{"id":1032,"date":"2016-12-08T10:15:44","date_gmt":"2016-12-08T14:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=1032"},"modified":"2016-12-08T09:40:24","modified_gmt":"2016-12-08T14:40:24","slug":"im-pretty-sure-its-not-the-economy-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2016\/12\/im-pretty-sure-its-not-the-economy-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m Pretty Sure It’s *Not* the Economy, Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listen: Basically all consumer goods are imported.\u00a0 <\/span>Go through your things now and look for labels: your phone, tv, and computer are Chinese; your shirts are Bangladeshi and Cambodian, your pants Mexican and Nicaraguan. There is exactly one<\/i><\/b>\u00a0U.S. factory making men’s underwear; those undies are awesome<\/a>, and cost ~$28 each.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"art
(art by DonkeyHotey)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If Trump places a 35% tariff on foreign goods, you’ll need a $6,000\/year raise in order to keep treading water (in that your spending on imported manufactured goods\u2014about 38% of the average American household budget<\/a>\u2014will go up by 35%). Alternately,\u00a0you can spend $28 for each pair of Made in the USA<\/em><\/strong> underwear, $12 for every pair of socks, and I guess not have an iPhone or TV or vitamin supplements or anything with a rare-earth magnet in it (i.e., a computer, a hybrid car, many power tools, many car covers…the list goes on).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Inflation-Adjusted<\/a>
Inflation-Adjusted U.S. Household Income 1966\u20132015 (source<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The only reason that most Americans haven’t noticed that our real (inflation-adjusted) household incomes have been flat since 1965<\/a> is\u00a0<\/span>because we’ve enjoyed the enormous savings on manufactured goods that comes with globalization. I’m foggy on why anyone wants to give that up\u2014even if, by some crippled miracle, a huge\u00a0tariff leads to t-shirt and underwear manufacturing returning to U.S. soil, we don’t have the capacity to produce those things at volume any more. \u00a0I think there’s only a single jersey cotton weaving mill left in the U.S. \u00a0It would take years to get factories retooled (or, hell, built; many of those old factories are now lofts, open-plan offices, and unoccupiable\u00a0attractive nuisances). \u00a0In the meantime you have the same crappy job you did in October, and you’re paying 35% more for the same shoes and kids pajamas and\u00a0phone chargers and disposable razors.<\/p>\n

So what were Trump voters voting for if it wasn’t the economy, stupid<\/a>? \u00a0I really can’t imagine; I didn’t vote for him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listen: Basically all consumer goods are imported.\u00a0 Go through your things now and look for labels: your phone, tv, and computer are Chinese; your shirts are Bangladeshi and Cambodian, your pants Mexican and Nicaraguan. There is exactly one\u00a0U.S. factory making men’s underwear; those undies are awesome, and cost ~$28 each.\u00a0 If Trump places a 35% … Continue reading “I’m Pretty Sure It’s *Not* the Economy, Stupid”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11],"tags":[71,66,53,56],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1032"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1038,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions\/1038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}