General > General Technical Chat
I have the feeling that the whole trade war starts from a pile of nonsense.
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technix:

--- Quote from: james_s on May 25, 2019, 05:13:20 pm ---Now regarding tariffs, in a way I think they are a good idea although not without risks. I don't have any problem at all with China, they are simply producing the goods we ask for and being competitive in price. The problem is that we've become addicted to cheap toys here. Goods are absolutely absurdly cheap, and because everything is so much cheaper people here can't make a living selling or servicing these goods. All this non-essential stuff is so cheap that it makes essential things like land, housing, food and stuff that cannot be outsourced to cheaper places seem much more expensive in comparison. It's not sustainable, we are going to have to get used to paying a lot more for stuff and having a lot less of it, the way it was up into the 90s.

--- End quote ---
Addicted to cheap toys = knees deep in consumerism. Instead of placing the blame on other countries exporting too many things, maybe US should rethink that instead. Well here is the problem: anti-consumerism goes against the benefit of megacorporations, which exerts a lot of control over the US governing system. Breaking US out of consumerism will be an uphill battle.


--- Quote from: apis on May 25, 2019, 05:58:26 pm ---
--- Quote from: Marco on May 25, 2019, 05:49:09 pm ---Right wing mostly refers to nationalists nowadays, not neoliberals.

--- End quote ---
No it doesn't. Conservatives are still right-wing, and I'm not sure even Tusk can be called neoliberal (and neolibs are right wing too). The right wing populists are usually called far right. Calling EU (and conservatives) leftist is just plain objectively untrue.

--- End quote ---
The Overton window has shifted a lot to the right thanks to Trumpian Republicans in US, UKIP and Marine le Pen in France. EU is now center-left to the Overton window and Bernie (and Siân Berry) is Overton far left.


--- Quote from: rstofer on May 25, 2019, 03:12:45 pm ---Back to trade:  The US needs to get its accounts more balanced.  We can't keep exporting money forever.  And we need to beef up those industries that are important to national defense.  Steel, aluminum, chips and such are all critical.  We don't need to be competitive, tariffs or government contracts will fix that, but we do need to be self-sufficient.  At least in terms of defense materials.  We simply can't be dependent on other countries for our own defense.

--- End quote ---
If you don't want to export money, you have to export something as an alternative to balance the books, and that something has to be attractive enough so the rest of the world would love to buy, and you should make it wide open available. Japanese steel just have its credibility tanked - they have to recall almost everything that uses steel in any major components, from cars to missiles - yet US allowed that chance to slip. US already make the best chips in the world, but for a lot of them you are not willing to sell or have a lot of odd conditions attached, instead of wide open available. And your immigration policies scares away foreign students, closing the doors on yet another thing you can export: higher education. (Keep in mind most foreign students have to pay for their own education in full, instead of using taxpayer money.) As of agricultural products US tanked its credibility a few years ago with all the GMO debacle, so people isn't really willing to buy.

Speaking of immigration policy, US could have undermined Chinese scientific and research capabilities using a targeted policy. A lot of the smarter brains in China want to leave due to the political oppression and bad labor conditions (see 996.icu,) and US was on top of most of their destination lists. If, for example, US allowed every Chinese student graduating from a Master's program or higher with an average grade no lower than B a green card after continuously staying within US and work any job for a year, you will see a lot of smart people in China take flight and they will likely stay in US. However you just tanked your credibility on that...
rstofer:

--- Quote from: magic on May 25, 2019, 03:19:24 pm ---
--- Quote from: rstofer on May 25, 2019, 01:57:03 pm ---For some reason, Congress is unwilling to require eVerify in other than Federal contracts.

--- End quote ---
You mean, you are surprised it's not mandatory on every hire in the private sector? Why would you want to be tracked like cattle by the gov?

--- End quote ---

In terms of employment, we are already tracked due to the requirement to pay into Social Security, Fed and local taxes, and so on.

Today, those deductions are taken from everybody's wages and paid into SOMEBODY'S account.  It just may not actually belong to the employee.  There are processes for detecting fraud in Social Security but it takes a while to catch up.  But all that stuff happens AFTER the employee is hired instead of catching the fraud right out of the gate with eVerify.  It's actually the Republicans that don't want eVerify because it will have an impact on illegal farm workers and farmers have a pretty big lobby.

It is the productivity of the farm workers that make our farm produce competitive.  That and subsidies...
soldar:

--- Quote from: james_s on May 25, 2019, 05:13:20 pm --- Now regarding tariffs, in a way I think they are a good idea although not without risks. I don't have any problem at all with China, they are simply producing the goods we ask for and being competitive in price. The problem is that we've become addicted to cheap toys here. Goods are absolutely absurdly cheap, and because everything is so much cheaper people here can't make a living selling or servicing these goods. All this non-essential stuff is so cheap that it makes essential things like land, housing, food and stuff that cannot be outsourced to cheaper places seem much more expensive in comparison. It's not sustainable, we are going to have to get used to paying a lot more for stuff and having a lot less of it, the way it was up into the 90s.
--- End quote ---

I share your low opinion of Trump and I disagree that tariffs are a good idea but, in any case, even if you think tariffs are a good idea, there are ways and there are ways to implement them.

Business needs stability and the ability to make plans and investments for the future. If you want to change the rules it should be done with plenty of warning, giving all parties time to prepare and adapt and not like in this case where it is just chaos and instability. This is just bad for business everywhere. Even American businesses do not know what the Cheeto will tweet tomorrow and that is just a very bad way to run anything, be it a corporation, a country or the world. He thrives on creating chaos and confrontation. The whole world hates this.

Americans who have to do business with foreigners must be embarrassed and apologetic.
apis:

--- Quote from: technix on May 25, 2019, 06:53:57 pm ---
--- Quote from: apis on May 25, 2019, 05:58:26 pm ---
--- Quote from: Marco on May 25, 2019, 05:49:09 pm ---Right wing mostly refers to nationalists nowadays, not neoliberals.

--- End quote ---
No it doesn't. Conservatives are still right-wing, and I'm not sure even Tusk can be called neoliberal (and neolibs are right wing too). The right wing populists are usually called far right. Calling EU (and conservatives) leftist is just plain objectively untrue.

--- End quote ---
The Overton window has shifted a lot to the right thanks to Trumpian Republicans in US, UKIP and Marine le Pen in France. EU is now center-left to the Overton window and Bernie (and Siân Berry) is Overton far left.
--- End quote ---
Left/right is somewhat objectively defined, the nationalist populist might be right of e.g. CDU but CDU is still right-wing. It's not obvious that the nationalists are further to the right either, although they are sometimes sloppily assumed to be. Often they lean more towards the center so that they can attract xenophobic/anti-establishment voters from across the spectrum.

Saying EU is leftist is like saying the Republicans and Trump are leftist. Saying it doesn't make it true. It's doublespeek.
technix:

--- Quote from: rstofer on May 25, 2019, 07:15:59 pm ---In terms of employment, we are already tracked due to the requirement to pay into Social Security, Fed and local taxes, and so on.

Today, those deductions are taken from everybody's wages and paid into SOMEBODY'S account.  It just may not actually belong to the employee.  There are processes for detecting fraud in Social Security but it takes a while to catch up.  But all that stuff happens AFTER the employee is hired instead of catching the fraud right out of the gate with eVerify.  It's actually the Republicans that don't want eVerify because it will have an impact on illegal farm workers and farmers have a pretty big lobby.

It is the productivity of the farm workers that make our farm produce competitive.  That and subsidies...

--- End quote ---
Given the geography of US, why don't you automate the thing? You already have some of the best robotics companies in the world who needs orders, electricity is cheap and the land is flat allowing the deployment of huge machineries. Replacing those temporary farm workers with robots means they now have no reason to enter US whatsoever, and since robots are not humans they are not subjected to those laws or even labor laws in general, and the wage of a single engineer plus machine maintenance is way cheaper than the wages to the farm hands too. What do those farms produce anyway?

Even in the hilly part of China there are automated farming going on. What used to be the job of half the village's residents of the week is now one engineer/drone pilot's job of the day.


--- Quote from: apis on May 25, 2019, 07:25:27 pm ---Left/right is somewhat objectively defined, the nationalist populist might be right of e.g. CDU but CDU is still right-wing. It's not obvious that the nationalists are further to the right either, although they are sometimes sloppily assumed to be. Often they lean more towards the center so that they can attract xenophobic/anti-establishment voters from across the spectrum.

--- End quote ---
I understand that, hence the use of the phrases Overton left and Overton right indicating the position on the political spectrum related to the Overton window. We have an Overton window somewhere in the center-right to mainstream right wing now.


--- Quote from: soldar on May 25, 2019, 07:22:25 pm ---Business needs stability and the ability to make plans and investments for the future. If you want to change the rules it should be done with plenty of warning, giving all parties time to prepare and adapt and not like in this case where it is just chaos and instability. This is just bad for business everywhere. Even American businesses do not know what the Cheeto will tweet tomorrow and that is just a very bad way to run anything, be it a corporation, a country or the world. He thrives on creating chaos and confrontation. The whole world hates this.

--- End quote ---
That goes hand in hand with the dishonesty - I would take the lack of stability as a variant of dishonesty really. When a part of the world is in chaos people, companies and capital take flight.

Speaking of, the whole war on Iran is going to earn Trump even more ire from EU. EU is already having trouble to stomach all the refugees from North Africa amid chaos there. For Iranian citizens trying to take flight it is most likely that they will also try to take refuge in EU, further worsening the refugee problem there.
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