5 ms·

Your statement would be true without nuance. Yes. The mass of US consumers do benefit from penny subsidies of certain foreign product. However, for every penn

Your statement would be true without nuance. Yes. The mass of US consumers do benefit from penny subsidies of certain foreign product. However, for every penny of foreign subsidy benefitting US consumers buying finished iron or steel goods, a US metallurgist is losing a job somewhere. On strictly numbers, we are better off with foreing-paid subsidies yes, but there are losers, and they take the brunt of the downside. So id update your analogy by adding a twist: your childhood sitter living on anytown, USA was the virtual receptionist of the business. She had no RSUs in the business. She stayed in anytown and declined a career in a larger, growing city because she found virtual work and it made her happy. Now she's stuck with a mortgage, in a dying town, and with no career prospects locally. And all because you offered her a job that incentivized her to move, and then changed the relationship to her job 180 degrees . Separately, ive only discussed the trade impact on consumers. We arent going into trade impacting producers, for example matters like producers having their inventions stolen, or their investment nationalized, to name a few examples.. -

mrtksn 1y ago
Good point but I think these are about the choices you make. You can choose to look after your metallurgist who become obsolete as a laborers but I'm sure they are amazing people. You might be worried for becoming communist or welfare state though. You can choose to limit trade and other freedoms so you can artificially keep metallurgists at work so you don't have to share what you have with them without exchanging something. This can help you can feel good about not giving away freebies and pretend that this is a meritocracy but suffer from slow progress and other conflicts related in preserving these artificial limits. You can just choose to leave them to suffer as long as their numbers are not enough to bother you. This one gives you the good life until suddenly it stops doing that if the numbers go up enough. I guess in this case it was to ignore the "losers" in the system until they become numerous enough to tear down the whole system. A lot of people who vote for obvious frauds and outright fascists(I'm not talking about USA, but in general) are just anti-establishment who don't mean bad but just want to see the current order teared apart at any price.
- sgc 1y ago
  > who don't mean bad but just want to see the current order teared apart at any price. That sounds like a terribly bad intention to me. Significant destruction of social order leads to either authoritarianism or anarchy. Neither are even remotely desirable. The only sane path to deep, lasting, but also healthy change is to systematically work on each specific sector - only dismantling while building something better at the same time. Otherwise you are just an agent of suffering. This pathological egoism does not qualify, even remotely, as "don't mean bad".
  - mrtksn 1y ago
    Sure its bad but its worse for those who have it good. Also, people don't plan or predict every outcome, they just want change and when that change is denied that's how we have civil wars. It all starts with a peaceful protest or some petty grievances and keeps growing when ignored or dismissed.
    - sgc 1y ago
      Yes, people do terrible things by neglecting their moral duty to actually think things through. This is a very basic known truth.
- Draiken 1y ago
  > pretend that this is a meritocracy That is unfortunately all we do today. If you think our current system is a meritocratic one, do I have some bad news for you. > You might be worried for becoming communist or welfare state though. What does communism have to do with anything parent wrote?
- IG_Semmelweiss 1y ago
  I will make you a deal. I will accept this premise of "choice" with 1 condition. I will personally advocate for tariffs at 0% worldwide in 2030, if in the interim, ALL permits required to have or work as : - an accredited university - work in national security, - or in university professors (economists!), - accountant - lawyer - pharmacist - insurance brokers - any other white-collar profession, etc Are rescinded. All of them. So, anyone from abroad can open a university tomorrow, and get student loans, grants etc money. Or, anyone from china can come and become an accountant, if E&Y wants to hire them , either remotely, or in person. Up to E&Y. Yes, those in person workers would use temporary (seasonal visas) for those jobs. So someone from China can come and teach econometrics at Stanford if Stanford wishes to hire them for 8 months (the undergrad season). Or someone can start a new Stanford in Bangalore, or whatever. In other words. You don't need a license or some kind of permit to practice as a professor, or at a desk job at Raytheon. Do you accept ? My point. White collars are are protected by the state. In the real world, i've come to learn that "free trade" doesnt actually mean "unrestricted free trade" . Its just an excellent sleight of hand to say "free trade" when in the real world, the position you actually advocate is to sacrifice the have nots, while leaving the elites untouched
Buttons840 1y ago
How does the life of a US metallurgist who works part time at a grocery store compare to a Chinese metallurgist who is working 70 hours a week doing metallurgy?
- JPLeRouzic 1y ago
  I have interacted with Chinese people in IT for a few months, and they worked 5 days per week. I don't know how many hours they made per day. Another interesting stat is that they live longer on average than US people. And until recently, men retired at 60 and women at 55 yo. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd9v48yn8ro https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd9v48yn8ro
  - quacksilver 1y ago
    From working in China a bit (though could be wrong, n=1 anecdotes etc.), the majority of IT people are probably the lucky ones who mostly had a middle class upbringing, could live in a reasonable city and studied hard at school or had well connected parents. Life growing up with parents who were a rural rice farmer or metal scrapper or something would be way different. It is very hard to get a job after a certain age compared to the west, and there is pressure in some areas for women to quit once they have children. It was common to see people working from 7 or 8 am to 8 or 10pm in my office, though with a 2 hour lunch break where most people slept. On average, people tended to look way healthier (at least superficially) on average compared to places I have been in the US. Maybe due to diet and activity level.
  - ppseafield 1y ago
    Look up 996. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58381538 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58381538 https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/11/15/1039650/china-tech-workers-996-fight-back/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/11/15/1039650/china-te...
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - 1y ago
MaxPock 1y ago
You might be losing as an individual but the country gains.
- abirch 1y ago
  This is the exact same as automation. We need to be sure that we take care of those who lose their jobs. Truck Driver is one of the most popular professions in most states but the end is coming soon: https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/business/first-driverless-semis-started-regular-routes https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/business/first-driverless-sem... you can imagine that they'll only need drivers that aren't on interstates or for inclement weather.
  - datavirtue 1y ago
    People who lose their job need to take care of themselves. That's the only way it works. You can only make it easier on them and enable success. Teaching kids real fincial literacy and how to leverage derivatives is an approach to solving this problem (most adults can't even grok a check book). Save while you can and preserve and multiply your wealth. In the typical truck driver world they have zero market participation other than selling their labor and maybe a 401k stuck in money markets or bonds, no derivative strategy and zero clue on what saving for retirement entails or how the money is leveraged in retirement. They do understand that they plan on working until they die but that isn't likely to pan out either. We have a <100 IQ population living in a 120 IQ world and have created a meat grinder with all these tech and tax laws. You shouldn't have to work for 40 years.
    - 542354234235 1y ago
      > People who lose their job need to take care of themselves. This feels incredibly simplistic. Taxpayer dollars go into funding tons of research that has led to automation improvements. Why shouldn’t taxpayers get some sort of return on that investment? When the US government negotiates trade deals, the money the country “saves” could go anywhere, to anyone. Why does almost all of it go to companies and not taxpayers? If a company wants to offshore work, why do they get to keep all of the monetary difference for themselves, instead of paying a substantial portion back to the country? Privatize the profits, socialize the costs doesn’t have to be how we allow companies to operate. “Help themselves” assumes that all the other factors are some sort of unchangeable natural laws, and not laws and regulations chosen. We could choose different rules that more directly returned gains to taxpayers, instead of vague trickle down type benefits.
wkat4242 1y ago
> However, for every penny of foreign subsidy benefitting US consumers buying finished iron or steel goods, a US metallurgist is losing a job somewhere. The US consumers can't bear the prices of US craftspeople anymore. Their purchasing power will drop so much that they would wish they still had the deficit and access to AliExpress. And nobody in the US will want to do factory jobs anymore. Really who wants to screw iPhones together all day every day for minimum wage? The few jobs on that category that are left are done by... immigrants. You know, the ones that Trump is kicking out. The ones that worked long hours to be able to live in the ghetto areas hoping in vain they'll one day benefit from the "American dream".
- monkeyfun 1y ago
  You're overall correct, but made me notice that there is actually an unusually coherent argument (by their standards) being presented by the reactionaries pushing for the things you mention. It goes roughly like: >The reason these jobs are terrible is because immigrants are doing it for wages that would be intolerably low to anyone else. >This is also why it's hard to find a decent job in general, our competition is basically cheating! >But if we remove the immigrants, the employers will surely have to increase wages like they were supposed to >Now americans will have high paying factory jobs, and if some goods increase in price that's ok, their wages will let them afford it. >we got to have our cake and eat it too! Obviously they're missing some key steps and consciousness here in the reasoning, but I feel it's interesting to reflect on in context of how it's almost right -- and surprisingly close to a marxist view of things until it starts assuming things like that individuals have more bargaining power than their employers or that economic agents will always try to set the lowest price they can afford for goods rather than the highest. So for example they'd believe prices would only go up a little and manufacturing companies would just live with stagnant or reduced profits since they'd have no other choice. Notice how they have a habit of assuming totally Good behavior from Companies but totally Bad behavior from Immigrants! I think in context of all that, it becomes more visible both how we could actually resolve this problem other than by just accepting the loss of domestic industry, and what in specific the people falling for this narrative are being hooked on.
  - 1y ago

mrtksn 1y ago

Good point but I think these are about the choices you make. You can choose to look after your metallurgist who become obsolete as a laborers but I'm sure they are amazing people. You might be worried for becoming communist or welfare state though. You can choose to limit trade and other freedoms so you can artificially keep metallurgists at work so you don't have to share what you have with them without exchanging something. This can help you can feel good about not giving away freebies and pretend that this is a meritocracy but suffer from slow progress and other conflicts related in preserving these artificial limits. You can just choose to leave them to suffer as long as their numbers are not enough to bother you. This one gives you the good life until suddenly it stops doing that if the numbers go up enough. I guess in this case it was to ignore the "losers" in the system until they become numerous enough to tear down the whole system. A lot of people who vote for obvious frauds and outright fascists(I'm not talking about USA, but in general) are just anti-establishment who don't mean bad but just want to see the current order teared apart at any price.

sgc 1y ago
> who don't mean bad but just want to see the current order teared apart at any price. That sounds like a terribly bad intention to me. Significant destruction of social order leads to either authoritarianism or anarchy. Neither are even remotely desirable. The only sane path to deep, lasting, but also healthy change is to systematically work on each specific sector - only dismantling while building something better at the same time. Otherwise you are just an agent of suffering. This pathological egoism does not qualify, even remotely, as "don't mean bad".
- mrtksn 1y ago
  Sure its bad but its worse for those who have it good. Also, people don't plan or predict every outcome, they just want change and when that change is denied that's how we have civil wars. It all starts with a peaceful protest or some petty grievances and keeps growing when ignored or dismissed.
  - sgc 1y ago
    Yes, people do terrible things by neglecting their moral duty to actually think things through. This is a very basic known truth.
Draiken 1y ago
> pretend that this is a meritocracy That is unfortunately all we do today. If you think our current system is a meritocratic one, do I have some bad news for you. > You might be worried for becoming communist or welfare state though. What does communism have to do with anything parent wrote?
IG_Semmelweiss 1y ago
I will make you a deal. I will accept this premise of "choice" with 1 condition. I will personally advocate for tariffs at 0% worldwide in 2030, if in the interim, ALL permits required to have or work as : - an accredited university - work in national security, - or in university professors (economists!), - accountant - lawyer - pharmacist - insurance brokers - any other white-collar profession, etc Are rescinded. All of them. So, anyone from abroad can open a university tomorrow, and get student loans, grants etc money. Or, anyone from china can come and become an accountant, if E&Y wants to hire them , either remotely, or in person. Up to E&Y. Yes, those in person workers would use temporary (seasonal visas) for those jobs. So someone from China can come and teach econometrics at Stanford if Stanford wishes to hire them for 8 months (the undergrad season). Or someone can start a new Stanford in Bangalore, or whatever. In other words. You don't need a license or some kind of permit to practice as a professor, or at a desk job at Raytheon. Do you accept ? My point. White collars are are protected by the state. In the real world, i've come to learn that "free trade" doesnt actually mean "unrestricted free trade" . Its just an excellent sleight of hand to say "free trade" when in the real world, the position you actually advocate is to sacrifice the have nots, while leaving the elites untouched

Buttons840 1y ago

How does the life of a US metallurgist who works part time at a grocery store compare to a Chinese metallurgist who is working 70 hours a week doing metallurgy?

JPLeRouzic 1y ago
I have interacted with Chinese people in IT for a few months, and they worked 5 days per week. I don't know how many hours they made per day. Another interesting stat is that they live longer on average than US people. And until recently, men retired at 60 and women at 55 yo. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd9v48yn8ro https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd9v48yn8ro
- quacksilver 1y ago
  From working in China a bit (though could be wrong, n=1 anecdotes etc.), the majority of IT people are probably the lucky ones who mostly had a middle class upbringing, could live in a reasonable city and studied hard at school or had well connected parents. Life growing up with parents who were a rural rice farmer or metal scrapper or something would be way different. It is very hard to get a job after a certain age compared to the west, and there is pressure in some areas for women to quit once they have children. It was common to see people working from 7 or 8 am to 8 or 10pm in my office, though with a 2 hour lunch break where most people slept. On average, people tended to look way healthier (at least superficially) on average compared to places I have been in the US. Maybe due to diet and activity level.
- ppseafield 1y ago
  Look up 996. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58381538 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58381538 https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/11/15/1039650/china-tech-workers-996-fight-back/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/11/15/1039650/china-te...
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- 1y ago

MaxPock 1y ago

You might be losing as an individual but the country gains.

abirch 1y ago
This is the exact same as automation. We need to be sure that we take care of those who lose their jobs. Truck Driver is one of the most popular professions in most states but the end is coming soon: https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/business/first-driverless-semis-started-regular-routes https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/business/first-driverless-sem... you can imagine that they'll only need drivers that aren't on interstates or for inclement weather.
- datavirtue 1y ago
  People who lose their job need to take care of themselves. That's the only way it works. You can only make it easier on them and enable success. Teaching kids real fincial literacy and how to leverage derivatives is an approach to solving this problem (most adults can't even grok a check book). Save while you can and preserve and multiply your wealth. In the typical truck driver world they have zero market participation other than selling their labor and maybe a 401k stuck in money markets or bonds, no derivative strategy and zero clue on what saving for retirement entails or how the money is leveraged in retirement. They do understand that they plan on working until they die but that isn't likely to pan out either. We have a <100 IQ population living in a 120 IQ world and have created a meat grinder with all these tech and tax laws. You shouldn't have to work for 40 years.
  - 542354234235 1y ago
    > People who lose their job need to take care of themselves. This feels incredibly simplistic. Taxpayer dollars go into funding tons of research that has led to automation improvements. Why shouldn’t taxpayers get some sort of return on that investment? When the US government negotiates trade deals, the money the country “saves” could go anywhere, to anyone. Why does almost all of it go to companies and not taxpayers? If a company wants to offshore work, why do they get to keep all of the monetary difference for themselves, instead of paying a substantial portion back to the country? Privatize the profits, socialize the costs doesn’t have to be how we allow companies to operate. “Help themselves” assumes that all the other factors are some sort of unchangeable natural laws, and not laws and regulations chosen. We could choose different rules that more directly returned gains to taxpayers, instead of vague trickle down type benefits.

wkat4242 1y ago

> However, for every penny of foreign subsidy benefitting US consumers buying finished iron or steel goods, a US metallurgist is losing a job somewhere. The US consumers can't bear the prices of US craftspeople anymore. Their purchasing power will drop so much that they would wish they still had the deficit and access to AliExpress. And nobody in the US will want to do factory jobs anymore. Really who wants to screw iPhones together all day every day for minimum wage? The few jobs on that category that are left are done by... immigrants. You know, the ones that Trump is kicking out. The ones that worked long hours to be able to live in the ghetto areas hoping in vain they'll one day benefit from the "American dream".

monkeyfun 1y ago
You're overall correct, but made me notice that there is actually an unusually coherent argument (by their standards) being presented by the reactionaries pushing for the things you mention. It goes roughly like: >The reason these jobs are terrible is because immigrants are doing it for wages that would be intolerably low to anyone else. >This is also why it's hard to find a decent job in general, our competition is basically cheating! >But if we remove the immigrants, the employers will surely have to increase wages like they were supposed to >Now americans will have high paying factory jobs, and if some goods increase in price that's ok, their wages will let them afford it. >we got to have our cake and eat it too! Obviously they're missing some key steps and consciousness here in the reasoning, but I feel it's interesting to reflect on in context of how it's almost right -- and surprisingly close to a marxist view of things until it starts assuming things like that individuals have more bargaining power than their employers or that economic agents will always try to set the lowest price they can afford for goods rather than the highest. So for example they'd believe prices would only go up a little and manufacturing companies would just live with stagnant or reduced profits since they'd have no other choice. Notice how they have a habit of assuming totally Good behavior from Companies but totally Bad behavior from Immigrants! I think in context of all that, it becomes more visible both how we could actually resolve this problem other than by just accepting the loss of domestic industry, and what in specific the people falling for this narrative are being hooked on.
- 1y ago