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Posts posted by Brisketexan
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I don't even think disentangling from China is a good idea. In my opinion, it's in the best interest of the global economy for the US/Chinese economies to remain as entangled as they are. To me, it's ridiculous to care even a little bit about how much US debt they hold. Who gives a shit?
I agree and disagree in part. There are definitely some strategic items on which we should disentangle and reshore (not just re China: see chips, and the CHIPS Act to do so). But when it comes to stitching shoes, and screwing iPhones together and such, that can and should happen elsewhere. Personally, I’d love it if we incentivized more of that happening in Central America, which would help on MANY fronts (easier shipping, less strategic vulnerability, and better employment there reduces immigrant outflow).
But we are doing the opposite of strategic thing here. Everything is as dumb as possible.
FFS, admin mouthpieces are saying BOTH that this approach will bring back manufacturing jobs…and that those factories will be fully automated, with almost no jobs….just so. Fucking. Stupid.-
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No, it doesn't fully explain it at all but it's a big part of it.
It both is and isn’t. Take the slavery and over-the-top repression out of the mix, and China would have similar market power to what it has now.
But that ship has sailed. The power to use commerce to disentangle from China or get China to alter its way is no longer really available to the rest of the world.
We pissed away everything.
Everything.-
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13 minutes ago, immamac said:
but their only other option is to develop in house and that takes WAR or decades to get back to par with what the US has to offer, and so the process of weaning off will take a while and be fairly painful.
Yet the US is providing ironclad proof that continuing to depend on the US will be even more painful, maybe fatal. The objectively interesting and ironic thing is that our idiot leadership is talking about how the US public has to "take its medicine and suffer to get us where we need to be." They are WRONG with respect to the US, but their actions are making that lesson RIGHT with respect to everyone else.
In 10 years, the entire non-Chinese/Russian aligned world should be flying Eurofighters and Saab aircraft instead of F-35s and such, as just one example. It's going to take time for European development and production to get there.....but get there they will. Because it's the only rational choice. If a choice is painful....but it is the ONLY rational path....then people can and will endure pain.
Our choice, inflicting great pain and much more to come, is completely IRrational. So nobody is going to join us on that path.
And this:
QuoteThe trade war will undoubtedly hurt the Chinese economy. But I honestly don’t think Xi cares. He sees this correctly, as a historic opportunity to destroy U.S. global influence.
We have handed China a gift, and unprecedented opportunity. They can and will exploit it.
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4 minutes ago, Armybrat said:
Just stay clear of the meat market & the deli.
Or, hey....free circumcisions!
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8 minutes ago, immamac said:
I'm asking wtf is China gonna do, how do we think this plays out and what moves do they have besides "nuh uh"
China will do two things:
1) Pivot away from the US as a trading partner.
2) Pivot TO the EU and others as a trading partner. All China has to do in that respect is "not be as shitty and batshit as the US." And that's a low fucking bar.
Sure, there's some short-term pain for China. China can bear it, they are much tougher than we (Americans) are, and they play a long game. And China will have to be friendlier/more favorable than they would like in building new/enhanced trading relationships with others. So be it, that's short term. Once they get their hooks in, then they can start playing more hard ball . . . 10-20 years from now.
We are squandering everything. And I don't use the term "everything" hyperbolically. I mean, literally everything.
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As a male, the primary item I use for emotional support is my penis. Because I am a shallow thinker and a simple man.
So, I think we should all start shopping at HEB with our dicks out, and if anyone says anything, bristle and claim discrimination against our emotional support dong.
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1 minute ago, Tuco said:
OMG, she has a friend who uses coupons. She really has her pulse on poverty in America.
Also, I don't think she really understood The Emperor's New Clothes.
Yes to all of this.
Also, I still want to see her RATs.
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14 minutes ago, immamac said:
except that China has been erratic and insane for the entire time, people just dealt with it because it was literally "slaves over there".
China is not erratic and insane. China is asshole. Strategic asshole, but not insane and unpredictable asshole. China is Houston drivers: homicidal, assholish, but with a purpose -- hauling ass from point A to point B at all times. The US under Trump is Austin drivers: will stop in the middle lane of the freeway because they just now decided their exit is the one three lanes over.
I much prefer dealing with Houston drivers, because "strategic homicidal asshole" is predictable, and that allows ME to drive strategically.
15 minutes ago, 'stache said:Let’s suppose they were open to negotiation on legitimate topics, why would they have any trust if an agreement was reached? We’ve already shown that we just go back and forth on this shit, see Canada and Mexico.
This also offers opportunity. If everyone knows that "deals" with Trump are just words you say to make his ego feel good, then fuck it, make a "deal" with him, and don't keep it. What's that, Donnie, you'll drop tariffs on me if I promise to move my shoe factories to the US? Sure thing. I am commissioning a blue-ribbon panel to study the proper formation and composition of the committee to evaluate how to make that happen, with a plan to be developed in the next 4 years.
Walla. Trump proclaims victory, and he brought manufacturing back. And I go about my business as usual, except maybe I set up some pointless panel to issue periodic reports with pretty pictures and graphs to make Trump happy, and those reports mention the "Donald J. Trump Shoe Factory of American Victory" a few times.
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1 minute ago, immamac said:
It would be a massive gamble that China would magically convert everyone who loathes doing business with them in a snap call.
All China has to do is "not be an erratic and insane fucking asshole." Seriously. That's the play. They don't have to be trustworthy. They just have to be "the most trustworthy large economy that others can deal with." And they do that by simply....not being the US. China has a massive opportunity right now. Helping us destroy ourselves even more is a great long-term play for China, which actually CAN weather some short term pain for long-term gain (market share, relative credibility, reliability, etc.).
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3 minutes ago, pantone159 said:
If we did try and default on paying them, that would cause an economic disaster that would make this current one seem like chump change. So we will probably try that next.
There is a 100% chance that he will threaten to do that, repeatedly. There's a 90% chance he does so within the next week.
He is -- quite literally -- a fucking insane madman with a 100 or lower IQ. He's an insane moron. And we've given him full and unchecked control of.....the planet.
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1 hour ago, Firemans4Horn said:
“Trust him, he knows what he’s doing”
Just substitute "The United States" for "TMTG," and you have a dead-on, balls-accurate disclosure there.
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How long until multiple countries simply ban travelers from the US, or impose hefty (read $$$) visa requirements on American travelers?
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1 minute ago, aggie08 said:
I'm very quickly moving from laughing at the absurdity of all this in a "we fucking deserve this" manner to anger and sadness for all the irreparable damage we're doing to our future and any remaining goodwill we have left...for fucking nothing.
Added the emphasis that makes this so fucking horrific. It's just goddamned tragic. This country and economy is being wrecked, never to fully recover.....for no sane reason whatsoever.
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Some of the biggest market perma-bulls I follow are completely off the trump train the last 6 days. Dan Ives with Wedbush is the biggest tech/AI believer you will ever meet and he is downgrading all of his calls. He’s been long TSLA forever and cut his projection wildly this week. Tom Lee with fundstrat is a huge “AI is the 4th Industrial Revolution” guy and his firm put this out tonight:
“Quietly wondered” if he’s insane.
I guess they also “quietly wonder” if gravity makes objects fall to earth. Jesus fucking Christ.-
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32 minutes ago, DreadHead said:
Republicans aren't going to do anything because Trump and Elon have threatened them. They know if they turn on Trump, they will turn maga loose on them and find someone to primary them. These Republicans care more about their job than they do their constituents, the constitution, and the American people.
This. Which is one of many reasons why the GQP is a terrorist organization.
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1 minute ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:
Is this your glass half empty or glass half full view? The truth is we may be just a few years away from a Jim Jones Kool Aid incident that takes out half the country.
This is America, 2025. There's not much in the glass, but what is in there is pure poison.
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3 minutes ago, aggie08 said:
Hopefully, Democrat approval rate will be above 30% by then!
It won't be. We may be eating leaves out of our hats, enjoying electricity for 1 hour per day on a rotating schedule, and dying in droves from a viral illness that has a vaccine but our government banned it, and Fox News will run wall-to-wall stories about a trans kid who appeared in one girl's community basketball league game in Peoria, and it'll be a GQP landslide across the board.
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35 minutes ago, Pods said:
For example, Andean foxes split from everyone else 6.8 million years ago.
Fuckin' Andean foxes, always thinking they're better than everyone else. Elitist assholes.
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That wall at La Brea is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Shit, La Brea is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I'd been reading about it since I was 4, and I visited it for the first time in my late 40s...and I was agog like a little kid.
And yeah, your summary is pretty much what I suspected here - lots of hype, but not lots of great science.
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Sigh.
I am a pretty damned good prognosticator....and a terrible investor/actor on my predictions.
I told myself a month ago "better dump as much as I can into cash/fixed return stuff, because shit's about to get wild." Yet....I didn't, so the equity portion of my portfolio has taken its lumps.
I told myself two months ago, when it became apparent that we were shitting on our ties with NATO and the EU, "I bet european defense stocks will take off." But I didn't do anything about it. And sure enough, every one of them I'd looked at has taken off -- some have doubled, even tripled.
Do I have any prediction right now? Not really. Just that shit is going to be volatile and messy and unpredictable. And I'm really not sophisticated enough to take advantage of it. I know a good bit about many things, but my investment savvy is pretty basic. So, in summary, I hate myself.
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6 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:
These are kidnappings and illegal imprisonment performed under the color of law.
QFFT.
That's it.
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Just now, immamac said:
I have a person in Austin, same thing. Friday/Saturday delivery
quien?
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15 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:
never hurts to have a shotgun or two handy for inside intruders. in that situation you don't want to worry too much about aim. beyond that, whatever you're comfortable that you're not gonna accidentally shoot yourself or your loved ones with. and no, this is entirely the appropriate thread for this conversation
This. Something you feel comfortable with. Keep it simple and mainstream. A basic semi-auto, probably in 9mm for ammo availability.
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2 minutes ago, Todd Gack said:
"Nazi Barbie" in the comments pretty much sums it up
Yep. Remember how all the Trumpers wouldn't shut up about how we all need to be armed, because "that's the last line of defense against an authoritarian state - disarming the public was how them Nazis were able to run roughshod and kill all those people!"??? Turns out, the fuckers were right about that. They just didn't tell us that they were the authoritarian state we'd have to worry about.
We're getting pretty goddamned close to "last line of defense" territory.
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Non-political tariffs thread
in Daily Texan
Posted
To some extent. Geography and transport creates difficulty. Central America is ripe for the picking -- actual ports, very close to American ports. Rail lines that already exist. Internal infrastructure (e.g., reliable power) is lacking....but that's part of the win-win. Guatemala gets better power supply and more and better jobs - both raising their living standards and removing the incentive to flee north for opportunity. We get goods assembled/manufactured 1500 miles away, in a country that is small and dependent enough that it CAN'T overly flex its trading partner hand.
There are SMART ways to handle trade. Declaring "all trade deficits are evil, and we're willing to wreck our economy and the global economy to prove it" is the dumbest thing ever.
We have a $30 trillion GDP.
We have a $1 trillion goods trade deficit (I'm using round numbers....and if I wanted to be ACCURATE, I'd say we only have around a $700 billion deficit, as we run a $278 billion SERVICES SURPLUS, but let's just stick with goods for easy numbers).
That's a 30-1 ratio. If we were a household with a $90k income, the equivalent would be a $3k "trade deficit" (more spent on goods than our trading partners, like HEB and Lowes, spend on us). Nevermind the absurdity of saying trade deficits are bad, period. The amount of destruction we're undertaking for something worth 1/30th of our GDP is insane. If you looked at any $90k household, and said "so, you spend $3k on goods that you don't get spending back on, leaving you with $87k in income".....the sane answer would be "cool....so what? And remember, I GET something for the $3k I spend -- groceries, hardware, what have you."
There's not a single part of this approach that isn't utterly stupid, built on a foundation of stupid, and creating an eternal historical monument to stupid.