13 ms·

I think the US (and Canada) just needs to ride the tide and let all the other boats sink. Pretty much everyone else is screwed. I think people are underestimati

I think the US (and Canada) just needs to ride the tide and let all the other boats sink. Pretty much everyone else is screwed. I think people are underestimating the second order effects of the US still having stable energy and farming capabilities. We'll see more stuff get done here and less stuff done elsewhere. Unemployment will be great here no matter what we do really. It will suffer in other countries. Though I'll admit, I still found the stat that of 20% youth unemployment in China to be shockingly high. The idea that they're lowering their interest rates is also bonkers to think about. Their economy has been slow motion train wrecking for soooo long now. God help them if they get another covid flare up over the winter and and are stupid enough to do another lockdown.

csours 4y ago
I ask this question every so often on economic threads - Are jobs created or discovered? What field of study is most associated with "new jobs"?
- tuatoru 4y ago
  What is the difference between "created" and "discovered" when it comes to jobs? Was "social media manager" created or discovered? How about (to take an older example) telex operator?
- peteradio 4y ago
  spark+kindling+gust
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Jobs are more often created than discovered. Tomorrow we might discover a new kind of math, requiring newly trained mathmeticians in a novel field. Those mathmeticians will need admins, business services, places to work, food, etc. Thus even the discovery of a few jobs has more jobs created than found.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    The mathematicians don't need any more food than they did before the new kind of math was discovered. Why would you count that as job creation?
    - carlmr 4y ago
      The single mathematician no, but a new field would lead to the creation of a new building with new people at some point.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        Every one of the people in that building needs the same amount of food they did before they moved in.
        jhundal 4y ago
        Same amount of food yes. But if a mathematician was just sitting on the sidelines before this new field, they may decide it is more productive to trade time they spent on preparing food for more time to spend on math.
        lupire 4y ago
        That's just moving the food job somewhere else. It's not clear that this thread is about. Jobs a weak approximation of utility creation + equalit of the distribution of that utility.
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      Having food is not the hard part, the logistics of food is the hard part. Feeding one person is easy. Feeding 200 people with a mix of allergies is hard.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        On the other hand, when you're already feeding 4000 people, feeding 4200 people is not noticeably harder.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  I don't think that's particularly relevant here. We're going to see jobs open up in the US (and Canada) because even with higher labor costs, the strong dollar and available energy will make it easy to purchase goods and build things here. They won't be novel jobs so much as leveraging an absolute economic advantage against every pretty much every other nation on earth to steal jobs from other countries. But I guess to answer the question, jobs, especially at the bottom are "enabled" more than anything. We want people to do simple tasks, but tech advancements make it efficient enough to actually pay people to do it. Like rideshare drivers, ignoring valid claims about vc money burning. Some new types of jobs might be created or discovered but most jobs changes are about determining whether its viable to pay something to do something you want to do. The idea to have them do it has always been there.
- t_mann 4y ago
  The fields are macroeconomics and labor economics. I don't understand your other question, so it's hard to answer. What do you mean by "discovered"? Discovered by whom, the employer or the the employee? But you may be interested in knowing that models of labor markets are often based on matching models - you've got two groups (employers, employees) and everyobdy is trying to find {one,many} members of the other group that are a good match.
  - csours 4y ago
    > The fields are macroeconomics and labor economics As I understand it, those are mainly concerned with reduction in labor costs. Job discovery is a phrase used by Clayton Christensen to describe finding a job to be done. He uses it to describe finding a product to sell to people to perform some function in their lives - a job to be done by a product that you make. I'm using it as an alternative to the idea of "job creation" because I don't think that's real. There is a certain political narrative about job creation and job creators. I tried to find support for it in academia and I could not. I didn't want to put all this in my original question because then I would only get political replies. --- About politics - Yes my question has some political motivation, but I am genuinely interested in the subject. My motivation is not to prove or disprove, but to learn. You don't have to believe that about me, but I do.
    - t_mann 4y ago
      > As I understand it, those are mainly concerned with reduction in labor costs. Where does your understanding derive from? Reducing macroeconomics to "reducing labor costs" is akin to reducing classical mechanics to "computing projectile trajectories". I don't know Christensen but I take it that he's a business school professor and I guess that was the target audience he was speaking to there. You're not wrong that economics is a discipline that is not free from ideological biases, but I guess you're going a bit far in reducing the discipline to that. People still want to answer questions with data, like "what happens to unemployment (and exchange rates, and investment,...) if we raise interest rates?". Labor economics might ask more narrow questions like "what happens if we raise the minimum wage?". That's the sort of questions that economics deals with, not musing over the semantics of creation vs discovery.
- Symmetry 4y ago
  And while we're at it, if a tree falls in a forest with nobody around to hear, does it make a sound? I don't think there's any difference of facts to debate around created or discovered, just semantics.
ddorian43 4y ago
Nah. Canada real estate has to take the hit.
- ericmay 4y ago
  What effect will that have? If some Canadians go underwater on mortgages, won’t others who were priced out be able to afford now? I guess some will lose jobs but what’s the big downside from a country perspective with having cheaper housing? Or are you concerned about immediate effects?
  - myth_drannon 4y ago
    It's not only about being underwater on mortgages, but having your morgtage payment double (and maybe tripling soon...). Reddit is full of panicking homeowners who are starting to straggle with payments. This will have a wide effect on the whole economy because any discretionary spending will evaporate.
    - endtime 4y ago
      Are adjustable rate mortgages common in Canada?
      - visiblink 4y ago
        Canadian mortgages have separate amortization periods (say 20 or 25 years for example) and interest rate terms (generally 1-5 years, after which the rate has to be renegotiated -- and you have the option of transferring the mortgage to another lender at that time). You can also let your rate float with the market, which is called a variable rate mortgage.
        kansface 4y ago
        Interesting. Do you know why mortgages in Canada are so different from the US? They seem much more risky on the buyer’s side.
howmayiannoyyou 4y ago
> I think the US (and Canada) just needs to ride the tide and let all the other boats sink. Look at USD FX rates. The US may be able to purchase resources and goods abroad at more favorable exchange, but who can afford to buy US exports as the USD rockets skyward? And what is the logical follow-on to unobtainable USD units of trade? Substitutes that China, for example, are more than delighted to support if it means they exert (even) more control over the global monetary system.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  FX rates are like racing logic. It might be better to be behind for a while (weaker currency) because that could have long term advantages like moving industry to your country. But you want to be in first place. The USD is strong because people need to buy things from the US to begin with. That is, at best, a "nobody goes there it's too popular" kind of comment. The idea that you weaken your currency to increase exports is something you do to benefit from growth, like moving industry to China. But if something like an energy shortage or a fertilizer shortage start limiting your ability to produce things with that opportunity, you're just doubled down on a bad situation. This isn't even a story on "reserve currency" status. This is just the US (and Canada) being in an incredible competitive situation. What do you do when there's a global food shortage and the US is the only country unhindered? You suck it up, buy those stupidly expensive US dollars, and import US food. And get screwed if you owe USD denominated debts while your currency goes down. And if the US finds it's not at the right level, it can always just... spend more money. It's basically free. Everyone's getting hit with inflation because it's genuinely harder to make and ship things. Slapping on some excess money sloshing around to try and keep things going is dangerous.
  - code51 4y ago
    That's why petrodollar is part of heated conversations around the world. You do this enough and your allies become collateral damage, the system begs for a change. Rest of the world starts to only base their trades in gold (or some other standard) and when faced with USD debt, change the debt amount through policy. US has to keep their (future) allies afloat either openly or with hidden support.
buscoquadnary 4y ago
This is the basic premise of this talk by Petar Zeihan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi_nFz1CJSI&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi_nFz1CJSI&t=2s
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Pretty much. I think he's too eager to write off certain things to paint a wholly American picture, but he's generally got it right. The China story is not as clear. But the Europe picture is pretty plain. America is gonna eat it's lunch.
  - UncleOxidant 4y ago
    I'm not sure we want to (or intend to) eat Europe's lunch - we'd like a fairly strong Europe. But yeah, for now Europe's lunch will be eaten.
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      Yes I agree on both points
    - Bombthecat 4y ago
      Europe missed the train and train doesn't reverse when missing the station.. Energy and infrastructure are the venes of Europe which clocked and overstretched to the max. Something will need to give and it already begins by small bakeries closing and more to follow.. It wont end well. I don't believe we will have any growth in Europe for the next 3 years. Who is going to invest in Europe if energy is literally unpredictable and expensive?
      - UncleOxidant 4y ago
        Yeah, bakeries are energy intensive. Methane generation from sewage would be one way to (relatively quickly^) replace some of the natural gas that was coming from Russia. And as a side benefit fertilizer could be produced from the same sewage. ^ even so it would probably take a couple of years to get methane generation going at scale.
WalterBright 4y ago
Central economic planning still doesn't work.
- PKop 4y ago
  Neither does no planning and complete decentralization (no national industrial policy, no trade barriers, letting important supply chains move out of your control or even into the borders of your adversaries).
  - Proven 4y ago
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Actually, the chaos of the free market works very, very well at producing the most prosperous countries ever seen.
    - thfuran 4y ago
      Which country are you referring to? I rather suspect that their government is a good deal less hands off than you're implying.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        The US is a fine example, especially the first century.
        thfuran 4y ago
        Very nearly the first piece of legislation passed after the ratification of the constitution was a tariff.
        missedthecue 4y ago
        The market works in spite of bad legislation not because of it
JPKab 4y ago
Mexico will be fine as well. North America is in a pretty good place compared to the rest of the world when it comes to energy/food/labor demographics. China is, unfortunately, a long way from the competent leadership of Hu Jintao and the other previous post-Mao leaders. Unlike the previous leaders (primarily selected on merit), who WANTED to prevent another Mao-like cult of personality, Xi is a deeply-insecure man whose rise was entirely built on family connections. He has fostered a cult of personality while simultaneously using the cover of anti-corruption stings to remove all of his CCP rivals, or anyone critical of him. The result is a huge departure from the previously competent CCP decisions. The current CCP is carrying out foolish, self-destructive, and non-sensical policies that can only make sense in the context of local decision makers desperate to please Xi. Xi is the ultimate centralizer of all decisions, having knee-capped the previous CCP policies of pushing decision making to local officials as much as possible. It's a real nightmare, and has resulted in China having an image of a shining (although somewhat authoritarian) city on a hill to a weird techno-dystopia with people starving in their apartments under absurdly stupid "Zero Covid" lockdown policies because the CCP can't admit the SinoVax is a complete failure.
- drekk 4y ago
  China has 4x the population of the US. Abandoning zero COVID as a policy would lead to millions of deaths. How can you call SinoVax a failure when all of the non-mRNA vaccines perform similarly? The US has more COVID deaths than China has had cases. That's shameful, especially when the US sat on enough mRNA vaccines to completely immunize our population 9x over. Countries like Argentina that were guinea pigs for the Pfizer, Moderna, J&J vaccines couldn't get enough access because IP law is more important than stopping a global pandemic that disrupts manufacturing. Countries like China and Cuba had to manufacture their own vaccines without the new mRNA process and it was less effective as a result but still better than nothing. Cuba even had to get permission from the US to import syringes to be able to administer the vaccine they manufactured. How is that defensible? All of this without even saying that the CPC has an incredibly high approval rating (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...), even when the polling is done by outside entities and anonymized. It seems incredibly condescending to treat a billion+ humans as inept drones under the iron grip of a tyrant simply because they're geopolitical rivals.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
Europe has plenty of energy. They sit on huge gas reserves, for instance, but have decided to effectively ban using them by banning fracking while still being extremely dependent on gas. And not only that but most of gas imports came from a geostrategic adversary... This is all self-inflicted. You can't prevent people and countries from shooting themselves in the foot.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Netherlands stopped fracking because their population density is too high to just sweep the environmental damaged caused by fracking under the rug, the only thing that is self inflicted are the now unavoidable earthquakes in the Netherlands.
  - LeChuck 4y ago
    The Netherlands did not stop fracking. The earthquakes in the Netherlands are not caused by fracking.
andsoitis 4y ago
> US still having stable energy and farming capabilities Don’t these industries depend on inputs from around the world?
fulafel 4y ago
Continued unabated fossils use indeed is sinking the other boats to get ahead short term, but hopefully enough people will disagree to get some less cynical climate cognizant energy policy going there.
jelling 4y ago
Re: lowering interest rates, China has the largest foreign currency reserves in the world at over 3 trillion USD. So where most sovereign currency issuers can’t print money without reducing the value of their currency - or increasing interest rates to compensate - China can defend the value of their currency by purchasing with it foreign reserves. I’m not an economist so I can’t tell you how far they can go with this. But they have an atypical margin for error correction re: interest rates / money creation.
ls15 4y ago
> farming capabilities Let's just hope that the upcoming megadrought (worst in 1,200 years) in the Western US does not get too dry.

csours 4y ago

I ask this question every so often on economic threads - Are jobs created or discovered? What field of study is most associated with "new jobs"?

tuatoru 4y ago
What is the difference between "created" and "discovered" when it comes to jobs? Was "social media manager" created or discovered? How about (to take an older example) telex operator?
peteradio 4y ago
spark+kindling+gust
vorpalhex 4y ago
Jobs are more often created than discovered. Tomorrow we might discover a new kind of math, requiring newly trained mathmeticians in a novel field. Those mathmeticians will need admins, business services, places to work, food, etc. Thus even the discovery of a few jobs has more jobs created than found.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  The mathematicians don't need any more food than they did before the new kind of math was discovered. Why would you count that as job creation?
  - carlmr 4y ago
    The single mathematician no, but a new field would lead to the creation of a new building with new people at some point.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      Every one of the people in that building needs the same amount of food they did before they moved in.
      - jhundal 4y ago
        Same amount of food yes. But if a mathematician was just sitting on the sidelines before this new field, they may decide it is more productive to trade time they spent on preparing food for more time to spend on math.
        lupire 4y ago
        That's just moving the food job somewhere else. It's not clear that this thread is about. Jobs a weak approximation of utility creation + equalit of the distribution of that utility.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Having food is not the hard part, the logistics of food is the hard part. Feeding one person is easy. Feeding 200 people with a mix of allergies is hard.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      On the other hand, when you're already feeding 4000 people, feeding 4200 people is not noticeably harder.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
I don't think that's particularly relevant here. We're going to see jobs open up in the US (and Canada) because even with higher labor costs, the strong dollar and available energy will make it easy to purchase goods and build things here. They won't be novel jobs so much as leveraging an absolute economic advantage against every pretty much every other nation on earth to steal jobs from other countries. But I guess to answer the question, jobs, especially at the bottom are "enabled" more than anything. We want people to do simple tasks, but tech advancements make it efficient enough to actually pay people to do it. Like rideshare drivers, ignoring valid claims about vc money burning. Some new types of jobs might be created or discovered but most jobs changes are about determining whether its viable to pay something to do something you want to do. The idea to have them do it has always been there.
t_mann 4y ago
The fields are macroeconomics and labor economics. I don't understand your other question, so it's hard to answer. What do you mean by "discovered"? Discovered by whom, the employer or the the employee? But you may be interested in knowing that models of labor markets are often based on matching models - you've got two groups (employers, employees) and everyobdy is trying to find {one,many} members of the other group that are a good match.
- csours 4y ago
  > The fields are macroeconomics and labor economics As I understand it, those are mainly concerned with reduction in labor costs. Job discovery is a phrase used by Clayton Christensen to describe finding a job to be done. He uses it to describe finding a product to sell to people to perform some function in their lives - a job to be done by a product that you make. I'm using it as an alternative to the idea of "job creation" because I don't think that's real. There is a certain political narrative about job creation and job creators. I tried to find support for it in academia and I could not. I didn't want to put all this in my original question because then I would only get political replies. --- About politics - Yes my question has some political motivation, but I am genuinely interested in the subject. My motivation is not to prove or disprove, but to learn. You don't have to believe that about me, but I do.
  - t_mann 4y ago
    > As I understand it, those are mainly concerned with reduction in labor costs. Where does your understanding derive from? Reducing macroeconomics to "reducing labor costs" is akin to reducing classical mechanics to "computing projectile trajectories". I don't know Christensen but I take it that he's a business school professor and I guess that was the target audience he was speaking to there. You're not wrong that economics is a discipline that is not free from ideological biases, but I guess you're going a bit far in reducing the discipline to that. People still want to answer questions with data, like "what happens to unemployment (and exchange rates, and investment,...) if we raise interest rates?". Labor economics might ask more narrow questions like "what happens if we raise the minimum wage?". That's the sort of questions that economics deals with, not musing over the semantics of creation vs discovery.
Symmetry 4y ago
And while we're at it, if a tree falls in a forest with nobody around to hear, does it make a sound? I don't think there's any difference of facts to debate around created or discovered, just semantics.

ddorian43 4y ago

Nah. Canada real estate has to take the hit.

ericmay 4y ago
What effect will that have? If some Canadians go underwater on mortgages, won’t others who were priced out be able to afford now? I guess some will lose jobs but what’s the big downside from a country perspective with having cheaper housing? Or are you concerned about immediate effects?
- myth_drannon 4y ago
  It's not only about being underwater on mortgages, but having your morgtage payment double (and maybe tripling soon...). Reddit is full of panicking homeowners who are starting to straggle with payments. This will have a wide effect on the whole economy because any discretionary spending will evaporate.
  - endtime 4y ago
    Are adjustable rate mortgages common in Canada?
    - visiblink 4y ago
      Canadian mortgages have separate amortization periods (say 20 or 25 years for example) and interest rate terms (generally 1-5 years, after which the rate has to be renegotiated -- and you have the option of transferring the mortgage to another lender at that time). You can also let your rate float with the market, which is called a variable rate mortgage.
      - kansface 4y ago
        Interesting. Do you know why mortgages in Canada are so different from the US? They seem much more risky on the buyer’s side.

howmayiannoyyou 4y ago

> I think the US (and Canada) just needs to ride the tide and let all the other boats sink. Look at USD FX rates. The US may be able to purchase resources and goods abroad at more favorable exchange, but who can afford to buy US exports as the USD rockets skyward? And what is the logical follow-on to unobtainable USD units of trade? Substitutes that China, for example, are more than delighted to support if it means they exert (even) more control over the global monetary system.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
FX rates are like racing logic. It might be better to be behind for a while (weaker currency) because that could have long term advantages like moving industry to your country. But you want to be in first place. The USD is strong because people need to buy things from the US to begin with. That is, at best, a "nobody goes there it's too popular" kind of comment. The idea that you weaken your currency to increase exports is something you do to benefit from growth, like moving industry to China. But if something like an energy shortage or a fertilizer shortage start limiting your ability to produce things with that opportunity, you're just doubled down on a bad situation. This isn't even a story on "reserve currency" status. This is just the US (and Canada) being in an incredible competitive situation. What do you do when there's a global food shortage and the US is the only country unhindered? You suck it up, buy those stupidly expensive US dollars, and import US food. And get screwed if you owe USD denominated debts while your currency goes down. And if the US finds it's not at the right level, it can always just... spend more money. It's basically free. Everyone's getting hit with inflation because it's genuinely harder to make and ship things. Slapping on some excess money sloshing around to try and keep things going is dangerous.
- code51 4y ago
  That's why petrodollar is part of heated conversations around the world. You do this enough and your allies become collateral damage, the system begs for a change. Rest of the world starts to only base their trades in gold (or some other standard) and when faced with USD debt, change the debt amount through policy. US has to keep their (future) allies afloat either openly or with hidden support.

buscoquadnary 4y ago

This is the basic premise of this talk by Petar Zeihan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi_nFz1CJSI&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi_nFz1CJSI&t=2s

spywaregorilla 4y ago
Pretty much. I think he's too eager to write off certain things to paint a wholly American picture, but he's generally got it right. The China story is not as clear. But the Europe picture is pretty plain. America is gonna eat it's lunch.
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  I'm not sure we want to (or intend to) eat Europe's lunch - we'd like a fairly strong Europe. But yeah, for now Europe's lunch will be eaten.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    Yes I agree on both points
  - Bombthecat 4y ago
    Europe missed the train and train doesn't reverse when missing the station.. Energy and infrastructure are the venes of Europe which clocked and overstretched to the max. Something will need to give and it already begins by small bakeries closing and more to follow.. It wont end well. I don't believe we will have any growth in Europe for the next 3 years. Who is going to invest in Europe if energy is literally unpredictable and expensive?
    - UncleOxidant 4y ago
      Yeah, bakeries are energy intensive. Methane generation from sewage would be one way to (relatively quickly^) replace some of the natural gas that was coming from Russia. And as a side benefit fertilizer could be produced from the same sewage. ^ even so it would probably take a couple of years to get methane generation going at scale.

WalterBright 4y ago

Central economic planning still doesn't work.

PKop 4y ago
Neither does no planning and complete decentralization (no national industrial policy, no trade barriers, letting important supply chains move out of your control or even into the borders of your adversaries).
- Proven 4y ago
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Actually, the chaos of the free market works very, very well at producing the most prosperous countries ever seen.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    Which country are you referring to? I rather suspect that their government is a good deal less hands off than you're implying.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      The US is a fine example, especially the first century.
      - thfuran 4y ago
        Very nearly the first piece of legislation passed after the ratification of the constitution was a tariff.
        missedthecue 4y ago
        The market works in spite of bad legislation not because of it

JPKab 4y ago

Mexico will be fine as well. North America is in a pretty good place compared to the rest of the world when it comes to energy/food/labor demographics. China is, unfortunately, a long way from the competent leadership of Hu Jintao and the other previous post-Mao leaders. Unlike the previous leaders (primarily selected on merit), who WANTED to prevent another Mao-like cult of personality, Xi is a deeply-insecure man whose rise was entirely built on family connections. He has fostered a cult of personality while simultaneously using the cover of anti-corruption stings to remove all of his CCP rivals, or anyone critical of him. The result is a huge departure from the previously competent CCP decisions. The current CCP is carrying out foolish, self-destructive, and non-sensical policies that can only make sense in the context of local decision makers desperate to please Xi. Xi is the ultimate centralizer of all decisions, having knee-capped the previous CCP policies of pushing decision making to local officials as much as possible. It's a real nightmare, and has resulted in China having an image of a shining (although somewhat authoritarian) city on a hill to a weird techno-dystopia with people starving in their apartments under absurdly stupid "Zero Covid" lockdown policies because the CCP can't admit the SinoVax is a complete failure.

drekk 4y ago
China has 4x the population of the US. Abandoning zero COVID as a policy would lead to millions of deaths. How can you call SinoVax a failure when all of the non-mRNA vaccines perform similarly? The US has more COVID deaths than China has had cases. That's shameful, especially when the US sat on enough mRNA vaccines to completely immunize our population 9x over. Countries like Argentina that were guinea pigs for the Pfizer, Moderna, J&J vaccines couldn't get enough access because IP law is more important than stopping a global pandemic that disrupts manufacturing. Countries like China and Cuba had to manufacture their own vaccines without the new mRNA process and it was less effective as a result but still better than nothing. Cuba even had to get permission from the US to import syringes to be able to administer the vaccine they manufactured. How is that defensible? All of this without even saying that the CPC has an incredibly high approval rating (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...), even when the polling is done by outside entities and anonymized. It seems incredibly condescending to treat a billion+ humans as inept drones under the iron grip of a tyrant simply because they're geopolitical rivals.

mytailorisrich 4y ago

Europe has plenty of energy. They sit on huge gas reserves, for instance, but have decided to effectively ban using them by banning fracking while still being extremely dependent on gas. And not only that but most of gas imports came from a geostrategic adversary... This is all self-inflicted. You can't prevent people and countries from shooting themselves in the foot.

imtringued 4y ago
Netherlands stopped fracking because their population density is too high to just sweep the environmental damaged caused by fracking under the rug, the only thing that is self inflicted are the now unavoidable earthquakes in the Netherlands.
- LeChuck 4y ago
  The Netherlands did not stop fracking. The earthquakes in the Netherlands are not caused by fracking.

andsoitis 4y ago

> US still having stable energy and farming capabilities Don’t these industries depend on inputs from around the world?

fulafel 4y ago

Continued unabated fossils use indeed is sinking the other boats to get ahead short term, but hopefully enough people will disagree to get some less cynical climate cognizant energy policy going there.

jelling 4y ago

Re: lowering interest rates, China has the largest foreign currency reserves in the world at over 3 trillion USD. So where most sovereign currency issuers can’t print money without reducing the value of their currency - or increasing interest rates to compensate - China can defend the value of their currency by purchasing with it foreign reserves. I’m not an economist so I can’t tell you how far they can go with this. But they have an atypical margin for error correction re: interest rates / money creation.

ls15 4y ago

> farming capabilities Let's just hope that the upcoming megadrought (worst in 1,200 years) in the Western US does not get too dry.