastructure by advanced country standards.
Spain has a GDP per capita of $35k. Its median income is $20k.
Everyone in Spain is covered with modern healthcare.
Spain has a nationwide high speed rail network. A lot of its infrastructure is top-notch compared to Mississippi and even wealthy parts of the US.
This is despite Spain having some of the highest inequality in Europe, and undoubtedly a host of other problems, including decreasing affordability for average people. Yet it's inequality is far lower than Mississippi, with a 31% Gini Index.
So perhaps GDP per capita doesn't tell the full story. Also, I'm being fair by comparing Mississippi to one of the poorer countries in Europe, not one of the middle or wealthier countries.
As do I. They all seem to have moved to cosmopolitan places with advanced economies, not Mississippi. I also have friends and relatives that have migrated to Spain. Overall, there is no mass migration in either direction.
> The situation you describe is… one of statistics and not reality
A high speed rail network and universal healthcare are not statistics, they are as real as it gets.
But I definitely agree that Spain is probably not a good place if you want to make an absolute shitload of money.
Statistics might not be ideal, but making policy decisions based on anecdotes is far, far worse.
So you reject mathematics in favor of a few cherry-picked experiences.
I have excellent 0€ out of pocket 0 paperwork healthcare. I walk to my 35 hours per week job. I have about 50 days of vacation each year. I have a small second home down in the beach to enjoy them. In my 150k people hometown some years there is a murder or two, and most years there isn't one. When people rob a business they might threaten with a tiny Swiss Army knife, or maybe just yell very hard.
I'll stay thanks.
Quality of life, by a number of metrics like HDI, is higher in (Western) European countries compared to the US. And even while total salaries might be lower, healthcare infrastructure, life expectancy, food quality etc are better.
Pure take-home money doesn’t tell you the entire picture.
And for pure anecdata, I have friends who migrated to the States and then moved back to EU when they had kids because EU seemed like the safer and better place to raise them.
You can find anecdata to tell pretty much any story you want to tell though.
Social mobility has very little to do with increasing your economic welfare in any absolute sense. It strongly favors countries with highly compressed wages and doesn’t imply much about ease of increasing income since it is only weakly correlated with that.
But yeah, some statistics indeed are just likelihood that the ranking order changes, or even self-reported...
It's like the definition of "middle class". Everyone thinks they're middle class. The OECD calls anyone with 75% to 200% of the average income "middle class". Classically the term means you are above the labour class but not noble.
AFAIK class mobility is measured by class at birth compared to adulthood (i believe as measured by net household wealth)
Also most easily available statistics are from 2020. The US economy has been a massive winner post-Covid and has diverged a lot from some countries.
This website should be a good example. The typical Sr Software dev in the US would be in the top 1% to 0.1% of earners in European countries and Canada. The US has more millionaires than many entire European countries have citizens.
A top 10% earner in the US would be in the top 1% in Canada. An AVERAGE earner in the US is about top 10-15% in Canada.
Class mobility (or social mobility) indicates ability to go from lower to middle class, working class to generational wealth, etc... All income statistics show the US as having a particularly large amount of high income earners, self made millionaires (and billionaires), etc...
This is a myth created by the rich so that you won't tax them.
Also keep in mind the US is a winner here. The UK loses the most millionaires and it's had an observable impact on their economy.
It’s also due to the lack of investment in heathcare, education and other public services over the last 14yrs
Britain still has very many extremely rich people - London has more billionaires than NY - Serious Money by Caroline Knowles is an interesting exploration of the subject
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
What is the incremental value of having a rich person around? Increased yacht sales?
>Individual studies have estimated absolute mobility rates for recent cohorts of roughly 50% in the US (Chetty et al. 2017), 53% in Canada (Ostrovsky 2017), 70% in Germany (Bönke, Harnack, and Luthen 2019; Stockhausen 2018), and 77% in Sweden (Liss, Korpi, and Wennberg 2019).
From https://www.ifau.se/globalassets/pdf/se/2020/wp-2020-11-tren...
Look at this chart: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
Look at the divergence from the US.
Canada's GDP per capita is barely above 2013 levels (~4%), meanwhile the US' is 60% higher. Wages in Canada have been stagnant, there is NO social mobility at all, it's completely fucked.
Where I came up with this statement? Actually knowing things about economics and following the CURRENT numbers. Not a 2017 study (which probably took a couple years and using data from 2015 or earlier) which is completely worthless in 2025.
Are there money games I am unaware of that means they are running brittle houses of cards and marginal percentage increases in taxes would topple their empires?
I just don't understand the fear or concern, but I am not ludicrously wealthy so I suppose I wouldn't.
If someone is truly strong then they have strength to spare for others. I guess I assume the same would be true of wealth, but perhaps you don't get ludicrously wealthy by being proportionally generous.
Notice your statement is a broad morale, and I'm presenting a consequence out here in the real world.
The math of booting wealthy people from the city doesn't play out well for the city.
It seems reasonable at first glance, but I’ve seen no proof of it. California, usually mentioned as having high taxes, still has a large percentage of the ultra-wealthy in the USA. Same with NYC. Sure some notable persons have changed their addresses, but overall, they are they hurting?
Is there any documented case of a rich-popular municipality increasing taxes on the ultra wealthy and seeing the tax levy go down?
So while I admit to not providing you with a study in this comment [1], it is pretty obvious they have been done and I don't see what there is to challenge on the topic. Obviously there is an optimal tax rate for maximising revenue, this is an area where there has been a huge amount of research done and if a municipality pushes their rates beyond that point (which will happen with some regularity) it'll see its tax take go down. There isn't much to document, anywhere with taxing authority would be feeling out limits experimentally all the time.
> Sure some notable persons have changed their addresses, but overall, they are they hurting?
They moved states for tax reasons, so yes. Otherwise they wouldn't have moved. If notable people are starting to move then the system sounds like it is very close to the critical point.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve (not that it'd be total tax burden that needs is the limit, not just the slice imposed by one area).
[1] Wikipedia has a lot of sources though if you actually want to look it up.
This is what I mean when I say I'm not sure if you're actually interested in the answer. The Wikipedia article is a pretty thorough treatment. This isn't some new or unexplored area, it is about as well trodden ground as the economists have. There isn't any need to gather more evidence to retest it yet again, the numbers are well known.
The income-maximising tax rate is between 60 and 75% and depends a bit on local conditions (probably mostly migration and language barriers). Lots of places have gone beyond it, happens all the time, and they generally lower their tax rates when someone points out they could make more money that way. You'd probably find the California tax people do studies on this sort of thing fairly regularly; not that anyone particularly cares or that I'm going to try and look it up. The real question is whether the government should even be trying to maximise the tax take.
Sort of but AFAIK nothing similar to this. There is some evidence of this occurring in Europe, notably France, but it was structural pretty different. Connecticut, NY, and Jersey often trade a small amount of residents depending on taxes year to year, but none of those individuals are really leaving the NYC economy.
NYC is also pretty unique in the availability of certain high-income jobs and amenities catering to the ultra wealthy. Like high-tax California (and America generally), the extra income and benefits from living there outweigh the costs for many. Massachusetts implemented a millionaire tax and saw a net increase in ultra wealthy individuals.
NYC is already one of the most expensive places in the country. People either live there because it’s worth the cost, or it’s the best place for them to make more millions. There is little evidence to support a minor wealth tax would change that meaningfully.
No, you're making baseless assertions / talking points / propaganda.
Capital class wildly different than wealthier working class. But in all honesty, bring the taxes all the way down to me at least. Anyone making a million a year could be taxed a lot more and still live comfortably. The capital class above me could afford a LOT more taxation and still live lives of unbridled luxury.
Is it though?
For many of our current societies I would say that we have failed to distribute the available resources. And even more so if we look at how we have failed distributing resources between societies and countries.
> Capitalism is a morally reprehensible way to distribute resources
Agreed!
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45079542 and marked it off topic.
The most positive argument I have heard is that it would be a small consumption tax that is regressive. Small because the US doesn't really import that much compared to most global economies. It's just things we fixate on like cars or steel, which actually aren't that economically important anymore. Maybe strategically? I feel like people are trying to make economic sense of an emotional / populist policy.
* https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2025/trumps-tariff...
>"Specifically, the requirement for duties and taxes to be prepaid on all shipments prior to their arrival in the US,"
[0]: https://apnews.com/article/us-tariffs-goods-services-suspens...
Which is also very destructive because such instability is very bad for long-term business planning.
The import tariff from Vietnam is 20% and Thailand is 19%.
That being said, the copper, steel, and aluminum tariffs announced recently are real and have been assigned import classification codes by US Customs (which is when new tariffs to become real).
The most insane ending is that tarrifs are reverted but most of the price hike will stay for good.
Under normal conditions, if one company increases their price then buyers will find an alternative.
When all the companies increase the price at the same time then there are no alternatives. Customers become acclimated to the new price.
One reason is buyers may only consider alternatives when prices increase.
Why? Because policy was stable during Obama. Whatever the policy is, if it's predictable, businesses can work around that. This was a real problem during the Biden term when there was constant policy shifts.
We're seeing that now with the tariffs. The problem isn't the tariffs so much as it is the uncertainty. They change from day to day.
One might be tempted to think the administration is intentionally trying to crash the economy. No, they just have absolutely no idea what they're doing and there's a dementia patient in charge nobody can so no to.
Hmm, it's not that I couldn't believe it was Obama, but this is like a 2nd-hand appeal to authority. I would be interested in a bit more data to see why this is.
> Why? Because policy was stable during Obama.
Now of course we can see there was a record period of near all-time high high oil prices from 2011 to 2014 which corresponds to US employment boom in the sector. Was that the Obama good times that oil and gas experts would refer to? That started to crash in 2015 though, and petroleum industry employment with it. Was that crash due to Obama policy or just global drop in oil prices behind taht?
Some might argue the high oil prices of 2011-2014 years are related to Obama's presidency, but it would probably be less about stable trade policy and more like references to the Arab Spring, peak of ISIS, capitulation to Russia's annexation of Crimea.
Now the 2015 oil crash is something I could talk a lot about. I'll try not to turn this into a wall of text.
In Obama's last term he faced a hostile Congress and wanted to pass some wind and solar rebates [2]. The deal he made with the Republican controlled Congress was to lift the ban on exporting crude oil in exchange for the renewable subsidies. This happened in 2015.
So why were crude oil exports banned? This happened about 40 years earlier during the OPEC oil crisis. As an aside, net crude oil exports stand at about ~3M barrels per day. Pretty much all production increases since have been for the export market. US domestic oil consumption has remained relatively stable, despite population increases.
In 2015, OPEC in general and Saudi Arabia in particular crashed the oil market by ramping up production. You can see this here [3]. Saudi Arabia in particular increased production by ~1M bpd in a short period of time. A lot of people think this was to crush the fracking industry, which was heavily in debt. I personally don't buy this explanation because as soon as the price recovers, someone else will buy their assets out of bankruptcy and you're back when you started.
I think it was punishment for lifting the crude oil export ban.
A whole bunch of oil producers and services companies did file for bankruptcy [4] and this whole incident set the stage for what later happened in 2017-2018 and 2020 where Trump basically screwed the energy sector multiple times.
[1]: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/leafhandler.ashx?n=pet&s=m...
[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-35136831
[3]: https://en.macromicro.me/charts/35226/opec-persian-gulf-regi...
[4]: https://graphics.wsj.com/oil-bankruptcies-tracker/?gaa_at=ea...
Yes around 2012 it started to rise, but that was a long way into his first term. Although if you're just going by production, it has been and is far higher after Obama's presidency. So I'm not sure what we make of that. And as you say, the crash happened during his term too.
So I think any kind of careful stable energy policy is really over selling it, yes the industry did well under him for a period of several years, but that looks more like being "lucky" with disastrous Middle East and North Africa interventions and destabilization (not all initiated by Obama of course) coming to a head, along with the birds of "the 1980s called" attitude toward Russia coming home to roost, which drove up oil prices to sustained near record highs that did it. And it wasn't just the prices, but the general attitude from energy companies and consumers that oil production must be diversified away from OPEC and Russia.
The effect will probably be similar to Covid / Remote Work - marginal idea until an externality made it essential. Does mean sh1t tons more unemployment though, so like I said, straws being clutched
You will never see Putin outsourcing civilian tasks to the military.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I know that manufacturing things here in Europe, there already used to be round trip by airplane and co to try to lower VAT paid on purchases to the maximum.
The invoicing system there is highly gamed and corrupt (not that anywhere isn’t).
All of this tariffing has created a lot of new opportunities for businesses who operate in grey areas.
You could try to raise tariffs on a whole country because one company in that country was falsifying country of origin… but it’s inevitable
The simplest explanation for higher stock prices is that the dollar has lost ~9% of its value this year (see: DXY)
stkai•5mo ago