Exactly what I thought when I first mis-read it as “gene-editing” instead of “gene-edited” and thought Spiderman!

Even if they do; if your employer “provides” the insurance they’ll take a cut of any cost savings :(

No need for a meme. Just say happy mother’s day. A personal anecdote will mean more… Give one example of why you think they’re a great mother.

I have a few close friends who are mothers I sent a note today. If you’re close enough you’d wish them a happy birthday it’d be kind to do the same on any other holiday that applies. And ultimately this is all about being nice to people you care about. If it would make their day a little bit better: do it!

The same applies for days that aren’t holidays too … This is part of how you make and maintain friendships. Send a nice message every once in a while just to let them know they matter to you and you think highly about them. People love to hear others appreciate them. They’re more likely to do the same back if you do, and I always find it uplifting to get a random compliment from a friend.

There’s already an annual child tax credit: https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-child-tax-credit

I’m sure they didn’t even check if birth rates are influenced by this…

Celery salt is made from celery seed and salt. It’s not as salty as table salt: https://www.allrecipes.com/article/what-is-celery-salt/

If you’re looking for convincing arguments; read through the responses from this panel of experts: https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/tariffs/ (from 2024) and more recently: https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/tariffs-reciprocal-and-retaliatory-2/

Many of the responding professors provide detail on why they vote a certain way. For example to the 3rd part of the question from 2024: “The gains for the American economy from tripling the tariffs would measurably outweigh the losses.” you get replies like:

Protectionism via tariffs creates well-understood aggregate losses in efficiency. This is so even if China “unfairly” subsidizes its steel. Political motivations aside, actual distributional impacts are modest, ill targeted, and better handled with other more direct tax tools.

With links to further background information: https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/publications/CW 04-15-22.pdf & http://www.econ.ucla.edu/pfajgelbaum/tradewar_1203.pdf with more detail to read.

Not sure if this will convince you or not; but it’s at least a cache of relevant information.

It’s overvalued in my market at the moment, (Dallas) majority of properties sitting on the market for over half a year and making several list price reductions. COVID inflated the market a bit too much and it needs to come down… 10-20% would be a fair amount I’d expect it to drop over 2 years.

But there are a lot of external factors I’m not considering in my estimate: like idiotic tariffs, incompetent leadership at the state level, and a possible demographic shift depending on how people react to immigration reductions (and possibly net emmigration)… I give a significant chance something out of left field will upend the economy 🤷‍♂️. But who knows when the people in charge change their policies every other day and then insist their new opinion has always been their super secret plan all along…

Housing prices are sticky to go down because they’re also an investment. People (in aggregate) have a tendency to hold rather than sell at a loss. Also note it varies significantly across geographies.

Edit: also houses are not liquid so that also adds to the stickiness of pricing. It takes time for price signals to develop due to the slow (often over a month) & infrequent nature of transactions. It also matters that there’s an industry of professionals who benefit from keeping prices higher.

First quarter was before tariffs were announced?

Let’s see, just divide by zero and… We’re wealthy beyond belief!

/s

Republicans are so dumb :(

Because somehow trump wrecking the economy isn’t scoffing the working class? This argument starts disjointed from reality then presents a false dichotomy. trump’s administration & policies are a dumpster fire! How is opposing this a dilemma in any meaningful way?

My facts were provided and cited? I’d argue your positions are the ones not related to the facts:

aerospace and military manufacturers are saying there are certain components they simply can’t manufacture here without importing from China

This is a media statement, not a fact, and not reflected in industry data nor historical examples. There’s a cost they don’t want to pay, not a hard block. Manufacturing has historically been more than able to adjust, but at a cost. In the event of a war we’d likely pay that cost, in the face of tariffs it’s up to those individual manufacturers to decide. So we might see them choose to keep importing instead of replacing certain components… But that does not then mean they couldn’t do so.

I don’t understand how you have maintained this perspective of interruptions and shipping affecting the US more than China

I didn’t claim this at all? And I won’t argue it as relevant since interrupting shipping globally is not a relevant equivalent to bilateral trade halting.

I don’t feel like you’re making arguments in good faith, or you are disregarding my claims and raising straw man arguments… Apologies in advance as I’ll likely not continue this thread.

US manufacturing output is far larger than the amount we import form China.

US manufacturing made about $2.5 Trillion in 2021: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/manufacturing-output

US imported from China about $0.5 Trillion in 2021 (all goods, not just manufacturing): https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

China could defeat most western countries without firing a single shot, just by cutting off their access to Chinese exports.

I disagree with this assumption!

We don’t rely on China, we benefit from trading with them. Some of our goods go there, we get some of their goods. If a war breaks out and that trade stops; we have plenty of manufacturing capacity. And the point of having allies is that we would expect assistance in the event of a war, so we don’t expect US manufacturing to even completely fill the gap (similarly our allies would expect the US to help if China were to target one of them… except that the current administration is alienating everyone but Russia…).

If you look another level down into what each country manufactures; the US makes a lot of military equipment, and imports a lot of consumer goods form China. Our military would not lose much capacity by a loss in trade with China, but US consumers would lose some of their consumption options. Guess which one matters when it comes to war?

I don’t support tariffs as a tool to increase American manufacturing jobs because they don’t accomplish that goal. This is not a political belief; it’s derived from evidence. Many sources available, here’s one: https://files.taxfoundation.org/20180627113002/Tax-Foundation-FF595-1.pdf

Using tariffs as a diplomatic tool is only effective in extreme cases. Diplomacy is difficult and so many things are interrelated. If a tariff threat makes China capitulate to our position on Taiwan, why not just use a tariff threat to bring China completely into line on every other position? Tariffs are blunt, and cause harm (economic and diplomatic) to broad areas of both countries unrelated to the specific issue. Topical example: sanctions on Russia did not change their position on Ukraine, even though those were far more severe than just a blanket X% tariff and were supported by many other countries (multi-lateral as opposed to uni-lateral). If we want to influence China’s position on Taiwan, diplomacy is more effective than tariffs.

I didn’t know the difference, thanks for the clarification!

For anyone wondering: tasted very similar to mapo tofu and rice. Texture was noticably different but still pleasant.

My son asked for mapo tofu, but my daughter doesn’t like mapo tofu and wanted noodles… And I didn’t want to cook both rice and noodles 🤷‍♂️

Adding further onto your point emphasizing why this will be severe: Borrowing will become more expensive, and we can’t just stop spending to stop borrowing. Much of the current debt is in short term positions that regularly get re-issued. The cost of issuing new short term debts just to replace the current ones coming due will increase even if spending stays the same (or decreases).

And of course, there’s a huge impact to the dollar’s value internationally if major financial markets shift away from holding US debt. You know the trade deficit Republicans like to rage about … Yeah, it’ll get a lot worse when fewer people want to hold US dollars for the purpose of investing in US bonds.

Imagine the loss in productivity from having so many people fired & quickly re-hired. Not just from those people; but the HR & administrative effort; the re-org of responsibilities among the other employees; and the nonsense time it probably took up in so many “mandatory departmental meetings” discussing what was happening…

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. -Mark Twain

Every Republican presidential term in my lifetime has had a recession start. None of the Democratic ones have…

Regan; one started each term. First Bush had one in his term. Clinton had none in his 2 terms. Second Bush had a HUGE one each time (dot com and great recession). Obama had none in his 2 terms. trump had one in his first term (triggered by covid & shutdowns; which his (in)actions intensified…). Biden didn’t have one (but; just barely… and only by the official definition [NBER]; he did have two negative real GDP quarters, so one could argue this point). Now we’re starting trump’s second term, so we’ll see (it’s pretty clear we’ll have a recession within 2 years).

This isn’t really debatable unless you ignore the evidence. Stock market and real GDP growth are overall way higher under Democrat presidents. One link for reference (but many more are available): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-021-00912-y