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The Economy

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by TigerVols, May 14, 2020.

  1. qtlaw

    qtlaw Well-Known Member

    Literally that’s what Karl Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto.

    As for pricing, everything is driven by labor costs. First Japan and then China were cheaper options because they were cheaper labor markets. But Americans have a choice, keep jobs here? Then choose to buy made in USA. That’s what’s ironic about how Middle America criticizes the “liberals “ who tend to be more likely to buy locally.
     
  2. swingline

    swingline Well-Known Member

    I have shirts that are 25 years old — and still fit. I’ve never followed fashion trends, so those type of clothes are the style I’ve worn pretty much since high school. Timeless.

    I had a men’s clothing store I loved because they had brands and shirts you didn’t see at chain retailers. Started shopping there in HS and did periodically until it burned and closed around 10 years ago. As an adult, I’d drop a few hundred there every three of four years.

    I worry about small, family owned businesses like that.
     
  3. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    Ha, yeah - I'm aware of how problematic it is, in some ways. But it's not like we're going to "stop" technology advances, or that everyone is simply going to do some leisure or arts and writing based job in the future. At some point, it becomes a math problem - "We have X jobs, but we need X*2."
     
    Inky_Wretch likes this.
  4. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    I'm not all that interested in unpacking all the slippery slopes that come from a conversation like this, so I'll just be annoyingly literal: Even in your scenario, grocery store workers would be making a choice.
     
  5. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    There will be enough jobs. Technology and other advances have always increased our standards of living. It gives us stuff we didn't even know we wanted or needed, but which we then came to see as essential. With so many new things -- technologies -- it has made it so that things that required a lot of human capital in the past (i.e. -- jobs) needed less of it. At times, that led to some displacement, as some people had trouble adapting.

    But it has never created a utopia (or dystopia, the way you were describing it) in which we suddenly had no prospect of there being enough jobs for everyone who wanted to work. The simple reason is that when a technology frees up human labor to do new things, we find new things to want and need -- we fill up the time and freed up resources with things that make our lives even better. Those things require. ... labor, human capital. Despite the displacements and stress a lot of people feel as those cycles play out, it also boosts are standard of living immeasurably over time and makes our lives in the aggregate way better.

    For example, the invention of the automobile made a ton of jobs obsolete. Those people were displaced, many had trouble adapting. At the same time, it made a lot of new things possible, which in turn created all kinds of new jobs. Standard of living wise, it gave people and businesses mobility that allowed all kinds of new possibilities that were impossible in the past.
     
    Last edited: May 15, 2020
  6. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    This is an excellent post. Thank you.
     
  7. Dog8Cats

    Dog8Cats Well-Known Member

    New loans or refinances?

    My money guy has been on my ass about how I should refinance. I have a mortgate at 4 3/8 percent, and I'm not going to pay for a new loan if its barely a 1 percent cut.
     
  8. Tarheel316

    Tarheel316 Well-Known Member

    My rate is exactly the same as yours and I agree with your take. Not worth it.
     
  9. MileHigh

    MileHigh Moderator Staff Member

    Refinances.
     
  10. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    Or between a chance of death/infecting their family or unemployment.
     
  11. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    An example that I think is going to hit sooner rather than later is self-driving trucks. There will probably be someone riding inside to help load and unload and to help when there is a problem, but those will be minimum wage jobs as opposed to the truckers of today. When that starts to happen, there are going to be a lot of over the road truckers who get laid off, and many of them will not have another marketable skill that allows them to make anything approaching their former wages.
     
  12. GilGarrido

    GilGarrido Active Member

    But do stereotypical liberals really spend more of their money on U.S. products than stereotypical Middle Americans? They may spend more on organically grown farmers' market vegetables while the Middle Americans buy some foreign-grown produce at Meijer, but their purchases of Priuses send a lot more money out of the country than the Middle Americans' purchases of GM cars, even the ones assembled in Mexico.
     
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