• psvrh@lemmy.ca
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      5 days ago

      No less than The Economist uses the BMI (“Big Mac Index”) to compare economies.

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      I like how this has “Murrkans dumb” vibes, but this picture is intellectually far better than what average Russian thinks about economy.

      That said, 6+ bigmacs for an hour of minimum wage sounds very good. Actually it sounds like some heaven on earth.

      • ZeffSyde@lemmy.world
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        ‘Heaven is a place in Earth’ was, in fact, released in 1987 by Belinda Carlisle.

        Fueled by cheap Big Mac’s, no doubt, though the song neglects to mention them.

  • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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    Good work Gamers. Your hardware will be more expensive, but at least Biden won’t be suggesting a non-enforceable DEI directive at the HR of those game studios.

  • auzy@lemmy.world
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    Apparently Google searches for “what is a tariff” skyrocketed after Trump won

    Also “can I change my vote”

    There are already quite a few regrets it seems, and the right wing are gonna learn how tariffs actually work real soon

    I’m guessing the money they raise will also be used to help fund tax cuts for high income

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    6 days ago

    And laptops, and phones, and literally every other electronic thing you might want to buy

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      People that can still afford stuff will be so cool. The hippest tech, biggest cars and newest kicks, everything will be uber exclusive. This is good for america because reasons.

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        This is good for america because reasons.

        People with lifted pickup trucks can now go into even more debt, so they can flex on the “poors” (while complaining about their “economic anxiety”).

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          Not to worry. If gas is a little cheaper while they fill up their tanks at the pump, they’ll be happy to pay [insert car financing company here] exorbitant amounts of money and think they’re winning

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          I think car industry regulations (ratio of gas per weight or something) are one of the incentives for production of such trucks. So again - this may eventually get better if “deregulation” stops being a curse. Not with Trump, of course.

      • WamGams@lemmy.ca
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        If that is truly their plan, they are dumber than we fucking figured.

        If a billionaire wants to buy a swimming pool, he needs a considerable amount of other people to be able to afford swimming pools or it it becomes impossible for him to get one at all eventually.

        To have a swimming pool, there needs to be an industry of specialized labororers who can manufacture and install. There has to be electricians who specialize in mixing water and electricity. There has to be people working the factories where the chlorine gets manufactured and bottled.

        This is true for every product that billionaires consume. You really gotta think that these people with all this wealth would have people on the payroll pointing this out to them.

        • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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          That is more of a millionaire problem. A billionaire can afford to fly the specialists and the materials in from Europe.

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          Party officials in USSR kinda managed to keep such an industry for their nice things. It’s not as complex as computers.

      • kautau@lemmy.world
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        Especially because every grift that trump has made, his shoes and the like, were all made internationally. Wonder who will pay for those tarrifs when he does the same?

        • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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          Thing is all that crap can be stitched together by 12 year olds in Alabama instead of 12 year olds in China.

          I don’t think he can really comprehend a chip fabrication plant costing 10 times his entire net worth. He probably thinks that what they make in “Silicon Valley”…

          • tibi@lemmy.world
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            I recently saw gamers nexus’ Intel tour. It was like seeing a sci-fi movie, it’s incredible how advanced the stuff they do is. I also found it incredible how much it takes to build a chip… It takes about 2-3 months from wafer to chip.

            • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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              It takes about 2-3 months from wafer to chip.

              After spending 3-4 years building the factory and even more time finding and training staff.

              But, sure, tarriff the hell out of things that can’t be made domestically for (optomistacally) half a decade. That’ll certainly make it happen instantly…

              /fucking morons.

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                I’m sorry, but you people talk about making state-of-the-art chips, while in many cases something like year 1990 will do. It’d be a very ambitious endeavor too, but both realistic and useful.

                What they are doing will reduce economic competitiveness of the whole USA, but in terms of incentivizing domestic industries it will work. No miracles, but it will give incentives to what can be done quickly enough. And if we consider that electronics already are cheaper in US than in EU or in Eastern Europe, this won’t be too bad.

                I’m not a Trump fan. Just - what these people want to do is not without rational justification in economics. It’s a weird justification, of the kind USSR’s strategy of existence had, but then the reasons USSR failed were not in that part about self-reliance in strategic industries. One can argue it collapsed because it didn’t really achieve that due to administrative inefficiency, as in “went bankrupt”. It was exporting fossil fuels to finance the appearance of domestic heavy industries, which were not profitable. At some point that wasn’t enough money.

                • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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                  people talk about making state-of-the-art chips, while in many cases something like year 1990 will do

                  It still takes time to spin up a chip fab, even one with 30 year old capabilities.

                  And, since nobody domestically makes the machinery needed, that too will be subject to the import tarrifs and probable delays caused by the ensuring trade war restrictions.

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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            It won’t be paid from his net worth or from even the government’s budget.

            It will, if it happens, be expected to redeem costs based on the demand of the whole USA, which is, ahem, an obscene amount of money.

            Anyway, you don’t have to start with something like TSMC. Producing MCs for home appliances is already very cool.

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        This is good. Same way forest fires can be good.

        But those people thinking they’ll be the elite don’t quite realize how exactly.

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      And now do some basic Google Foo and find out what is manufactured in Taiwan. If China gets it’s way, because Trump thinks Xi is cool and he’s a good guy, China will just waltz in - TSMC, ASML and Trumpf have some safeguards in place as far as I know to destroy anything valuable. So while you might want to buy shit, you can’t because the Cheeto and his cronies collapsed it.

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        That would in long term be good. I’m serious. Keeping all your eggs in one basket is bad, and other than that - said one basket may, for example, not scale production fast enough so to keep profits, that’s basic supply and demand and that’s what oil producers do too.

        Short term, though, would be similar to a collapse of civilization.

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          Short term, though, would be similar to a collapse of civilization.

          Would it? Civilization doesn’t depend on bleeding edge high tech. Sure, it depends on tech, but look around who’s making ICs or basic processors that are in machine control panels and all the millions of appliances. AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom do the “heavy lifting” in terms of monetary value, but in overall quantity? Samsung, SK Hynix, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, Sony, Renesas and NXP are the ones that make the world go round. Infineon is German, NXP is Dutch, Renesas is Japanese, STMicroelectronics is Swiss. The thing that’s really going to hurt is Foxconn, but they are probably global enough to withstand that. There’s also many, many more local players. BOSCH for example has very high capacities for everything up to 80 Nanometers (Pentium 3/4, Athlon 64…)

          Civilization would crack, sure - but i don’t think it would collapse. Society on the other hand…that’s a different paper.

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            Society on the other hand…that’s a different paper.

            I meant that too. But would actually be interesting, if electronics around us would still be a normal thing, but smartphones changing every year and carelessly used computing power will not. I think it would feel like waking up from a fever dream.

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              I mean, “change” per se isn’t necessarily something bad. Meaning, stuff needs to last longer (again) in those cases. Planned Obsolescence is a real thing, that’s however only economical as long as raw materials are relatively cheap. But it would be nice if companies just did that change, instead of being forced in to it…

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                The issue is - tariffs and regulations already exist and force them the other way in fact. So the matter of purity doesn’t suffer here. Relatively.

  • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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    I’m actually really excited about the smuggling opportunities such a high tariff presents. It’s a real job creator. It’s been a long time since we’ve had major smuggling operations on the great lakes. Will be a big boom for Chicago too, since that’s the point where the smuggled goods get put on trains. Maybe even get the outfit back together.

    • mlg@lemmy.world
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      Al Capone watching his successors continue his legacy by smuggling PS5s and pirating games lol

  • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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    From this article

    But in the case of the hefty tariffs that Trump put on China during his first term, economic studies found that most of those costs were passed on to American consumers.

    Economists believe this could happen again. One study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, for example, calculated that Trump’s current tariff plans would increase costs for a typical American household by $2,600 a year.

    Paying more for everything to own the libs! 🤡

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        I’m not sure it’s a safe bet. Only if the tariffs last longer than 4 years. Building new factories takes a couple years, then you need to break even all within 4 years? Just seems risky to me

      • Unlikely. In the age of globalism, it’s much more likely that manufacturing will leave the US to dodge counter-tariffs. The combined markets of Europe and Asia is for most products larger than the US market, and that trend is only likely to increase in the future as Asia develops. Manufacturers know making stuff in Asia is just cheaper, and that American consumers are more likely to go into debt to buy stuff than other consumers. They also know that these tariffs are unlikely to last for long, because if the US takes the expected economic hit here then it becomes less likely that Trump/the GOP remains in control (eg midterms flip control back to the democrats).

        Not much reason to move factories to the US, which is wildly expensive, when taking the hit and waiting it out is ultimately most likely cheaper.

      • Sweetpeaches69@lemmy.world
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        It’s just a stupid way of doing it. Companies should be getting other incentives to bring manufacturing home. The middle and lower class shouldn’t burn for that to happen.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
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    look closer at everything you own. 99.9% of it will be 40% more expensive if you have to buy it again

    • dan1101@lemm.ee
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      People think that foreign countries pay the tariffs and I’m not sure trump doesn’t think that as well.

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          Not to forget these crazy machines that’ll give you free money if you smash in one of those weird plastic thingys from your purse. Absolutely bonkers!

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        Even if they did, they would still be passing that cost down to us.

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        And even if they did, do they think they are just going to swallow those fees?

    • IamSparticles@lemmy.zip
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      I think the “logic” is that if things are too expensive to import then companies will start manufacturing them domestically and create jobs. But that almost never works out. An economist could probably explain why better than I can.

      I do know that the better approach is to support those industries here. That’s why we recently dumped a bunch of money into the CHIPS and Science act.

      • Dempf@lemmy.zip
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        I am actually in favor of tariffs in a couple of limited situations:

        1. Foreign goods are cheap due to non-existent labor laws

        2. Foreign goods are cheap, but produce more emissions than domestic manufacturing

        #2 is also called a carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM, and the EU voted to implement one last year that goes into effect in 2026. The USA desperately needs one IMHO. I’m involved in a nonprofit that’s been lobbying Congress to implement our own CBAM.

        It’s silly though to think that a tariff is anything but a tax. It’s not any different than any other way that we use our tax laws to try to regulate “pure” capitalism by encouraging certain behavior and discouraging other behavior.

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    Good, gaming is for chud man children and incels.

    Turns on Switch and looks at latest sales for jRPGs

    Really nothing but anime fans lusting after booba.

    Puts Unicorn Overlord in cart