I just took a look at our annual medical contributions and employer's part.
We pay just over 10k for health insurance through our (different) companies. Our different employers cover almost 28k. So around 38k for insurance. This doesn't even include dental or vision which is separate.
It just seems so crazy how much we pay and still have deductibles. I understand we have small copays and get items covered like age-related screenings but this just feels excessive.
Just talk to people in the healthcare industry about what kind of patients they have. We cover a tremendous amount of treatments in the U.S., at an arguably unsustainable level of service.
My aunt had a kidney infection in Canada and my cousin had to pull teeth to get her scheduled for an MRI. My five year old got a black eye from running into a table and they scheduled him for an X-ray and CAT scan (“just in case “) later that same morning. Had the results by lunch. My dad had a non-emergency scan scheduled the next day, and an outpatient procedure for a kidney stent (to treat high blood pressure) within two weeks. Once the surgeon was in there he realized my dad didn’t need a stent after all.
Here in the US, I see wait times for medical care comparable from what I hear from my Canadian friends. I don't think we our system can really tout that as an advantage over theirs.
Where are you located? E.g. the average wait times for CT scans and MRIs in Canada is weeks: https://canjhealthtechnol.ca/index.php/cjht/article/download.... UK NHS is 6-18 weeks. Here in suburban Maryland I’ve never had to wait more than a day or two for anything.
I live in the urban west. Most of the people I know have to wait weeks for pretty much anything.
When I had a serious accident involving multiple broken bones and the need for orthopedic surgery, I had to wait two weeks to get an MRI, although I did get a basic X-ray in the emergency room. Then another month (while being unable to move much, let alone work, and being in a great deal of pain) to get the surgery. That was me getting expedited scheduling. It also cost me a fortune out of pocket.
The people who opposed socialized medicine by fear-mongering about “death panels” can’t now complain that their preferred system provides limitless, marginal benefit end of life care. That’s the trade off THEY argued for and said THEIR system could do.
What about the people living in the same country who didn't oppose socialized medicine or fear monger about death panels? Can they complain that their non-preferred system sucks every bit as much as they always knew it would, and advocate for improving it, or are they forever bound to suffer karmic justice for what other people did over a decade ago?
I pay 8% from my salary for mandatory government health "insurance" which is basically a tax as there are enormous waiting queues for something serious.
"To be sure, the ADP report has a spotty track record on predicting the subsequent government jobs report, which investors tend to weigh more heavily."
> The government recently disbanded two outside advisory committees that used to consult on the numbers, offering suggestions on ways to improve the reliability of the government data.
> At the same time, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has suggested changing the way the broadest measure of the economy — gross domestic product — is calculated.
> Those moves are raising concerns about whether economic data could be manipulated for political or other purposes.
Not sure if others did this but when I did group projects (25ish years ago) we did the project and submitted or presented as a group. But at the end we also submitted to the professor (anonymously) “grades and comments” for others on our team.
Is this /s? I didn't read anything about a crime or kids with criminal intent, just a dad being told that the park was for <5 year olds to play in (which is ridiculous but a different issue).
I'm in this space. Where I work we've already lost 10% of our staff with senior management looking for an additional 15% in budget cuts (anything else we can cut).
So this sector may be "ignored" so to speak (though I'm not even sure what that means). I also have a number of friends at agencies and government contractors that all think they will "feel" these possibly large federal budget cuts. They are all on edge, especially with eyes towards the end of summer and early fall.
I hate to be so cynical these days....but if this is true, that would mean a lot of dockworkers/longshoreman are out of jobs or not working right? Truck drivers, and who knows what other jobs are just not doing anything at this point?
But, China itself is automating away most of those jobs. It's a stark difference between Chinese and Western—just look at the phraseology we're using, without thinking about it: "out of jobs"; in China's zeitgeist they wouldn't say they lost jobs to technology, they say they "saved 80 percent of manpower" [0].
Pretty sure that the dockworker who is now unemployed, in China or in the US, isn't thinking "we saved 80% of manpower" but is more likely thinking "fuck, I lost my job."
True or not, be aware that "The Global Times is a daily tabloid newspaper under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the People's Daily, commenting on international issues from a Chinese nationalistic perspective." (Wikipedia)
Even where power and wealth is the sole purpose, "saving labor" to allow them to move into new jobs with higher meaning to your power/wealth would be your default take. "Job loss" is the position only when you've stopped innovating and can't imagine that there is anything else people can do.
What do you think gaining power and wealth looks like? To me the Chinese central government seem hyper-fixated on it and it is working out well for them. Making strategic dual-purpose investments is directly aligned with gaining power and wealth.
It's just people commentating differently depending on what "team" they think the target of the comment is on - people who think socialism is probably a good idea, but bemoan any automation done by private industry that causes job losses. However they will love China's efficiency doing the same thing.
Dockworkers, logistics, truck delivery drivers, warehouse workers, etc.
On the other hand, I guess it might be a great time for small shops and businesses that produce low to medium tech stuff- from crafts, clothing and furniture to electronics. Even if the country's going to suffer they should profit handsomely (which is not a bad thing per se).
It’s actually not. If you’re starting a business right now with the goal of selling to customers all over the world, setting up shop in America is not looking good. You’d pay exorbitant tariffs on inputs and machines.
It’s better to manufacture out of the country and let US consumers eat the tariff cost on import while keeping your operations efficient outside of the US tariff zone.
> If you’re starting a business right now with the goal of selling to customers all over the world
If you do that now in the USA, there’s a fairly large risk that your exports will be taxed, and, with exports to the USA tanking, there’s excess production in the rest parts of the world, so prices will go down outside the USA, at least temporarily.
⇒ If you’re starting a business in the USA today, you should only aim for the domestic market.
I want to believe that, but the president is not doing this by himself. His was re-elected democratically by a majority of voters, and he enjoys the support of the house, the senate, and the federal courts. I fear that the problem lies in the hearts and minds of the American people.
As a Canadian, it has been hard to stomach. I thought we were brothers working together towards a common future. It would be a lot less heartbreaking if this really was caused by a single individual.
That's not what MAGA world wants though. They want products made here, sold here, bought here. MAGA world does not care about the rest of what the world's people do. If they want to buy our stuff, great, but then blame other governments for taxing American products like there's no blame to share.
Sure, but in that case, tariffs on finished goods are the way to go. You'll first recover the assembly business and then over time you could reshore more of the inputs.
But like, it's not the 1950s anymore, basically every product consists of parts from all over the world.
> with the goal of selling to customers all over the world
No, I think you're missing the point. This is not to create world-class companies, capable of selling abroad. This is to inject money and optimism in small, local, antiquated businesses that have been long priced out of any competition with the rest of the world.
Who's going to invest in a business that's only profitable as long as we keep these insane tariff level up and will take several years to spin up? (Plus where are they going to get the machines to do the actual work? Those are being tariffed too!)
Unfortunately the largest cotton producing country is china, followed by India.
My grandparents actually worked and met at a denim factory in west Texas which was renowned for its cotton production. Growing up I remember giant cotton fields which have all been replaced with strip malls and sprawl.
It’s going to be a multi-year project at the very least. And even then probably still cheaper to make clothes in Vietnam.
But that’s what MAGA wants and Trump clearly, like Putin, doesn’t want to go anywhere so maybe start now? I can see, like you, how tragically comedic this situation is.
If the bank can not finance your stuff maybe Trump knows some people who can borrow you money? On preferential conditions, of course… who knows, maybe he gets into loan business himself.
Cool, so in a year or three the fabric factory would be up and running. Oh wait, we need to first build a factory for the machines we need in the fabric factory...
If anything it will be very short term. Nobody knows where this is going so it would be suicidal for small businesses to scale up. Large companies have the reserves but little guys don’t. I am very worried that this will lead to another dying of small businesses like happened during COVID.
> On the other hand, I guess it might be a great time for small shops and businesses that produce low to medium tech stuff- from crafts, clothing and furniture to electronics.
Absolutely not. All of the small businesses I know are getting crushed by tariffs.
Electronics especially. With 125% tariffs on everyone from
China, prices just exploded.
Even domestic PCB manufacturers prices and lead times have shot up due to demand.
It’s extremely bad. I don’t think people realize how devastating this is to company that couldn’t amass huge inventories prior to tariffs arriving and can’t lobby the Trump administration for an exemption.
I didn't mean that this is going to be a net positive or even better than disastrous. I'm just saying that if you already have a small business in the US making stuff that was hard to sell locally given the cheaper competition from abroad, people will have no choice but come to you.
> Even domestic PCB manufacturers prices and lead times have shot up due to demand.
Exactly this, I bet those PCB manufacturers are quite happy. Some of their employees might get the idea of setting up a new business, too.
> if you already have a small business in the US making stuff that was hard to sell locally given the cheaper competition from abroad, people will have no choice but come to you.
Not true for many businesses. It’s common to have some inputs or machinery that is imported. Maybe you can win while you’re working through inventory and your machines aren’t breaking down, but if your COGS also go up with tariffs then it might not be a clear win.
>I didn't mean that this is going to be a net positive or even better than disastrous. I'm just saying that if you already have a small business in the US making stuff that was hard to sell locally given the cheaper competition from abroad, people will have no choice but come to you.
Unless those businesses have inputs that rely on China...which many do, those guys are going under.
>Exactly this, I bet those PCB manufacturers are quite happy. Some of their employees might get the idea of setting up a new business, too.
Those US PCB manufacturers didn't care for that business before, they focus on getting fat government or industrial contracts. The reason China was so consumer focused was because they have so much capacity that they must be friendly to my dinky $5 order. Furthermore consider that with 1.4 billion people, there are so many engineers that its extremely cutthroat. You then have a scenario where they assign an engineer to look at my dinky little $5 order because they can.
It depends what sort of demand there is for your product. If it's an essential and you can bring it in at a good price, your business might jump. If it's discretionary and is the sort of thing people postpone buying due to recession, not so much.
Intermodal freight drayage industry, which is largely comprised of a thousands of very small and ineffocoently run mom and pop nepo-companies run dependent upon an open tolerance of very scammy business tactics extending temporary surcharges indefinitely, milking covid business relief loans to the fullest extent possible) in order to survive, is going to experience a mass die-off if this tariff war lasts another 6 to 9 months.
I didn't mean we should keep importing to keep people busy. I'm sure that whatever was coming through those ports was ordered by a large number of companies/individuals.
Sure, if we were in a downturn it would slow but not come to a standstill.
From this article "Even during the COVID nonsense, the supply chain did not experience THIS kind of sudden shut down."
> I didn't mean we should keep importing to keep people busy. I'm sure that whatever was coming through those ports was ordered by a large number of companies/individual
Sure but you were being cynical and presented port workers not having having thing to unload as a major issue to worry about. In the whole scheme it seemed like not the first problem to solve.
> Yes, probably. Lose skilled, trained workers to another industry and it may be tough to get them back later on when you need them again.
I love it! If that's the case, then it's easily solved, just ship empty cardboard boxes back and forth to/from Hawaii. The workers can diligently load and unload them, and then load them right back. The truck drivers can do a few loops around Los Angeles even to keep up their training.
That that kind of happened during a phase of the Soviet Union's economic development. The economic success of a branch was measured by the amount of resources consumed and the allocated work done. So they had started building large couches and started running empty trains back and forth to consume wood or fuel and add up "miles driven" to their ledger. We can do the same /s
No but it's presented as the major problem to solve. There are lot larger issues at play and if keeping pork workers buys is the goal, then we should have them load and unload empty boxes /s
I don't think OP was specifically stating we need to save these specific jobs, rather they were pointing out the interconnected nature of the economy. Less importing hurts the workers in those industries. Taking that further, it will hurt businesses near the ports where the workers may have gotten lunch, etc. etc. etc. That's how recessions look at a microeconomic scale.
No, but we're not just importing stuff because it keeps port workers busy. We import stuff because there is demand for it, and port workers' labor generates many multiples of profitable business activity downstream.
