This poll is a Rorschach test for people on both sides of the free trade debate.It either shows that:1. Pro-manufacturing people (80%) don't actually want to work in factory jobs (25%).2. Or there is potential/willingness (25%) for 10x growth in current factory jobs (2%).
Comments
But yes.
Whatever Europe does in Ukraine, it's increasingly clear that the US can't be part of it.
Otherwise, the poll is meaningless. If there is zero cost, then of course, everyone would be in favour of more people working in manufacturing. But if they are reminded that more people working in manufacturing equals higher prices, then I'm willing to bet support for more manufacturing will drop pretty fast.
1) the story hasn’t disappeared from the news - how dare US news continue to report on it in a way that will make viewers sympathic
and
2) it’s yet another reminder that his desired Novel Peace Prize for stopping the war isn’t going to appear on November
And then you will discover that it’s at most it will be $100 across all purchases in a year based on the previous tax question of that type in the UK
For increasing the amount of warfare having been promising to stop it.
Another way he gives off strong Nixon vibes.
Tariffs, saving, and investment
https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/tariffs-saving-and-investment
I wholly concur with the opinion that China's currency "manipulation" is a fallacy.
Here my only comment would be that’s more than an MP gets. But, personally, skilled work should be properly awarded.
Having googled Rorschach test, I now know it's "important that you see the four-legged animals on each side of the blot," as "you're assumed to be a mental defective if you don't." I didn't know anyone used such terms nowadays.
Have we finally found a test that proves Leon has a high IQ - with an explanation?
So Kemi had personally drawn up a plan as Bus. Sec. which would have saved British Steel months ago and Labour jettisoned it because she had drafted it and it was brilliant? That is incendiary!
Chair of the Transport committee just said that they need a new website for booking to stop this but it will take 5 years.
Would any of our resident tech people explain to an analogue caveman like myself how it takes 5 years to build such a site and can they not buy existing ones off the shelf used by other countries and tweak it?
Seems absolutely bonkers that it takes 5 years.
And I'm pretty bad at golf.
The UK, for example, produces a very large proportion of our food, yet only 1% of the population work in agriculture. Only 150,000 people work in energy generation, and that will likely fall even as we increase out output via renewables. We could open dozens of new EAFs and produce much more steel than we do now, yet employ fewer people than in our blast furnaces. We might end up entirely replacing the RAF with AI-flown drones.
An economy structured around maximising employment in certain sectors is doomed to fail, IMO. It should really be the opposite, opening up labour for new areas of economic growth, or more time for fun, raising children, looking after elderly relatives and so on.
TLDR Being pro domestic manufacturing does not mean being pro domestic manufacturing jobs.
If someone prints off a really big certificate, the size of those charity presentation cheques, headed NOVEL PEACE PRIZE and give it to Donny T, will that be enough to make him go away?
But the fix is simple - cancelled appointments go back into a pool and are available to everyone - don’t let instructors change the id on a test
The bigger point is that 100% will be paying more for goods for a max of 2-3% to get new manufacturing work. And of those 2-3% some won't enjoy their work, some will be illegal immigrants, and few will be well paid. The jobs may end up in the areas already with a decent economy rather than the hollowed out post industrial towns that need them.
All this is if you completely eliminated the trade deficit which is pretty unlikely. As public policy this is just bonkers.
Creating a replacement system wouldn’t take 5 years, either.
The real issue is an absolute resistance to the idea that a test can only be booked for a specific person. Which would prevent re-sale.
http://www.google.com/doodles/world-quantum-day
Easy!
The best Trump cheating story is where he won his own club tournament by ordering the course to be set up brutally hard whilst giving himself a special exemption to record his score on a completely different course as he was away on busines.
It’s so obvious. Why have all these traitor presidents of the past not done this already?
It's nostalgia for a time that did exist for a bit. But even if we could return to that time, we wouldn't really want to. (See also the polling in the UK that says too many young people get degrees these days but my (grand)children should definitely do so.)
And that reminds me of another decision that a country took to go back to simpler better times, the way things were in their youth, which also has negative consequences which many are desperate to overlook.
https://bsky.app/profile/luketryl.bsky.social/post/3lmm4oiefes25
You are not alone in your (and mine!) income bracket.
Winning the Masters whilst playing the tournament not at Augusta but at the pitch and putt in Penarth.
After that the next issue is logistics to get the raw materials in and the finished goods out - there is no point building a factory in nowhereville Kansas because the cost of the extra logistics is going to further increase the final cost of the products.
Trump has offered his voters an impossible dream, something that at the end of the day can’t exist
(Was that the same debate that he started taking his clothes off? Was he trying to prove that he was bonkers enough to be Conservative leader?)
So far as I can tell, the report must have been written by two different people who did not agree on whether 2-tier policing should be denied or justified.
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/83/home-affairs-committee/publications/
Richer countries just need to plan economies around a low number of manufacturing jobs.
He told people to BUY NOW and then announced he was scrapping the extra tariffs. Trumpers made $304bn. I assume similar profits in Apple etc when he reneged on the smartphone tariff.
What has happened this weekend - big short positions on Apple now that he's putting smartphone tariffs back on?
Endless comedy:
MAGA types think he is a tactical and strategic genius
His mates are making a literal killing, gutting US pensions to do so
Nobody will challenge King Donald despite all of this being screamingly illegal
Meanwhile he is going to sue the lying woke liberal MSM again because they interviewed evil Zelinskiyy. The obvious step is appoint Don Jr to run the FCC and abolish CBS and presumably MSNBC and CNN.
America does not need traitors broadcasting woke lies!
Most people with a shred of humanity wouldn’t even think of sending them back to a war zone , but with the current administration where cruelty is the number one game who knows!
And it’s the failure of Governments across the world over the past 4 decades to do so which is why Trump is in power and why the AfD and Farage are doing so well politically
Now some will be in rural areas where there are few or no factories and that's not going to change.
But most will simply not have the skillset needed.
And that is a failure of partly themselves and partly of the US education/training system.
See the many, many examples where fraud and malpractice is not pursued.
The next big scandal, which Reform will break, is the sale of work visas by companies. Given that people will pay 4 figures for a seat on a RIB across the Channel, what do you think they pay for real, actual papers? Yup.
Local elections in Finland see the vote of the semi fascist Finns Party cut in half. Good result for the Centre Left.
https://bsky.app/profile/jmkorhonen.fi/post/3lmqztorzw22i
Not Trump's tame billionaires for sure.
Then again how many are just exhibiting the 'grass is greener' syndrome? Work in a call centre / restaurant / retail outlet / delivery driver... "surely a factory job would be better?"
Everyone from the highest manager to the most junior supervisor will be constantly struggling to get much of the workforce to actually produce some useful output.
A piece on closing the "it's a business and business rates are cheaper" Council Tax avoidance loophole on Holiday Accommodation in Wales; the rules have been tightened: Changes:
- Stricter criteria to qualify as a business (140 days available / 70 days let -> 282 days / 140 days)
- Council Tax can be increased for holiday lets by Councils (usually double).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4wy98gde9o
My take:
- Seems to be achieving its objective of a sharper dividing line. The number of former 2nd homes on the market suggests the loophole is closing.
- It wants a success check in 3-5 years, on whether the season has extended and adjustments needed, after the market has stabilised.
- Cheaper holiday lets in Wales at the end of the measurement year coming soon?
[Moderator note: Please do not post "you cannot be serious " again]
I'll say more when we're ready to launch it (likely next week), but this is going to be a whole load of fun. How much can I get away with saying before my party suspends me lol
Would a factory be better off if you worked there ?
I suspect a venn diagram of those who think they would be better off if they worked in a factory and those that a factory would actually want to have working there would show very little overlap.
A complication may be that Trump already has an injunction on him in the Court Action on his banning of the Associated Press from media access.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69662918/the-associated-press-v-budowich/
The principles may read across.
That is what the US government should be focussing on.
And Good Morning one and all. Ms Cyclefree, I hope you're well away from A&E now.
So as an example I am completely chill for Americans to vote for Trump and for him to asset strip their pensions. The bit that is relevant is the impact of tariffs here. Same with the gutting of NATO and our need to rearm - how we find the money here and what it does for our economy.
And we're very much not just wanting to be commentators. We need wholesale reforms of the UK, and we're going to talk through the framework of the Big Picture stuff which we can then pin all the political crises onto.
In essence: Reform are on track to win the next election by talking Big Picture and offering simplistic solutions. You can't combat that by ignoring the real issues or by trying to outflank them, you need to out-think them. And you can't do that within the confines of a single political party and the pressures of the parliamentary grind...
A semicircular chamber might, I've heard suggested, encourage more lateral thinking and co-operation.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277682/gov.uscourts.dcd.277682.46.0_1.pdf
(Even the daftest of MPs generally behave in the HoC)
That also explains the vote for Trump as in the rustbelt manufacturing jobs were better paid than most jobs
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/federal_election/spread-of-fake-campaign-pins-disgusting-says-senior-tory
"Two Liberal staffers made fake, Trump-style buttons and planted them at a conference of Canadian conservatives last week. But they were exposed after they discussed the plot at an Ottawa bar and were overheard by a CBC reporter."