We should probably talk about the madness Trump unleashed this afternoon. As someone on Bluesky said (the actual author is now lost to endless flow of my timeline), the question of whether a nation could more thoroughly punch itself in the groin than the Brits did with Brexit has now been answered with a resounding “Yes.”
I’m completely buried in book stuff–trying to finish a rapid turnaround short work on vaccines while promoting the almost-here tome on the history of germ theory (which has become waaaaaay too timely thanks to RFK Jr.)–if anyone’s in the neighborhood, I’ll be talking at the Oxford (UK) Literary Festival, on Sunday afternoon; love to see any UK Jackals. So I’m not going to add my gloss to the disaster we’re about to enjoy.
Instead, let me give you a random sample of Bluesky reactions as prompts to start the chat here. Have fun inventing invective of the ferocity Terry Pratchett would have placed in the mouths of Commander Vimes et al.
To add some grist to your mills, here’s an excerpt from a note Paul Krugman just posted on his Substack:
But you know that having once claimed that Europe charges tariffs more than 10 times as high as reality, Trump will never drop that claim. I don’t know how many people noticed, but he’s still claiming that we’re subsidizing Canada by $200 billion a year. Aside from the basic mistake of claiming that a Canadian trade surplus means that we’re somehow subsidizing Canada, he’s inflating the actual trade surplus by a factor of three. Many, many people have pointed out the error, but Trump is sticking with it, the same way Musk is sticking with the millions of dead Social Security beneficiaries thing.
If you had any hopes that Trump would step back from the brink, this announcement, between the very high tariff rates and the complete falsehoods about what other countries do, should kill them.
With that, this thread is open–but I rather hope it stays focused on the matter at hand.
*That outcome is now wildly overdetermined, to be sure.
Image: Angelo Bronzino, detail from Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time, 1540-1545
Baud
Are you suggesting the tariffs won’t work?
PAM Dirac
I keep going back to Fran Leibowitz: “You don’t know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don’t”.
SpaceUnit
I’ve got an appointment to speak with my financial adviser on the phone tomorrow. Ought to be interesting.
And by ‘interesting’ I obviously mean a total shitshow.
hells littlest angel
Here’s hoping this century belongs to the EU!
hells littlest angel
@Baud: Oh, they’ll work, alright. Harder than a nine year old picking crops in Florida.
thruppence
Trump is delusional and should be removed from office, but the people who could do it are just as committed to his delusions as he is.
Kelly
Here in rural Oregon’s western Cascade foothills the Trumpists will cheer the cult leader on. They voted +70% in his favor all three times. All their ideas about how the economy works are ridiculous bullshit. The won’t blame him for this mess. Timber barons will enjoy higher lumber prices.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: It depends on the goal. If the goal is to trash our economy, it will work brilliantly!
Steve in the ATL
Of all the
gin jointsEmbassy Suites in all thetownsshithole Florida cities, in all the world,shethe Teamsters/United Airlines bargaining committee walks into mine.hells littlest angel
@thruppence:the people who could do it are just as committed to his delusions as he is.
It’s the Sunk Sanity Fallacy.
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
Push for more legroom.
scav
@PAM Dirac: Some of his ardent supporters should be giving him tough competition pretty soon.
Martin
@SpaceUnit: Be wary – a lot of financial advisors believe Trumps brand of economics.
Baud
@Kelly:
Supposedly, he had a bunch of union people with him when announcing the tariffs.
JBWoodford
@hells littlest angel: The EU is probably the best of the current alternatives, but I’d like to see more from the Global South (not that I’m likely to live that long…late Boomer, and all).
Jay
@Baud:
@hells littlest angel:
Yurp, pretty soon everybody will be Buying American.
China will buy Lockmart, Airbus will buy Boeing, Kia will buy GM, ruZZia will buy Alaska and Nor California, Mexico will buy the southwest and SoCal and deport all the filthy gringos, all at mere pennies per $100,000,000 USD.
SpaceUnit
There were convoys of trucks tearing around on my side of town yesterday flying “Liberation Day” flags and honking their horns.
Sandia Blanca
I’m loving the commentators pointing out that he’s imposing “retaliatory” tariffs on some tiny uninhabited islands (Heard and McDonald). Those penguins need to be taught a lesson!
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: They really believe the bullshit (they are perennially protectionism-curious). They will be very disappointed.
Martin
Hope everyone has their curtain rod and cardboard box ready to go. Spring is coming and the sparrows will start making their appearance.
SpaceUnit
@Martin:
Yes, I’m aware. They’re pretty much all Republicans.
I’ve never discussed politics with mine. That might be about to change.
Trivia Man
@hells littlest angel: fingers crossed they maintain a commitment to human rights and privacy
Ksmiami
We need to destroy every single Republican Rt effing now
Jay
@Kelly:
Will there be any buyers for wood in the Trumpconomy?
Tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber over the decades have only done one thing, increase the cost of a starter new single family home by $50k over the years.
SW
We need to keep hammering the fact that the responsibility for this and its consequences lies entirely with the Republican Congress. Hang it around their necks. Trying to claim that they are innocent bystanders won’t fly. Tariffs are entirely the responsibility of Congress. They can’t escape it by claiming that Trump is responsible. They had to empower him to do this. This is the soft underbelly of the Clown show. We regain Congress in 26 and we put an end to the madness and begin the process of repairing the damage.
Eolirin
I’m not sure we can survive another almost four years of this.
Ruckus
@PAM Dirac:
People that voted for shitforbrains are close.
I believe that they think that someone with money must be smart.
But he inherited his money. And he inherited a HELL OF A LOT MORE MONEY than he did brains, common sense, rationality, any realistic concept of himself – other than he has money.
Jay
@Sandia Blanca:
Don’t forget, the Puffins must be punished as well.
Besides, Birb’s arn’t real.
Flightless, yeah, right.
Steve in the ATL
Saw this in LinkedIn from a rival firm:
Hope they’re successful!
Gin & Tonic
When Trump was first elected, a good friend of mine in Ukraine was trying to convince me to move there, permanently. I still had gainful employment in the US and a family situation that didn’t allow it, but now … I wonder which choice is worse.
Matt McIrvin
@Steve LaBonne: The Democratic Party used to have a protectionist wing (Dick Gephardt was always into that), and it played well with the industrial unions. But I’m not sure they’re ready for what happens now.
different-church-lady
What’s there to talk about? We elected an insane man, he’s doing an insane thing, and now there’s nothing left but insanity. Fin.
Ksmiami
@Eolirin: drag them out of our government. Pitchforks and tumbrels.
bbleh
@Kelly: was thinking the same about WV miners.
They see Their Man Standing Strong Against America’s Enemies. And just as importantly, they see the guy who hates non-Whites and uppity wimmin as much as they do and has come out a WINNER. They won’t necessarily see the effects of this idiocy soon, but when they do, they will first deny that it’s happening, then deny that he had anything to do with it, and finally say they’re just fine with it because something something greatness (and also those lazy inner-city types).
They are as stupid as he is.
Ksmiami
@different-church-lady: National suicide.
TF79
It looks like those “Tariff rates charged to the US” column that has Krugman scratching his head was calculated by taking a country’s trade deficit with the US and dividing it by their total exports (i.e. not anything fucking close to a tariff rate).
James Surowiecki: “Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn’t actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us. So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is.”
I haven’t looked at all the countries, and different sources have slightly different numbers for trade balances, but for the EU, it looks like a $235B trade deficit on $605B in exports to the US, or ~39%.
uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c7e3262eceebe70ff9d27b236e75ef5214ef1ec46e1272bb86493dd72a3ae216.png
cmorenc
The curse of having a President who is both most confidently convinced he knows it all and the most incapable of recognizing he is the most stupidly ignorant of our Presidents ever.
Sandia Blanca
@Jay: I expect an investigative report from Albatrossity!
NotMax
America 2025: the land of Manifest Dunceity.
bbleh
@Martin: @SpaceUnit: … and alas, some will SAY they believe it, hoping they can surf the wave and come out ahead, and meanwhile needing people not to abandon ship. Remember that, with some exceptions, financial advisors do NOT have a fiduciary duty.
@TF79: wow. That is even more dishonest than I expected! Which is not to say that (1) it will be pointed out by the MSM, or (2) his followers would believe it or (3) care even if they did believe it.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
We used to be more industrial and have less foreign trade.
So we’ll see.
RevRick
@PAM Dirac: He is the epitome of stupidity. He claims knowledge far beyond his actual abilities and refuses to admit how wrong he is about what he thinks he knows.
Jay
@bbleh:
Oh, they will, between no OSHA, no Mine Safety and China being the only real buyer of their product,……………………………. when there is Australia much closer,………………..
Now the Black Lung will take a lot longer to show up again.
Steve LaBonne
@Matt McIrvin: Their members are about to get a very expensive education.
Kelly
@Baud: Not a lot of union jobs out here. A few sawmills are unionized. Now I’m wondering if even the lumber industry will benefit from Trump’s autarky. Might not be much lumber demand if no one has money to build.
We have Trumpist farmers that are about to lose their wheat and grass seed export markets. I don’t know how big those export markets are but they always lobby for export transport infrastructure
edit @Jay: Just started wondering about that
bbleh
@Jay: lung damage from silica dust is even worse. But they simply refuse to make the connection. “None is so blind as he who will not see.”
(I probably am alive only because I avoided going to bars while I lived there …)
Ruckus
@bbleh:
They are as stupid as he is.
I know they voted for him and all but still, just over half the humans in the US are dumb as, as, as, what the hell is that dumb? I mean sure they voted for shitforbrains, did they actually think he was going to make things better in any way? For anyone? And now we are looking at a recession. Oh well at least with shitforbrains no one can say they are surprised at how completely fucking stupid he is.
SpaceUnit
@bbleh:
Yes, I expect my advisor will consider calming the waters to be his primary duty.
Eric S.
Since November I’ve hoped the ownership class would throttle the damage he would do. I never counted on it, but hoped. That hope is just about gone.
Harrison Wesley
@Baud: He had guys in hard hats, but so do the Village People.
oldgold
This damn fool, the Wharton School of Business’ orange embarrassment, seems to think the word “groceries” is some arcane word he has resurrected from the dust bin of history.
Speech after speech he dwells on the word groceries. He did it again today.
“It’s a very simple word. Who uses the word? I started using the word. Groceries – such a beautiful word!”
All it shows is he is completely out of touch with the day to day lives of regular folks.
Chief Oshkosh
ABC News playing it straight-up reasonable, couching it entirely in Trump/GOP framing. They aren’t even questioning where Trump’s numbers come from, nor are they questioning the completely contradictory “logic” of Trump’s view of tariffs and expected outcomes, that they are internally completely inconsistent, as explained by Krugman:
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/stop-looking-for-methods-in-the-madness?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=277517&post_id=160404589&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1yjc6&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
With follow-up:
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-goes-crazy-on-trade?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=277517&post_id=160453846&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1yjc6&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Jay
@Ruckus:
Average IQ, 97, functionally a moron.
Average reading and comprehension level, 4, functionally illiterate.
The Common Clay of the New West.
Baud
@Harrison Wesley:
I heard about it second hand. I don’t know where the unions officially stand.
bbleh
@Ruckus: did they actually think he was going to make things better in any way?
Oh but he HAS made it better. He showed those damn libruls! He beat those ***** Dumb-o-crats like a drum! And — although this goes without saying — he made it ok to be an out-loud-and-proud bigot again. They don’t have to listen to those libruls tellin’ ’em what they can and can’t say anymore! Or those stupid eggheads and their “climate” stuff and “vaccines” and their stupid MASKS!
Ruckus
@Eric S.:
Your hope storage box must be a hell of a lot bigger than mine.
PaulB
There are three quotes I’ve seen in the last few days that I think sum up what I’m seeing. First, from Paul Krugman:
The second, from Trump himself, although I’m not sure when he said this:
And the third, from a White House staffer, courtesy of Politico:
It’s ego and ignorance driving these decisions, not some grand plan. Personally, I’m tired of analysts and reporters trying to come up with rational explanations where there are none.
HinTN
@Steve in the ATL: Entertainment value on the order of HST and his attorney in Las Vegas, no?
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The industry we have depends on foreign trade. Every car made in America has parts made elsewhere. That’s how it works.
We’re not going to replace every industry we buy components from with a drop-in domestic replacement. They couldn’t even get the workers.
SpaceUnit
I think it might be time to once again stock up on scotch and peanuts, batten down the hatches, and party like it’s 2020. Things are gonna get bad.
Matt McIrvin
@PaulB: Dude ran on “KAMALA = HIGH PRICES, TRUMP = LOW PRICES”. I don’t see how you get from a tariff-backed nation to that.
hitchhiker
Last summer I made an effort to find a new primary care person; we’d been in our new place for 4 years and the old one was 2 hrs away.
At my first appointment I was trying to explain why I find it helpful to keep a few low dose hits of xanax in my medicine cabinet. (I just like knowing they’re there in case there’s a day when it all becomes intolerable. I don’t drink. I don’t use weed. Those pills are like a safety net, to be used once a month or so. A bottle of ten lasts for a year.)
She was being kind of rude about this, and wanted to know what sort of thing I was worried about … the election, I said. Like, isn’t that obvious??
She shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter who the president is, right?”
She actually said that!
I guess if I hadn’t fired her on the spot, I’d ask her at my next appt if she still thinks it doesn’t matter. Dumbass.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: I’ll go down to the hotel bar and ask
bbleh
@Matt McIrvin: not only that, even if there were viable business plans to establish such businesses in the US under a tariff regime rather than abroad (extremely unlikely for several reasons, but leaving that aside), it would take years to build a base of any size, and NOBODY is going to invest in anything like that when you’ve got a mercurial moron switching tariffs on and off whenever his Adderall-addled brain decides it would be fun or get his name in the news.
Suzanne
@oldgold:
OH FOR FUCKING FUCK’S SAKE.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: UAW has been officially on board for a while. Fain actually seems to believe there will be a lot of new jobs for his members.
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
If working people are happy, I’m happy.
Steve in the ATL
@HinTN: I like the way you think. I look forward to an evening of mescaline and raw ether!
Harrison Wesley
@oldgold: I don’t think a guy who lives off hamberders knows what groceries are. At least he didn’t say that the groceries came up to him in Publix with tears in their eyes and called him “sir.”
Gin & Tonic
@Steve in the ATL: You’re not *at* the bar, at this moment?
Ruckus
@bbleh:
You are correct, he made things better. But only for him and only for a short while. His followers will suffer – just like the rest of us. And after every thing turns to shit – again, only worse this time around, it won’t be just this side of the fence that suffers. The problem is that his supporters think that fucking over everyone else is good for them, and it isn’t and won’t be any more this time than it’s been before, it’s just that they will never admit it.
cain
@Kelly:
I’m sure a lot of equity firms will start moving in – they got plenty of money. I mean they’ve already moved in on old folks homes, vet clinics, homes, everything can be turned into an index now even prisons!
But the jobs spawned are not going to pay well anyways.
I’m going to be very curious to see how the media is going to react to this. They’ve been sane-washing this motherfucker for quite some time. Now they are being shoved to the back of the room, and right winger news media is getting all the access.
But now they also will be poorer themselves.
Steve in the ATL
@Gin & Tonic: QUIT STALKING ME!!!
NotMax
@HinTN
Truman was in Las Vegas?
:)
cain
@PaulB:
Their editors aren’t losing enough money yet. Give it some more time. Once things really start circling the drain it’s going to be an incredible Depression, the best, one we’ve never seen before.
different-church-lady
@oldgold:
ONE YEAR FROM NOW: “Remember groceries? Those were great times…”
TF79
@bbleh: yes, I figured they’d do some shady accounting, creative interpretation sort of things. But this is like taking my height and dividing by my bank account and calling it my street address.
cain
@Steve in the ATL:
🎶 I always feel like, someone’s stalking me! (and I get no privacy!) 🎶
PaulB
Oh, that’s easy; they already have that figured out. According to Trump and his supporters, foreign nations pay the tariffs, not American buyers, so our prices will remain the same, and may even go lower as foreign countries capitulate to Trump’s amazing tactics. Also, according to Peter Navarro, tariffs are a tax cut, not a tax hike.
See? So prices won’t go up and we’ll also get $6 trillion in revenue from the tariffs (over the next 10 years), so we’ll all be better off. Isn’t life wonderful in Trumpland?
RevRick
@Baud: In 1975, when I moved to the Pittsburgh area, there were about 125,000 jobs in the steel industry there. Total employment in the American steel industry was over half a million. By the time I left, Pittsburgh steel employment collapsed to 23,000. In ‘75, total US steel production was about 100 million tons. Today, the US produces about 85 million tons with around 143,000 employees. Advances in automation have caused more reduction in manufacturing jobs than trade with other countries.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: We don’t have the infrastructure to support a massive surge in manufacturing, and no path to building it out in anything resembling a reasonable amount of time, especially with them gutting the Biden era investments.
We will see cost increases and supply shortages. Along with a ton of bankruptcy of US industry that’s dependent on foreign components where there’s insufficient demand to deal with the higher prices or that’s export dependant and gets killed by retaliatory tariffs or boycotts.
There are generally alternatives for most US goods, outside of tech and entertainment IP. There are no means for us to reasonably replace our imports from the entire world.
Nukular Biskits
@Martin:
Well, I did plant extra tomato plants this year …
Scout211
Commentary in The Guardian
Here’a a snippet, but the whole thing is a good rundown of today’s whole speech of crazy talk by the crazy man who seems not to understand anything.
. . .
And concludes:
cain
@Eolirin:
I also suspect waves of nationalism happening in EU and other places. By that I mean, American fast food is going to be in the cross hairs.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin: There’s protectionism – and there’s this, which is just nuts. Protectionism involves targeted tariffs to achieve specific goals, usually nurturing infant industries or defending industries with national security importance. In the modern world, across the board tariffs of 20 plus – often a LOT of plus, targeted by country rather than product and industry, is an express system to have no foreign trade at all – like Juche in North Korea. Worse than Peronism in Argentina.
This is going to have really horrific economic consequences for the US. OTOH, it’s really good news for the Chinese Communists!
PatrickG
@Jay:
Truly door opening opportunities for America when Lockheed-Martin and Walmart merge!
(sorry not sorry)
For the rest, well, I got nothing that other people aren’t saying better.
bbleh
@TF79: it’s all kayfabe. That’s all pretty much ANY of their public actions are. It’s a show, and for a show you need a big chart with numbers on it, so you whip up some numbers. Doesn’t matter that they’re completely meaningless — hell, even if they WERE meaningful, it’s not why the tariffs are being imposed.
Mighty Trump Smashes Evil Foreigners With Strong Tariffs!! WHAM! CRUNCH! POWEEE!!
(But yeah, I figured there’d be SOME connection, like maybe they picked ONE particularly egregious tariff each nation imposes and merely implied that it was across-the-board. But no — this was faster and easier I’m sure.)
Chetan Murthy
@cain: theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/29/boycott-french-customers-mcdonalds-coca-cola-trump-tesla
“Le boycott: French customers shun McDonald’s, Coca Cola and Tesla to protest against Trump”
Eolirin
I would not be surprised if MS, Apple and Google start eyeing the exits.
Fair Economist
@Eolirin:
Interesting thing about IP is that having IP in other countries requires the *other* countries pass and enforce laws on it. With this kind of assault, they have good reason to roll those back.
Besides that, this poisons US-identified entertainment brands. Things other than Disney and Star Trek can become cool elsewhere, and probably will.
Steve in the ATL
@cain: there’s an eighties song for every occasion!
Eolirin
@Fair Economist: I meant more that no one else has the infrastructure to create entertainment like Hollywood does, though India and China are working on it.
Same thing with tech. No one can replace Windows or Android at the scale and functionality needed. AWS and Azure too
Breaking IP devalues those products, but if those products are devauled to the point they break, entire industries collapse.
The Audacity of Krope
It’s going to come to the point where I’m unwilling to buy any durable goods because I refuse to support my nation exploiting others.
First up will be electronics if Trump gets as exploitative a Ukraine deal as he is seeking.
SW
@Scout211: that last line just kills.
Hoodie
@Matt McIrvin: They appear to simply ignore comparative advantage, e.g., Canada can process aluminum and produce lumber cheaper because they have cheap hydropower and giant forests. Christ, Krugman won a Nobel prize on this shit. That’s what makes me think this is a smokescreen. There is no grand plan to transform the economy. These tariffs are a blunderbuss, patently ridiculous. I imagine all the exceptions and carve outs will start immediately. Trump sees this as a glorious way to generate bribes and punish selected enemies. He’s likely already extracting some bribes looking at some of these recent pardons.
Kelly
@cain: Private equity has been buying timber companies, quickly cutting timberland and closing the mills for a while. The usual stripping for parts.
rk
This isn’t about his supporters learning lessons. It’s about democrats learning their lessons. So many did not show up, many Biden voters voted for Trump and a lot of minorities thought the people they know who were legal would be spared.
Kamla Harris was right when she said that when we show up we win.
Trump won because a whole lot of Democrats are tepid supporters. Republicans will continue to worship Trump even if he shoots them in the face.
Scout211
@Eolirin: And in contrast, Zuckerberg just bought a $23M mansion in DC.
There’s a lot of the government up for sale right now.
Nukular Biskits
Somewhat related:
Had a former coworker tell me about another former coworker who had gone gov’t recently … and quit to go back to his contractor job before he was terminated due to being a probationary employee.
cain
@Kelly: Yep, and they will be doing more of it. These equity firms are horrible institutions. It’s an absolute disaster that Dems have not gotten around to putting a leash on them. It’s also why prices are so high for everything.
Jay
@Fair Economist:
Don’t you kinda need chips from Taiwan?
32%.
cain
@Martin:
Yes, it will be good to enjoy nature when you’re homeless. The box and curtain rod will come in handy. I could use a wheelbarrow though.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
The actual UAW statement on this:
uaw.org/tariffs-mark-beginning-of-victory-for-autoworkers/
Fain’s somewhat caveating such “support” if ‘Murkin corporations do a laundry list of the right things by labor plus other pie-in-the-sky things like a strong NRLB.
The UAW’s position isn’t ‘officially onboard’ by any stretch, again, read the actual release. But, all people see is the click bait headline and then opine from that. Admittedly, the UAW’s position going to the conclusion the UAW wants to see is based on unicorns farting rainbows. When that doesn’t happen, it’s easy to see how they could easily pivot into a very critical view of what Hair Furor’s done.
mapanghimagsik
Wheeee! ( Sliding down the Dow futures slide )
tobie
There are some days it’s hard to breathe. Today’s one of them. Seeing America’s self-destruction in real time is so painful.
cain
@Chetan Murthy:
It has begun!!!
Especially, you’re going to see movements to kick McDonalds and other franchises out of historic buildings or areas like Champs-Elysées. Nobody wants a reminder of America in the center of their heritage sites.
cain
@Eolirin: If htey are upcoming then U.S. interests will look to buying them. Should have seen the cola wars in India. To some extent I suppose Bollywood has already been taken over by western cinema. This was some time back:
cnn.com/2013/05/05/business/u-s-bollywood-turns-100/index.html
That’s a 2 billion people market. But Netflix has done better than these companies have because they don’t adapt their content to Indian watchers like Netflix has.
But U.S. entertainment and fast food is going to FAFO. These are the U.S. cultural pile driving that people strongly associate with the U.S.
Fair Economist
@Jay: Yes, we need a lot of imported chips for a lot of things, and it would take a decade to design new ones, build the foundries, and redesign the devices to use them. It’s going to be a rerun of the COVID supply chain crisis, except it won’t end.
MagdaInBlack
@cain: I’m sure there will be plenty of un-used shopping carts available.
Eolirin
@Fair Economist: US firms hold most of the the chip architecture IPs, we don’t need to redesign them. We just need the fabrication capacity. Which… we don’t have, and the Trump administration is gutting all of the CHIPS act funding that was targeted at helping us get.
Harrison Wesley
FL legislature may be trying to eliminate the property tax. Since there is no state income tax, lost revenue will be recouped by increasing sales taxes. That would blend nicely with Trump’s cunning plan.
windpondalaska
This speech by Rand Paul regarding tariffs is thoughtful and informative. I was surprised. youtube.com/watch?v=LeZdMCTIckQ
Nukular Biskits
@Harrison Wesley:
MS just passed (and idiot MAGA governor Reeves just signed) legislation to eventually eliminate the income tax, reduce the sales tax on groceries but increase the sales tax on everything else. AND increase the fuel tax.
IOW, it’s a shifting of the tax burden down the income ladder.
BeautifulPlumage
@Sandia Blanca:
it’s the quantity not the quality, makes the list look longer
Eolirin
@Nukular Biskits: I’m sure that will prove to be very popular.
The shift in the white vote needed to flip MS is a lot smaller than you’d think. I wonder if this will do it.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
That’s the auto tariffs of last week. Any statement about today?
Kelly
Historian Eric Rauchway
bsky.app/profile/rauchway.bsky.social/post/3llugqo36ps22
Gvg
Just reviewed causes Of the Great Depression. Sigh. We really need to prevent anyone in his circle convincing him we should bring back the gold standard. I don’t remember that being taught when I was in school, but the countries that stayed on it had worse and longer depressions. They mostly resumed it after WWII. We didn’t go off it again till sometime in the 70’s when I was a kid and it was controversial so that would be why it wasn’t taught to me, but the evidence is strong, and you know how Trump likes gold.
our schools must be worse than I realized.
trollhattan
@SpaceUnit:
Imagine how much more those flags cost AFTER Liberation Day.
Take that, Gyna.
Jay
@MagdaInBlack:
Yeahbut, then you have to deal with that one wonky wheel forever.
Here, we have groups that gather bikes and build trailers and then donate them. The trailers are a safe insulated sleeping space and a place to keep your curtain rods. The old friction 12V generators are used to charge a small battery bank that allows interior lights and cell phone charging.
Kelly
@Eolirin: and critical chip fabrication equipment is only available Dutch corporation ASML
Steve LaBonne
@Gvg: Think bigger. Crypto standard!
Harrison Wesley
@Nukular Biskits: Perfect coordination. Prices go way up, then draw a hefty sales tax. It will be interesting to see if a state can function with only millionaires as its population.
trollhattan
@Nukular Biskits:
Worked so well in Kansas with Brownback. Hoo boy.
Martin
@Fair Economist: They’re mostly designed in the US for the most part. Most of that IP is also in the US. The US also dominates the software used to design them, the control systems for the fabs, and a few other bits and pieces.
The Dutch make the machines that make the chips. Taiwan threaded the IP needle on how to manufacture the chips. Wafers come from all over, but Japan still punches well above their weight. And US designed chips go, well, everywhere, apart from a little bit of Chinese designed silicon and a little bit of South Korean designed and a bit of Taiwanese designed.
A decade is optimistic. The upfront costs for this stuff is unbelievable (now in the 100s of billions) and largely out of reach of any one company. It’s all consortiums of one form or another. And unless the US is looking to invalidate everyone else’s IP, the US is going to have to build their own, and even just starting up the university programs to do that research will take a minimum of 7 years and cost 10s of billions, and result in an intractable fight in Congress for which states should get that money. These are decades long initiatives that the US has long ago shown we don’t have the attention span to pursue.
There is literally no way to domesticate the entire semiconductor supply chain. Anyone suggesting that should be laughed out of the room. Semiconductors have turned into a species project, not a national one.
Eric S.
@Ruckus: my Hopeful box share an open floor plan with my wishful thinking box.
Steve LaBonne
@Nukular Biskits: Ohio Republicans are going to end up doing this.
Ksmiami
@SpaceUnit: ignore your financial advisor and buy international etfs. The US is over
SpaceUnit
@trollhattan:
Surely we can make our Liberation Day flags here in America. Of course the spelling will be off.
Baud
@Martin:
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: Hadn’t considered the wonky wheel issue.
I have a bike, and curtain rods, itsa start.
trollhattan
@Scout211:
Exactly what Bezos did.
washingtonian.com/2020/01/27/jeff-bezos-dc-mansion-has-made-its-social-debut/
Jay
@Martin:
I don’t think you will have Universities.
Steve in the ATL
@Kelly: the national labor relations act came out of the depression too!
Another Scott
@oldgold: It seems to be another indication of what happens when you go to school and don’t do the work, but instead have others take tests for you…
There’s actually a case to be made that the trade deficit is an actual problem that (eventually) needs to be addressed. E.g. Dean Baker (from 2010):
47 won’t be arguing for a lower valued dollar, of course, but blowing up the US and world economy will probably help that happen.
We all know the old saw of someone who is always wrong who miraculously isn’t wrong on[c]e. “A stopped clock is right twice a day.” 47 is taking a sledgehammer to the clock…
Grr…
So even if one were genuinely concerned about the trade deficit and wanted to reduce it, one wouldn’t do it in the stupid way he acts. It’s clear that he wants perpetual attention and wants other leaders to come crawling to him to change his mind or give them a break. It’s all about him, all the time, every day, in every way.
And everyone else is going to needlessly suffer until people in authority stand up and stop him. Something like 20 Republicans working with the Democrats could end this stupidity….
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Ruckus
@RevRick:
For most of my working life I made things out of metal. The advancement of computers changed everything. The machines when I started were operated by hand. Turning a handle turned a screw and move the metal bits under a cutter which removed metal. In the 70s computers started to be used to tell the machines what to do. The last few machines I bought could run 24 hrs a day without anyone standing there. It’s more advanced today than it was then. One computer and one human can operate several times what one human did over 50 yrs ago, be more consistent, and far closer tolerances. Last job I did 3 yrs ago had a tolerance of +/- 25 millionths of an inch. Easy peasy to do in today’s manufacturing.
Eolirin
@Martin: It may have been possible for the US to do this, over time, but not with this crowd of lunatics, who are doing everything they can to kill research and claw back infrastructure spending.
Melancholy Jaques
@bbleh:
They see him scorning & harming the people they despise. That’s all it takes to earn their complete devotion.
Jay
@MagdaInBlack:
2/3’rds of the way there to the New American Fiscal Independence.
It’s not just sparrows you know, fair amount of meat on a Pidgeon, and then there are roots and berries. Ducks if you have a lakefront park, a park bench, can beg some stale bread and have a hammer.
SpaceUnit
@Ksmiami:
Most of my portfolio is in managed funds. Those fund managers have typically been pretty good at outperforming the markets during economic turndowns.
But this is uncharted territory.
BeautifulPlumage
@HinTN:
+++whispers because off-topic*** Today’s picture is great, I love the layout and colors
am
Your artistic reference savagery is breathtaking.
What an incompetent jerk he is.
Mike in Pasadena
@SpaceUnit: One assumes by his profession that he is a trumpty dumpty supporter. Be sure to razz him about his support. That’s what I do to my MAGA financial advisor, just for fun.
SpaceUnit
Pro Tip: Coat hanger wire is better for roasting sparrows than a curtain rod.
Kelly
While Trump extracts bribes Trump insiders are gonna steal billions frontrunning the tariff changes.
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: With me and everyone else out there trying to snag ducks and pigeons, we’ll soon have shortages of those too…..
Nukular Biskits
@Eolirin:
Almost no one is fooled, based on the reactions to Tate Reeves’ post on Twitter.
The income tax cut rollout is supposedly tied to economic benchmarks over the years yet Reeves keeps touting it as an immediate cut.
Additionally, there was no real plan put together about how a state that relies on federal funding to prop up about 40% of its budget is going to fund programs/services when revenue dries up.
Finally, there’s this:
MS Today: Mississippi Legislature ends 2025 session without setting a budget over GOP infighting
SpaceUnit
@Mike in Pasadena:
I dunno. I’d prefer to keep the relationship as apolitical as possible.
I’ve never actually met the guy in person. He’s on the east coast and I’m in Colorado.
MagdaInBlack
@SpaceUnit: Was just thinking that. I mean, I’ve used them for marshmallows, so of course they’d work.
Jay
@MagdaInBlack:
You will always have Canada Geese.
I can give you tips on those so you don’t wind up dead.
First, practice a Canadian accent,……..
Martin
@Jay: Look, I gotta have some assumptions to start from.
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: Ha!
I raised geese. The grey Toulouse were easy to handle, but those damn knobby headed ones that look like Canadian geese, they were assholes.
(the Toulouse were my pets. The assholes, were dinner)
cain
@Kelly: Sure, but I think the other countries are not going to allow these assholes in. So they probably will be spending freely here but on what I don’t know other land.
David T Rickard
Y’know, if there was anyone sane/serious in the maladminsitration, they’d just tell the Mad King that all the tariffs were implemented as ordered, fake up a bunch of reports saying that the Trump Golden Age is in full swing, hire a bunch of actors to pretend to be foreign dignitaries begging Dear Leader to show mercy… and not change anything in US trade policy.
SpaceUnit
@MagdaInBlack:
This blog should start posting weekly forums where we share tips for surviving the American Apocalypse. Foraging for edible plants and sleeping under bridges, that sort of thing.
Jay
@MagdaInBlack:
Lost in the Chilcotin. Stopped by a Ranch House to ask directions. Two German Shepherds came charging out, barking. No big deal, stood them down.
Two Embeden geese can charging out when I came closer. Ran me off.
MagdaInBlack
@SpaceUnit: All my years of digging dandelions in the spring, and walking fence-rows for asparagus gonna come in handy. Something to go with the pigeons on a spit.
p.s. fire roasted squab with roasted wild asparagus sounds pretty fancy, huh?
Ksmiami
@SpaceUnit: most cactus is actually edible
CaseyL
The human capacity for rationalization is limitless. Trumpies will say the ruin of the US is God’s punishment for ever electing a black man as President, and for “letting” women live independent lives.
Also, they’re convinced Jesus will come back once things get really bad.
Martin
@Eolirin: No, not possible.
Before Moores Law was coined, the founder of Intel figured out that semiconductors are a very low marginal cost market, and their ascendance came when he slashed prices on integrated circuits to boost demand. The increased sales didn’t materially impact their marginal costs (the material cost of a semiconductor is pretty close to zero) but it better distributed how to pay off the large investment in equipment.
Semiconductors are an exercise in scale. TSMC is huge because they do most of the planets manufacturing, and it’s only by doing that that they can afford to be where they are. How you remove the US from that international market matters here. If the US designers are removed but the global sales market stays, TSMC will mostly stay ahead. The US designers (Apple, Qualcomm, AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Broadcom, etc.) needs foreign markets to sell their products into. In a trade war, it’s likely that ends, and the US only has domestic markets. (Note, the largest general purpose compute IP portfolio is ARMs and they license to almost anyone including most the above listed companies, plus Samsung and some Taiwanese firms and are based in the UK, not the US.) With only domestic markets, the US cannot compete – we’re way too small. You would need to bring half the world’s markets to the US, which you possibly could have done with a softer approach, and an unprecedented investment in US higher education and kicking the immigration doors wide open. But that was never in the cards and is even less so now.
Martin
Democrats should rebrand Trumps ‘Liberation Day’ as ‘Americas Great Leap Forward’. The parallels are startling.
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: I’d have run too.
Harrison Wesley
@CaseyL: It’s my understanding that he’ll be bringing his private equity firm and looking for bargains.
SpaceUnit
@Ksmiami:
When I was a kid we’d catch buckets full of crawdads in the nearby creek. Pretty tasty actually.
RevRick
@Ruckus: Trump has a Stalinist-Maoist obsession with heavy industry. He is also under the delusion that we can build an autarky. But as David Ricardo noted back in the early 19th century with his theory of comparative advantage, even if country X can produce both textiles and wine better than country Y, it increases the wealth of a nation more if they (X) focus on the thing they really excel at and import the wine from country Y. Trade benefits both!
BeautifulPlumage
@Ksmiami:
aaahh, Yule Gibbons “Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible”
(Old Grape Nuts commercial for the younger olds here)
Mrs Ragbag
@MagdaInBlack: Memories. Grew up on a farm in Ohio. My dad raised beef cattle. We ate steak with morels and wild asparagus. Because hotdogs cost money
YY_Sima Qian
wrt the title of this post, I think the American Century ended w/ the GWOT & the GFC, the Wiley Coyote has just now realized that it is over the ledge, & is flailing its arms thinking they are wings.
Steve in the ATL
@SpaceUnit: tasty but too much work for so little food
brendancalling
I’m SO looking forward to being poor again. Really psyched.
SpaceUnit
@Steve in the ATL:
Well, when you’re ten years old wading barefoot in a creek to catch crawdads really isn’t work.
sanjeevs
I think Adam has been warning for a decade that there would be consequences for allowing Putin’s war on the West to continue without significant pushback.
And now, here we are.
Jay
@SpaceUnit:
Ground insulation. At 54 to 57F the ground sucks heat from the body, faster than air. Layers of cardboard work if dry. Better yet, a bivvy bag. It’s basically a ground cloth, an insulated pad, a one person “mummy bag tent” rain hood and bug screen. The really good ones can be rigged as a hammock. That and a sleeping bag, you are good to go. It can all be rolled up and easily carried.
Earth tones.
You can unroll under an overgrown cedar hedge and never be spotted, giver “troll hunting” as a MAGgot sport.
cmorenc
@Martin: at least China did recover economically from the “Great Leap Forward” in spectacular fashion, but it took two or three decades to do so. And they had to wait until Mao was dead and also some of his immediate acolytes had passed from power.
MagdaInBlack
@Mrs Ragbag: My parents raised hogs, and my mother had a HUGE garden. And we hunted morels in the spring. Some excellent meals indeed, you’re right =-)
Jeffro
yes, yes, and…maybe not all of them, not for too much longer
#CallCongress
KEEP POUNDING
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@SpaceUnit: spouse and I pulled our money out of the stock market about two weeks ago. I hoped the was not coming but figured it would because Mango Mussolini is a complete fucking dumpster fire. I don’t have any idea what happens to my Social Security or Navy pension since Elon the dumbfuck is breaking every thing but if he also kills the VA I may not be around to worry about it. Hoping my grand kids are old enough for all their vaccines before RFK kills those programs…
M31
@Gvg: pretty sure ‘go back to the gold standard’ is in Project 2025, so I’m sure it’s coming
jesus h christ in a chicken basket this is insane
Bill Arnold
@Ksmiami:
Ghostbusters (1984 version):
America has made its choice. It chose Trump.
Honus
@Jay: fact is, there probably aren’t mote than 10-15k miners in WV anymore, and less than half of them are underground miners. Most of the coal is stripped now. There are more school teachers and nurses in WV than miners.
Steve in the ATL
@SpaceUnit: I’m sure that was fun. I was referring to the amount of effort required to get a tiny amount of meat out of the crawdad.
Eolirin
@Martin: If the US government was willing to spend hundreds of billions to subsidize the necessary infrastructure developments and to continue to subsidize local production so it was cost competitive, it could have done so prior to Trump 2.0.
Gloria DryGarden
@SpaceUnit: people catch crawdads in city park, in east Denver. Buckets full.
SpaceUnit
@Jay:
I was pretty good at building a lean-to when I was a kid. There were woods behind our house, and we’d camp out there in the summer.
Barry
@cain: “I’m going to be very curious to see how the media is going to react to this. They’ve been sane-washing this motherfucker for quite some time. Now they are being shoved to the back of the room, and right winger news media is getting all the access.”
Considering the past decade, I have nightmares about things getting so bad that the press stops the sane-washing.
Jay
@Steve in the ATL:
Brown rice and beans are the staples. Everything else adds flavour, salsa, garlic, sparrow, I’d say eggs but their off the menu.
Gleaning is good, so is robbing kitchen gardens.
Mobility is a key.
SpaceUnit
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do at this point. If I go liquid I’ll owe a shitload in taxes.
SpaceUnit
@Gloria DryGarden:
Don’t know if I’d eat the crawdads from that water. I can’t imagine it’s terribly clean.
Chetan Murthy
@SpaceUnit: I went liquid -yesterday-, and plan on paying those taxes -tomorrow- (typically takes a few days for trades to “settle”). I delayed doing it for a month, and in that month my investments lost about 8%. I don’t know how much more things are going to drop, but my belief is, a lot more. Which is why I sold up: better to sell up and take the tax hit, than wait and watch the value of your investments dwindle. B/c I fear it’s going to be a lot of years before they recover.
ETA: OTOH, if you don’t think things are going to drop a whole lot more, it can make sense to just ride it out. It’s a judgment each of us must make, and nobody can make it for anybody else. I’m sure not giving counsel here, just explaining my own thought process.
bbleh
@Honus: but the mythology is gigantic. Hell, how many actual cowboys are there now, but the myth still rules a lot of people’s minds.
Mechanization was the first big change. The number of miners dropped by something like 90% over a generation. And that was mostly before the big shift to surface mining.
Must have been 20 years ago I heard that there were fewer Americans working in coal than working at Arby’s. But you’d never know it from the constant flow of “when my daddy worked in the mines” stories as though it was still the reality.
Ksmiami
@Bill Arnold: we will break apart after this. I fully expect to be part of the reversed Treaty of Hidalgo since NM was part of Mexico before, it will be again. Ah well
Jeffro
this blog has the best inside baseball game EVER
SpaceUnit
@Chetan Murthy:
Thanks. I appreciate it. All options are on the table right now.
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: You’re imagining much more abundance than I. I have visions of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” in my head.
Chetan Murthy
@SpaceUnit: Also (of course) your 401k doesn’t need to take a tax hit: you can sell -within- the 401k and not take a distribution. I did that on Monday. Again, between when I started thinking about doing it, and when I did it, it dropped 10% in value.
TONYG
@Ruckus: Yes, Trump got a lot of money from his daddy (before and after the daddy died) — but then he was so incompetent as a businessman that he had to declare bankruptcy a half-dozen times. The stupidest people in this country (the Trump cult) believe that he was a successful businessman because of that idiotic “The Apprentice” TV show. That’s right — we are governed by people who are so stupid that they think that a TV show is reality. Maybe next time the GOP will nominated an actual cartoon character to be president.
Interesting Name Goes Here
Well, here we go. Because Gaza. And eggs. And Genocide Joe and Kamala’s a cop. And the DNC did this and the video game DLC did that.
The world is going to shit once more because a whole lot of people are stupid, self-serving, and self-sabotaging morons, and we refuse to adequately address that.
Maybe this time, the eventual moments of clarity will stick, and it’ll be the last time in my life that the only thing I have to reliably look forward to is helping to clean up after everyone else’s foolishness.
Maybe.
p.a.
I like it, but what % of our idiot public will have any idea of the reference, or the ambition to look it up?
SpaceUnit
@Chetan Murthy:
I don’t have a 401k. I’d definitely get screwed on taxes.
Emily B.
@SpaceUnit: Mr. B. already laid in several cases of French and Italian wine in anticipation of tariffs. Not enough to get us through the next four years, though.
Jay
@SpaceUnit:
Given the KKKops, you don’t want to cluster in an unhoused encampment, and hiding in the woods is hard. One needs to remain mobile, move with the seasons. When “sweeps hit”, everything that can’t be carried is gone. Tent. pots, pans, tools, electronics, food stores, even little comforts like pillows or photo’s, all hauled to the dump.
Bivvy bag, sleeping bag, one pot, a MSR Multifuel single burner stove, (white gas, diesel, alcohol, gas, vegetable oil, biodiesel, what ever you can siphon), a good, cleanable water filter/pump, a tube telescoping ladder, (dumpster diving, sleeping on roofs), some basic tools.
Back when we were unhoused, I gleaned (with permission), 250lbs of potato’s from a farmers field. They were too small for the picker. Traded them with others.
Had a thing where I would go out into the valley, split old growth cedar stumps, split and shave them into planks, haul them back to in front of the Art Gallery, carve Celtic runes into them, burn them to blacken the carvings, sell them for $20 and take commissions. $20 was a weeks worth of brown rice and beans for both of us and cat food.
SpaceUnit
@Emily B.:
Bathtub gin will be making a comeback.
Bill Arnold
@Gvg:
Bitcoin standard! Bitcoin is a parody of gold.
kalakal
@Eolirin:
Not sure that the US has an alternative to ASML
Jay
@SpaceUnit:
2 days in a bucket of clean water, (rain water) cleans them out, sort of. Sushi tuna is more toxic.
thruppence
I guess it was the wrong time to quit drinking. Not that drinking helps anything, but God. Damn.
Jay
@MagdaInBlack:
I and T and 2 cats spent 2 years unhoused.
YY_Sima Qian
I doubt the USG even has the capacity right now to enforce these complex new tariffs. Evasion & avoidance will be rampant, especially as companies choose to bribe the Trump Admin.
SpaceUnit
@Jay:
I did not know you had been unhoused. I’m sorry to hear that but very glad you were able to get back on your feet. Seriously, well done. It’s so very difficult.
Here in Denver the homeless situation is the shame of the city.
Chetan Murthy
@SpaceUnit: it is our shame everywhere. Including here in SF & CA. These are our fellow Americans.
Gloria DryGarden
@Chetan Murthy: and often they are veterans, or elders, or mentally ill, with few services. It’s so painful.
Jay
@thruppence:
Glue sniffing is cheaper.
Canadian fentanyl is cheaper, only a 25% tariff.
Good wine,…………………………………… wow.
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: I think that I knew that, and that’s why I figured your advice came from lived experience.
I am sorry you all had to have that experience ❤️🍁
Ksmiami
@YY_Sima Qian: I was just thinking the Black Market is about to become a huge shopping mall.
Matt
What’s fascinating / horrible is that it’s fundamentally an identical set of wreckers in both: the right wing, aided and abetted by “centrists” who’d rather see their country wrecked than ever admit the hippies might be right about something.
TONYG
@YY_Sima Qian: Exactly. Open bribery in order to avoid tariffs will be widespread. None of the bribery will be prosecuted, because the Justice Department is as corrupt as the rest of the government.
Ksmiami
@SpaceUnit: and Denver has tried so hard. I really do think some of the issues are tied to synthetic drugs these days.
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
Sadly, most are the working poor.
Here, it’s $5k Canadian in the bank, to get a 1BDR. (1st, last, damage, pets).
Half of our combined income goes to rent. We can spend $1875 a month in rent, but The Bank says we don’t qualify for a $850 a month mortgage.
Eolirin
@kalakal: We don’t, but there’s also no viable alternative to Windows/Android, or AWS/Azure, we have an effective monopoly on chip design software and professional software suites, and we own most of the chip architecture IP.
This is one area where the US can’t be easily decoupled from the global economy. There aren’t very many others.
Eolirin
@Matt: Also with huge lifts from the Russians… Hm.
Mark Field
Pure speculation on my part, of course, but I expect future historians will date the end of the American Century at 2017.
kalakal
@Eolirin: ARM have a heck of a lot of chip design IP. AWS/Azure is probabably the biggest monopoly on earth.
Linux may well become a lot more popular
Not so sure about this
There’s a lot of professional
software for the music an graphics industry spread all over the world. Libre office is open source and beats the hell out of windows
Ohio Mom
@cmorenc: I might have two decades left in me but definitely not three. Proving that in the long run, we’re all dead.
SpaceUnit
@Ksmiami:
It will have to be an argument for another day, but I feel that Denver has thrown an ungodly sum of money at the problem of homelessness while trying every possible solution except any that could actually have any chance of working.
I look forward to that discussion but I’ve got to break off for a bit.
Peale
@Mark Field: yep. When TPP fell apart was the end of economic liberalism.
YY_Sima Qian
@Peale: TPP didn’t all apart, it moved on w/o the U.S. in the guise of the CPTPP, w/ the particularly poisonous pro-US provisions stripped out. The PRC formally applied to join in 2023 (IIRC), & its chances of accession has just gone up by quite a bit.
RevRick
@p.a.: National Sales Tax Day
Citizen Alan
I really do think Kid Rock is going to run.
Jay
@Citizen Alan:
Homer Simpson.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Chetan Murthy:
Here in Denver, there’s this attitude that it’s unique to here. It’s not.
I’m involved with a neighborhood effort dealing with a day shelter and it’s issues dealing with this. We’re a group of neighbors, the police, the day shelter and a city mediator. It’s tough with no signs of ending even tho we’re all on teh same page and pulling in the same direction.
It’s not helped by a “burn it all down” mentality of entitled white professionals that have moved here, sight unseen, and are *horrified* by what they’re seeing that doesn’t fit with their suburban view of the world.
Our Great White Dope of a Mayor, extremely ambitious, extremely in over his head, with heads of departments carried over from our very corrupt previous mayor, can’t figure things out. And as much as I can’t stand him, he’s in a tough spot trying to do the right thing because there is no “right thing”.
prostratedragon
@Gloria DryGarden: Wait’ll everybody’s doing it.
Kristine
The best response I’ve seen tonight.
dnfree
@Mark Field: I think the end of the American century can be very neatly tied to the election of GW Bush with the help of the Supreme Court, followed by 9/11 and two expensive and damaging wars.
YY_Sima Qian
Voodoo economics:
“
Ramalama
@cmorenc: The Great Flop Forward. Rebranding in the spirit of our most moist president.
Canadian tv journalist cut Trump’s speech because he was lying. She said he was spewing falsehoods that were provingly untrue. Last time I saw that happen was when they interviewed Rudy Giuliani after Trump lost to Biden. All the lying. Journalists here taking a stand. Well, actually expressing emotion or at least showing it. Canadians have been on edge.
Bill Arnold
Reciprocal Tariff Calculations – Executive Summary (The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR))
Via this thread (via Adam S.):
Interesting Name Goes Here
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Now where have I heard that one before…
Martin
@p.a.: More than zero. Not like there’s a critical label of it yet. It’s something.
RaflW
BTW, the segment of TFG’s presser where he talked about groceries. I mean, the guy’s brain is cooked. He should be sharing these observations on the front porch of Happy Acres Retirement Home, where the other men can just turn down their hearing aids and ignore him while they enjoy their rocking chairs.
Stuart in Austin
@Eolirin: I live 5 miles east of the Samsung Austin fab that produces 5% of the world supply of semiconductors. Twelve miles north of me Samsung is completing its Taylor fab, 3 times the size of the Austin fab. Texas Instruments is completing a fab in Sherman, Texas that is in the same capacity range as the Samsung Taylor fab. TSMC and Intel have well advanced fabs under construction in Phoenix and Intel has one in Ohio. Process technology advances so rapidly that new construction is continuous. No one ever catches up. A semiconductor fab creates more construction jobs than it does tech jobs!
frosty
@Harrison Wesley: Boosting the sales tax will cost the Snowbirds (like me) more to visit Floriduh. It’s time to rethink our usual trips.
Actually it was time last year, but the Polar Vortex put the kibosh on the drive to Arizona.
frosty
@Jay: Good plan. We need to be aware though, that in the Great Depression, in the South, the deer were wiped out in six months.
I read this somewhere, don’t know where or when.
fry1laurie
Andrew Jackson was partly responsible for the Panic of 1837, when he removed treasury funds from banks, causing runs on those banks, which didn’t have the capital to satisfy all depositors.
Jay
@frosty:
Deer got hit hard by both hunting and the dust bowl.
Think smaller, mice 2 gm of protein
You can even eat their teeth.
frosty
Please let it be the Road Runner and not Wile E Coyote. Or Bugs Bunny – I could go with Bugs!
frosty
@Jay: You’ve had quite the life. Between that, the Orange Apron, and other stuff I don’t remember … you should write an autobiography. You’re not the only jackal I’ve recommended to do this.
frosty
@SpaceUnit: We’d better check in with Nukular Biskits. He’s in the heart (OK, a little south) of moonshine country. I think Mississippi Hill Country is where we need to check in.
I bought a book called The Moonshiner’s Manual when I was in my 20s. Lots of ways to kill yourself doing it wrong!
Eolirin
@Stuart in Austin: A lot of those investments were spurred by the CHIPS act, which is in the process of being unwound. There will not be followup funding for the foreseeable future.
And Samsung may have less desire to do business in the US going forward.
Like, the pandemic highlighted the fragility of chip supply chains and the importance of reshoring domestic production. So of course we’re simultaneously moving away from doing that and also making imports more expensive.
Sally
@YY_Sima Qian: I agree with this analysis / opinion of the TPP.
ckderrick
@SpaceUnit: Once you are hungry enough, you will no longer worry about such minor details.
Mark Field
@dnfree: That’s a reasonable point too. You could also point to the Reagan Administration, or even trace it back to Nixon. I chose 2017 because we (mostly) were able to fix the harms created by Nixon and Reagan, and at least partly the harms caused by W. In contrast, the harm caused by Trump, both times, seems irreversible.