Price increases and shortages

[seedcorn]

We will have to agree to disagree as I see tariffs as a good thing. Asking American companies to compete with foreign companies that use slave labor, have zero environmental laws or safe working conditions is impossible. Plus foreign companies don’t have to deal with lawyers that bring frivolous law suits and incompetent jurors who award large settlements-who would think that putting hot coffee between your legs is a good thing? Or that coffee might be hot? Insanity!
Ag has been ruined by exporters. They buy 2-3X more than they need, raise the price, then sell it back-never touching the product, all paper transactions. Government stopped Italy from doing that on soybeans but China does it 2-3X per year-no penalty.
Fruit/vegetable importers have killed American markets as again. Slave labor and use of illegal products forcing family farms out of business.

 

[Dirtmechanic]

We will have to agree to disagree as I see tariffs as a good thing. Asking American companies to compete with foreign companies that use slave labor, have zero environmental laws or safe working conditions is impossible. Plus foreign companies don’t have to deal with lawyers that bring frivolous law suits and incompetent jurors who award large settlements-who would think that putting hot coffee between your legs is a good thing? Or that coffee might be hot? Insanity!
Ag has been ruined by exporters. They buy 2-3X more than they need, raise the price, then sell it back-never touching the product, all paper transactions. Government stopped Italy from doing that on soybeans but China does it 2-3X per year-no penalty.
Fruit/vegetable importers have killed American markets as again. Slave labor and use of illegal products forcing family farms out of business.

I do not disagree actually. I just believe tariffs are not high enough to protect domestic production from the debt inflation problem because the purpose is income not protection. Mr Miyagi said "always look eye" but in politics it should be said "always look treasury". Nixon also caused the second half of the problem when they took us off gold and the debts got started. They said it would stop bad Depressions, but brothers that Great Recession was an eye opener. They are just here to help. I see lately they are trying to strengthen the dollar so oil and gold and so forth do not get super crazy. The euro is equal to a dollar again. Good time to vacation in Europe except for all the nonsense.

Plus you have to pay for "cough" border security of some sort I think anyway. Nothing is free, but this idea of governments hiding taxes stinks on the political side. We cannot participate when our hired management thinks they deserve whatever they can take and hides the numbers. Classic example was my 2016 State Insurance Dept annual report. First paragraphs proudly pointed out that the Dept of Insurance was the number one contributor to the general fund. Now I know I am a child in the world but that struck me as odd. Then I recognized why the mandatory insurance for cars got voted in, and have also felt funny about the underpinnings of the socialized medical insurance. Every tribe in every movie I ever watched showed a tight relation between the chief and the witch doctor. I guess we cannot come up with a better system.

Also, every employee wants to fuss at me because I insist on showing them their full tax burden including the 10% non-refundable employer matching taxes. They do not understand why they are paying more than they owe and cannot get it back at the end of the year in a refund check. I literally start businesses for them and help them learn their way around the balance sheet so they can maximize their freedom from financial oppression. That is happening so often these days. Business starts I mean. No wonder why.

 

[flowerbug]

... Every tribe in every movie I ever watched showed a tight relation between the chief and the witch doctor. I guess we cannot come up with a better system.
...

ever since the first peoples in groups decided that they were willing to feed someone for telling stories or painting on the cave wall it's not ever changed much other than the accents, wrappings and colors.

 

[Dirtmechanic]

And LO, the fight over robots is coalescing;

A West Coast port worker union is fighting robots. The stakes for the supply chain are high

Automation is an issue in West Coast port worker contract talks. A few decades into a world of automated ports, it's still hard to declare winners and losers.

www.cnbc.com

Since the main value of money is its relationship to time, the faster the products move with robots then the more money per day can be acquired from tariffs and taxes. This pits long standing relationships between unions and politicals against each other. Wonder who wins?

 

[seedcorn]

Politicians & lawyers always win. Even when they lose, they win. They still get paid. Dock workers will be fine as they will get paid to watch the machines do their work. They will be retitled as “supervisors”.

 

[heirloomgal]

Wonder of wonders, we experienced a price decrease. The cost of gas got so high it was actually resulting in lowered caloric intake in certain dems, particularly single parent families. So they slashed -temporarily- the carbon tax on fuel so gas went from about 2.21 to 1.91. But the new 'Nitrogen Policy' was announced a few days ago, farmers will be forced to cut nitrogen application by 30%. Wonder what degree of effect that will have as time goes along. No doubt it's only the beginning, as its a 'climate emergency' measure.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Nixon also caused the second half of the problem when they took us off gold and the debts got started. They said it would stop bad Depressions, but brothers that Great Recession was an eye opener.

Well, to be fair to Nixon, by that point, nearly EVERYONE was abandoning the gold standard and specie in favor of fiat currency. The U.S. may or may not have started it, but the rest of the nations jumped on the bandwagon PDQ (to the point that, these days, if a nation actually DOES add precious metal coins to their regular circulation [like Mexico did for a bit in the 90's] it's usually taken as a sign that their currency is REALLY shaky, and in imminent danger of collapsing.)

The simple fact is, the kind of economy we have now, for better or worse, can't really WORK anymore. There just isn't enough new precious metal mined each year to keep up with our current economic growth. A specie backed economy may be good for keeping inflation down, but it keeps the growth rate really, really slow. And with more and more of the precious metals mined being earmarked for use in technology, trying to go back on the gold system might actually stop progress by making gold and silver too scarce to be affordable for tech.

I would also like to point out that, if Nixon HADN'T taken us off the Gold Standard in 1971, Ford probably wouldn't have repealed the Gold Act in 1974, and people like us being able to own and invest in gold would probably still be illegal. Heck, I think it is just possible that, if Nixon had tried to keep us on a precious metal standard, he might had added a Silver Act to the Gold Act to shore up the backing funds and it would have been illegal to own THAT anymore either. (and, given how expensive copper, iron and many other metals are now, they all could have been added one by one until ALL our money was paper.)

 

[seedcorn]

30% nitrogen reduction? Expect grain prices to get crazy.... yields will be reduced plus protein levels will go down forcing livestock producers to feed more protein or synthetic AA that are manufactured in SE Asia.

Interesting that in USA, government took gas from $2+ to $5+, reduces it to $4 and everyone is thinking this is great....... How our policies still almost doubled energy prices.

 

[heirloomgal]

30% nitrogen reduction? Expect grain prices to get crazy.... yields will be reduced plus protein levels will go down forcing livestock producers to feed more protein or synthetic AA that are manufactured in SE Asia.

Interesting that in USA, government took gas from $2+ to $5+, reduces it to $4 and everyone is thinking this is great....... How our policies still almost doubled energy prices.

It's 1.91 /L not sure what that converts to per/G?

 

[seedcorn]

$7.23/gal.