Last paragraph is the only part that's wrong. The dollar has been the world's reserve currency since WW2, well before all the "hollowing out".
"21st century jobs" - a nice "means what you want it to" phrase, but most likely you mean service sector rather than manufacturing? Does the 21st century not use manufactured goods? Or do we in fact depend more on manufactured goods than ever?
The sneer is unwarranted. Someone is doing those jobs in the 21st century. If the USA isn't doing them, that makes the trade in the fruits of those jobs vulnerable to the unwinding of globalization, vulnerable to shocks to supply chains such as the ever-increasing war in the world. We're talking about a house of cards here.
The administration isn't wrong to oppose sending manufacturing overseas. They're just mostly very stupid in what they want to do about it.
I re-read that paragraph and yes, I'm a bit vague in my terms, but I think the point I was trying to get at stands: Vance and people who think like him (e.g. Peter Navarro) are trying to restore the type of jobs we had in the '70s, but our economy now is different and more prosperous. Vance's obsession is mostly not about strategic goods -- those could be on-shored through industrial policy. We're mostly talking about consumer goods, which are primarily responsible for our trade imbalance. And I think it's fine to let those jobs go abroad and accept that our economy now has a very large services/management sector and we don't need to manufacture everything domestically.
The U.K. prospered on an economy built entirely on financialization until it made them uniquely unable to weather a storm. I wonder how useful those cushy service jobs will be once we're at war with China and supply chains are frozen.
There's a real good argument for reshoring manufacturing, at least in certain industries. (Noah Smith has good essays about how it should be a national priority to build a domestic drone industry top-to-bottom because it's an essential product in wartime. Not having drones in the next fight will be like not having airplanes in WWII.)
But that's very different from reshoring the jobs. Vance sells the dream of a factory job supporting an upper-middle-class lifestyle, and it might, but there won't be that many of them.
Brah, China has these things called 'Dark Factories' so called because they don't need lights because they don't have workers. The technicians just go in and change a few settings and then this factory just plops out tractors and motorcycles. Why do you think BYD can churn out a $10k luxury car? It's time to get with the times. Manufacturing 'jobs' are becoming as obsolete as telegram operator.
But for the sake of argument, let's say they did. It would be all the more reason for the USA to reshore manufacturing. After all, one of the big advantages China has historically is a more exploitable workforce with lower wages and fewer protections. If that's no longer a factor, then that advantage of offshoring is gone as soon as the "Dark Factories" get built domestically.
It's risible that anyone thinks there are no or very little "manufacturing" jobs in America. Comparing value, China has about double in manufacturing than the US, but it's a quantity vs quality thing. American manufacturing is for big things like airplanes and tractors and cars and ships whereas China is more component level manufacturing.
So what? You don't get partial credit for having part of the manufacturing process. If you have an airplane factory and you can't source the components for the airplane, you just aren't going to make the airplane.
China is a strong candidate for being on the other side of the next major war the USA will have to fight. Sending manufacturing jobs there was a bonkers national strategy.
OK, but there is no such thing as one country or organization, whatever, having total control of the supply chain, so not getting partial credit for having part of a manufacturing process is nonsensical. Not being able to source components for the airplane is of course a problem, but only having component level manufacturing is arguably a bigger problem since the whole point of manufacturing is to deliver a product to markets that have end-uses for consumers.
There is in fact such a thing as total control of the supply chain. It was quite common before globalization! But the next best thing is to source from your allies and have the capacity to retool for the rest in a hurry if you need to. The USA isn't close to that, either.
I know it’s a cliche to talk about how republicans call everything socialism to the point it’s a cliche to point it out, only matched by the cliche of centre-left boomers to then call the republicans communists, which means im sorta doing two of the three cliches, but I genuinely think Vance and the rest of the MAGA supposed thought leaders are cherrypicking the most annoying parts of contemporary socialist activism - the “this thing I dont understand is capitalism and is bad because stuff isnt free and a guy I dont like is getting paid for it” whinging by its advocates - and implementing it into their MAGAnomics philosophy. Just saying “I shouldnt be paying for things cause that guy’s a poopyhead” but still insisting youre for a free market is a confused combination
Well, it's also the "democratic socialists" who call pretty much anything socialism even if it has nothing to do with public control of the means of production.
Democratic socialists believe making money is innately evil and everything would be better if profit was illegal. They don't want apartments to be built because then developers will make money. They don't want pharmacy companies to profit from drugs they've spent billions developing. They don't want any alternatives to shitty government services, so no private schools, private security, or private healthcare. Mandani thinking he can make groceries cheaper than Walmart simply because he'll eliminated the tiny amount of profit individual stores make is just indicative of how they run things when in power.
Sure, that's actual socialism. And Mamdani definitely has socialist beliefs. And you don't like socialism, we get it. But there is still a whole lot of stuff that gets grouped with socialism but is not socialism. Most of which you probably don't like either.
I like it when the government does things that the market can't do very well, like public goods, managing externalities, or provisioning social safety nets. Sure you could call that stuff "socialism," or you could just use specific words like public goods, externalities, and safety nets.
Yea I’m sure Mamdani began as or aspires to be a socialist, but he is consistently operating within capitalism even when trying to implement these kinds of policies. He only clings to them because he’s either stupid or believes his constituents are stupid. His policies are stupid, but rarely as nuts or stupid as most socialism and he tends to walk back on almost all of them when they blow up in his face. Which is wild that so many New Yorkers still like him given he’s operating like every other mayor they’ve had
If I were cleverer I’d make a joke out of socialism, halloween candy and the word priceless since it seems there’s an angle there to connect them all in a funny way
Yes, I've seen so many r*ddit*d ideas that I used to associate 100% with the left now showing up from the right with complete sincerity and I can't believe this is the Republican party these days.
Fair take, Maurer. I guess we’ll also take AOC’s previous proposals from the “Robert Mugabe School of Economics” as the inevitable and ardent policy from the other side of the aisle.
I would venture to say that many of the most popular policies, with widespread bipartisan support, range from not good to disastrous:
-Doing nothing to social security benefits while also doing nothing to address its impending insolvency
-mortgage interest deduction
-tons of weird tax deductions
-SALT deductions (bipartisan in states with high taxes)*
-basically every aspect of the student loan program**
-tax credits to bring businesses***
-pretty much anything that Elizabeth Warren, JD Vance and/or Donald Trump agree on. There is lot.
*SALT overwhelmingly benefits high income or wealthy people in the highest tax states. I would just get rid of it completely. Few lower to middle income people used it, and even fewer once the standard deduction was raised under Trump. It also blunted the impact of state and local government taxing decisions. Getting rid of it under the 2017 TCJA was probably the best thing out of that bill. I found it kind of hilarious when governors of such states blamed Trump for…the states tax policy.
**I’m not opposed to a student loan program, but if you goal was to transfer tons of money to school, and inflate the cost of education, I can’t imagine how else it would be designed.
***If the state believes its taxes and regulatory environment are so hostile…fix that! It’s unfair to existing businesses and taxpayers, and doesn’t really work. Cuomo’s startup New York spent like $300k\per job paying $100k. During the Amazon thing, Cuomo said that without these tax incentives, Amazon would go somewhere else, like Texas. There is no law of nature that says New York has to be so unappealing that it requires giveaways to attract business. Our the current Mayor clearly doesn’t want businesses to come here, so we will see if he gets his wish.
The US benefits tremendously from being, at this point, probably the only true reserve currency. The Euro is no. 2, but it mostly just inherited that from the Deutschmark and has serious structural problem. The amount of outstanding Pound Sterling is just too small, without getting into the British economy’s issues. Same with Swiss Franc. The Chinese would need to be willing to have a free floating currency and end capital controls for the RMB to be a contender, which they really seem to not want to do.
The US economy is truly a marvel. The dollar goes up and down. When the USD declines a bit, it’s not going to fuel some kind of manufacturing renaissance, nor will all factory workers get laid off when it rises. That’s good! We have a diverse, resilient economy. Countries who care a lot about their exchange tend to be small to medium sized countries highly dependent on a manufacturing (think Germany), or EM countries which export one or two things and import everything else. These are not countries we want to be, nor will be. US economic policy making should be dominated by this concern: whatever we do, DO NOT FUCK THIS UP.
"Republicans tend to fetishize tough-guy jobs for capital-”d” Dudes."
And this, Jeff, is what drives me away from the Democrats when I should be their natural base. Indeed, in the past, me and those like me *were* their natural base; blue-collar white working class union types (often Irish).
But this kind of sneering about the people who are not the new college-educated white-collar professional class employees is what drives people to the Republicans (not necessarily Trump, but if he's the only guy going 'hell yeah I like what you like' then you see it as 'he's on my side').
The jokes about "just learn to code" weren't very funny, because not everyone can do that. We can't all swing jobs writing jokes for the John Oliver show. And even if it's mean-spirited, the idea that AI is now, finally, coming for the white-collar professional jobs and there are tremors of alarm among the software engineers that "gosh, the job market is really bad right now", is the chickens coming home to roost.
Yeah, the manufacturing jobs are gone, and they're not coming back. But what is going to replace them? Even AOC's Green New Deal promised "good-paying union jobs" (in renewable industries, maybe). Hillary Clinton? Ditto. Kamala Harris (when she got around to finally producing policies)? Ditto. Even the Democrats try and appeal to the "tough guy jobs for capital-d Dudes" vote.
The language of "fetishising" is insulting and contemptuous. I'm not a guy, but I'm damn tempted to phrase it back at you as:
So if I were a guy in a dress wanting a spa to let me wander around naked and the other women should just accept the view of my girldick swinging in the wind, you'll go to bat for me: 'Not a fetish! A natural human right! You are being oppressed!'
But if I'm a guy in jeans and a ball cap wanting a job in the box factory if that is possible, please, in our trillion-dollar economy, then it's 'Ugh, don't inflict your disgusting fetish in public on other people, you freak!'
I've seen other people online using that language of "fetish" about manufacturing jobs as a sneer at the Republicans and they're often the kind of people you are eviscerating in your posts about the DSA. Don't be that kind of nincompoop, Jeff.
It's fair that you're annoyed at Maurer sneering at Vance's priorities. But the problem is actually difficult and Vance wouldn't actually help it, so it's reasonably fair to sneer at Vance.
One fundamental problem is that up until recently, farming and industry used a lot of human brawn to just move things around. The result was that human brawn was economically valuable. This led to a big difference between male and female wages, leading to what we think of as the traditional family dynamics. But by roughly 1970, lugging things around had largely been automated, and human muscle per se stopped being very valuable. Hence the current feminist ideology that men and women are nearly interchangeable in the labor market.
Beyond that, factory work (as we call it) is particularly vulnerable to automation. So if people build factories these days, they use 1/10 or 1/100 the number of workers that they used to. E.g. near Gary, Ind. there is an exit from I-80 (IIRC) labeled "U.S. Steel lot 3". But not too long ago, someone built a shiny new steel mill in Alabama that used 100 workers.
Both of these mean that "tough-guy capital-D Dudes" don't have any particular economic value any more.
What, exactly, is going to replace factories for mass, well-paid employment is unclear. Clearly, it's going to have a lot more thinking/judgement/sophistication than the jobs lugging iron pigs in the steel mill had, even working at McDonald's needs that. It's going to require some substantial vocational training, I think. My guess is it resembles what we call "the skilled trades". You want a job in the box factory, you say, but it's going to be repairing the robots, not folding cardboard all day long. But we need a system that will teach you how to repair the robots, we need a system that trains everybody in some sort of skilled trade.
I agree, Vance could be full of it regarding economics. And I do think manufacturing jobs have gone the way of the dodo.
But the notion "we're all so much more prosperous now in the service economy" - hmmm. And how did we get terms like "gig economy" and "precariat" in this new, so much better-off world?
I do think that there's going to be more upheaval with the economy globally, and I don't believe that AI is going to hit some threshold where it's so super-smart and productive, it will make the economy grow by gigazillions and so there will be so much wealth sloshing around, every single person can be paid UBI to enable them to live without the fear of having to toil to afford food, shelter and healthcare, and then we'll get a renaissance era of creativity and innovation.
AI will make AI companies rich. The rest of us? I'm not holding my breath.
The "fetish" language sounds like something Scott Weiner could tweet, about "Oooh those Republican boys are swooning over big burly sweaty muscle-men doing manual labour, sounds a bit gay doesn't it!" before he unironically puts on his harness for the Leather Daddy parade on Folsom Street.
Doesn't help anyone to couch fears about "and what kind of work will be available for the lower middle-class?" in terms of "it's all a fetish about Dudes". Service industry can pay shit wages, I speak as someone who once worked retail back in the day and hope never to have to do so again. We'll all make a living as contractors for Uber Eats and being care assistants in nursing homes? I sure hope the new AI economy makes housing, food, utilities, etc. way way cheaper because everybody wants childcare and someone to look after Grandma, but nobody wants to pay the fees to cover the wages that make such jobs liveable (because the market rate fees are squeezing people already facing cost of living increases and it's tough to make ends meet even for middle class dual-income families).
I'm not asking anyone to agree with Vance. I'm asking the party of We Love And Respect Everyone Unconditionally not to only remember the working class when they're looking for union votes (which may often be corrupt anyway, given how big unions are and how far-removed from the workers the leadership can be). If someone is worried about "will I still have a job up till retirement? will my kids have jobs?" don't respond with "that's just your fetish about big sweaty dudes, the new gig economy where you're never an employee with rights and work piece-work is the solution, just look how good the stock market is doing! You have a spare $20k to sink into stock in the chip companies and FAANGs, don't you? Then you're sorted!"
Hmm I think it’s simpler than that. I think it’s a crypto trade. Whatever may happen if the US loses reserves currency status, bitcoin will go up (even if the Renminbi ultimately takes the place, or part of the place, of the dollar)
Hasn’t Vance, for years now, said that GDP is a pernicious measurement while (incorrectly) lauding tariffs’ use in reducing trade deficits?
GDP might be imperfect. I guess one _might_ argue it’s bad. But then to sacrifice it for trade deficits reduction is just beyond galaxy-brained (quasar-brained?)
A big part of why we've had two Trump administrations is their willingness to signal that jobs in Middle America are some kind of priority. Whether they have a plan or can deliver those jobs is of less consequence than the idea that they pretend like they're important, which is more than you can say about the last several administrations. The alternative to making toasters in the hinterlands is the AI/tech hellscape developing in California. To many, that doesn't even seem like a choice.
Certainly a lot of recent politics makes more sense if you look at it as a class war, with every faction being captained by somewhat demented politicians.
You should up your standards some more. Viable is not enough. The candidate needs to be sane. Needs to avoid committing different mistakes that ruin the country in ways that can't be undone.
Well, Trump was highly “electable”…..and I give him full credit for cleaning up the border and creating a SC that has been a bulwark for common sense ( even if he just did what the Federalist Society told him).
The point that JD isn't getting and to be fair you have also ignored is that the root cause of all of this is gross fiscal indiscipline that originated in the Reagan era and has plagued America ever since.
Rearranging the Kalecki-Levy IDENTITY will show that Net Exports = Corporate Profits+ Worker Savings - Investment - Fiscal Deficit. America did fine with Eisenhower tax rates. Even Reagan era tax rates will fix the fiscal deficit. Heck Clinton-era rates DID fix the deficit. Insanity is GWB and Trump 1 and Trump 2 fiscal policies.
You are exactly correct on the corruption. State socialism is the ownership of corporations by the government The Trump issue he doesn't fit into one box He is all over the place, without a clue. Except he wants to make as much money as he can and does not care about legality or the law
cato institute trump socialism
The Cato Institute describes Donald Trump's economic policies as a blend of socialism and capitalism, labeling them a form of "state capitalism" that diverges from traditional socialism by not fully nationalizing production. This approach has led to increased government intervention in various sectors, raising concerns about cronyism and market dynamics.
Cato Institute
Trump's Economic Policies
Trump's policies reflect a unique blend of economic ideologies.
State Capitalism — Trump's approach is characterized as a hybrid between socialism and capitalism, focusing on government involvement without full state ownership of production.
Cronyism Concerns — Policies such as tariffs and subsidies have been criticized for fostering cronyism, benefiting select industries at the expense of free market principles.
Nationalism in Economics — Trump's economic strategy incorporates a nationalist perspective, aiming to protect American industries while warning against leftist socialism.
Government Intervention — Increased federal involvement in sectors like steel and semiconductors has raised alarms about the erosion of market-driven dynamics.
To be fair, they are doing their best to weaken the dollar, just by being irresponsible and profligate.
Last paragraph is the only part that's wrong. The dollar has been the world's reserve currency since WW2, well before all the "hollowing out".
"21st century jobs" - a nice "means what you want it to" phrase, but most likely you mean service sector rather than manufacturing? Does the 21st century not use manufactured goods? Or do we in fact depend more on manufactured goods than ever?
The sneer is unwarranted. Someone is doing those jobs in the 21st century. If the USA isn't doing them, that makes the trade in the fruits of those jobs vulnerable to the unwinding of globalization, vulnerable to shocks to supply chains such as the ever-increasing war in the world. We're talking about a house of cards here.
The administration isn't wrong to oppose sending manufacturing overseas. They're just mostly very stupid in what they want to do about it.
I re-read that paragraph and yes, I'm a bit vague in my terms, but I think the point I was trying to get at stands: Vance and people who think like him (e.g. Peter Navarro) are trying to restore the type of jobs we had in the '70s, but our economy now is different and more prosperous. Vance's obsession is mostly not about strategic goods -- those could be on-shored through industrial policy. We're mostly talking about consumer goods, which are primarily responsible for our trade imbalance. And I think it's fine to let those jobs go abroad and accept that our economy now has a very large services/management sector and we don't need to manufacture everything domestically.
The U.K. prospered on an economy built entirely on financialization until it made them uniquely unable to weather a storm. I wonder how useful those cushy service jobs will be once we're at war with China and supply chains are frozen.
The problem is structural deficits that are incompatible with that.
The UK Triple Lock is like one of the dumbest policy mistakes by a major country in recent memory. And that includes the Iran war.
There's a real good argument for reshoring manufacturing, at least in certain industries. (Noah Smith has good essays about how it should be a national priority to build a domestic drone industry top-to-bottom because it's an essential product in wartime. Not having drones in the next fight will be like not having airplanes in WWII.)
But that's very different from reshoring the jobs. Vance sells the dream of a factory job supporting an upper-middle-class lifestyle, and it might, but there won't be that many of them.
Brah, China has these things called 'Dark Factories' so called because they don't need lights because they don't have workers. The technicians just go in and change a few settings and then this factory just plops out tractors and motorcycles. Why do you think BYD can churn out a $10k luxury car? It's time to get with the times. Manufacturing 'jobs' are becoming as obsolete as telegram operator.
Pretty sure they don't actually have those.
But for the sake of argument, let's say they did. It would be all the more reason for the USA to reshore manufacturing. After all, one of the big advantages China has historically is a more exploitable workforce with lower wages and fewer protections. If that's no longer a factor, then that advantage of offshoring is gone as soon as the "Dark Factories" get built domestically.
They definitely do have them. So do we in some places, mostly electronics and chip manufacturing
It's risible that anyone thinks there are no or very little "manufacturing" jobs in America. Comparing value, China has about double in manufacturing than the US, but it's a quantity vs quality thing. American manufacturing is for big things like airplanes and tractors and cars and ships whereas China is more component level manufacturing.
So what? You don't get partial credit for having part of the manufacturing process. If you have an airplane factory and you can't source the components for the airplane, you just aren't going to make the airplane.
China is a strong candidate for being on the other side of the next major war the USA will have to fight. Sending manufacturing jobs there was a bonkers national strategy.
OK, but there is no such thing as one country or organization, whatever, having total control of the supply chain, so not getting partial credit for having part of a manufacturing process is nonsensical. Not being able to source components for the airplane is of course a problem, but only having component level manufacturing is arguably a bigger problem since the whole point of manufacturing is to deliver a product to markets that have end-uses for consumers.
There is in fact such a thing as total control of the supply chain. It was quite common before globalization! But the next best thing is to source from your allies and have the capacity to retool for the rest in a hurry if you need to. The USA isn't close to that, either.
I know it’s a cliche to talk about how republicans call everything socialism to the point it’s a cliche to point it out, only matched by the cliche of centre-left boomers to then call the republicans communists, which means im sorta doing two of the three cliches, but I genuinely think Vance and the rest of the MAGA supposed thought leaders are cherrypicking the most annoying parts of contemporary socialist activism - the “this thing I dont understand is capitalism and is bad because stuff isnt free and a guy I dont like is getting paid for it” whinging by its advocates - and implementing it into their MAGAnomics philosophy. Just saying “I shouldnt be paying for things cause that guy’s a poopyhead” but still insisting youre for a free market is a confused combination
Well, it's also the "democratic socialists" who call pretty much anything socialism even if it has nothing to do with public control of the means of production.
I mean, government run grocery stores sounds pretty socialist to me.
Sure, but that’s 0.1% of Mamdani’s agenda and 0.01% of DSA agenda.
Democratic socialists believe making money is innately evil and everything would be better if profit was illegal. They don't want apartments to be built because then developers will make money. They don't want pharmacy companies to profit from drugs they've spent billions developing. They don't want any alternatives to shitty government services, so no private schools, private security, or private healthcare. Mandani thinking he can make groceries cheaper than Walmart simply because he'll eliminated the tiny amount of profit individual stores make is just indicative of how they run things when in power.
Sure, that's actual socialism. And Mamdani definitely has socialist beliefs. And you don't like socialism, we get it. But there is still a whole lot of stuff that gets grouped with socialism but is not socialism. Most of which you probably don't like either.
I like it when the government does things that the market can't do very well, like public goods, managing externalities, or provisioning social safety nets. Sure you could call that stuff "socialism," or you could just use specific words like public goods, externalities, and safety nets.
Yea I’m sure Mamdani began as or aspires to be a socialist, but he is consistently operating within capitalism even when trying to implement these kinds of policies. He only clings to them because he’s either stupid or believes his constituents are stupid. His policies are stupid, but rarely as nuts or stupid as most socialism and he tends to walk back on almost all of them when they blow up in his face. Which is wild that so many New Yorkers still like him given he’s operating like every other mayor they’ve had
A lot of oversimplification Trump is more socialist than the DSA. How many companies has he extorted to get stock?
That is bad but it's definitely not socialism!!
I legit saw a tweet that called giving kids candy when they go trick or treating an example of socialism
Haha that's priceless.
If I were cleverer I’d make a joke out of socialism, halloween candy and the word priceless since it seems there’s an angle there to connect them all in a funny way
Except maybe in Iowa, where the tradition includes the kids preparing a joke or such to perform in exchange for the treat 😁
Yes, I've seen so many r*ddit*d ideas that I used to associate 100% with the left now showing up from the right with complete sincerity and I can't believe this is the Republican party these days.
And yet, because of Trumpism, manufacturing jobs are down since 2024.
Add constantly changing tariffs to key inputs to American manufacturing, and American manufacturing suffers.
And they were dramatically up under Biden
Fair take, Maurer. I guess we’ll also take AOC’s previous proposals from the “Robert Mugabe School of Economics” as the inevitable and ardent policy from the other side of the aisle.
We have a bipartisan to moronic policy! Unity!
Some dumb ideas are *really* popular!
I would venture to say that many of the most popular policies, with widespread bipartisan support, range from not good to disastrous:
-Doing nothing to social security benefits while also doing nothing to address its impending insolvency
-mortgage interest deduction
-tons of weird tax deductions
-SALT deductions (bipartisan in states with high taxes)*
-basically every aspect of the student loan program**
-tax credits to bring businesses***
-pretty much anything that Elizabeth Warren, JD Vance and/or Donald Trump agree on. There is lot.
*SALT overwhelmingly benefits high income or wealthy people in the highest tax states. I would just get rid of it completely. Few lower to middle income people used it, and even fewer once the standard deduction was raised under Trump. It also blunted the impact of state and local government taxing decisions. Getting rid of it under the 2017 TCJA was probably the best thing out of that bill. I found it kind of hilarious when governors of such states blamed Trump for…the states tax policy.
**I’m not opposed to a student loan program, but if you goal was to transfer tons of money to school, and inflate the cost of education, I can’t imagine how else it would be designed.
***If the state believes its taxes and regulatory environment are so hostile…fix that! It’s unfair to existing businesses and taxpayers, and doesn’t really work. Cuomo’s startup New York spent like $300k\per job paying $100k. During the Amazon thing, Cuomo said that without these tax incentives, Amazon would go somewhere else, like Texas. There is no law of nature that says New York has to be so unappealing that it requires giveaways to attract business. Our the current Mayor clearly doesn’t want businesses to come here, so we will see if he gets his wish.
Hey! The VP has the exact same ideas I had when I was a 19 year old community college student trying to sound smart!
Maybe I really AM smart!
The US benefits tremendously from being, at this point, probably the only true reserve currency. The Euro is no. 2, but it mostly just inherited that from the Deutschmark and has serious structural problem. The amount of outstanding Pound Sterling is just too small, without getting into the British economy’s issues. Same with Swiss Franc. The Chinese would need to be willing to have a free floating currency and end capital controls for the RMB to be a contender, which they really seem to not want to do.
The US economy is truly a marvel. The dollar goes up and down. When the USD declines a bit, it’s not going to fuel some kind of manufacturing renaissance, nor will all factory workers get laid off when it rises. That’s good! We have a diverse, resilient economy. Countries who care a lot about their exchange tend to be small to medium sized countries highly dependent on a manufacturing (think Germany), or EM countries which export one or two things and import everything else. These are not countries we want to be, nor will be. US economic policy making should be dominated by this concern: whatever we do, DO NOT FUCK THIS UP.
Look at this guy who acts like dinosaurs are gone and talks about eggs ONE sentence later!
"Republicans tend to fetishize tough-guy jobs for capital-”d” Dudes."
And this, Jeff, is what drives me away from the Democrats when I should be their natural base. Indeed, in the past, me and those like me *were* their natural base; blue-collar white working class union types (often Irish).
But this kind of sneering about the people who are not the new college-educated white-collar professional class employees is what drives people to the Republicans (not necessarily Trump, but if he's the only guy going 'hell yeah I like what you like' then you see it as 'he's on my side').
The jokes about "just learn to code" weren't very funny, because not everyone can do that. We can't all swing jobs writing jokes for the John Oliver show. And even if it's mean-spirited, the idea that AI is now, finally, coming for the white-collar professional jobs and there are tremors of alarm among the software engineers that "gosh, the job market is really bad right now", is the chickens coming home to roost.
Yeah, the manufacturing jobs are gone, and they're not coming back. But what is going to replace them? Even AOC's Green New Deal promised "good-paying union jobs" (in renewable industries, maybe). Hillary Clinton? Ditto. Kamala Harris (when she got around to finally producing policies)? Ditto. Even the Democrats try and appeal to the "tough guy jobs for capital-d Dudes" vote.
The language of "fetishising" is insulting and contemptuous. I'm not a guy, but I'm damn tempted to phrase it back at you as:
So if I were a guy in a dress wanting a spa to let me wander around naked and the other women should just accept the view of my girldick swinging in the wind, you'll go to bat for me: 'Not a fetish! A natural human right! You are being oppressed!'
But if I'm a guy in jeans and a ball cap wanting a job in the box factory if that is possible, please, in our trillion-dollar economy, then it's 'Ugh, don't inflict your disgusting fetish in public on other people, you freak!'
I've seen other people online using that language of "fetish" about manufacturing jobs as a sneer at the Republicans and they're often the kind of people you are eviscerating in your posts about the DSA. Don't be that kind of nincompoop, Jeff.
It's fair that you're annoyed at Maurer sneering at Vance's priorities. But the problem is actually difficult and Vance wouldn't actually help it, so it's reasonably fair to sneer at Vance.
One fundamental problem is that up until recently, farming and industry used a lot of human brawn to just move things around. The result was that human brawn was economically valuable. This led to a big difference between male and female wages, leading to what we think of as the traditional family dynamics. But by roughly 1970, lugging things around had largely been automated, and human muscle per se stopped being very valuable. Hence the current feminist ideology that men and women are nearly interchangeable in the labor market.
Beyond that, factory work (as we call it) is particularly vulnerable to automation. So if people build factories these days, they use 1/10 or 1/100 the number of workers that they used to. E.g. near Gary, Ind. there is an exit from I-80 (IIRC) labeled "U.S. Steel lot 3". But not too long ago, someone built a shiny new steel mill in Alabama that used 100 workers.
Both of these mean that "tough-guy capital-D Dudes" don't have any particular economic value any more.
What, exactly, is going to replace factories for mass, well-paid employment is unclear. Clearly, it's going to have a lot more thinking/judgement/sophistication than the jobs lugging iron pigs in the steel mill had, even working at McDonald's needs that. It's going to require some substantial vocational training, I think. My guess is it resembles what we call "the skilled trades". You want a job in the box factory, you say, but it's going to be repairing the robots, not folding cardboard all day long. But we need a system that will teach you how to repair the robots, we need a system that trains everybody in some sort of skilled trade.
I agree, Vance could be full of it regarding economics. And I do think manufacturing jobs have gone the way of the dodo.
But the notion "we're all so much more prosperous now in the service economy" - hmmm. And how did we get terms like "gig economy" and "precariat" in this new, so much better-off world?
I do think that there's going to be more upheaval with the economy globally, and I don't believe that AI is going to hit some threshold where it's so super-smart and productive, it will make the economy grow by gigazillions and so there will be so much wealth sloshing around, every single person can be paid UBI to enable them to live without the fear of having to toil to afford food, shelter and healthcare, and then we'll get a renaissance era of creativity and innovation.
AI will make AI companies rich. The rest of us? I'm not holding my breath.
The "fetish" language sounds like something Scott Weiner could tweet, about "Oooh those Republican boys are swooning over big burly sweaty muscle-men doing manual labour, sounds a bit gay doesn't it!" before he unironically puts on his harness for the Leather Daddy parade on Folsom Street.
Doesn't help anyone to couch fears about "and what kind of work will be available for the lower middle-class?" in terms of "it's all a fetish about Dudes". Service industry can pay shit wages, I speak as someone who once worked retail back in the day and hope never to have to do so again. We'll all make a living as contractors for Uber Eats and being care assistants in nursing homes? I sure hope the new AI economy makes housing, food, utilities, etc. way way cheaper because everybody wants childcare and someone to look after Grandma, but nobody wants to pay the fees to cover the wages that make such jobs liveable (because the market rate fees are squeezing people already facing cost of living increases and it's tough to make ends meet even for middle class dual-income families).
I'm not asking anyone to agree with Vance. I'm asking the party of We Love And Respect Everyone Unconditionally not to only remember the working class when they're looking for union votes (which may often be corrupt anyway, given how big unions are and how far-removed from the workers the leadership can be). If someone is worried about "will I still have a job up till retirement? will my kids have jobs?" don't respond with "that's just your fetish about big sweaty dudes, the new gig economy where you're never an employee with rights and work piece-work is the solution, just look how good the stock market is doing! You have a spare $20k to sink into stock in the chip companies and FAANGs, don't you? Then you're sorted!"
brb gonna go preface all my terrible opinions with "btw this may be somewhat heterodox lol"
Hmm I think it’s simpler than that. I think it’s a crypto trade. Whatever may happen if the US loses reserves currency status, bitcoin will go up (even if the Renminbi ultimately takes the place, or part of the place, of the dollar)
Hasn’t Vance, for years now, said that GDP is a pernicious measurement while (incorrectly) lauding tariffs’ use in reducing trade deficits?
GDP might be imperfect. I guess one _might_ argue it’s bad. But then to sacrifice it for trade deficits reduction is just beyond galaxy-brained (quasar-brained?)
A big part of why we've had two Trump administrations is their willingness to signal that jobs in Middle America are some kind of priority. Whether they have a plan or can deliver those jobs is of less consequence than the idea that they pretend like they're important, which is more than you can say about the last several administrations. The alternative to making toasters in the hinterlands is the AI/tech hellscape developing in California. To many, that doesn't even seem like a choice.
Certainly a lot of recent politics makes more sense if you look at it as a class war, with every faction being captained by somewhat demented politicians.
Another reason to pray that the Democrats field a viable Presidential candidate in 2028.
(btw, would it be up to the brain trust of Bessent and Lutnick to implement such a policy?)
You should up your standards some more. Viable is not enough. The candidate needs to be sane. Needs to avoid committing different mistakes that ruin the country in ways that can't be undone.
Ok, how about “electable?”
Well, Trump was highly “electable”…..and I give him full credit for cleaning up the border and creating a SC that has been a bulwark for common sense ( even if he just did what the Federalist Society told him).
And we all lived happily ever after.
That's the same thing. You trolling or something?
Ok, how about “who does everything Lucid Horizon tells them to do?”
Jeez, take it easy.
oh, you two 😂
The point that JD isn't getting and to be fair you have also ignored is that the root cause of all of this is gross fiscal indiscipline that originated in the Reagan era and has plagued America ever since.
Rearranging the Kalecki-Levy IDENTITY will show that Net Exports = Corporate Profits+ Worker Savings - Investment - Fiscal Deficit. America did fine with Eisenhower tax rates. Even Reagan era tax rates will fix the fiscal deficit. Heck Clinton-era rates DID fix the deficit. Insanity is GWB and Trump 1 and Trump 2 fiscal policies.
David,
You are exactly correct on the corruption. State socialism is the ownership of corporations by the government The Trump issue he doesn't fit into one box He is all over the place, without a clue. Except he wants to make as much money as he can and does not care about legality or the law
cato institute trump socialism
The Cato Institute describes Donald Trump's economic policies as a blend of socialism and capitalism, labeling them a form of "state capitalism" that diverges from traditional socialism by not fully nationalizing production. This approach has led to increased government intervention in various sectors, raising concerns about cronyism and market dynamics.
Cato Institute
Trump's Economic Policies
Trump's policies reflect a unique blend of economic ideologies.
State Capitalism — Trump's approach is characterized as a hybrid between socialism and capitalism, focusing on government involvement without full state ownership of production.
Cronyism Concerns — Policies such as tariffs and subsidies have been criticized for fostering cronyism, benefiting select industries at the expense of free market principles.
Nationalism in Economics — Trump's economic strategy incorporates a nationalist perspective, aiming to protect American industries while warning against leftist socialism.
Government Intervention — Increased federal involvement in sectors like steel and semiconductors has raised alarms about the erosion of market-driven dynamics.