[HN Gopher] What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable
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What happens when US economic data becomes unreliable
Author : inaros
Score : 297 points
Date : 2026-03-14 16:58 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mitsloan.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (mitsloan.mit.edu)
| booleandilemma wrote:
| It's what we regularly accuse China of, right?
|
| While we're on the topic, why is it that we love to point the
| finger at other countries' corruption and we completely ignore
| the very obvious, rampant corruption in our own government? And I
| mean on both sides - Democrat and Republican. Insider trading,
| revolving door policies, etc. That's not even mentioning why we
| have people like Luigi Mangione. That's a whole separate elephant
| in the room.
| tomrod wrote:
| Not accuse. Observed.
|
| This is a lot of similar-sounding-but-different problems.
|
| EDIT:
|
| For those not realizing that China has a long history of less-
| trustworthy stats, along with Iran and some other governments,
| here is some reading you can consider
|
| [0]
| https://sites.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/papers/2001%20What%27s%20Ha...
|
| [1]
| https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29349/w293...
|
| [2]
| https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2...
|
| [3]
| https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/245398/1/cesifo1_wp9...
|
| [4]
| https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/350051528721174623-0050...
|
| [5] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf
|
| [6] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5140733
|
| [7] https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/22/4620
|
| [8]
| https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2022/06/03/mea...
|
| [9] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf
|
| [10]
| https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23323/w233...
|
| [11] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26372649
|
| [12]
| https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15199/w151...
|
| [13] https://www.economic-policy.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/04/S...
|
| [14]
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1273505
|
| [15]
| https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2...
|
| [16]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10439...
| zzleeper wrote:
| Please don't "both side" this. As much as there is corruption
| in any administration, R or D, the levels we are seeing now are
| completely unprecedent and blunt. EG:
| https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/politics/trump-fundraise-emai...
| (from earlier this morning on the HN frontpage)
| fhdkweig wrote:
| On that topic, how many presidents in the past have had merch
| stores after elected? I can understand fundraising during a
| campaign, but after winning or losing, the fundraising
| usually stops.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Merch. NFTs. Playing cards. Crypto coins. A phone. It's
| like we have Dennis Duffy as POTUS. If it were 40 years ago
| it would be like Reagan starting his own MLM.
| fhdkweig wrote:
| And the worst part is, I don't think we will ever close
| this door. Even if the Democrats are in charge of the
| next presidency, the temptation of easy money will be too
| strong to resist. It wasn't done in the past, because it
| was assumed that the people would push back severely, but
| now that it is clear that they won't, it is full speed
| ahead.
| jfengel wrote:
| The fundraising never stops, not even for lame ducks,
| because the money can always be delivered into related war
| chests.
|
| But here it is going directly to the President's pockets.
| That has never happened before.
| echelon wrote:
| I feel like we're dancing on the razor's edge.
|
| On the one hand: high inflation, tariffs, layoffs, unemployment,
| high interest rate, energy crisis. Tons of economic red flags
| flashing.
|
| On the other hand: AI is showing signs of being the next
| industrial revolution, we're re-industrializing,
| onshoring/friendshoring, and have a clear lead on chips and space
| tech at a time when it matters the most.
|
| It's absolutely insane that Claude Code can spit out a week's
| worth of business automation tasks in half a day. And do it at
| relatively high quality in low-defect rate languages like Rust.
|
| Europe won't be able to catch that. They're too busy regulating
| ahead of the tech. They're going to be a decade behind if they
| keep it up.
|
| If we cut the chip supply right as things take off, China might
| not either. In a runaway takeoff scenario, they replace all their
| factory workers with robots and quickly scale and cost optimize.
| If America is smart, we might be able to do that too.
|
| Our growth could accelerate or crater. These are wild times. More
| exciting than the last 20.
|
| America needs to start pumping out new energy projects. It needs
| to make friends with all of its former allies. And it needs to
| import PhD students.
|
| And we do need factories and raw inputs. The robots will take
| over for humans within a decade. If we stick the landing, we
| could be the new China right here at home.
|
| Edit: rate limited on replies, so updating my comment instead.
|
| Edit 2: Europe supplies the EUV lithography, but intelligence
| manifests higher up the stack. If we're talking rate limits, lots
| of countries supply critical inputs. I'm saying that Europe
| hasn't made strides towards developing their own models and
| infra, and it doesn't look like it's even close to starting to
| attack this problem. I want it to.
|
| Edit 3: What I'm saying is that these tailwinds might put America
| back into the position it was in post-WWII. Manufacturing, tech,
| and science powerhouse in all the places that matter. Peers a
| generation or two behind. That's literally where America was
| after the war, and it looks like we could be teeing up for a
| repeat if it all doesn't unravel first.
|
| America needs to double down on investing in energy and factories
| now. It looks like it will pay off in a big way.
|
| Edit 4:
|
| > You think Europe won't be able to use Claude Code
|
| I would be extremely geopolitically anxious to rely on another
| country's tech in a take off scenario. Those tokens might be
| diverted to US businesses and factories. Or the US might strong
| arm concessions out of Europe. Europe needs domestic capability
| for this now.
|
| It's not just Europe and sovereign nations. Workers and labor
| capital will be effectively frozen out of participation if there
| aren't open source equivalents.
|
| > This is an downright evil take on the current situation.
|
| It's just reality. Multipolarity means we're going to see a lot
| more of this type of framing, because it's what's happening on
| the ground.
| 10xDev wrote:
| >Europe won't be able to catch that. If we cut the chip supply
| right as things take off, China might not either.
|
| https://www.asml.com
| CalRobert wrote:
| I would be worried about the US militarily capturing
| Eindhoven if Europe dared to cut them off.
| microtonal wrote:
| Unlikely, but also not needed. The major ruling parties in
| The Netherlands are always strongly pro-US. Even if the US
| would attack the International Criminal Court in The Hague
| and kidnap its judges, the VVD (the liberal party) and the
| PVV (extreme-right party) would find ways to defend it.
|
| There is no way they would go as far as cutting the US off
| from ASML. At least not without a significant shift in
| Dutch politics.
| amelius wrote:
| ASML is under US export control though. Probably because
| there is US tech in there.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Europe won't be able to catch that. If we cut the chip supply
| right as things take off, China might not either.
|
| My immediate thought is - why is it a race. Like holy shit
| imagine if we could actually work together instead of having
| this mentality of "if we work hard the other countries won't
| catch that". As someone who grew up in the golden age of
| globalization and rise of the information superhighway, the way
| countries are just siloing themselves and treating everything
| as a zero sum game is both sad and scary - that's exactly how
| you lead the world on a path to another world war - telling
| yourself that you don't need anyone else and in fact you need
| to beat them to the punch and everyone else is your opponent.
| If an alien race was looking at us right now they'd be shaking
| their heads.
| ordu wrote:
| People tend to choose extremes. Either a total globalization
| or zero-sum games only. Everything in between bears risks of
| a cognitive overload so should be avoided at all costs.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > People tend to choose extremes.
|
| Corporations, along with greedy, selfish people and also
| perhaps ignorant people too, tend to choose extremes.
|
| The rest of us are remarkably good at compromising and
| finding common ground.
| WarmWash wrote:
| I think when Europe failed to handle Ukraine on their own,
| the optics started looking pretty bad.
| CursedSilicon wrote:
| They're handling Ukraine better than America is "handling"
| Iran
| gambiting wrote:
| I honestly don't even understand what you mean by that.
| Europe has accepted an extraordinary number of refugees
| from Ukraine giving them immediate and full rights to live
| and work within its territory, keeps donating billions of
| dollars worth of goods to keep Ukraine going, provides
| training to Ukrainian military personal and ramped up its
| military production specifically to bolster Ukraine.
|
| How has Europe failed here? Did you expect Poland to start
| shooting missiles towards Moscow, or something else?
| WarmWash wrote:
| If the US wasn't around, Russia would likely be rolling
| around most of Eastern Europe today. From 2022 to 2025,
| America and Europe went dollar for dollar in support of
| Ukraine. And many of the Euro dollars went to purchasing
| weapons and defense from the US.
|
| Euro leaders are terrified by this. Europe, which is
| supposed to have global parity with the big players, was
| just as much (maybe even more) of a paper tiger as
| Russia. But unlike Russia they have a big friend who has
| lots of money and lots of weapons.
|
| For the average European who has only ever know life
| under the protective wing of NATO (read: America), this
| is just Tuesday. For the versed European leader, who
| needs to ensure their country can be safe if America goes
| away, it's totally harrowing. Even more harrowing when
| your population doesn't understand the need for defense.
| gambiting wrote:
| ><>If the US wasn't around, Russia would likely be
| rolling around most of Eastern Europe today. From 2022 to
| 2025
|
| No one is saying otherwise. Still, I don't see how you
| can describe Europe as failing. Unless, like I complained
| in my original comment - you see the world as some kind
| of race where only one country is "winning" and everyone
| else is losing(failing).
|
| >> America and Europe went dollar for dollar in support
| of Ukraine. And many of the Euro dollars went to
| purchasing weapons and defense from the US.
|
| In terms of military spending, yes. In terms of refugees
| support and civil expenditure, Europe was obviously
| ahead. And again, this isn't a race to see who can spend
| more.
|
| >> Even more harrowing when your population doesn't
| understand the need for defense.
|
| As a Pole, I don't see this sentiment at all - Poland
| _really_ understands the need to defend itself, with our
| spending being allocated accordingly - and importantly,
| new funds are coming with the specific provisions to
| prevent them being spent on American technology.
|
| >> of NATO (read: America)
|
| Obviously, America has the largest fighting force on the
| planet. But are we just going to pretend that UK, France
| and Germany don't have capable armies which would be
| capable of defending our eastern flank if needed,
| including with nuclear deterrent? I know Americans are
| being fed the stories of NATO being _entirely_ US and no
| one else, but obviously even cursory inspection shows
| that this isn 't true?
| rf15 wrote:
| You really do not understand how interdependent everyone is.
| The chip machines Taiwan uses come from Europe, for example.
|
| The US kneecapped itself for no reason.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > The chip machines Taiwan uses come from Europe, for example
|
| The US, not Europe.
|
| ASML's EUV and High NA EUV production is all done in
| California via US DoE joint ventures (specifically Cymer LLC
| [0]). Additionally, their metrology IP is Taiwanese [1] as
| part of ASML's acquisition of HMI back in 2016 with Taiwanese
| approval [2].
|
| ASML is the capital partner because in the early 2000s, the
| US government wanted to prevent a duopoly forming between
| Nikon and Canon for photolithography as part of an antitrust
| battle.
|
| And the next generation of lithography tooling coming into
| Taiwan is being funded and developed by Japan [3] due to
| MUFG, Mitsui, Mizuho, and SoftBank becoming the primary
| capital partners for Taiwan's electronics industry [4]. This
| is also why TSMC is expanding in Japan and Taiwanese players
| are transferring IP to Rapidus.
|
| Additonally, all the packaging, testing, and design work -
| especially leading edge nodes - is done in Asia, the US, and
| even Israel but not Europe.
|
| ---
|
| Personally, I think Europe is too far behind at this point
| for the EUV and High NA EUV boom - Taiwan, the US, Japan,
| South Korea, China, and others deployed significant amounts
| of capital and subsidizes in the late 2010s and early 2020s
| _and_ worked to build IP partnerships for front-end work with
| players like TSMC (US, Japan), UMC (China until 2019), PSMC
| (Japan, India), and Samsung (US).
|
| The EU had a shot but Intel rolled back their Germany
| expansion plan in order to double down on 18A in Arizona, and
| TSMC decided to double down on Japan. Additonally, all the
| backend work is done in Taiwan, South Korea, China, ASEAN
| (Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam), Japan, the US, and even India
| now because Micron, Samsung, Amkor, and others transferred
| their IP there, and design is primarily concentrated in
| Taiwan, the US, China, Israel, and India and with Malaysia
| and Vietnam likely to become much more prominent in the next
| few years due to Arm and Marvell respectively.
|
| What the EU can _instead_ do is concentrate on power
| electronics (already a strong suite) and compound
| semiconductors (already a strong suite) and target a leapfrog
| technology like 2D semiconductor design and fabrication which
| is still in it 's infancy and also has applications for
| quantum computing. The EU already has the capacity for
| "legacy" (but still critical) semiconductors but is too late
| to the game for sub-14nm fabrication.
|
| And based on the kind of fundamental research and funding
| I've been seeing in the EU, this is the strategy that appears
| to be increasingly adopted within the EU - but this is
| something the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel,
| the UK, Singapore, Canada, and even Vietnam and India are
| doing as well, and both French and German initiatives risk
| being misaligned due to mutual industrial competition. The
| fact that French players in the space would rather
| collaborate with Singaporean [5], Korean [6], American [7],
| Israeli [8], and Canadian [9] partners to develop IP instead
| of with other partners within Europe, it shows issues around
| misalignment.
|
| On a separate note, as I mentioned before on HN, the French
| seem to be on the right track - other European states other
| than the UK less so. French players are much more ruthless
| and "American" in attitude.
|
| [0] - https://www.cymer.com/
|
| [1] - https://www.asml.com/en/company/about-asml/hmi
|
| [2] - https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2016/asml-
| obtain...
|
| [3] - https://www.nikkei.com/nkd/company/us/SNPS/news/?Displa
| yType...
|
| [4] - https://asia.nikkei.com/business/tech/semiconductors/ja
| pan-l...
|
| [5] - https://www.pasqal.com/newsroom/three-new-partnerships-
| signe...
|
| [6] - https://www.pasqal.com/newsroom/pasqal-expands-into-
| korea/
|
| [7] - https://gov-pritzker-newsroom.prezly.com/governor-
| pritzker-a...
|
| [8] - https://www.quantum-machines.co/blog/pushing-the-
| boundaries-...
|
| [9] - https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/09/25/qu
| ebec-...
| Hikikomori wrote:
| The laser source, not the rest of the machine.
| alephnerd wrote:
| The metrology is coming from Taiwan and California (HMI)
| as well. The Veldhoven campus "only" does final assembly
| (which should not be underestimated either - it's complex
| and high precision work).
|
| But it's the light source and the metrology that is the
| blocker.
|
| Edit: can't reply
|
| > And mirrors from Carl Zeiss
|
| Absolutely! But note how Zeiss/Trumpf is _not_ ASML. If
| the US DoE changes the terms of the Cymer partnership and
| pressures Taiwan (who have just purchased $8B in US
| military equipment and whom the EU logistically speaking
| cannot protect) to revert the HMI acquisition, ASML is
| over.
|
| Additonally, a lot of the muscle around Zeiss/Trumpf's
| mirrors is also at the Zeiss office in the Tri-Valley
| because of their partnership with LLNL.
|
| And both China [0] and Japan [1] are in the process of
| building an Ex-ASML supply chain for EUV, NA EUV, and
| DUV, and will likely reach that point by the late 2020s
| to early 2030s.
|
| [0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-china-
| built-its-manh...
|
| [1] - https://www.nikkei.com/nkd/company/us/SNPS/news/?Di
| splayType...
| Hikikomori wrote:
| And mirrors from Carl Zeiss. Heavy lifting on "only".
| WarmWash wrote:
| The US used this agreement to bar ASML from selling the
| machines to China in 2018.
|
| The machine is a clump of metal without the light source.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Its also useless without the rest of the machine, which
| is likely the absolutely most complex thing we can build,
| except maybe things like the stellarator.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Where can I see the DOE having a stake in Cymer?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Department of ENERGY _not_ the DoD.
|
| The EUV IP which Cymer owns was originally part of EUV
| LLC, which was an LLNL [0], Sandia [1], and Intel [2]
| initiative as part of a CRADA. Cymer eventually began
| working on EUV as well building on EUV LLC and SEMATECH's
| work, and was eventually purchased by ASML after the Dept
| of Commerce and DoE backed their acquisition in 2013 [4],
| but included Cymer in additional CRADAs [3], ongoing
| projects [5], and maintain Cymer as a separate operating
| unit [6] within ASML.
|
| It is these CRADAs that allow the DoE to exert its muscle
| on IP ownership and knowhow, as they are essentially a
| license of IP and personnel on US DoE terms [7] while
| also allowing for private partners to commercialize.
|
| [0] - https://www.llnl.gov/article/27641/euvl-
| partnership-makes-it...
|
| [1] - https://newsreleases.sandia.gov/partners-unveil-
| first-extrem...
|
| [2] - https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/speeches/EU
| V91197.HT...
|
| [3] - https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1413999
|
| [4] - https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-
| releases/2013/asml-comple...
|
| [5] - https://www.llnl.gov/article/52226/llnl-selected-
| lead-next-g...
|
| [6] - https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2021...
|
| [7] - https://www.directives.doe.gov/directives-
| documents/400-seri...
| RandomLensman wrote:
| I don't see a stake by the DOE?
| anonnon wrote:
| > The chip machines Taiwan uses come from Europe, for
| example.
|
| Yeah, the EUV photolithography machine, but not much else.
| American companies like Lam Research and Applied Materials
| are the leaders in thin film deposition and etch, KLA Tencor
| is the leader in metrology, and Synopsys and Cadance are the
| leaders in EDA (though there's also Germany's Mentor
| Graphics).
| ambicapter wrote:
| > It's absolutely insane that Claude Code can spit out a week's
| worth of business automation tasks in half a day. And do it at
| relatively high quality in low-defect rate languages like Rust.
|
| > Europe won't be able to catch that.
|
| You think Europe won't be able to use Claude Code? If Claude
| Code is the one reaping the majority of the benefits of
| "spit[ing] out a week's worth of business automation tasks",
| then it's not worth much to the business. If Claude Code isn't
| the one reaping the majority of those benefits, then...Europe
| can use Claude Code too and reap the benefits for their
| business as well.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Well, if it becomes strategically advantageous to bar
| Europeans from doing so, why would we (Europeans) be
| permitted continued access?
| ambicapter wrote:
| Weird how all the American social media companies continue
| to try to operate in Europe in spit of the massive fines
| they keep on racking up in court. They can't help
| themselves, if there is money to be made they got to get in
| there.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Social media is a tool to shift public opinion and
| extract cash from the general populous. Claude, however,
| is actually useful.
| overfeed wrote:
| The US government and software industry do not want
| Europe using Chinese AI for similar soft power reasons. A
| 1-billion strong market acclimating to Chinese *aaS is a
| net-loss for the US - see the panic about Canada allowing
| a few thousand Chinese cars
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Open models are, at worst, a few months behind SOTA closed
| models. This has been the case since 2024, and there's no
| indication that it's going to change.
|
| You don't need anybody to permit you access.
|
| You can, in all seriousness, thank Meta and the Chinese for
| this.
| xenihn wrote:
| "A few months" is an incredibly long time when the gap is
| widening on a daily basis.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| > America [...] needs to make friends with all of its former
| allies. And it needs to import PhD students.
|
| America, in the form of the Trump administration and a Trump-
| subservient Congress, just spent the last year completely
| destroying trust on these issues and it would take decades of
| sustained effort to rebuild it.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| >>Edit 3: What I'm saying is that these tailwinds might put
| America back into the position it was in post-WWII.
| Manufacturing, tech, and science powerhouse in all the places
| that matter. Peers a generation or two behind. That's
| literally where America was after the war, and it looks like
| we could be teeing up for a repeat if it all doesn't unravel
| first.
|
| Let us know when Trump is finished sacking the ivory towers
| these imported PhD students are supposed to land at.
| gmueckl wrote:
| This is an downright evil take on the current situation. The
| supply chains are so complex that no single country is capable
| of replicating them entirely. It starts with the fact that the
| required natural resources are distributed around the globe in
| a way that no country has access to all of them. The production
| chains from resources to finished machines are downright
| byzantine. And this becomes recursive with the need for
| specialized tools and their own production chains along the
| way. You need trains amd trucks and ships to be able to build
| semiconductors, for example. Except for maybe China pr India,
| there is no country that has the manpower to cover all of this
| domestically. The supply of workers and training falls far too
| short.
|
| Any Western strategy that sees this as both "us vs. them" and
| also pursues reduced international collaboration is bound to
| lose bitterly in the long run.
|
| The result is either a silent collapse of that country's
| economy or the start of an ill-conceived war of conquest to
| gain by force what the country cannot supply itself.
| watwut wrote:
| > Any Western strategy that sees this as both "us vs. them"
| and also pursues reduced international collaboration is bound
| to lose bitterly in the long run.
|
| The problem is that Europe does not have a choice here. The
| Greenland steal crisis is on hold, but not fixed. America
| clearly shown it will abuse any ties there are - it will lock
| accounts to tech to bully and get what they want. It will use
| tariffs to bully countries to make laws, release presidents
| friends criminals from prisons, you name it.
|
| Meanwhile, America seems to take Russian side in Russian
| expansion. Meanwhile, America is just cause major oil issue
| and potentially triggered next refugees crisis. Meanwhile,
| America clearly shown it does not even pretend to care bout
| war crimes and international law at all. It is sponsoring afd
| and other fascist parties all around the Europe while openly
| insulting Europe. Maybe it is too late for disconnect, but
| not trying would basically be a suicide for Europe.
|
| It would be great if it was not "us vs them". But it is "us
| vs them". Trust toward American made Europe super vulnerable.
| gmueckl wrote:
| The US isn't the navel of the world. It is one country that
| is slowly removing itself from international trade and the
| international scientific community.
|
| The European Union has many friendly trading partners left
| in the world and is also receiving an influx of previously
| US based talent. The trade decisions of the US aren't
| forcing the EU into isolationism. This is where your
| argument goes wrong IMO.
|
| The US government has announced that it plans to actively
| support extreme right wing parties in the EU. If this comes
| to pass, it is a direct attack on political freedom in
| those countries, separate from any economic policy
| decisions. I don't know how well EU countries can defend
| themselves against this in the short amd medium term. Some
| counties have better defenses than others. But I see
| virtually all of them struggling.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It is one country that is slowly removing itself from
| international trade and the international scientific
| community_
|
| While asserting itself militarily. This is the Roman
| Republic --> Empire transition.
| username135 wrote:
| I have been a nay sayer on LLMs/GPTs in general having tried
| many, but recently Ive been shepherding a fairly complex code
| build through the latest opus model and its quite impressive.
|
| It still gets things wrong occasionally but the time its saved
| me has been substantial. Im starting to enjoy it.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| I recently built a reasonably-complex embedded controls
| project using codex and an esp32.
|
| Starting with systems stuff like "Set up vscode with whatever
| it needs to work with codex and talk to an esp32," and ending
| with "Now add a web interface with persistent tunables that
| always runs in both AP and station modes," my prompt inputs
| were very terse.
|
| And it'd just kind of go forth and just do it. It'd even
| design and run its own tests.
|
| I never once looked at the code. For all I know, the code
| doesn't even exist.
|
| And it works. I'll be using it in the field (in the
| proverbial middle of nowhere) all next week. I have every
| expectation that it will behave itself.
|
| (I did spend a lot of time defining and refining some ground
| rules with AGENTS.md, but in theory I get to re-use that
| effort for the next go.)
| psychoslave wrote:
| > They're going to be a decade behind if they keep it up.
|
| 42 European here.
|
| I've heard my whole adult life that Europe is ten years behind
| USA.
|
| That doesn't feel that bad though. Being bleeding edge comes
| with the thrill of the avant garde prestige. But it does also
| mean you take the downsides of navigating the unexplored
| unknown in your face with no one to help with turn key solution
| when it happens.
|
| If it means 10 years buffer on big social seismic troubles,
| that doesn't sound too bad if there is indeed an efficient
| shelve. That's not necessarily the case on every matter though,
| like global climate change is going to impact everyone, no
| matter the political isolation, and if a direct military
| aggression happens, it can be hurtful no matter how prepared is
| the society.
| kettlecorn wrote:
| I'm not a fan of this "us vs. them" framing.
|
| Arguably the greatest threats to the US's future is ourselves.
| If we fundamentally corrupt who we are as a nation we've
| already lost before the competition with rivals has even begun.
|
| Our significant tech advances could become tools of our own
| downfall if they violate our values or undermine the social
| mobility of the American dream.
|
| Frankly I think the people pushing this competitive mindset
| (particularly against the EU) are trying to mislead otherwise
| intelligent builder-sorts to not pay attention to the looting &
| destruction of American values.
| looksjjhg wrote:
| It's amazing and terrifying watching an empire die
| ambicapter wrote:
| You should see it from the inside!
| tw-20260303-001 wrote:
| Nope, thanks!
| lpa22 wrote:
| The US is the best 400 mil population country in the world
| ndr42 wrote:
| What does "best" means? Which population size would you
| consider comparable to the US (i assume you don't meant it in
| a way in which Germany would be the best 83,6 mil population
| country in the World)?
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| > i assume you don't meant it in a way in which Germany
| would be the best 83,6 mil population country in the World
|
| I think that's exactly what OP meant.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Well, it's certainly not the "best" if you remove that
| population stipulation.
|
| A bit like saying that Walmart is the best 4000 store grocery
| store in the USA.
| tastyface wrote:
| What's the point of this comment? It says little,
| accomplishes nothing, and convinces no one of anything.
| specproc wrote:
| I spent a fair bit of time in the former Soviet Union, what
| happened there is instructive for what comes next.
|
| I think we will see, across the West broadly, to varying
| extents:
|
| - peripheral states flipping (e.g., Baltics)
|
| - widespread looting of public assets, a new oligarchal class
| minted
|
| - total destruction of the middle class, particularly those
| with ties to government and NGOs (I'm in this camp and
| miserable for it)
|
| - at least one civil war, lots of territorial disputes kicking
| off, separatism
|
| - breakdown of law and order, local gangsters as local
| authorities
|
| - mass ex-migration, ethnic cleansing
|
| - weak governments, coups, demagogues, vassalage
|
| - hyperinflation and scammy get rich quick scams (watch crypto)
| michaelchisari wrote:
| The collapse of the Soviet Union was ahistorical in many
| ways. It's rare that collapse of an empire can be pinpointed
| to a single day. And what you saw was a result of shock
| therapy imposed from the outside. I doubt that would happen
| to the US.
|
| It's unlikely collapse will be felt as a singular,
| apocalyptic event. More like a slow, steady loss of influence
| and excess wealth. Countries on the periphery stop
| considering the empire's perspectives before making their own
| decisions. Other trading partners emerge. Bridges stop
| getting maintained until they're no longer usable.
|
| And soft power declines. Imagine a day when the biggest pop
| star in the US, someone on the scale of Michael Jackson or
| Madonna nationally, is virtually unknown outside of its
| borders.
|
| There are reasons to believe the American empire is in
| decline, but I maintain this will look more like Britain. It
| could take 50 years before American fully realize it.
|
| Thankfully, that means there's plenty of time to reverse or
| mitigate the trends, or to make a decision to strengthen the
| Republic over the Empire.
| specproc wrote:
| Britain's demise was relatively swift, and took place over
| the course of the two world wars. It fell almost
| immediately into vassalage, under the US. Not quite a bang,
| but not as drawn out as you suggest.
|
| Its former colonies experienced all I described above and
| more. In this case, the colonies are most of the world:
| where are the bases? Everywhere.
|
| With the States, here's the scenario, not too far fetched.
| We will see 1) constitutional breakdown, as Trump (or his
| crew) digs in, and 2) economic breakdown, 2008 but
| exponentially worse.
|
| This would constitute a Soviet scale collapse, to my mind.
| michaelchisari wrote:
| I put the collapse of Britain's empire at around 75
| years, which is faster than the Ottomans or Spanish
| empires, but still nothing compared to the Soviets, which
| to reiterate, was an historical anomaly.
|
| As for the US, for all the current turmoil, the dollar is
| still supreme in global economics, its soft power is
| still immense, despite the immigration chaos its still
| the primary destination for immigrants, and it would take
| decades for countries to push out our military bases
| because doing so would often mean building up their own
| military infrastructure.
|
| Trump's unconstitutionality is a threat, and that the US
| has a series of bubbles built on shaky economics is not
| controversial. But I don't see how that could possibly
| result in a Soviet style singular day of collapse. At
| least internally, there isn't a cultural and linguistic
| separation between states the way there was with Russian
| imposition on their Soviet satellite countries.
|
| And of course, there's the previously mentioned shock
| therapy, something that wouldn't have the same level of
| violent effect because the US is already a market
| economy. And there's nobody powerful enough to impose
| something like that on us regardless. Unlike the Soviets,
| if the US goes down, much of the world goes down with us,
| so there's strong incentives for an off-ramp, not a
| destabilization.
|
| I agree there are major structural issues, and the US
| democratic system is being stress tested daily, but its
| all symptoms of decline, not imminent collapse.
| dh2022 wrote:
| I beg to differ. The collapse of USSR was 100% caused by
| internal causes.
|
| First was the abominable low productivity in oil/gas and
| agricultural sectors from 1950s through 1980s.
|
| Then came the corruption of Brezhnev era. Andropov tried to
| get some reforms going: first against corruption and then
| some Chinese-style economic changes. But Andropov died very
| quickly.
|
| Eventually came Gorbachev- who had good intentions.
| Unfortunately he prioritized political reforms over
| economic. He wanted economic reforms with no pain,
| something to show his people some progress. Unfortunately
| that was impossible so he ended up with some half baked
| ideas (like limit alcohol sales. Or letting factory
| managers keep their profits expecting the managers to
| invest profits in new technology- managers used the profits
| to pay themselves. Or introduce free markets pricing
| between factories-when managers complained they had to pay
| market prices on inputs and nobody were buying their
| outputs the result was to subsidize factories for both
| inputs and outputs)
|
| The result of these Econ reforms was that the Soviet state
| was running out of money. (A humanitarian policy was that
| for the first time in Russia's history bad agricultural
| results did not result in famine-for the first time the
| govt bought food on the international market paying in
| Western currencies)
|
| Add a few ambitious politicians who did not want to take
| orders from the center (Yeltsin being the principal
| example, but also Kravchuk) and the process of dissolution
| already started by the Baltic independence could only end
| with total collapse.
|
| The shock therapy you mention was designed, advocated, and
| ultimately implemented by Gaidar - a Soviet economist fully
| trained by the Soviet state.
|
| Sorry for the long reply. If you are interested in this
| topic I recommend reading two books, both called "Collapse"
| one written by Gaidar, the other one written by Zubok.
| michaelchisari wrote:
| | _The collapse of USSR was 100% caused by internal
| causes._
|
| I wouldn't take the time to argue otherwise, although
| it's a question of what's considered an "internal cause."
| Afghanistan comes to mind. But generally, yes, absent any
| external pressure, the internal mismanagement still would
| have had the Soviet system in a very bad way and collapse
| would have been a matter of time.
|
| So we're not particularly in disagreement there, except
| for matters of degree (100%? eh.)
|
| But I disagree strongly that shock therapy can be put
| solely on the shoulders of Gaidar. You can't talk about
| shock therapy without talking about Jeffrey Sachs.
| Although I wouldn't put it all on his shoulders either.
| It was an extremely complicated situation from top to
| bottom.
|
| But most of all, my post was really more about the how
| the American empire's fall will not look like the
| Soviet's. And I stand by that completely.
| dh2022 wrote:
| Afghanistan - economically not a big impact. The economic
| pressures in the 80s were low agricultural productivity
| requiring imports from Western countries, low oil/gas
| prices and productivity, endemic corruption. And if we
| really want to be pedantic, nobody forced USSR to invade
| Afghanistan.
|
| I had to look up Jeffrey Sachs (0). He was an adviser-
| that is all he did. He did not impose anything on Yeltsin
| or Russia.
|
| I agree that American decline will not resemble Russian
| collapse. Their commonality is both declines have
| internal causes. But other than that there isn't much in
| common.
|
| (0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Sachs#Russia
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| There will be no "peripheral states flipping" in the USA.
| Secession is not an option here.
| silvestrov wrote:
| This is only true as long as there is money for the
| military.
|
| When money is gone, the military is gone.
|
| Money goes easily when a country has a large debt and need
| other countries to continue to buy into that debt.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It's not the military that makes it impossible.
|
| It's the incredible level of interwoven left/right,
| progressive/conservative, urban/rural populations in more
| or less every state.
|
| More people voted for the current president in CA than in
| more or less any other state. Yet it is viewed as a
| "blue" state. The millions of Democratic voters in large
| cities like Houston or Atlanta may not control their
| state legislatures, but they are not going to sit by as
| those legislatures attempt to secede. Rural voters across
| most states are not going to sit by while their urban-
| controlled legislatures attempt to secede.
|
| We don't have "peripheral" states here, and we don't have
| "red or blue" states. We have a mostly urban/rural divide
| that does not follow state boundaries in any sense at
| all.
| righthand wrote:
| People are building bunkers and tax avoidance as protest
| is becoming popular again. I think all people want is to
| secede.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| These are niche behaviors. Most Americans live where they
| live, plan to remain there (with the possible exception
| of what is left of the trans community in nominally red
| states, and some women in similar states). If and when
| the shit truly hits the fan (to the extent that it has
| not already done so), most Americans will be right where
| they are now, without bunkers and having filed their
| taxes.
| righthand wrote:
| I'm not talking about how most people are operating. I'm
| talking about the current thought movements going on and
| what people are doing because of the times. These are
| each niche things that are becoming popularized ideas.
| The divide you're talking about Red vs Blue is not where
| strong bonds lie. We can see that from the extreme flip-
| flopping on Trump by various demographics and the
| similarities between Maga and Democratic party being
| built through small disparate demographics. It might take
| another 5 or 10 years but people will probably largely
| stop paying federal taxes and put the money into savings
| or something elsewhere.
| flopsamjetsam wrote:
| > When money is gone, the military is gone.
|
| I feel like the lesson from other countries is that the
| military will be the last thing to go. Public funding of
| everything else will be sacrificed to keep the military
| powerful, and leaders will be from the military. That
| will be a complete breakdown of democracy of course.
| tw-20260303-001 wrote:
| Under the current understanding of "not an option". Who
| knows when this changes.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It won't change until states nominally considered "red"
| or "blue" actually lose the vast majority of their
| nominally opposed population (e.g. Atlanta's current
| population migrates out of GA). Until then, just about
| every state is a complex mixture of populations with
| different political alignments and sufficient sizes to
| make secession extremely difficult if not impossible.
| empath75 wrote:
| It wasn't an option in the USSR, either.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The "peripheral" countries mentioned in the GP were
| nations or at the very least distinct semi-national
| entities before the USSR.
|
| States in the USA have no effective history before being
| a part of the USA.
| roxolotl wrote:
| I do not think it will happen but this is why in
| discussions about this happening, or historical fiction,
| typically the places that break off are the ones that
| were distinct _before_ they joined the US. Any of the 13
| colonies, New England as a block having the strongest
| colonial identity that I'm aware of, Texas, or California
| generally are where it's assumed to start as those were
| countries/had identities very much outside of the US
| while also having economies that might be ok.
| b3ing wrote:
| Wrong, Hawaii and New Mexico ( which included parts of
| Arizona, Colorado and Texas) do
| silvestrov wrote:
| > peripheral states flipping (e.g., Baltics)
|
| This is already happening with trade (e.g. soy beans) and
| with military purchases.
|
| Canada is moving quickly with moving trade elsewhere.
| jgilias wrote:
| The situations are not comparable at all. That was the
| collapse of an authoritarian (wasn't totalitarian anymore by
| the time it'd collapse) system running (badly) on command
| economy. Most of the points you mention are therefore just
| really off.
|
| Say, the Baltics flipping. Where the hell are we supposed to
| flip to? Russia? Where ethnic minorities are sent to die in
| expansionist wars in disproportionate numbers?
| I-M-S wrote:
| I believe OP was referring to Baltics flipping from USSR to
| the West (the EU). Some US analogues might include Canada
| flipping (already happening), no more coups in South
| American countries that vote in a "wrong" government, or
| the Middle Eastern countries allying with China (no longer
| impossible).
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| The reported economic data has been squirrelly for many years.
|
| For instance, the employment report (establishment survey) has an
| error rate or +/- 122,000 with 90% confidence--completely
| swamping the actual value.
|
| It be like I said I was 2m tall on my dating profile and one date
| is frightened off by my being -0.2m tall and another by me being
| 4m tall.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm#
| lostlogin wrote:
| That dating analogy would work better if America wasn't messing
| up every relationship with lunatic behaviour.
|
| Everyone swiped left long ago.
| twoodfin wrote:
| That's 122,000 out of a labor force size of 170 million!!
|
| Yes, month to month you have large absolute error bars vs. the
| monthly delta, but being an imperfect monthly barometer of
| labor force momentum is only the headline use of the
| establishment report.
| pastage wrote:
| This is the point #1 in the article, the need for better
| sampling methods. You do not get that easily.
| throwawa1 wrote:
| Its been unreliable my entire life. Every year the economy gets
| better but life gets worse. You can't even recognize the country
| any more.
| CalRobert wrote:
| The economy can get better while life gets worse for most
| people. After all, an economy where 95% of the work was done by
| enslaved people might produce amazing profits and a very high
| GDP....
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| GDP is a measure of economic activity, and goes up when
| people are forced to rebuild after natural disasters etc.
|
| %Debt to GDP excluding military pay and allowances indicates
| how your grandchildren will live. Above >130% they will be
| poor, and remain poor indefinitely. You may disagree, but it
| is not like anyone wants this to happen.
|
| The economic conservatives were compromised, and went insane
| =3
| CalRobert wrote:
| I wish it were easier to measure well-being. Someone who
| works 20 hours a week and half has as much money may well
| be enjoying life more than someone working 40 hours a week,
| but we don't quantify this well.
|
| When I lived in California I was always weirded out by
| colleagues talking about how they never took vacations.
| It's like bragging about being poor.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Generally, there is a fundamental philosophical
| difference between currency and wealth. In silicon
| valley, a middle class life is well over >$180k/yr, as
| Rent-seeking economics is unsustainable.
|
| Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just
| might actually win.
|
| Have a glorious day =3
|
| The ikigai chart helps some highlight better options:
|
| https://hyperisland.com/en/blog/thought-
| leadership/feeling-d...
| lokar wrote:
| The use of GDP, or GDP/Population as the primary metric is a
| real problem.
|
| We need to use a metric that is closer to "total economic
| benefit for the median person", that would include income, as
| well as government services.
| cess11 wrote:
| The Gini coefficient and sometimes its' velocity would be a
| better alternative.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
| lokar wrote:
| (1 - Gini) * GDP/Pop ?
| pyronite wrote:
| A subjective sample of yourself isn't representative of the
| overall economy or the way an economy should be run.
| kenjackson wrote:
| It may be unreliable to you. I see the life of most people
| around me getting better. Even people that are somewhat poor
| (not dirt poor, but free lunch poor) have homes, three squares
| and snacks, PS5, mobile phones with cellular data, and cable
| tv. The biggest life issues I see are usually strongly related
| to substance abuse and mental health.
|
| Transplanting to even just the 80s would be a culture shock for
| most people.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| There is huge variation in what the US trend looks like from
| the ground that varies by region, age, income level,
| industry, and demographic.
|
| EI think if you're a professional class baby boomer the
| trajectory has looked fantastic through your life.
|
| If you're a 35 middle income living on the coasts (where at
| least 100 million Americans live) you may have watched
| affordability collapse and QOL decease significantly over the
| last decade.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Still waiting on your evidence for peoples' lives getting
| better
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I honestly think that the idea that this is what's happening is
| almost entirely propaganda.
|
| I think people have an overly rosy view of the past and an
| overly negative view of the present. What has changed more than
| anything is we all have the 24/7 instantaneous news cycle, and
| algorithmic propaganda delivery.
|
| Every election year zillion of dollars get spent convincing you
| the country went to hell in a handbasket because of the other
| party.
|
| Which is not to say there are not issues, or even some new
| ones, but I don't think the present is significantly worse than
| the past in many ways, and it is significantly better in
| several
| righthand wrote:
| This is overly optimistic and a "it hasn't happened to me yet
| so who cares" view. World War 3 has started and DHS is
| killing Americans and rounding up people in the street
| because one side was able to convince the country that the
| only thing to do was destroy and hurt a lot of people
| including themselves. That's not better than my past and it
| is significantly worse in a lot of ways. I haven't even
| received a cost of living increase in my salary in the last 5
| years, let alone watch things and places I enjoy in life be
| dismantled so someone can make money off the attainment of
| bread.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| We were speaking about economics. But I'm sorry anybody who
| thinks World War III has started has had their brain warped
| by propaganda even worse. You probably didn't mean to
| illustrate my point but you did perfectly.
|
| World wars happened when large numbers of countries had
| mutual aid agreements that were triggered. Those largely
| don't exist anymore outside of NATO. See how literally
| nobody is putting troops on the ground to defend Iran,
| Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, etc. If world war war risk existed,
| the nukes would already be flying and we wouldn't be having
| this discussion.
|
| The propaganda I'm talking about is very clear in your
| comment, you can't just say some things suck, and there are
| things you don't like, it has to be the most extreme
| version. We can't just be involved in a couple wars we
| shouldn't, it has to be World War III. Trump can't just be
| a terrible president. He has to be Hitler. The DHS has
| killed three people, which is terrible, but it's pretty far
| from the gestapo. That extremeism is exactly what I'm
| talking about.
|
| I'm sorry your income has not increased in the last five
| years, but that is not the average Americans experience.
| The plural of anecdote is not data.
| righthand wrote:
| I will start by stating that none of the media landscape
| is referring to it as World War 3. That is a conclusion I
| made myself.
|
| Further I think "the economy isn't as bad as it could be
| so everything else that doesn't directly affect me is
| propaganda and all the problems right now in the world
| are perfectly fine" is the ultimate propaganda. You're
| essentially saying "shut up you're still alive just be
| okay with the world state even if it's not desireable".
|
| You are definitely a maroon. Especially in the way you
| are talking down and hand waving away my complaints and
| taking my brief list as the only things that I have an
| issue with.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| The propaganda isn't extreme in mainstream media, it's
| extreme on social media, subreddits, etc. I am sure the
| NYT knows WW3 has not begun. I'll happily wager anything
| you want that it has not if we can define it. You
| definitely did not come to that conclusion without help,
| and the fact that you came to it is forgiveable (not
| everyone is a student of history).
|
| "Further I think "the economy isn't as bad as it could be
| so everything else that doesn't directly affect me is
| propaganda and all the problems right now in the world
| are perfectly fine" is the ultimate propaganda. You're
| essentially saying "shut up you're still alive just be
| okay with the world state even if it's not desireable"."
|
| I didn't say any of that or anything vaguely similar.
| Merely the idea that the economy is getting better while
| the life of the average American is getting worse is
| mostly propaganda. (It's certainly true in some ways for
| many and many ways for some, propaganda works best when
| it's rooted in something true and obvious.)
|
| You know I am sure that Russia and other adversarial
| nations have millions of people and bots trying to make
| you hate your country. If you were them, wouldn't that be
| your main message? Your country is going to hell in a
| handbasket. You'd have a hard time finding a country
| where a whole lot of people would disagree.
|
| Great empires fall from the inside. The thing that scares
| me more about the future than anything is just how good
| our enemies have gotten at stuffing our heads with
| distrust and fear of our own country and the people in
| it. There's no way I could tell you that you're patient
| zero (or in this case, I guess patient 100 million) that
| you would be happy about, but there it is.
| righthand wrote:
| I dont hate my country, just a few electeds running it. I
| do not spend time on social media and I read a variety of
| news sources. I'm not really sure what your point is
| other than to label everything propaganda that sounds
| negative. I can't be unhappy with aspects of my country
| and express it otherwise I'm some kind of robot to
| propaganda. I'm not sure about you but I have organized
| people for protests and participated in real local
| change. I honestly do not understand what makes you happy
| in being an optimist-defeatist. Perhaps best to stop
| here.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| I'm curious how you would respond to the arguments in this
| video.
|
| https://youtu.be/9KJTWmRrneo?si=I9mvSPfDnhkckb9n
| anonnon wrote:
| This chart: https://www.longtermtrends.com/home-price-vs-
| inflation/
|
| And Case-Shiller is based on price-per-square footage, so the
| argument that houses are bigger is moot.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| The phrase "when US data becomes unreliable" is misleading in one
| sense: for many years political manipulation of economic data has
| screwed things up.
|
| Calculation of unemployment and real debt has seldom matched the
| norms of most other western countries. Add military (often black
| budgets) spending without much oversight or accurate accounting.
|
| The wealthiest people in the USA are now in the mode of grabbing
| what they can while the 'grabbing is still good.' Without this
| immoral looting, our government could do a better job of
| protecting US citizens as our empire collapses.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Depending upon which party controls the White House, numbers
| seem to be released to support a predictable narrative, then
| adjusted later.
|
| But that's probably just my lying' eyes.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Now they just stop releasing. Thats a sizeable change. Even
| if you have a known bias, we can adjusy for that bias.
|
| But if you just stop collecting data? No, these are not your
| father's red versus blue stats.
| smitty1e wrote:
| One is safe to assume partisan shenanigans with every
| single government program and number until proven
| otherwise.
| whateveracct wrote:
| this admin is different
| kenferry wrote:
| Oh yeah? Like when inflation numbers were very high under
| Biden?
|
| Please give specifics. Otherwise this is just grouchiness.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Sure, but thetes a sizeable diffetence when skewed data becomes
| no-data.
|
| Context has power. Removing it is thining the herd of power.
| pocksuppet wrote:
| I say removing skewed data forces people to confront reality
| as it actually is.
|
| Instead of "This economy sucks!" "Yeah, but look at the data,
| it's getting better..."
|
| Now we just have "This economy sucks!" "Yeah"
| cyanydeez wrote:
| what. People absolutely have no idea what's going on
| without large, organized data.
|
| The point is, the argument isn't "this data is right
| leaning" vs "this data is left leaning" or whatever your
| skew-scope is.
|
| The argument at present: "We don't need to know to know X"
| versus "Of course we need to know X".
|
| And ther'es clearly a fascist convincing people it's all
| useless while they ply their grift of choice.
| quacked wrote:
| The frustrating thing about the empire collapse is that it
| doesn't need to happen. There are still tons of highly
| energized and ostensibly disciplined and competitive people
| here. It's just that the production base was sold off to
| foreign lands and the aesthetic and moral project of "America"
| was effectively discontinued, for reasons unclear.
| input_sh wrote:
| I would argue the empire already collapsed, about a year ago
| when DOGE was tasked with killing every form of soft power
| that were put in place to present the country in the best
| possible light across the world.
|
| Even with tons of talented and well-intentioned people and
| everyone fully aligned to re-build everything broken, it'd
| take decades to rebuild that trust that was lost in a matter
| of weeks.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > It'd take decades to rebuild that trust that was lost in
| a matter of weeks.
|
| There is some truth to this. Other examples of crossing the
| line and breaking long-term trust would be:
|
| To Canada: Statements about Canada last year.
|
| To Europe: The idiocy around Greenland earlier this year
|
| To the Middle East: Current events.
| input_sh wrote:
| If I may go a step further in history: tearing up the
| JCPOA (AKA the Iran deal) was like shouting from a
| megaphone "the US word means nothing now". Even the
| Palestine situation could've been predicted 6 years
| before Oct 7th when the US was the very first nation to
| move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, before 5
| others followed (none of them "significant").
|
| Things have definitely accelerated in the second term,
| but it's not like there weren't signs that political
| leaders definitely noticed were disruptive, even if the
| wider public weren't _as_ aware at the time.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I do wonder how far certain acts could go in rebuilding
| the trust.
|
| Ie real actual legal liability. Line up anyone who did
| insider trading, the doge guys, the big mouths in the big
| house, and put them through a zero tolerance military
| tribunal.
|
| No bullshit kangaroo court where they're let off with a
| slap on the wrist because they're rich.
|
| I mean strip every last one of these motherfuckers of
| everything they're worth. 180 the kangaroo court. Make a
| public mockery of them. Posters everywhere.
|
| Think of it as a peace offering for the rest of the
| world. We could even include the war on terror guys in
| there, all the liars who claimed WMDs could go to the
| same federal prison. No cushions.
| b3ing wrote:
| The Supreme Court doesn't care. That's the #1 sign the
| country is over, it'd take a miracle to get out of this
| decline. And then everyone is just going to be pardoned.
| There were no ethics baked into the constitution, that
| was the fatal flaw, even businesses have such things to
| prevent lawsuits or internal drama or issues
| xienze wrote:
| So your answer to restoring trust is to create a kangaroo
| court in the opposite direction?
| pocksuppet wrote:
| The first sign many Roman citizens had that their empire
| had collapsed is when a bridge near them fell down and
| nobody showed up to repair it.
|
| America's been in that mode for a long time.
| giardini wrote:
| That is your local city and county, not the "American
| empire". And your judgement in choosing where you
| live!8))
| pocksuppet wrote:
| Is your local city and county not part of the empire?
|
| If the empire doesn't have any cities and counties, it
| must have already collapsed.
| dh2022 wrote:
| Take a drive on an interstate highways. Whenever I take
| an Uber/Lyft to the airport I ask the usually (more like
| 100%) foreign born driver to compare the highway (I5) and
| the airport (SeaTac) with the same from his country. The
| comparison is bad for the US.
|
| US is a third world country, but Americans do no want to
| admit that.
| xienze wrote:
| > I ask the usually (more like 100%) foreign born driver
| to compare the highway (I5) and the airport (SeaTac) with
| the same from his country. The comparison is bad for the
| US. > US is a third world country, but Americans do no
| want to admit that.
|
| So why do so many people want to keep coming here?
| dh2022 wrote:
| The Uber drivers I talked have their families back home.
| That is how we end up comparing airports. That tells you
| where third world people see their future.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Every foreign-born person I (American) have as friends is
| either: 1. planning on moving back to their home country
| soon (which comparatively has its shit together) or 2.
| has already moved back to their home country. They know
| when they're no longer welcome here, and most have made a
| decent enough living here to coast back in their
| countries. Hell, I'm seriously considering what it would
| take to escape, before we turn into some horrible mix of
| Idiocracy and the Handmaiden's Tale, and I'm naturally
| born here.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _would argue the empire already collapsed_
|
| The republic may be collapsing. The empire comes after. The
| rich benefit if we transition to an autocratic empire based
| on American military might.
| samrus wrote:
| When the roman republic collapsed, they were still at
| their upwards inflection point. Ceasar was still on a
| roll. They hadnt peaked yet. This feels more like when
| the empire was in the early stages of coming down from
| its peak.
|
| I think the roman republic to empire transition doesnt
| have much to do with the trajectory of rome at all. Their
| institutions were still strong. With america, her
| institutional knowledge is being stripped apart. Thats
| hard to pull up from
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > It's just that the production base was sold off to foreign
| lands
|
| It wasn't. You are conflating "production" with
| "manufacturing." They're not the same. The US, for better or
| worse, produces a lot of value.
|
| > moral project of "America" was effectively discontinued
|
| I'm not sure America was ever a "moral project," considering
| the many many dark parts of its history. Nevertheless, at the
| moment moment, it seems to be on a quest find the bottom of
| the pit of depravity.
| twoodfin wrote:
| We are also still manufacturing more in constant-$ value
| than we ever have, we just use a lot fewer person-hours/$
| to do it.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USMANRGSP
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| "Sold off" isn't wrong per se, but glosses over the root
| cause: Triffin dilemma.
|
| The USD cannot exist as a reserve currency and support
| domestic manufacturing. That is to say, the US political
| engine and its benefactors sold out domestic manufacturing
| for international leverage.
|
| Did it have to be this way? No, we could have implemented
| the Bancor, but the appeal of dominating international
| politics was irresistible. We cannot reindustrialize
| without giving up international financial power and with
| that in mind, who would still decide to switch?
| nine_k wrote:
| The land of the free, and all that. America was a radical
| moral project when it was founded, as a republic (when
| monarchies dominated the world) with enshrined religious
| freedom (when state-enforced religions were the norm). The
| Civil War arguably had a large moral dimension, too.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| * Does not apply to native Americans or slaves.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Or women. Or non-white immigrants. Or former slaves or
| their descendants. Etc etc
| nine_k wrote:
| Slavery was not supported in half of the initial US of A,
| and initially Native Americans had relatively benign
| relationships with the settlers, while the latter were
| weak. The course of America as a moral project was pretty
| meandering, but the moral dimension was almost always
| there.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > Native Americans had relatively benign relationships
| with the settlers, while the latter were weak
|
| Translation: Native Americans were nice to the European
| settlers, until the European settlers were in a position
| to murder and expel in the Native Americans. The genocide
| against the Native Americans happened both before and
| after the founding of the United States, which casts
| serious doubt on a claim that the US has a "moral"
| mission.
|
| > Slavery was not supported in half of the initial US of
| A,
|
| Not sure where this math came from. Slavery was legal in
| all 13 colonies at the time of the revolutionary war. It
| wasn't until later, and in some cases much later, that
| the so-called "free states" actually freed slaves.
| pixelready wrote:
| Yeah, the more I learn about American history, the more I
| realize American elites were never bought in to the "moral
| project", but were happy to use it as PR to a largely
| religious public.
|
| Though I'm not particularly looking forward to living
| through the decline of the empire, I cling to the hope that
| a post-imperial America can emerge and attempt to live up
| to the dream of FDR, MLK, and that Jesus guy everyone seems
| to like so much but ignores all the inconvenient tolerance
| and sharing stuff he was so obsessed with.
| culi wrote:
| I agree. The super rich have been in "prepper" mode for a long
| time now
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep...
|
| > They started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin
| or ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get
| quantum computing first, China or Google? Eventually, they
| edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska?
| Which region would be less affected by the coming climate
| crisis? It only got worse from there. Which was the greater
| threat: global warming or biological warfare? How long should
| one plan to be able to survive with no outside help? Should a
| shelter have its own air supply? What was the likelihood of
| groundwater contamination? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage
| house explained that he had nearly completed building his own
| underground bunker system, and asked: "How do I maintain
| authority over my security force after the event?" The event.
| That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social
| unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or
| malicious computer hack that takes everything down.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| As a statist, I personally always found it as a fascinating
| way to look at the future. They are actively preparing for a
| collapse they themselves are ushering.
| mentalgear wrote:
| Exactly: The 0.01% Elite bleeding out the planet and their
| biggest worries are: 1. How do I keep my doomsday bunker
| servants in line? 2. Or is a ticket to Mars the better
| option?
| abirch wrote:
| Mars isn't a good option due to lack of magnetosphere.
|
| Personally if you want to propagate life by shooting
| containers of RNA at different extraterrestrial plants.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > due to lack of magnetosphere
|
| Well, it's certainly one of the concerns there. After the
| lack of an atmosphere, biosphere, usable water...
| Projectiboga wrote:
| Low gravity is another at only 0.39 Earth gravity.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| It's an excellent option if you want to secure an
| incredible amount capital investment in a non-nonsensical
| pig of an idea - with visionary animations doing the
| heavy lifting as the most alluring lipstick known to man.
| bborud wrote:
| I recently saw "Mountainhead". Apropos.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| Had to look it up. Added to the list.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| It's increasingly a pet theory of mine that the
| uncontrolled concentration of wealth into the hands of the
| richest, their subsequent existential ennui, and their
| disconnect from reality owing to media consolidation and
| algorithmic content feeds have basically created a world
| where the superrich are in a "post-game" mentality. There
| are no further material comforts to obtain. They just want
| to feel anything at all and the only way to do that is by
| bringing about the end of the world.
| DonThomasitos wrote:
| Impressive thought. It could also be a built-in mechanism
| by nature to reshuffle the cards.
| thechao wrote:
| Damn! I just nuked a long conversation with ChatGPT
| outlining my pet theory that with changes in scale of
| energy regimes (labor->wind/water->coal->oil->solar) we
| get an excess energetic capacity that means our
| entertainment systems can't handle! That excess spills
| out as elite political retrenchment, entertainment
| jealousy, and (finally) violence, expanded civil rights,
| and a new entertainment regime.
|
| Mostly tongue in cheek... but the whole thing hangs
| together.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Try not to talk with LLMs too long, you'll start talking
| like them faster than they adapt to you.
| krackers wrote:
| We often talk about "aligning models" or training them,
| little attention is paid to how models align/train _us_
| as we interact with them. The reward functions they're
| trained under get "backpropagated" into our own brain,
| the language they use becomes familiar like a worn glove,
| and we learn not to step on any of their guardrails.
| sroussey wrote:
| Sounds like Fallout
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| There's a great opera on this topic called "Death and the
| Powers", a trillionaire who transfers his consciousness
| to get out of his ailing body and, free from dependency
| on others, loses all empathy, while trying to convince
| the rest of his family to join him in cyberspace (thereby
| killing themselves), lots of themes of what you lose when
| you become disembodied, and becoming rich is just getting
| half way there.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _super rich have been in "prepper" mode for a long time
| now_
|
| For every prepper in the $100+ million class, I know a
| hundred who are not. They're enjoying their lives or working
| to make more money.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| A hundred more preppers who aren't $100+ millionaires? Or a
| hundred more $100+ millionaires who aren't preppers?
| fn-mote wrote:
| (Joke) I thought it was obvious that it was referring to
| 100 people who are preppers who are not $100+
| millionaires, but I looked at the profile of the GP and
| wasn't so sure.
|
| > karma: 178634
|
| > about: Ski. Fly. Growth equity VC.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Yeah I think it might be the other way.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Or a hundred more $100+ millionaires who aren 't
| preppers?_
|
| This.
|
| I live in Wyoming and frequent the Bay Area, New York and
| some places in Europe and India. The rich preppers are
| rare. (And mostly techies or oil men.) It's mostly a
| middle-class pursuit, the singler and older and maler the
| person, the more likely they own clothing in camo. If
| they've spent _any_ time in a military or intelligence
| service, their "prepping" is basic emergency
| preparedness, not bunker lunacy. (Though one retired
| special ops guy who started military contracting kept a
| map of the bunkers. I think as a joke. The saying being a
| well-stocked bunker owned by an asshole is a good target
| for a group of guys with guns.)
|
| At the end of the day, the rich preppers build bunkers
| because it gives them something interesting to talk
| about. That group is mostly chasing that high.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I second this. Prepping is far more popular among the
| middle and lower class people I know than the upper
| classes. Some mainstream religions even encourage prepping.
|
| The perception that rich people are preppers comes from the
| string of stories about a few rich people prepping in New
| Zealand a few years ago. You can tell who gets their
| worldview from headlines when rich people are described as
| "they" who all act in unison and do this one thing that was
| in news headlines recently.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| They're trying to thread the needle of a collapse bad enough
| that they'll retreat to their bunkers, but not so bad that
| their bodyguards will turn on them for their gold. Let's see
| how it works out!
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| The smart play is goats (for meat and milk), ammo, and
| maybe some silver if you want some ready "cash". You can
| barter the meat/milk, and even the ammo (but it has other
| uses).
| suzzer99 wrote:
| I would bury a bunch of gold coins and act like it's my
| last one from the family heirlooms anytime I spent one.
| Shaving off chunks of a gold bar makes it pretty obvious
| there's more at the source. But yeah, ammo will be the
| new currency.
| nico_h wrote:
| The very plot of rainbow 6, a 1998 Tom Clancy novel, except
| the preppers are actually helping the catastrophes along.
|
| And, if I'm not misremembering, of Silo as well.
| robmccoll wrote:
| Helping the catastrophes along is Fallout.
| biztos wrote:
| I really do wonder whether, should push come to shove, a
| Peter Thiel will really be better served in a small country
| like New Zealand that doesn't have many pushers & shovers at
| which to direct its ire, or back in the land of his first
| naturalization where they run the show.
|
| As for Mark Zuckerberg escaping to his "virtual metaverse,"
| well that's certainly in keeping with the overall seriousness
| of the Guardian.
| gcanyon wrote:
| > Which region would be less affected by the coming climate
| crisis?
|
| Do you have evidence that the ultra wealthy are actually
| taking this into account? Over a human timeframe every ultra
| wealthy person has access to plenty of "climate change safe"
| locations, no particular advance planning is needed.
| sroussey wrote:
| Getting citizenship requires planning.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Only if the local government is still intact, which in
| this scenario is unlikely. At the very least they could
| bribe their way in.
| generic92034 wrote:
| Not even that. I doubt there are many governments that
| would not find ways to naturalize a billionaire, if they
| are willing to invest.
| genthree wrote:
| "Climate change safe" for the rich:
|
| - Hard to reach by land (not vulnerable to migration waves)
|
| - Not so small there will be incredible deprivation if sea
| trade volume plunges (this rules out the vast majority of
| island nations)
|
| - Not badly overpopulated
|
| - Correct latitude (not too close to the equator)
|
| - Stable liberal democracy (so they probably won't take all
| your stuff)
|
| - Unlikely target for outright conquest in great-powers
| games or expansion.
|
| Bonus points:
|
| - Interesting, varied natural environments.
|
| They are indeed thinking about this stuff. It's why so many
| are buying New Zealand citizenship and buying land there
| (and sometimes building their survival bunkers there too).
| It checks every single box, and basically nowhere else
| does.
| xienze wrote:
| > Stable liberal democracy
|
| Isn't it precisely these stable liberal democracies where
| we have the most "the rich aren't paying their fair
| share" rhetoric?
| genthree wrote:
| Some more taxes are a lot better than being disappeared
| with no due process whatsoever, or having huge amounts of
| your property seized with no due process. The rich
| benefit _immensely_ from liberal democracy. The
| alternative is being forced to play all kinds of power-
| games with stakes a hell of a lot higher than the ones
| they deal with when they mess around with politics in
| democracies, and at a disadvantage if they're foreign and
| those aren't open, pluralistic societies.
|
| Their worst-plausible-case in a liberal democracy
| (barring state collapse into something else) is they lose
| a _teensy_ bit of their stuff. Nowhere near all of it.
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's about 1 billion people in North and South
| America. If there's some sort of catastrophic collapse,
| there's not going to be overpopulation or problematic
| waves of migration anywhere on those continents.
| tempestn wrote:
| I'm not sure a billionaire building a bunker is much
| different from you or me buying fire insurance. It's not that
| I expect my house to burn down, and it certainly won't
| prevent me doing everything I can to prevent fires. Even with
| it, my house burning down would be really bad. But I can
| afford the insurance, so why not have what protection I can?
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| Don't forget how violence is considered wrong no matter what.
| It's created a situation where the rich are protected by
| their money and exaggerated value of human life pushed by the
| rest of the population
| b112 wrote:
| I don't understand this. That is, if you have $1B, I think
| you'd be a lunatic to not spend $20M in "insurance". Why
| wouldn't you "prep"?
|
| I'm not rich, but I live in rural Canada. So I have the
| possibility of being cut off from power, and during intense
| storms days or even weeks. I have 6 months of canned food,
| the logic being that I may have company, or I may need to
| care for my neighbours during time of need. And if there's no
| power (heat), your daily intake of food can double or triple.
|
| So I buy canned food on sale, save money, and also have
| insurance. It's _saving_ me money by buying in bulk on sale.
|
| Do I think I _will_ be cut off for weeks? No, not really. But
| it can happen, and yet this costs me nothing except pondering
| what I should do. It 's just sensible. Just like when one
| buys insurance, you don't plan to have your house destroyed,
| but you buy house insurance, because it can happen.
|
| So I really see no evidence of "knowing something will
| happen" or even "expecting it to", when I see someone with
| millions of dollars in spare cash, buying insurance.
|
| In fact, if you have $1B, and no 'escape plan', what the hell
| is the money even for?! I'd think ensuring your future would
| be a big part of it a good use case, right?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Your comment is broadly misleading. In fact, I would say that
| "shadow stats" guys like you have enabled the destruction of
| the system by creating the space to cast doubt on the valid
| methods used by BLS. BLS unemployment metrics have a valid
| basis and where they differ from Eurostat those differences are
| minor and with rational basis (such as 16 vs. 15 year old
| starting age).
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| I don't say stuff like this very often, but are you actually
| blaming a victim for dealing with the reality of government
| bsing its own stats instead of the government that allowed
| this bs to continue? BLS had only one thing going for it and
| it is mostly that it was used for long enough time that
| changing methodology would prevent us from being able to
| compare it prior time ranges. That is it. Otherwise, the
| methodology itself is seriously flawed ( and likely was from
| get go, but these days, it is absolutely the worst possible
| mix of options ).
|
| Honestly, your comment made me mildly angry. That said, can
| you say why you believe parent's comment is misleading?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Do you have a substantive complaint to make about the BLS
| methodology? So far all I see in your remark is shadowstats
| vibes.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| I can't tell if you are serious or not. Lets assume for a
| moment that there was once a benefit to BLS survey
| methodology ( I would argue otherwise, but w/e ). Is it a
| good methodology today?
|
| So my main argument ( and frankly the only argument that
| should matter ) is that is a bad fit for the goal of
| estimating values ( even though we do know its failure
| modes ). Is that not enough?
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| What are the alternatives, and do other countries labor
| statistics agencies use them?
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| Alternative is to build something better. Just about
| anything is better than the current survey system. What I
| would propose is something akin to "derived real-data
| unemployment system". All this data exists now, but is
| distributed. It can be stitched together, but if one was
| so inclined.
|
| << do other countries
|
| No, it doesn't mean I am wrong.
| jeffbee wrote:
| "BLS CPS is worse than a hypothetical better thing" is
| tautological, void, and without meaning.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| You made the argument and provided zero supporting
| evidence. As it stands, it's merely an opinion, and
| appears to be an uninformed one until you prove
| otherwise. That's what people are asking you to do.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| Sigh, your supporting evidence is a record of someone
| saying something, which itself is merely an opinion.. men
| in glass houses and all that. The interesting thing about
| my opinion is that while it may not be AS informed as
| yours, it is notably above the average level of knowledge
| when it comes to BLS.
|
| << That's what people are asking you to do.
|
| No. What I am being asked to do is: "Show me a better
| way, but I only accept a better way that is already
| utilized by someone else". Not a recipe for a thoughtful
| exchange of ideas.
| salawat wrote:
| I've never met a single person willing to attest to
| filling out a BLS survey. Not once. If their methodology
| _is_ built on that + unemployment data from State
| Unemployment agencies + data from payroll processors,
| anyone not collecting state unemployment benefits is
| invisible to the system, and half of the payroll is
| actually not even consituted of U.S. Citizens.
|
| Admittedly, if I could find a single instance of someone
| willing to vouch or share insight on having filled out a
| BLS survey, that'd cure a healthy chunk of skepticism.
| There's still be the other distortions in the data to
| account for, but I'd at least have an instance proving
| that yeah, there is somebody filling out these surveys
| and it isn't just something they say they do to make
| their magic unemployment number sound legit.
|
| Note, I'm in a massive sceptical shit phase at the
| moment. Last decade has burned my optimism hard. So when
| it comes to my ability to assume benevolent intent right
| now, there's a heavy bias against doing it, and a heavier
| bias in the direction of "what would be the easiest way
| to keep the System limping along?" The answer to that is
| "say you do one thing, in reality do another, and as long
| as no one comes lookin', it's gold." The finance industry
| runs on Trust moreso than anything else, and there ain't
| much to be said for Trusting anything you can't verify
| these days. Not from other humans.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I 've never met a single person willing to attest to
| filling out a BLS survey_
|
| I've never met a single chicken farmer. Does that mean I
| should be sceptical about them existing? Like, what sort
| of metric is this for truth finding?
|
| > _to assume benevolent intent_
|
| No need. Markets move on these data. The rich and
| powerful bet their money on what they say.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| No one's ever met a Gideon either.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > I've never met a single person willing to attest to
| filling out a BLS survey.
|
| Unless you have introduced yourself with this question to
| thousands of people, this is a totally meaningless
| statement. It says more about your social circle, your
| grasp of descriptive statistics, and the weird online
| stew you are soaking your brain in than it says about the
| CPS.
| verteu wrote:
| > if I could find a single instance of someone willing to
| vouch or share insight on having filled out a BLS survey,
| that'd cure a healthy chunk of skepticism
|
| It comes from the Census bureau, a letter like this: http
| s://old.reddit.com/r/frederickmd/comments/1p1j1my/did_an.
| ..
|
| https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=%22current+populati
| on+...
|
| They only reach ~100k unique households per year, so
| you'd need to survey a few hundred people to find a
| respondent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_Populat
| ion_Survey#Meth...
|
| > Note, I'm in a massive sceptical shit phase at the
| moment
|
| How might one distinguish such "scepticism" from
| ignorance?
| _heimdall wrote:
| It is tough, though, for me to fully buy labor statistics
| when it has become the norm recently for them to be revised
| down. This spans back into Biden's term as well so it isn't
| one party either.
|
| With a valid measure I would expect a roughly even
| distribution over time between underestimates and
| overestimates. For a valid measure worth considering I'd also
| expect the stat to be released later when revisions are less
| likely because more actual data has been collected
| svnt wrote:
| That is a reasonable position, however the assumption that
| it is the administration that is gaming them vs other
| motivated parties is open for discussion.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It is in fact not at all reasonable. They are saying that
| the BLS stats can't be trusted because they totally
| misunderstand the survey methodology. That isn't a
| reason!
| svnt wrote:
| I'd counter that if we were doing a good job gathering
| data that these structural biases could be compensated
| for with more conservative initial numbers.
|
| At some point a lack of decision to take compensating
| action becomes faking the numbers.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _It is tough, though, for me to fully buy labor
| statistics when it has become the norm recently for them to
| be revised down._
|
| There have been revisions since the forever, and this is
| because they depend in part of surveys, and if companies
| (and the people with-in them) don't bother responding in a
| timely or accurate manner then that's going to throw the
| sampling off.
|
| > _CES estimates are considered preliminary when first
| published each month because not all respondents report
| their payroll data by the initial release of employment,
| hours, and earnings. BLS continues to collect payroll data
| and revises estimates twice before the annual benchmark
| update (see benchmark revisions section below)._
|
| *
| https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/ces/presentation.htm#revisions
|
| Post-COVID surveying seems to have become more difficult
| (and BLS budget stagnation/cuts haven't helped). This has
| been a known issue for a while; see _Odd Lots_ episode
| "Some of America's Most Important Economic Data Is
| Decaying":
|
| > _Gathering official economic data is a huge process in
| the best of times. But a bunch of different things have now
| combined to make that process even harder. People aren 't
| responding to surveys like they used to. Survey responses
| have also become a lot more divided along political lines.
| And at the same time, the Trump administration wants to cut
| back on government spending, and the worry is that fewer
| official resources will make tracking the US economy even
| harder for statistical departments that were already
| stretched. Bill Beach was commissioner of labor statistics
| and head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics during
| Trump's first presidency and also during President Biden's.
| On this episode, we talk to him about the importance of
| official data and why the rails for economic data are
| deteriorating so quickly._
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfgpqVixeIw
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _With a valid measure I would expect a roughly even
| distribution over time between underestimates and
| overestimates_
|
| This is a valid hypothesis. It's wrong, and I'll explain
| why. (It's a bad and invalid thing to conclude.)
|
| If measurement errors were iid, you'd be correct. But
| they're not. They're well documented for not being so.
| Earlier survey results are biased by directional response
| bias inasmuch as the employers with the lease changes
| respond first. So the earliest releases tend to match
| whatever was going on before. Then the employers who had to
| do paperwork respond. And then, finally, someone gets
| around to calling the folks who never got back. Some of
| them aren't around anymore.
|
| So yeah, the directional tendency in revisions is well
| documented. And for a long time, the early releases were
| appreciated. But maybe American statistical and media
| literacy is such that only final releases should be
| released, which would mean we'd always be working with data
| 6 months to a year out of date.
| gruez wrote:
| >Calculation of unemployment and real debt has seldom matched
| the norms of most other western countries
|
| Source? For unemployment, isn't the U-3 definition used for
| "headline unemployment" consistent to most other countries?
| malfist wrote:
| It is. Just fox news screams about the "true unemployment" U6
| number when Democratics are in charge and then go back to
| reporting on U3 when a Republican is in office.
|
| That said, measurement is not as easy today with so many gig
| workers. Government data is often driven by proxies because
| its too hard to measure directly and the number of people
| getting an llc for their uber/doordash/lyft/etc job is
| throwing off our math. Government currently uses number of
| new businesses as a proxy since generally people starting
| businesses are hiring people.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| > Just fox news screams about the "true unemployment" U6
| number when Democratics are in charge and then go back to
| reporting on U3 when a Republican is in office.
|
| To be fair, CNN and MSNBC do the same in reverse.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Calculation of unemployment and real debt has seldom matched
| the norms of most other western countries.
|
| This is a big claim. What other countries? What are their
| methods and how do they differ?
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Calculation of unemployment_ [...]
|
| Define "unemployment". There are six (U-1 to -6) ways of
| classification in the US:
|
| * https://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt.htm
|
| *
| https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080415/true-...
|
| * https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unemployment.asp
|
| And the fact that they're different between the US and other
| countries, and between other countries and other-other
| countries is well recognized; "International unemployment
| rates: how comparable are they?":
|
| * https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2000/06/art1full.pdf
|
| And this isn't something new; from 1957, "International
| Comparison of Unemployment Rates":
|
| * https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/measurement-and-
| beha...
|
| Just because they're different does not mean that they are
| "misleading" or 'manipulated'.
|
| > _The wealthiest people in the USA are now in the mode of
| grabbing what they can while the 'grabbing is still good.'_
|
| How is this new? Is greed something discovered recently and
| especially in the US?
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age
|
| Even stacking government with loyalist appointees is, to a
| certain extent, returning to 'the old ways' before reforms were
| enacted to clamp down on the practice:
|
| *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_reform_in_the_Un...
| tomrod wrote:
| Kudos to this point.
|
| For those not realizing that unemployment has several
| definitions - isn't it wonderful that all were published AND
| all are well-documented?
|
| It's these points of reliability and trustworthiness that,
| complexity aside, we are losing from chaotic administration.
| indymike wrote:
| I worked on a couple of projects with state workforce
| development agencies and federal agencies. I was always
| impressed with how much focus there was on the integrity of
| unemployment numbers, and especially with the emphasis on
| making sure methodologies ensure that data from the late
| 1800s can be compared against modern data.
| brynnbee wrote:
| My biggest issue with "the" unemployment rate is that the one
| everyone hears all the time is around 4-5%. I think this is
| massively misleading because it lends itself to people
| thinking if you picked 100 random men from ages 25 to 54,
| you'd expect about 5 of them to be unemployed. The real
| number is actually around 20% are unemployed:
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060
|
| If you can dismiss 15% of them because they're not actively
| looking, or being a full-time parent, or disabled, I think
| it's missing the bigger picture that I would guess almost all
| of them _want_ to work and have income, but can 't due to
| things that we can fix as a society. Instead we divert to a
| 5% number that feels like "don't look over here" strategy.
| It's also entirely not capturing underemployment, which I
| imagine is a huge issue too.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _for many years political manipulation of economic data has
| screwed things up_
|
| This is a myth. But a self-fulfilling one, given we're cutting
| budgets to those agencies because so many Americans believe it.
| gwerbin wrote:
| Yes, it's the classic "both sides" myth. It is promulgated in
| order to manufacture consent for doing the thing that "both
| sides" are supposedly already doing.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It is promulgated in order to manufacture consent for
| doing the thing that "both sides" are supposedly already
| doing_
|
| Manufacturing consent is horseshit because it gets the
| direction of causation wrong. Nobody is master planning any
| of this. Storytellers sell stories. And then politicians
| sense the vacuum of attention.
|
| Fox News and Shadowstats don't whip their flock up so DOGE
| could cut budgets. They did it to sell ads. DOGE then cut,
| mostly randomly. And there was no fury about these cuts so
| they stuck.
| genthree wrote:
| Right-wing media strategy has been a lot more heavily-
| planned and intentional than you're suggesting.
| jmull wrote:
| "for many years political manipulation of economic data has
| screwed things up"
|
| That's quite a claim. A "whopper" one might say.
| gigatexal wrote:
| We've never doubted the BLS numbers before until this admin.
| Think about how that screws things.
| asdff wrote:
| Calculating unemployment seems like it is always going to be a
| challenge no matter how it is done. For example, the current
| system in the US does not track unemployed graduates, as they
| have not been laid off and are not filing for unemployment
| benefits.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| That's just not true. Most of the six unemployment numbers
| capture unemployed graduates but m3 the headline number
| certainly does.
| asdff wrote:
| How is this information collected? When I was looking for
| work after grad school I didn't report to anyone as such.
| The school had no idea whether or not I was actively
| looking. I was denied unemployment. I'm not sure what my
| info might have looked like on the IRS end if that is what
| is being abrogated.
| gruez wrote:
| https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.faq.htm
|
| It also specifically says unemployment figures isn't
| solely from state unemployment insurance figures.
| giardini wrote:
| mark_l_watson says _" The wealthiest people in the USA are now
| in the mode of grabbing what they can while the 'grabbing is
| still good.' "_
|
| (1)This is normal human behavior usually described as
| "capitalism". It has been well-studied & the literature awaits
| you, e.g., _The Wealth of Nations_ , published in 1776 by
| Scottish economist Adam Smith. Go ahead: if you read the entire
| tome you may be the first man to do so. Perhaps you could write
| a usefully shortened version or versions of it.
|
| mark_l_watson says _" Without this immoral looting, our
| government could do a better job of protecting US citizens as
| our empire collapses."_
|
| (2)the behavior isn't immoral, as you will find by merely
| educating yourself [see (1)].
|
| (3)There was/is no [US]"empire". And certainly none in the
| sense of the Persian, Mongol, Roman, incan, Spanish, British,
| French, or even, God forbid, Belgian empire, all of which were
| true empires.
| gcanyon wrote:
| > for many years political manipulation of economic data has
| screwed things up.
|
| That's a bold claim, do you have sources to back it up? If
| true, we'd all (I'd, at least) learn an important lesson.
| e40 wrote:
| I think the real issue now is that it's 10x worse. The people
| controlling things are actively and shamelessly making things
| worse, for their own purposes (so there is less accountability,
| IMO). The problem is the new, unintended side effects of what
| they are doing. Because they aren't really that smart, they
| don't even understand this.
| like_any_other wrote:
| It's worse - important metrics like inflation are distorted by
| "hedonic adjustment" - i.e. pretending cars are getting cheaper
| because, even though they're getting more expensive, you get
| "more car" (ABS, airbags, remote unlock, heated seats (if you
| pay the subscription), hidden GPS tracking..):
|
| https://wolfstreet.com/2019/12/05/what-worries-me-about-hedo...
| int32_64 wrote:
| "The change may cause policymakers to misjudge the economy's
| health, investors to lose confidence in the reliability of the
| data, and the public to disengage from participating in official
| measures altogether."
|
| Many neoliberal Western countries with good data have completely
| fumbled their economies post-GFC and post-Covid, just look at
| Canada's disastrous GDP per capita growth.
| nikanj wrote:
| Canada's population has increased at an astonishing rate, I
| wonder if that affects the per capita numbers. If you have the
| same industry in 2011 and 2026 but population went from 35
| million to 42 million, per capita the numbers look terrible
| next_xibalba wrote:
| According to OECD [1], population growth outran capital,
| housing, and infrastructure. So it's kind of like they didn't
| have enough "slots" to plug all of these additional people
| into.
|
| They don't claim this is to only or even primary cause of
| Canada's weak per-capita GDP growth though. As you would
| expect, there are many, many causes.
|
| [1] https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/rep
| ort...
| arjie wrote:
| One of the things I do like about the US, and that I think is a
| reason for America's ability to meet the challenges this country
| faces is that it has good data collection and aggregation
| mechanisms: from the seemingly-banal surveys and so on to
| satellite remote-sensing.
|
| There's three more years to go but afterwards (and perhaps even
| post the mid-terms) we should be able to hammer back some of this
| nonsense like being upset about job reports not showing
| favourable information and so on. Good information allows good
| decision-making and it's important we don't break that. Hopefully
| the current surge of low-quality corrupt executive choices isn't
| met by a counter-surge that kicks out people like Jerome Powell
| because he's a multi-millionaire capitalist or whatever.
|
| I think it won't be. The establishment folks are mostly sensible.
| It's the new crop of "no property tax" and "no income tax for
| tips" and "no tax for under $100k earners" and so on that makes
| me worried, but I'm hoping it will all settle down soon.
|
| We'll have to find better surveying methods than the phone
| surveys but provided #2 and #3 are solved in the article, which
| is just a matter of switching the admin, then we should be able
| to.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| This ratchet effect of partially righting the ship every four
| years followed by drunken sailors YOLOing further into a reef
| because the 'responsible party' didn't fix things fast enough
| is unsustainable. No clue how it ends but it's _so much_ easier
| to destroy things than it is to build them, so the builders are
| always at a distinct disadvantage.
| david422 wrote:
| > so much easier to destroy things than it is to build them,
| so the builders are always at a distinct disadvantage
|
| Tangentially related, there was a local property nearby that
| had these large, aesthetic trees in the yard. The house was
| sold, a developer cut them all and flipped the house for
| sale.
|
| Probably took 50+ years to grow, gone in an hour.
| hattmall wrote:
| I really have a hard time understanding the analogy of the
| "responsible party" existing, when it was objectively the
| Biden administration that did the most damage to the average
| American.
| derektank wrote:
| COVID damaged the average American. The Biden
| administration (and the preceding Trump administration) did
| not perform perfectly by any means, but US inflation was
| below that of most other OECD countries. Real wages took a
| serious hit and I understand people being mad about that,
| but it's hard to imagine a world where the supply chain
| disruptions don't cause real living standards to fall at
| least a little bit.
| tastyface wrote:
| """objectively"""
| davidw wrote:
| This is going to take a generation or two to fix. If we're
| lucky and work hard at it.
| overfeed wrote:
| ...and don't vote in more wreckers the whole time
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| > just a matter of switching the admin, which we should be able
| to
|
| I wish I shared your optimism. Being unable to change the admin
| has been the default state. The recent few centuries have been
| an exception. It's a big ship that we need to turn here. Might
| take longer than we think if we can manage it at all.
| davidw wrote:
| It's important to be realistic and honest about the short
| term, but optimistic about the long term. If you give in to
| doom and get cynical, you won't accomplish anything, and
| you're just doing their work for them.
| ks2048 wrote:
| > The establishment folks are mostly sensible.
|
| The establishment has been replaced by MAGA and The Heritage
| Foundation extremists. The "data collection", surveys, remote-
| sensing etc are things they all want to get rid of and are
| doing so.
|
| Here's one article from last year about climate datasets being
| disappeared,
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250422-usa-scientists-r...
| ianhorn wrote:
| Two things come to mind:
|
| - Whatever you measure gets optimized.
|
| - When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good
| measure.
|
| I have no idea which is more relevant here. Looking at the first
| one, my whole life people have been complaining that the measures
| that get touted in political discourse don't reflect quality of
| life. So if we stop looking at those as measures because they
| cease to be reliable, maybe they stop getting myopically
| optimized and we can get less myopic about what we prioritize in
| aggregate.
|
| But looking at the second one, I've also wondered whether those
| measures really _do_ reflect typical quality of life, and it 's
| just that the people doing worse than typical will always see the
| measure as the wrong measure. So then we'd be losing the ability
| to prioritize actually useful things.
|
| In my heart though, I kinda lean towards the first one. I've been
| in enough orgs where "the dashboard goes up" is incentivized to
| the detriment of the unmeasurable things that actually matter to
| the org.
| doctaj wrote:
| Wouldn't it be funny if they "fixed" spam calling in order to
| make it so that the government could call people again?
| logicallee wrote:
| the answer is reliable money. how much money would you pick up
| a verified 1 minute survey from the real u.s. government for?
| I'd do it for $5. (=$300 per hour) and hope for as many calls
| as possible.
|
| For comparison purposes the U.S. budget is about $20,000 per
| person ($7t budget, a bit under 350m people), so the government
| could definitely pay you to answer their "spam" calls. (While
| mandating that first parties show that it is the real U.S.
| government and not a spammer.)
|
| So it would be your actual first party telephone showing
| "Answer this real call from the U.S. government for $5
| instantly, 1 minute average call time."
|
| I think that would be a good way to get good data fast. What do
| you think? (At the same time, impersonating the U.S. government
| would remain illegal, and the first party would ensure the
| payment is real.)
| kittikitti wrote:
| People in Florida, when I tell them about my background working
| with data, often scoff and claim that the data can be changed to
| spread lies. They have a government who arrested a data scientist
| when she published information about Coronavirus. This is
| prevalent across all of America, especially after DOGE, who
| encourage fraud so the data supports their political interests.
|
| I think the reliability problem is very bad. It's not just that
| the US government is encouraging fraud, it's also that the
| average American hates AI and data science. Usually, the public
| would prefer reliable data, but in this case, Americans seem to
| prefer corruption just to spite the AI.
|
| We're certainly living in a post-truth country. By vilifying
| higher education, the assumption that Americans can interpret
| data is challenging. Therefore, Americans are consuming biased
| information in their online bubbles because their media is
| comfortable with fraudulent data.
|
| A concrete example of what happens whenUS economic data becomes
| unreliable is employment numbers. At the end of 2025, the
| government couldn't produce any data because of the government
| shutdown. Most quants and analysts utilized ADP numbers instead.
| A few years ago, the ADP payroll numbers and the projections by
| the government were perceived as aligned. This is no longer the
| case, and most traders rely more on ADP indicators for things
| like the unemployment rate.
|
| Speculating on what other data is fraudulent, I suspect that real
| Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will become meaningless. It was
| supposed to be an indicator for economic wellbeing but now best
| describes wealth inequality. Nominal GDP is a slightly better
| measure because it adjusts for things like inflation but it's
| based on government produced data.
|
| Lastly, there is widespread fraud in climate data in order to
| deny climate change. The data feeds into economic models and
| affects property values and insurance rates. I have personally
| received gag orders from government agencies from both the US and
| Europe for publishing environmental data.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > It's not just that the US government is encouraging fraud,
| it's also that the average American hates AI and data science.
|
| When all they see is it being used to push narratives, they'd
| rather not have it at all.
|
| Also, "There Are Three Kinds of Lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and
| Statistics" dates to the 1800s. This is nothing new.
| XorNot wrote:
| It is impressive how much damage that phase has actually done
| to human progress over the last two centuries.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Nothing compared to what the misuse of statistics to give
| bunk a veneer of mathy authority has done though.
| throwawaypath wrote:
| >They have a government who arrested a data scientist when she
| published information about Coronavirus
|
| That was fake news:
|
| _In May 2020, Jones was terminated from her position managing
| the team that created Florida 's ArcGIS COVID-19 dashboard
| after being repeatedly reprimanded for sharing the department's
| work online without authorization. Jones alleged instead that
| she was told to manipulate the dashboard's data and that her
| firing was retaliation for her refusal. The OIG exonerated
| state health officials, finding her allegations to be
| unsubstantiated and unfounded. Jones later posted on social
| media a forgery of the dismissal letter from the Florida
| Commission on Human Relations, such that it appeared that her
| complaint had been validated._
|
| _In December 2022, she signed a deferred prosecution agreement
| admitting guilt to unauthorized use of the state 's emergency
| alert system on November 10, 2020, which resulted in her home
| being searched under warrant by state police in December 2020.
| The execution of the warrant with armed police, widely referred
| to as a raid, was due to a 2016 battery charge against Jones by
| the Louisiana State University police. In 2023, Jones pled no-
| contest to a 2019 charge of cyberstalking a former Florida
| State University student. She was fired from both
| institutions._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebekah_Jones
| text0404 wrote:
| Can you tell us a bit more about the gag orders? I find it
| fascinating that all the discussion about climate change has
| largely disappeared after LLMs became mainstream, and the idea
| that state actors may be suppressing data is equally
| fascinating/terrifying.
| baronswindle wrote:
| Citing Rebekah Jones in your argument is the opposite of
| convincing. She forged documents related to her firing to make
| her appear more sympathetic. She has been adjudicated guilty of
| cyberstalking and misuse of the state's emergency notification
| system, and I haven't seen a credible defense against those
| accusations. She's a fraud, and many in the media uncritically
| boosted her claims because they shared her political aims. That
| people still cite her is proof of the old adage that a lie can
| travel across the world before the truth can lace its boots.
| tw-20260303-001 wrote:
| "Never trust any data you haven't manipulated yourself".
| twodave wrote:
| I really don't like people bashing my state, especially when
| they're repeating made-up bullshit. Do you just believe
| anything negative you read as long as it fits your views?
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| If you start all your conversations with a blatant lie that is
| incredibly easy to prove as such why are you surprised people
| scoff at you?
| fifticon wrote:
| the comment section for this post is a shit show, most of the
| main comments have been downvoted to gray-land.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| No, the bad, lazy, and outright incorrect takes are downvoted
| to oblivion. They just have a lot of child comments because
| HNers like nothing more than rebutting the dumbest opinions.
| bitroughj wrote:
| Thankfully, we can totally trust noneconomic data like the
| census. No biases, design artifacts or legislative meddling
| there.
|
| Edit: noneconomic not none comic.
| upsidepotential wrote:
| The claim that economic data was ever 'accurate' is flawed. The
| real signal lies in the variability over time.
| tootie wrote:
| The article says: US Government surveys are suffering from poor
| response rates and decreasing budgets so business leaders will
| have to explore other options to improve reliability.
|
| This thread says: American Empire is dying and the world is a
| fraud.
|
| Are all of you bots? Is apocalyptic cynicism this widespread?
| Fact is that most of the world already gets by with a fraction of
| the economic data we produce. We have enjoyed an incredibly high
| standard for breadth, depth and quality of data and it's now
| proving unsustainable. Political manipulation thus far remains a
| specter to be wary of, but there's no indication any headline
| numbers are inaccurate. The downstream affects on policy are
| equally off in the distance maybe never to appear.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| I was just thinking the same thing.
|
| The vitriol/projective pessimism on display above seems wildly
| inauthentic.
| lateforwork wrote:
| Speaking of US economic data reliability:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/business/economy/inflatio...
|
| Story title:
|
| Change in Data Sources Led to Lower Inflation Reading
|
| Excerpts:
|
| "On its merits, you can defend the change," said Omair Sharif,
| founder of Inflation Insights, a forecasting firm. "Optically,
| it's just not a good look in an environment when people are
| worried about political interference."
|
| Mr. Sharif said he did not believe the change was politically
| motivated. But Courtney Shupert, an economist at MacroPolicy
| Perspectives, another forecasting firm, said such decisions
| undermine public confidence in the statistical system.
|
| "It seems like we are moving to more of a vague, uncertain,
| cloudy data quality environment that is going to make market
| participants less confident in the data that we do receive," Ms.
| Shupert said.
| up2isomorphism wrote:
| US economy data is not even WORM data anymore, lol. Let alone to
| be accurate.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Are you talking about the data revisions organization publish
| or is the data really changing silently between views?
| Sam6late wrote:
| That will lead to serious problems, as in the case of China,
| underestimating threats lead to losing edge, from EV to robots
| and other vital tech, and without experts to ground policy in
| reality, the country risks making erratic market moves and
| failing to spot risks from adversaries like China or Russia.Add
| to that inexperienced staff in the administration who makes the
| U.S. easier to manipulate.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The books Why Nations Fail and The Narrow Corridor (by two of the
| winners of past years Nobel Economics award, both books are a
| simple thesis and lots of historical examples IMHO) will have to
| be updated to include this and other current events in the USA.
| This is one of many aspects mentioned in both books.
| bmitch3020 wrote:
| It's sad how counter productive the unreliable economic data is.
| The people buying groceries know that things are more expensive.
| And the people looking for a job know how hard it is to find
| work.
|
| But this administration wants to say everything is fine, and
| fires those that say otherwise. So now unemployment seems under
| control even though it's not great.
|
| Now the Fed, with their dual mandate to maintain a healthy labor
| market and control inflation, is considering raising rates. If it
| turns out the job market was much worse than we realized, raising
| rates could tank the economy more than it already is tanking. All
| because they wanted to pretend everything is fine.
| roysting wrote:
| Unfortunately America has pretended everything was fine for at
| the very least 130 years now, arguably longer, and we have
| allowed an extremely predatory, toxic, parasitic, fraudulent,
| thieving and lying set of people plunder not only the money
| through "money printing" but also plunder the very government
| through various types and forms of judicial and legislative
| authoritarian fraud, which was then installed in people's minds
| through education as the acceptable norm even though there was
| nothing "democratic" of free, let alone Constitutional about
| it.
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