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The economy may no longer be Donald’s trump card – politicalbetting.com
The economy may no longer be Donald’s trump card – politicalbetting.com
NEW Economist/YouGov Poll% approving | disapproving of Trump's handling of…Inflation/pricesJan. 26-28: 45% | 39%March 9-11: 38% | 52%Jobs and the economyJan. 26-28: 49% | 37%March 9-11: 43% | 47%d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/ec…d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/ec…
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Setting fire to one’s Trump card, after wiping your arse on it….
The real fun for the world economy is just getting started. Worldwide depression, anyone?
Especially his bullshit claims about how tariffs were going to MAGA.
It really isn't surpriing his Pol Pol Year-Zero approach has come back to bite him in his nappy-wrapped arse in weeks.
Although I can't see Trump's America winning many tenders that pass over Zelenskyy's desk.
Anyone would think his dresser was trying to get him shot...
But hey, you vote for an idiot, you get idiocy. Its not like they weren't warned, even if those in their own bubbles didn't hear it.
It’s fictional but based on a real case/cases. So it is a real phenomenon.
Personally I think this quite distinct from the trans debate although some dishonest actors like to attack these people too.
A friend of a friend is a trans man, you honestly wouldn’t know - I didn’t - until I was told. I’m frankly not bothered what genitals he has, he’s as male as me as far as I am concerned in practice and is welcome in the male loos.
I say this sincerely, I do think people have a view of trans people that many - and this is something I see JK Rowling do a lot - just look like men in a dress. I honestly think this is not the case.
But I do have one question, if we are to take the view of some, he should still be using the female loos?
Leaving any cynicism aside, all western economies are searching for that magic ingredient that doesn't involve printing ever larger amounts of cash. It's going to be interesting from a lab rat's point of view.
A mouldy turnip, perhaps.
And why it's going to fail.
FROM MAGA TO CHINA
Here are four things MAGA is getting wrong, and why it's handing over the world to China.
(1) First, MAGA correctly understands that America’s economic position is in decline but thinks this is due to economic competition itself, rather than lack of competitiveness.
(2) Second, MAGA also understands that the US has wasted trillions abroad in foreign wars, but thinks the problem is global leadership itself rather than poor leadership.
(3) Third, MAGA knows that their Blue American enemies have allies abroad, but has incorrectly overreacted to this by treating every non-Red-American as an enemy.
(4) Fourth, MAGA sees the billions of dollars flowing from the US to foreign recipients, but isn't grasping that the US can only print those dollars in the first place so long as it's the hub of a global empire...
https://x.com/balajis/status/1899373219297321017
Although "Killer Cars" moment might have come.
...there is a Spinal Tap sequel coming out this year !!!
The laudatory tribute just finished on R4 added the category ‘presenters’ to artists, writers etc who have been influenced by the album. I’m sure Thom & the boys will be chuffed.
If you put a mouldy turnip in the compost heap, you get compost. Valuable stuff.
If you put Trump on the compost heap… not sure what you’d get. But it wouldn’t be good for the geraniums….
Plus @malcolmg would have to give up turnip juice.
I can understand the frustration with Americans who look at the industries they once had and want them back. Why are car parts crossing the Canadian and Mexican borders several times before being assembled onto Murican cars? Why not just do all of it in Murica?
The you get the reality check. You can - but are Murican consumers able and willing to pay the additional cost? That dumb news anchor who's response to the car dealership[ factually pointing out that costs will go shooting up and consumers won't afford it was to rant about how its Europe's fault for not buying them.
This is Murican exceptionalism. What's right for Georgia must be right for anywhere, right? So build ladder frame massive trucks with minimal safety features and massive low power high consumption V8s under the hood. Ain't no replacement for displacement, right?
Lets assume that some MAGA industrialist starts a business to make all the parts needed for a Dodge Ram actually in Murica. They become a closed economy. With minimal imports and exports, building things that nobody else wants - and besides they've become a pariah state where importing that truck would be as welcome as importing a Tait brother.
Its crazy, its stupid, but its the only information that millions upon millions have been fed. Which is why we think "they were warned". Nope. Not if your news comes from Fox and Newsmax.
The latest Trump/Thiel plan seems to be eliminate all taxes for anyone earning less than 150,000 dollars a year, and then to replace the lost income with tariffs.
If they were going to do that sort of stuff, it would have better been done thirty or more years ago, when the US economy was in a much better competitive position, and it would have been much harder to replace with foreign (Chinese, Indian, Korean etc) competitors. And it probably would not have worked then...
Not sure that’s the ground that Sir Keir should be choosing to fight the Blob upon.
With a uniform swing from 2021 in each riding, this result would keep the Liberals in power
https://x.com/OwenWntr/status/1900095489048985764
On top of that there will be massive inflation and America will cut itself of from much worldwide trade.
Real increases in productivity mean fewer people doing more, with less effort.
Real productivity increases in agriculture mean that doctors can laze about in the NHS saving lives. In Ye Goode Olde Days, 97% of the population were required to work on feeding the country. In harvest time, in Medieval times, even the moderately aristocratic were out there helping.
Remember all those propaganda films from the Soviet Union about heroic farm workers harvesting? By hand?
Nowadays, it’s one guy in the climate controlled cab of an expensive machine.
We have a shortage of workers in the U.K.
The population pyramid is aging. If the workers we have can do more for less effort, then that will change the equation.
AI is just a buzzword for some technology. Much of government has been untouched by the real technological revolution.
This isn’t just replacing paper generation with computerised paper generation. That happened a long time back. This is about streamline processes, connecting things together.
If you talk to civil servants, it’s a mix of over work and no work. A classic of queuing theory. They speak of fighting systems designed to prevent things happening.
Shot, you say?
Immigration is going to be cut significantly IMHO.
It won’t work. They won’t get anywhere near enough in tariffs.
I think they'd sell well in the UK if the OEMs were interested in RHD markets (which they are not) and the UK altered its regulatory environment so they could get type approval (which the UK won't).
1) what is the moral case for large numbers being left “economically inactive”, because it is cheaper and easier to import labour?
2) many of the “economically inactive” will not be able to generate value per hour in excess of minimum wage. At least in the short term.
3) why do we we have 70%+ tax rates on poor people doing more work?
https://x.com/olliecarroll/status/1899908007624138822
Trumponomics winners so far (20 Jan to 13 March 2025 in USD):
#1 Poland yay!!! +20%
#2 Hong Kong listed Chinese stocks +20%
#3 Hong Kong stock index (including Chinese stocks) +18%
#4 Europe (Eurostoxx, a lot of banks) +9%
#5 CAC, which is top 40 in Euronext +8%
#8 Vietnam Ho Chi Minh stocks +5%
Mexico, Brazil, Japan, South Africa, Turkey are also winners. Note that this is mostly FX because, well, the dollar softened.
In short, Trump has made Poland great again!!!
Trumponomics losers so far:
#1 Bitcoin -21% in USD (yes, it goes up a lot and down a lot but it really depends on the level that you buy)
#2 Thailand -12%
#3 Argentina -12%
#4 Nasdaq 100 -9%
#5 Indonesia -8%
#6 SPX -7%
#7 Australia -7%
#8 Taiwan -6%
#10 India NIFTY -5%
https://x.com/Trinhnomics/status/1900098332200231375
There's one problem - orgnaisations are constipated into inertia by their own information.
The other problem in many organisations is the decision making process which, I accept, may be worse in the public sector. Call it an adversity to risk or a fear of unintended consequences or simply overload but getting senior people to take decisions (and stick by them) is arguably the biggest barrier to productivity I ever encountered.
The last point is completely wrong, in fact stupid. America isn't the hub of a global empire, unlike say us a century ago, and it could print dollars without having a single colony anyway.
A shame as it rather undermines the rest of the post.
Like much else they espouse, it's idiotic.
The question is whether any efforts will be made to Trump-proof it in the future
Mould is useful. Penicillin is a mould.
Enormous potential capacity, and is a couple of orders of magnitude more stable than paper.
The most worrying scenario of them all, though, is that he knows that it would be irrecoverable, and is using nationalist like Trump and Vance. He, Andreesen, and others, are more interested in competing mini tech-states run by autocrat CEO's, and Greenland, for instance, is a good candidate for one of their "digital states." The co-founder of the Thiel-linked Praxis organisation, for instance, wants to buy a city in Greenland and turn into a tech city-state, and simultaneously model a Mars community on it.
The introduction of technology doesn't always mean a reduction in headcount or improvements in productivity - it might do when you're working in a field or on a factory floor but if all the technology does is enable more information to be produced, it simply leads to more demands for more information and the employment of more people to process that information.
Complexity isn't resolved by technology - complexisty is resolved by tackling the reasons for complexity.
I do agree we have under employment in many areas (especially but not exclusively specialisms) yet we also have people who cannot find work for years. The number looking for work isn't what the numbers claiming unemployment benefit (or whatever it's called these days). It's inflated by those looking for second jobs to augment income and those who, for whatever reason, cannot even get an interview. I suspect the unemployment rate among those with disabilities continues to be stubbornly high as well.
If you read the thread, he partially addresses that anyway, pointing out China's growing trade dominance across the globe.
The theory that there only holding down their currency until they've completely destroyed manufacturing competition, at which point they'll float it, is an interesting one.
Disruption, there, could turn into disaster.
I see the Prime Minister is talking about a "cottage industry of checkers and blockers slowing down delivery for working people".
I'm not 100% sure what he means by that and to whom he is referring. Is he thinking about the legal, financial, contractual and environmental checks you see in Cabinet level reports to local councillors and presumably their equivalent at Civil Service level?
The reason such checks are included are usually statutory based on the requirement of Councils to conform to standing orders which in turn derive from legislative and regulatory requirements agreed by Parliament?
I presume he's also warbling on about planning and all the checks and balances imposed by previous Conservative and Labour Governments to ensure applications met certain criteria.
If he wants to stop the checking, fine. All he has to do is repeal the legislation enforcing the checks. If we don't need to prove if a contractor or another organisation is financially viable, fine. If we no longer need to prove a site for development has any nesting bats or similar, also fine but don't blame those doing the checks you and other MPs imposed.
I'm not 100% sure that's true - more than a million jobs in local Government were lost after 2012 thanks to the Coalition's ludicrous "austerity" yet I suspect NHS headscount has grown but at least we can put that down to the requirements of an ageing population.
Do we really want a disruptive Civil Service? Part of the attraction of the UK is a rock solid set of conventions, laws, taxes etc etc. Just look at the effect of Trump's tariffs on business confidence. Perhaps we should leave it to the private sector to hurry things along, and think tanks to agitate for public sector reform.
His Republican core vote still largely backs his economic policies and is not majority opposed to protectionism but the GOP need to be at least about level pegging with Independents too to win
The majority of people live in imitative jealousy of the special and bright few - themselves - so the system is inherently unstable. This is their own interpretation of the second-rank but very grim French philosopher Renee Girard, who Thiel quotes in his essay.
Since ordinary people can't be trusted, and the Enligtenment was wrong to assume the natural state isn't perpetual war and envious competition, the constutution has to be reconfigured so that the natural monarchs can take charge. Then security and happiness will return.
Part of the current problem is unthinking creation of useless “work” - metric tons of documents that no one ever reads and the rest.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/30/trump-crime-the-purge-speech
My point is that the big group could do all of this in house if they were organised - they are not. What I imagine Starmer has in mind is ending the use of external consultants like myself and bringing work in house - with some of the work being scrapped altogether. A chunk of my consulting work is advising the group on how to organise to deliver goal x, having them not do so, and then paying me to mop up the mess caused by them being disorganised. I wonder how much of national & local government plus arms length agencies have the same issue.
Looks more like a UK 2010 election, where Brown stopped Cameron getting a majority than a clear Carney win at present but we will see what more polls show
So still not a lettuce.
Or just a modestly more efficient one ?
https://www.civilserviceworld.com/news/article/brexit-decreased-public-sector-productivity-uk-changing-europe
25% increase in headcount due to Brexit
It's almost as if Conservative policies were counterproductive to their aims
It's posting as a popular movement, buf is fact funded and organise mainly by techno-elitists, and techno-fascists.
The EU too has tariffs on Chinese EVs for example
And yes yours is my broad view too. There is a good argument for cutting a lot of regulation, but there must be an honesty in doing so. If you cut regulation you are increasing risk, generally, and that might be appropriate and acceptable (after all, it is impossible to remove all risk from life) but win the argument on that. For too long, governments have not felt confident to win the argument on risk. Perhaps they should try to do so, rather than blaming people behind desks.
And then Harris didn't bother using them in her campaign.
There are a lot of systems where it is impossible to delete data - it can be moved to archive but it's still there on a backup server and if, under GDPR. an individual applies for their records to be anonymised it's very difficult to do. Most systems are predicated on the input and retention of data, not on its output or removal.
That influences a mindset which is about information gathering and retention rather than information management. As I once told a colleague you have two choices - either you manage the information or the information manages you.
Yesterday's revelations: Staley having sex with one of Epstein's staff at one of his properties. Epstein writing a recommendation for Staley to Prince Andrew describing the financier as a friend and like a member of the family. Whatever criticisms can justly be made of Andrew, you have senior, apparently respectable financiers so close to Epstein, little wonder that someone with little nous won't see the obvious red flags.
Particularly when it comes to media interviews.
It is about risk in all its forms - I read the other day about some poor woman who rang her bank with a routine enquiry and ended up being declared dead. Trying to live when you're officially dead is almost impossible and this poor woman basically lost control of her life, all because somebody hit a wrong button and this woman was marked as dead on a bank's system.
Yes, risk works both ways and while there are some who might argue we should protect the habitats of endangered species others might counter the need for human beings to have a place to live trumps that consideration. Does it? Should it?
It's amazing to think Trump was valued for his business expertise. It must be a nightmare trying to run any sort of business in America at the moment with huge daily shifts in policy to react to. Even just at an administrative level, having to reprice certain categories of goods is a massive exercise - only to have to change them again the next day.
"Overcautious and flabby"
This is such an unstable situation and what I describe is just the internalities that can go wrong. There is a whole other set of dominoes, economic externalities, a fiscal or currency crisis.... these republicans don't have a conservative bone in their bodies. Conservativism conserves.... it does gradual, reasoned change, it promotes institutional stability. This, what the republicans are, is something completely different.
So they squandered all the opportunities for a reorientation of the economy and political power that he could have been achieved. Meanwhile , China brought the Tech monopolists, like Jack Ma to heel, and actually accelerated its own tech development in the process So what really made the difference was ultra-neoliberal ideology, preventing the regulation huge tech monopolies.
Genuinely.
I worked for one of those, in a big corporate, a while back.
You get the “external” thing, but their overall interests are more aligned to the overall organisation.
And, anything you are doing every day and will do in the future, *is* a core feature of your organisation. So insource it - it’s usually cheaper.
It would just be future deterrence NATO nations needed to increase their militaries for