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Joined 1 month ago
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Cake day: March 8th, 2025

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  • I have nifty tech, yes, but I also have vaccination deniers, Nazis, and my fourth “once in a lifetime” economic crises. I’m never going to buy a house. I’m never going to retire. I’ll probably never even pay off my student loans.

    I personally think that, largely speaking, if imports are cheaper than local production, that’s a good thing!

    I’m hardly an economist, right? But I agree with you, broadly speaking. But first covid, and now Trump round two is showing is the weakness of global integration. As long as everything goes smoothly, it’s jam for everyone. But let something screw up the logistics, or someone duck up the balance of trade, and everything can go to shit really fast. There are lots of things we can’t make here, but we rely on them. That is less than ideal.

    I don’t know that tariffs are the way to address that issue, or even if it needs to be addressed at all. O do know that the way Trump is doing it is all wrong.











  • As I understand it, these sweatshop jobs do resist the standard of living in the areas they are in. The people there don’t have the option to work a job that we would consider good. They work the job we consider terrible, and they get paid more than they would doing other jobs.

    To make a moral judgement, we must balance between “terrible working conditions, no protections, maximum wealth extraction,” on the one hand, and “no infrastructure, no job, no money” on the other. Sadly, there is no profit in making the world better for everyone.