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China's economic situation right now is worse than the US. They have incredible debt (accounting for provincial debt which is essentially state debt, China is n

China's economic situation right now is worse than the US. They have incredible debt (accounting for provincial debt which is essentially state debt, China is not a federation), a massive housing asset bubble, and an aged population that is expensive to care for. Never mind also being stuck in a deflationary cycle with a high youth unemployment rate. And this is just working with the self-reported numbers from an authoritarian regime. The biggest crunch to the US will be to the consumer, the biggest crunch to China will be the worker. People in the US will need to buy less shit, and pay more for what they do buy. People in China will need to work fewer hours and bring home less money. Of course, the situation is fractal and ridden with unknowns. But I think a lot of people have this view of China as being a young slick economic powerhouse and the US being a weak economy with old decrepit money pile. That's far from the truth.

tommica 2y ago
What is the difference between paying more for the item VS having less money to spend? Both to me seem like being unable to afford the things you need.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  Americans buy a ludicrous amount of stuff they only think they need. American consumerism is unrivaled in the world. In the US the poor are the ones who suffer from obesity. From having too many calories available cheaply. Let that sink in. The US is so much further from "needs not being met" than anyone understands.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    right, but so far the consumerism has been the only thing doing bread and circuses away from the real problems of housing and whatnot. it's interesting that many things like televisions and phones went from being multiples of rent or mortgage payments, to the reverse, so now cutting back on consumer spending to afford necessities wouldn't do a whole lot.
    - Workaccount2 2y ago
      I'm not worried about the consumer aspect at all. It will be painful and maybe pull the wool off all the trumpets eyes, reveling his idiocy. But people are not going to be starving. Maybe starving for new clothes and iPhones like they get all the time. I do worry though about embedded costs up the supply chain the depend on Chinese made things. The parts of parts that go into machines that are made domestically. I think that has potential to be the real knife in the back. Most things need all the pieces to work, and even though the machine is 90% made in USA, the last 10% that is a Chinese export is going to cause pain in all sorts o unexpected places.
  - AngryData 2y ago
    The US has one of the largest agricultural sectors in the world, it should be no surprise that food is not in short supply. But we don't live in an era where people live in homes built from local gathered sticks and rocks and just need food to survive, our modern lives depend on far more than just food. Poor people are fat because we made extremely calorie dense foods the cheapest foods, poor people often shop by calorie per dollar, not because they have extra cash to throw around. Try living on the US median wage only and let me know how much ludicrous amount of stuff you can afford.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
      << Try living on the US median wage only and let me know how much ludicrous amount of stuff you can afford. The question is not what you can afford. The question is what you can get. And whatever else you want to say about US system, it made the ability to show that you have $desired_item257 relatively easy to obtain even at low income level. It is genuinely not impossible to own status luxury items with aggressive financing.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - nebula8804 2y ago
    In the US half of consumer spending is done by only the top 10% [1]: https://hive.blog/economy/@davideownzall/in-the-us-the-top-10percent-of-earners-account-for-half-of-all-consumption https://hive.blog/economy/@davideownzall/in-the-us-the-top-1... There is a lot of poverty in the US.
  - jgalentine007 2y ago
    It's more expensive to buy and prepare fresh food than shelf stable ultra processed foods and requires more time. Poor people have access to 'poor' calories. I would wager that children would also inherit the eating habits of poor parents. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20720258/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20720258/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14684391/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14684391/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4254327/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4254327/
  - XorNot 2y ago
    This is flat out advocating "the Maduro diet" as a good thing.
  - HWR_14 2y ago
    > In the US the poor are the ones who suffer from obesity. Are there any developed countries where "can get enough calories" is a real question?
- donavanm 2y ago
  Long term savings, productivity increases, and infrastructure investments. Buy less today to have more tomorrow. The us individual hardly saves at all, the US gov/society has financed decades of deficit spending n the outcome of ww2, 20th century global industrialization, and the “exorbitant privilege” of financing/coordinating it. Common opinion is that china has the opposite problem, with massive productivity outputs being shipped overseas and a population base who cant/wont consume their own outputs.
epistasis 2y ago
While this is all true, China knows all the economic levers to cause lots of pain to the US (eg selling t-bills) whereas the leadership in the US is so economically illiterate that it thinks trade deficits are theft and that tariffs are free tax money that will strengthen the US. The US's current leadership is so economically illiterate that most of the people who backed Trump thought he was just joking about his economic policy. When the stock market finally realized that he was so stupid as to follow through on campaign promises the stock market tanked. It is currently only held up at current depressed levels because it is assumed that Trump will back away from the trade war. Though the US economy is the strongest and healthiest on the planet by a large margin, and while typically the president of the US has minimal impact, we find ourselves in a strange situation where the president has found a way to throw all that supremacy away.
- noqc 2y ago
  >China knows all the economic levers to cause lots of pain to the US (eg selling t-bills) China has been divesting itself of treasuries for a long time: a) because they create coupling between the two economies, and b) they know that the US will simply freeze them if China invades Taiwan. If China dumped all of its treasuries at once, it would hurt a little, but not that much.
  - epistasis 2y ago
    A small amount of selling T-bills from bond vigilantes already caused Trump to drastically pull back his plan once. If a holder as large as China started a big dump of T-bills it would cause a massive financial disaster. China would feel some pain too, but the US having far higher interest rates as it rolls over new debt into new T-bills would be extremely difficult for us. We are at economic Mutually Assured Destruction levels this is still a lever that China can pull that is in their favor.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  In some sense Trump and co would want China to sell their t-bills. It will weaken the dollar (increasing competitiveness of US exports) and strengthen the yuan (decrease competitiveness of Chinese exports). To some degree is it possible to frame this whole situation as America intentionally tanking the dollar because it is too strong (which has happened twice before, albeit in more diplomatic ways). The hard part though is getting our economic allies to go along with it while also not abandoning dollar supremacy. How does the strongest boxer ever intentionally get weaker to avoid permanent injury, while also keeping bettors confident in his winning streak? It kind of needs to be done, but man I cannot think of a worse person to execute this than Trump.
adra 2y ago
I'm sure that China will suffer greatly from any trade war, and I'm positive the US will blink first. Chinese consumer and workers are already significantly less likely to revolt, stop working, drag their country down. The second that dollar store becomes $10store in the US, it'll be pandemonium, and they only have a single person to blame for their troubles. China? They may be doing anti-competitive trade practices and haven't been put to task, but if you ask the Chinese citizen who to blame on the trade war, it'll be trump. If you ask a US citizen who to blame for this trade war, it'll be trump.
- ratorx 2y ago
  In this case, that seems pretty accurate? Trump is indeed the one that started the trade war. External enemies are easier to unite against etc.
- nebula8804 2y ago
  Our tiktok/instragram/youtube has been downright flooded with pro Chinese propaganda for the last few weeks. Sounds like we need to really start hustling and push the lie flat movement hard on the Chinese platforms. In the meantime Trump will find a way to blame Biden, he has already started.
  - raydev 2y ago
    > downright flooded with pro Chinese propaganda for the last few weeks Can you link some examples? I (shamefully) have been spending a lot of time on TikTok lately but it's mostly devoid of politics. My YT home page is still the same 3-4 topics I already watch most often. No politics.
    - platevoltage 2y ago
      I made a new TikTok account out of curiosity after Trump "saved" the platform. No exaggeration, half of the "For You" content was from "Team Trump" or Charlie Kirk. They are actively pushing propaganda, but I've seen no signs that it's Chinese propaganda, unless you assume that Bytedance is bowing to Trump, and that Bytedance is controlled by the Chinese Government, which just raises more questions. Youtube Premium is the only "streaming service" I actually pay money for, and I use it quite a bit. Rarely ever does something off the wall get pushed to me. I do consume politics on YT, and occasionally something right wing shows up, but it's rare. I have no doubt that this stuff would be prioritized on a new account though.
decimalenough 2y ago
China faces many long-term headwinds but they're not in crisis yet. The Chinese housing bubble has been deflating since 2020. The state pension and healthcare systems are less than generous so care for the elderly is not that expensive (yet). And Chinese government debt is less than half the US despite being 5x the population. At the end of the day, the US represents only 8% of China's exports and only 2% of China's GDP. Losing that will hurt, but China is far better placed to weather the loss than the US.
- _carbyau_ 2y ago
  > the US represents only 8% of China's exports and only 2% of China's GDP. Losing that will hurt Just noting that trade can often find a new country so it's unlikely that 8% will all simply vanish. How much will vanish I don't know, but not all. Whereas it is near certain that items going into the US will be priced higher. Tariffs have to be policed after all.
freefrog1234 2y ago
Do you have any links to support the assertion that China debt is worse than US?
- stock_toaster 2y ago
  I think most of the Chinese debt is actually internal, whereas most of the US debt is external? China is also a large external creditor, for example holding a large amount of treasury bonds from other countries. I certainly don't know how either of those impact the calculus of which is worse and/or more manageable though.
  - epistasis 2y ago
    Almost all of US debt is internal. Social security and the federal reserve are the two biggest holders. Only 25% is in other countries, and the largest single other country is Japan at 3%. If there is a secret Trump plan to devalue the dollar and force us treasury holders to accept cheaper longer term debt, the biggest plenary will be to social security. One visualization: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-heres-who-owns-u-s-debt/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-heres-who-owns-u-s-... (Though on the last numbers I saw had the UK and China with far more similar amounts of holdings.$ Calling T-bills debt is only half the picture. They function more like dollars, whose value can be deflated or increased after issuance merely by changing interest rates.
    - stock_toaster 2y ago
      Great info. I imagine most of that 20% of Intra-Governmental Debt is Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid?
  - HWR_14 2y ago
    US debt is also mostly internal. 2/3 of all US bonds are held by US citizens or companies. Of the foreign holders of US bonds, Japan holds the most.
XorNot 2y ago
Direct exports from China to the US is 15% of their total. It's the largest fraction but not a majority. The US has tarriffed the entire world, and every category - finished goods and raw materials. I'm Australian: I'm shopping on Aliexpress in another window right now. I'm going to keep doing that. China has far more options in this then the US.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> biggest crunch to the US will be to the consumer, the biggest crunch to China will be the worker Why do you think America will have a layoff- and insolvency-free recession?

tommica 2y ago

What is the difference between paying more for the item VS having less money to spend? Both to me seem like being unable to afford the things you need.

Workaccount2 2y ago
Americans buy a ludicrous amount of stuff they only think they need. American consumerism is unrivaled in the world. In the US the poor are the ones who suffer from obesity. From having too many calories available cheaply. Let that sink in. The US is so much further from "needs not being met" than anyone understands.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  right, but so far the consumerism has been the only thing doing bread and circuses away from the real problems of housing and whatnot. it's interesting that many things like televisions and phones went from being multiples of rent or mortgage payments, to the reverse, so now cutting back on consumer spending to afford necessities wouldn't do a whole lot.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    I'm not worried about the consumer aspect at all. It will be painful and maybe pull the wool off all the trumpets eyes, reveling his idiocy. But people are not going to be starving. Maybe starving for new clothes and iPhones like they get all the time. I do worry though about embedded costs up the supply chain the depend on Chinese made things. The parts of parts that go into machines that are made domestically. I think that has potential to be the real knife in the back. Most things need all the pieces to work, and even though the machine is 90% made in USA, the last 10% that is a Chinese export is going to cause pain in all sorts o unexpected places.
- AngryData 2y ago
  The US has one of the largest agricultural sectors in the world, it should be no surprise that food is not in short supply. But we don't live in an era where people live in homes built from local gathered sticks and rocks and just need food to survive, our modern lives depend on far more than just food. Poor people are fat because we made extremely calorie dense foods the cheapest foods, poor people often shop by calorie per dollar, not because they have extra cash to throw around. Try living on the US median wage only and let me know how much ludicrous amount of stuff you can afford.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
    << Try living on the US median wage only and let me know how much ludicrous amount of stuff you can afford. The question is not what you can afford. The question is what you can get. And whatever else you want to say about US system, it made the ability to show that you have $desired_item257 relatively easy to obtain even at low income level. It is genuinely not impossible to own status luxury items with aggressive financing.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nebula8804 2y ago
  In the US half of consumer spending is done by only the top 10% [1]: https://hive.blog/economy/@davideownzall/in-the-us-the-top-10percent-of-earners-account-for-half-of-all-consumption https://hive.blog/economy/@davideownzall/in-the-us-the-top-1... There is a lot of poverty in the US.
- jgalentine007 2y ago
  It's more expensive to buy and prepare fresh food than shelf stable ultra processed foods and requires more time. Poor people have access to 'poor' calories. I would wager that children would also inherit the eating habits of poor parents. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20720258/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20720258/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14684391/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14684391/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4254327/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4254327/
- XorNot 2y ago
  This is flat out advocating "the Maduro diet" as a good thing.
- HWR_14 2y ago
  > In the US the poor are the ones who suffer from obesity. Are there any developed countries where "can get enough calories" is a real question?
donavanm 2y ago
Long term savings, productivity increases, and infrastructure investments. Buy less today to have more tomorrow. The us individual hardly saves at all, the US gov/society has financed decades of deficit spending n the outcome of ww2, 20th century global industrialization, and the “exorbitant privilege” of financing/coordinating it. Common opinion is that china has the opposite problem, with massive productivity outputs being shipped overseas and a population base who cant/wont consume their own outputs.

epistasis 2y ago

While this is all true, China knows all the economic levers to cause lots of pain to the US (eg selling t-bills) whereas the leadership in the US is so economically illiterate that it thinks trade deficits are theft and that tariffs are free tax money that will strengthen the US. The US's current leadership is so economically illiterate that most of the people who backed Trump thought he was just joking about his economic policy. When the stock market finally realized that he was so stupid as to follow through on campaign promises the stock market tanked. It is currently only held up at current depressed levels because it is assumed that Trump will back away from the trade war. Though the US economy is the strongest and healthiest on the planet by a large margin, and while typically the president of the US has minimal impact, we find ourselves in a strange situation where the president has found a way to throw all that supremacy away.

noqc 2y ago
>China knows all the economic levers to cause lots of pain to the US (eg selling t-bills) China has been divesting itself of treasuries for a long time: a) because they create coupling between the two economies, and b) they know that the US will simply freeze them if China invades Taiwan. If China dumped all of its treasuries at once, it would hurt a little, but not that much.
- epistasis 2y ago
  A small amount of selling T-bills from bond vigilantes already caused Trump to drastically pull back his plan once. If a holder as large as China started a big dump of T-bills it would cause a massive financial disaster. China would feel some pain too, but the US having far higher interest rates as it rolls over new debt into new T-bills would be extremely difficult for us. We are at economic Mutually Assured Destruction levels this is still a lever that China can pull that is in their favor.
Workaccount2 2y ago
In some sense Trump and co would want China to sell their t-bills. It will weaken the dollar (increasing competitiveness of US exports) and strengthen the yuan (decrease competitiveness of Chinese exports). To some degree is it possible to frame this whole situation as America intentionally tanking the dollar because it is too strong (which has happened twice before, albeit in more diplomatic ways). The hard part though is getting our economic allies to go along with it while also not abandoning dollar supremacy. How does the strongest boxer ever intentionally get weaker to avoid permanent injury, while also keeping bettors confident in his winning streak? It kind of needs to be done, but man I cannot think of a worse person to execute this than Trump.

adra 2y ago

I'm sure that China will suffer greatly from any trade war, and I'm positive the US will blink first. Chinese consumer and workers are already significantly less likely to revolt, stop working, drag their country down. The second that dollar store becomes $10store in the US, it'll be pandemonium, and they only have a single person to blame for their troubles. China? They may be doing anti-competitive trade practices and haven't been put to task, but if you ask the Chinese citizen who to blame on the trade war, it'll be trump. If you ask a US citizen who to blame for this trade war, it'll be trump.

ratorx 2y ago
In this case, that seems pretty accurate? Trump is indeed the one that started the trade war. External enemies are easier to unite against etc.
nebula8804 2y ago
Our tiktok/instragram/youtube has been downright flooded with pro Chinese propaganda for the last few weeks. Sounds like we need to really start hustling and push the lie flat movement hard on the Chinese platforms. In the meantime Trump will find a way to blame Biden, he has already started.
- raydev 2y ago
  > downright flooded with pro Chinese propaganda for the last few weeks Can you link some examples? I (shamefully) have been spending a lot of time on TikTok lately but it's mostly devoid of politics. My YT home page is still the same 3-4 topics I already watch most often. No politics.
  - platevoltage 2y ago
    I made a new TikTok account out of curiosity after Trump "saved" the platform. No exaggeration, half of the "For You" content was from "Team Trump" or Charlie Kirk. They are actively pushing propaganda, but I've seen no signs that it's Chinese propaganda, unless you assume that Bytedance is bowing to Trump, and that Bytedance is controlled by the Chinese Government, which just raises more questions. Youtube Premium is the only "streaming service" I actually pay money for, and I use it quite a bit. Rarely ever does something off the wall get pushed to me. I do consume politics on YT, and occasionally something right wing shows up, but it's rare. I have no doubt that this stuff would be prioritized on a new account though.

decimalenough 2y ago

China faces many long-term headwinds but they're not in crisis yet. The Chinese housing bubble has been deflating since 2020. The state pension and healthcare systems are less than generous so care for the elderly is not that expensive (yet). And Chinese government debt is less than half the US despite being 5x the population. At the end of the day, the US represents only 8% of China's exports and only 2% of China's GDP. Losing that will hurt, but China is far better placed to weather the loss than the US.

_carbyau_ 2y ago
> the US represents only 8% of China's exports and only 2% of China's GDP. Losing that will hurt Just noting that trade can often find a new country so it's unlikely that 8% will all simply vanish. How much will vanish I don't know, but not all. Whereas it is near certain that items going into the US will be priced higher. Tariffs have to be policed after all.

freefrog1234 2y ago

Do you have any links to support the assertion that China debt is worse than US?

stock_toaster 2y ago
I think most of the Chinese debt is actually internal, whereas most of the US debt is external? China is also a large external creditor, for example holding a large amount of treasury bonds from other countries. I certainly don't know how either of those impact the calculus of which is worse and/or more manageable though.
- epistasis 2y ago
  Almost all of US debt is internal. Social security and the federal reserve are the two biggest holders. Only 25% is in other countries, and the largest single other country is Japan at 3%. If there is a secret Trump plan to devalue the dollar and force us treasury holders to accept cheaper longer term debt, the biggest plenary will be to social security. One visualization: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-heres-who-owns-u-s-debt/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-heres-who-owns-u-s-... (Though on the last numbers I saw had the UK and China with far more similar amounts of holdings.$ Calling T-bills debt is only half the picture. They function more like dollars, whose value can be deflated or increased after issuance merely by changing interest rates.
  - stock_toaster 2y ago
    Great info. I imagine most of that 20% of Intra-Governmental Debt is Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid?
- HWR_14 2y ago
  US debt is also mostly internal. 2/3 of all US bonds are held by US citizens or companies. Of the foreign holders of US bonds, Japan holds the most.

XorNot 2y ago

Direct exports from China to the US is 15% of their total. It's the largest fraction but not a majority. The US has tarriffed the entire world, and every category - finished goods and raw materials. I'm Australian: I'm shopping on Aliexpress in another window right now. I'm going to keep doing that. China has far more options in this then the US.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> biggest crunch to the US will be to the consumer, the biggest crunch to China will be the worker Why do you think America will have a layoff- and insolvency-free recession?