From Brandon Smith
It is an economic rule which free market philosophers like Adam Smith have tried to explain to governments and monopolists for centuries:
Less liberty and more centralization equals less production and less overall wealth.
Governments and central banks have sought to circumvent this rule by printing money from thin air, thinking that they can create wealth while at the same time suffocating public financial interactions and trade with authoritarianism. This, of course, only leads to inflation or stagflation, and thus wealth is never actually created, it is projected like a hologram in order to trick the masses into thinking that all is well – until everything breaks, that is.
Inflationary policies inevitably lead to speculation
To be sure, capital is concentrated under this system into the hands of a select few, but the currency itself is devalued swiftly and buying power is truncated. Speculative assets and many commodities start to see a burst of activity as the inflation grows out of control.
Some of these assets will implode eventually, especially those that offer no intrinsic value or utility, that were only ever purchased in the hopes of passing them on to a greater fool. Others will explode even higher. Essentially, bizarre bubbles in various sectors are in reality a warning of the inflationary crisis to come.
Exhibit A: Rare Whisky Icon 100 Index near its all-time highs.
Exhibit B: The billion-dollar ecosystem of cartoon apes
There are mainstream economists out there arguing that monetary policy decisions and authoritarian mandates have no real world consequences. The inflation is “transitory”, they claim. The public will “adapt” to the new normal and submit to the controls for their own good. Central bank stimulus will defuse all crisis events in the meantime and helicopter money will placate the citizenry. Throw the public a few scraps from the table and they will shut up and happily nibble.
These academic policy-makers and unelected bureaucrats refuse to see these speculative bubbles as what they actually are: Desperate moves to avoid inflation. No one wants to hold dollars when they can watch their purchasing power being destroyed daily, so they seek something, anything else. Eventually, most of these illusory safe-havens will collapse into worthlessness (how much will your Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT be worth next year?)
As I have been saying for many years now, an economic crash in the U.S. simply cannot be avoided, and it can only be hidden from public view for a limited time. And that limit is expiring fast.
Well, guess what? The crash is here now right in front of us and it is becoming obvious even to people who barely pay attention.
The “Everything Shortage” is the beginning of the end
For a while now preparedness advocates like myself have been warning about the incessant bottlenecks and weaknesses within the U.S. supply chain, a system highly dependent on “just in time” freight. It has been saddening to see our warnings go unheeded for so long. Now, the circle of idiocy is nearing completion and large elements of U.S. supply and trade are trapped, waiting on a handful of U.S. ports and a crippled freight network to process billions of tons in product before it can reach wholesalers and retailers.
And, it’s only going to get worse because the causes are not being addressed.
There are a number of reasons for the breaking supply chain, and it would not be fair to place all blame on a single culprit. However, the “perfect storm” we are witnessing is perhaps not as coincidental as it might appear. At the very least, government officials and corporate elites have known about the fragility of our supply chain for quite some time and have done nothing to remedy the situation.
Here are the primary time bombs within the supply chain as I see them…
A shortage of port workers
Labor shortages have been a cancer within our economy for the past 18 months and the ports are no exception. Covid mandates and lockdowns have stifled business operations including those at “essential” services. In particular, it was the Covid unemployment benefits and welfare checks that caused the bulk of our existing problems by paying workers far more to stay home than they would make on the job.
While federal covid checks have technically “ended”, some benefits are ongoing and state covid “benefit enhancements” are flowing through various channels such as SNAP. This is on top of regular state unemployment checks. So, even though federal programs have been slowing down, state programs continue which means many more months of labor shortages to come. There are numerous people out there that have not worked a job in over year despite the fact that job openings are ample. In May it was estimated that 30% of the unemployed representing around 9.2 million workers had been jobless for at least 12 months. And why not? Why work when the government pays you to do nothing.
Port worker shortages are ongoing due to a loss of employees at the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns that still has not been remedied. It is important to note that the states with the worst port congestion are the states with the most Covid restrictions (blue states). So much so that red states are taking on extra port traffic to mitigate the congestion in places like California and New York, but they can only do so much.
Truck driver shortages
As with the port workers, trucker shortages are rampant. The industry estimates 80,000 to 100,000 truck drivers need to be hired immediately just to stave off the current backlog of containers at ports. At least 13 cross-country shipments need to be completed for each truck driver working today in the U.S. This means that at the current speed of freight deliveries they will never catch up to the backlog.
Trucks carry about 60% if all goods to retailers across the U.S., not to mention raw materials to manufacturers. If the trucking system shuts down, the economy shuts down.
Vaccine mandates
Now we are getting closer to the root cause of our supply chain dilemma. Biden’s vaccine mandates and the Covid mandates in general have been the primary trigger for the worker shortages. This goes for port workers as well as truck drivers.
Vaccine mandates are forcing workers in important infrastructure positions to make a choice – Stay at work and take a vaccine with no long term testing to prove its safety, or, refuse and look for work elsewhere. Many are choosing the latter.
The brink of disaster
It is important to understand that in most of these industries a loss of only 10% of the workforce would lead to disaster. Right now, many ports and companies are looking at a worker loss of 30% or more. This would cause the supply chain to grind almost to a halt, and there’s nothing Biden or state government can do about it because most of these jobs are skilled labor requiring years of training and experience. There is no pool of skilled workers waiting in the wings to take these jobs. There is no contingent of national guardsmen qualified to fill them. There is no group of qualified foreign workers they can ship into the country to take up the slack who can also speak English well enough to function. There’s no one.
They might be able to patch together a facsimile of the former supply chain, but it will be a joke in comparison. Biden’s mandates can and likely will cripple U.S. freight and the economy overall, and maybe this is deliberate. Biden’s handlers and cabinet are the true policy writers, and they know full well what the damage will be as the vaccine mandates take effect and millions of workers refuse to comply. Either they don’t care, or, they hope to make hay with the ensuing chaos while blaming the vaccine refuseniks.
I suspect they did not think there would be so much opposition in America to the mandates, so Plan B is to spin the narrative to their advantage by crashing the system a little early. Resistance to the vaccine passports is necessary to saving our republic in the long term, but it’s important to realize that we, the unvaccinated, will be painted as the villains in the short term just for quitting our jobs or being fired for non-compliance.
The inevitable dollar devaluation and stagflation
The bigger problem which almost no one in the mainstream is talking about is the effect of money creation and price inflation on the supply chain. For one, helicopter money through Covid checks has caused a flood of demand for overseas goods, which dilutes the buying power of the dollar because now there are more and more dollars chasing less and less available goods. The goods are becoming more valuable to foreign manufacturers than the dollars Americans are trying to trade for them.
Stimulus measures in the U.S. have the peculiar benefit of shifting inflationary damage offshore for a time, because the dollar is the world reserve currency (for now). Banks and corporations around the globe continue to hold dollars in reserve for future trade, but this could change quickly.
The Federal Reserve and the government have created at least $6 trillion in new money in the span of a mere 18 months according to official estimates. Foreign holders of dollars are losing buying power the longer they continue to keep these reserves. It’s only a matter of time before they begin to liquidate on a large scale. As this happens, all those dollars held overseas will come flooding back into the U.S. and with them comes crushing price bubbles.
I believe incredibly high shipping prices are in part a representation of dollar devaluation. If I am right, then shipping and container prices will remain relatively high compared to pre-pandemic and pre-stimulus levels even as retail demand falls. The falling dollar might not be immediately visible to the public or markets, but the supply chain burdens and price spikes will be punishing American consumers from now on.
Sheltering from the stagflation storm
The solutions are rather straightforward, but with far reaching social implications and a loss of power for the establishment, which is why they will never happen peacefully:
- End the covid mandates
- Incentivize manufacturing on U.S. soil
- End the Federal Reserve
- Return the U.S. to the gold standard
The powers that be clearly benefit from economic disaster in the U.S., so applying any practical fix would be contrary to their agenda. The more economically destitute a population becomes, the more desperate they are. The more desperate they are, the more they tend to submit to control on the promise that they will be secure in the necessities of life. A hungry citizen is a compliant citizen. And a broken supply chain is a great way to inspire such fear.
This requires actions outside of the system to insulate local and state economies. If the goal is economic instability through supply chain disruption, then Americans will have to create their own supply chains closer to home. This means local production and manufacturing of goods, localized trade systems, alternative currencies (backed by commodities) or physical gold and silver and resource management outside of federal regulations. In other words, complete decentralization is the answer to the conundrum of government imposed chaos.
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Prior to the Convid 1984, there was a shortage of more than 100,000 skilled mechanics. These people tend to be very conservative and I would bet half will not volunteer to be jabbed. They can take their tool box home and repair trucks/equipment for cash. Trucks do not roll and container handlers do not move without someone making the repairs. Container handlers work in a tough environment and are not usually operated by the best of the best.
Here’s Why U.S. Supply Chain Problems Will Only Get Worse
Brandon maybe the reasons you give were true at one time but that is no longer true.
Now the problems will only get worse because TPTB want it that way for now. No other reason. Quite by design there is no longer any price discovery of anything anywhere. It has been made impossible to unwind all the non market factors involved in the everyday pricing of “Things”, any Things. Identifying yet another symptom won’t change a thing.
This one isn’t true any longer…
“If I am right, then shipping and container prices will remain relatively high compared to pre-pandemic and pre-stimulus levels even as retail demand falls.”
Shipping rates are dropping like a rock. Capesize Index was 10,500 a month ago and is now around 3,200!!
That said, trucking rates in the US may still be elevated due to the shortages in that industry and the rising cost of fuel. I don’t see the cost of trucking going down anytime in the near future… Chip
Read for comprehension.
I said true price discovery. Not the outward sticker price of a shipping container or a gallon of milk.
“It has been made impossible to unwind all the non market factors involved in the everyday pricing of “Things”, any Things.” Notice I said non market factors. I doubt you’ll get any argument from Llpoh or Austrian Peter about that sentence.
Every product or raw material input to a product has it’s own Micro Matrix of regulations, subsidies, taxes, tax rebates and deductions all sucking sap from the tree or blood from the host.
Basically what you are seeing is the cost of liberalism. Liberalism is non productive and must live off the sweat of a producer somewhere in the food chain. The regulatory agencies are bassically a jobs program for liberals and those who support them. A regulator hires an accademic to do a study in order to write a regulation etc. as an oversimplified example.
This.
It take one farmer to raise a pig and prepare it into cuts for market.
It takes an additional six to twelve apparatchiks to regulate, inspect, index, HACCP, codify, human resource, indemnify, insure, oversee, analyze, study, review, underwrite, subsidize, process, package, ship, store, stock, and market a single pound of bacon.
I can’t sell mine for less than $20 a pound and after all those people have dipped their beak their far inferior product is still available to consumers for about 1/5 that price.
The entire system is broken, nothing functions naturally or organically and everyone who isn’t clever and resilient is eventually forced out of the market until the only thing that will be left to choose from is whatever they tell you they have, even if it’s pure garbage.
Yep,
The Cow/Calf producers are the input end of the beef production line and they’ve been taking it in the shorts for years.
I’m buying my own feeder steers from the rancher next “door” (shared fenceline) and skipping all the middle meddling bureaucrats. I have a bandsaw and my husband knows how to use it.
That and a good grinder. Vacuum pack it and it’ll Damn near last forever frozen.
Slowly then all at once.
https://www.henrymakow.com/2021/11/makow—-we-sold-our-freedom.html?_ga=2.7266290.1172902103.1635950059-585894304.1630817101
Producers tend to use standard cost to determine the cost of their products. They are not guessing about what they paid. Take the (total cost of the inventory + new cost)/total quantity to get the new unit cost.
That changes nothing about price discovery and the true cost of Liberalism and the fact that is unsustainable. It must break at some point.
They have waged a ‘War Of Attrition’ on the American people. Nobody hates the American people more than the American government.
But Virginia turned Red!!
Sounds like the fucker is serious about this mandate shit.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/vaccine-test-biden-advances-sweeping-mandates-private-sector/story?id=80946163
I guess they are expecting the Corporate Fascists to enforce the mandate. OSHA can’t enforce the rules they have on the books right now. I worked in or around construction for two decades and I never once saw an OSHA inspector on one of our sites… Chip
The compromised fuck( commie mother fucker too) running our company says he will have to follow OSHA mandates, I know it’s coming.
Well, you can always burn his house down.
In terms of strategy, it might be a good thing. They HAVE to get crazier if people are finally going to wake up. Look at VA. McAllLeft would have won if he hadn’t opened his stupid mouth about parents and CRT. Most people are sheep and only react when they are faced with consequences that impact their lives directly and painful. We are almost there.
Return to the gold standard? The elite would loose their stranglehold on this world and just be rich. NOT GONNA HAPPEN! There is not near enough gold in the world to back all the currency floating in the world. 20 years ago dividing all the currency at that time by the total amount of gold available came out to about 1 million per ounce. Today’s figures would be much higher than that. Another thought on this. Usdebtclock.org lists current currency and derivatives at 601 TRILLON. Cover that figure with gold. Start digging and smelting. Good luck.
All it requires is a complete reset of money; a new dollar. It’s coming anyway with CBDCs.
The only thing that would work would be to use a large basket of raw commodities to back the currency. That way the labor to produce the commodities would back the digital currency.
Let’s go Brandon. LOL
My undergraduate degree was a BS Business from CU Boulder. I remember one of my Senior classes was International Marketing and the big theme was the world would be totally interconnected and the ideal was to let the countries best suited, make the products and then they would ship them to where they were needed and things would be much more efficient and economical. In the same tone, things like just in time delivery and increased efficiency were huge subjects with countries like Japan leading the way. FYI I graduated from CU in 1983. Fast Forward almost 40 years. We make nothing here in the United States but we consume like a Sailor seeking booze on Liberty. Why, because our bureaucracy makes it too expensive to produce here so we’ll just ship it in and let the slave like labor in China and the third world make it. Despite the shipping, it will still cost less than what it would cost to make it here. By no means do you warehouse things and keep a supply on hand “just in case” the “just on time” system has a hiccup. That would cost the big multi-national corporations dollars off the bottom line, can’t have that.
I’m all for capitalism and profit. However, just like for example a souped-up hot rod, there’s a maximum and an optimum. You push the engine constantly to the red line on the tach (the maximum) and you’ll go fast and win races but you’re going to blow the engine much sooner, rather than later. Push that engine not quite as hard and stay a little below the red line, you’ll still win races and you might lose a few but the engine will run a lot longer (the optimum). The Dear Lord said it for a reason, the root of all evil is avarice, the love of money. Sometimes, some pigs at the trough (Soros, Gates, Bezos, Schwab, et al) just don’t ever seem to get full.
Funny thing is, I think the pigs listed above, don’t care about blowing the economical engine. As a matter of fact, and I know I’m preaching to the choir here at TBP, they intend to blow the engine. “Build Back Better” aka welcome to the new medieval serfdom. The pigs just keep eating and get fatter and fatter and we all take it in the shorts. Most of the sheeple will take their vax like they’re told and then go off and die. The sheeple that live will be the new serfs. The remaining who don’t take the vax will be hunted by TPTB’s wolves and exterminated. I will not go peacefully into “That Good Night”. I prefer to go standing in a pile of hot brass rather than kneeling and licking chains that bind me.
Are you a fucking moron? We make nothing here in the US? Do a bit of research and quit being an imbecile. The US is STILL a mighty manufacturing nation, and seriously, that is fucking stupid. We make extreme amounts of goods. As a matter of fact, manufacturing as a percentage of GDP has remained largely unchanged since forever.
Seriously, what the fuck. I have posted time and again links to where anyone in the US can buy anything they want US made. And supposed educated people post shit like that. Fuck me dead.
Stick to jamming your hands up cow’s asses. I do not spout off about that stuff, as I know nothing about it. I have a lifetime in manufacturing, though, and know this shit inside and out. You know not a fucking thing about this or you would not spout such an outrageous falsehood. Your fucking narrative is a damn lie.
Your F’ng sorry ass is stuck on the prison island of Australia. Who is the F’ng moron.
You are the asshat. You regularly spout off about stuff you know nothing about. Get a fucking clue. I know nothing about cows, and you clearly know nothing about what the US manufactures. You said and I quote “We make nothing here” which is a total fucking lie. The US is a powerhouse of manufacturing, you dolt.
Tell the auto manufacturers waiting for chips from Taiwan that.
That is a management fuck up. You said nothing is made in the US. That is imbecilic.
Nothing of importance, like those chips. There I fixed it are you F’ng happy now. Most sane people understood what I meant when I said we make nothing here. You’re a F’ng hair splitting mouth breather. What about pharmaceuticals? Yes I know we have manufacturing in the US of drugs. But, the vast majority are made elsewhere. Let’s time travel back about 30 years. Good old penicillin G was used quite a lot in veterinary medicine at that time. There was ONE plant that manufactured the raw product in Germany. When that plant was shut down by regulators guess what happened. Yep, even old green sleeves like me understand supply chains. Get the general gist you F’ng nit picking anal retentive bastard.
Once again you put forth narrative with the “vast majority” crap. It simply is not true. It takes a bit of digging, but if you dig you will find that 54% of all US drugs are US made. Do not buy the narrative, Doc. There is a kernel of truth, but people give up buying US made because they think that it is impossible to find US made. And it just ain’t so.
I agree you can find and buy US made. I’m not arguing that point. The problem as always is follow the money. Most consumers these days look at the price and not the quality first, ala Walmart and Amazon. Most of the big manufacturers are Multinationals and make things where their costs of production are lowest. I agree that the US has the capability but, the almighty love of the dollar whether in the hands of the consumer looking to buy or the producer looking at the bottom line dictates the market. The current dilemma of supply chains is just a reflection of this.
I’m not for this current system. The US has to get back in the race and start making key things like more computer chips than we’re currently producing.
Assembled from chinese and other foreign ingredients.
To quote another famous Indian, what do you mean we?
All due respect but you’re just an observer living in a penal colony.
And you deliberately overlooked the point. Yes there is still manufacturing in the US, plenty of it in fact, but there’s an awful lot of critical components that aren’t being made here any longer and the supply chains critical to just in time systems are fragile under the best of circumstances, fragile as hell when they are being deliberately compromised and/or targeted by those who are enemies of Western capitalism.
I personally think that this is the single best thing to have happened to America in the past century. We’ve been pursuing all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons for so long people came to believe that the way things were somehow, normal. They aren’t and they haven’t been and now it’s time to sober up and reassess the meaning of life on a grand scale. And in every time of crisis and change there exists opportunity for those willing to read the wind and take the risks.
Either way people are about to learn how to live on a lot less with a far more limited menu.
HSF – stick to jokes and farming. You are out of your league when it comes to anything re manufacturing. Seriously. I am a world class expert in the field, you not so much. I have forgotten more than you know about supply chains, manufacturing, etc. And the shit about penal colony is bullshit and you know it. At least Oz isn’t verging on being overrun by Hispanics.
The US has been living around 20% above its means for a long time now. To reach equilibrium there needs to be a loss of around 1/3 of its standard of living. I have posted that many times, so you are right about that. I thought it would be faster than it has been, but I always said it would come via inflation – which is now well underway.
Oh,and the “we” was with respect to cow docs comment that “ we make nothing”. It wasn’t referencing me. I have made all I am going to make.
Oh, and just because something isn’t being made in the US now doesn’t mean it can’t be made there soonish. In a crisis, you would be amazed how fast manufacturing can be brought on line. The issue isn’t manufacturing it is raw materials. What materials are lacking is the real question. Get back to me when you have that answer.
Maybe living upside down affects reading comprehension.
“We” in your comment quite definitely meant the USA, I understood it.
Once you leave a country for good, you are no longer a part of the “we”.
And everything you just said about the standard of living in the USA was a recapitulation of my response to you.
But glad to see you still have some fight left in you after the way the Aussies have been ass raping you guys for the last year and a half.
Guess you have missed the way you have been bent over in the US. No one has been unscathed.
My lineage and ancestors in the US predates yours by tens of thousands of years. Where I currently am physically does not alter that.
You weren’t talking about the Iroquois Confederacy, were you?
Listen, I’m just having fun with you, you know I both respect and admire your expertise and commentary and in truth, you and I are pretty much in full agreement on this topic.
Things are going to be changing in a fundamental way. I just happen to think that less is more. The way we’ve been living is both irresponsible and unsustainable on a multitude of levels, the supply chain issue merely being one of them. It’s a big part of how your own people were conquered and dispossessed. Trinkets and baubles bring down civilizations if people desire them over tradition, now it’s our turn.
Glad to see you are faring this much in the same way we have been- move to the high water mark and watch the show from a safe distance.
HSF – it is all good. I just get irritated when folks make outrageous claims like the US manufacturers nothing.
The issue isn’t what is manufactured it is what is bought from overseas on credit. The US has damaged itself mightily by doing that, and then people try to claim the US makes nothing. There is almost nothing that a US consumer cannot buy US made if they want to do so. I have posted link after link showing people where to buy US made goods. But nope, Cow Doc and Co prefer to feed a false narrative that the US makes nothing. It just ain’t so.
I’m all in for buying American made and for us making what we need here. I agree that the American capabilities for production are tremendous. The problem as always is “The Bottom Line”.
The issue is that many Americans will not pay a bit more for American made. When someone says that nothing is made in the US, it reinforces a narrative that the goods are not made in the US, which is false, as they are indeed made in the US. And hence why I get cranky about this stuff. I was a manufacturer, and to hear people say that would buy US made goods if they existed drove me crazy, as it was just an excuse to buy imported crap.
The US makes just about anything imaginable. Buy US made goods. They are available.
Wholeheartedly agree.
I always buy made in USA if I can, and if Made in Canada is available I buy that as well. I would rather buy old new stock than new crap from Red China.
I started buying tools when I was 16 to work on my car. Always bought Craftsman because that’s what my dad and grandpa bought. No more, the last time I went into the now closed Sears every tool was made in Taiwan or Red China. I went in to do a warranty exchange and got Red China crap, so much for the life time warranty, it’s not the same quality. However yes there are tools made in the USA, snap on for example. But you have to look long and hard for them, they aren’t in the retail shops.
The same goes for most everything else in the retail sector. Try to buy US made cookware in a local store or even something as simple as US of A made paperclips. Not going to find em.
Sure if you want to but a Boeing Jet, a John Deere tractor or a GE train engine or wind turbine, you can get made in usa, but the average every day things people buy on a daily basis. Not so much.
There are at least a dozen medium sized manufacturing operation within 20 miles of my farm, maybe twice as many small ones. Guns, bearings, grinding drums, winches, heating coils, extrusions, etc. If you need a part and you can’t find it it’s not that hard to find someone who knows how to make it and has the tools and expertise.
In the same way the US auto industry re-tooled for WWII, the same thing could easily happen here. We have raw materials, we have the labor force, we have the electrical grid required to power it, etc.
All we need is for the bureaucracy to take it’s foot off their neck and get out of the way. Or have enough people simply disconnect from the matrix and start doing it on their own without waiting for permission.
Either way a new world is coming, I just happen to believe more in the resilient nature of the human spirit than I do in the corrupt goals of a small cabal of evil conspirators with their pipe dreams of some globalist plantation.
I guess we’ll see.
The WWII analogy is spot on. If it weren’t for our manufacturing capability we’d have had a hard time winning the war. Just look at Armor/Tanks. The Sherman sucked vs the Panthers and Tigers. Under armored and vastly out gunned we won by attrition and being able to far out produce the Germans.
Our family lost it’s first college graduate (Cornell/Geology) at Kasserine (Sidi Bou Zid). He was in an M3 Lee tank, basically a giant box that stood 12 feet tall and had a cannon that could only traverse- no turret.
Those things made the Shermans look like great stuff, which they were, until the advent of the Panthers and Tigers.
If we had the M-26 Pershing 18 months earlier no one would have been nearly as impressed with the Tigers.
Yep. The book “Spearhead” by Adam Makos is an excellent read on the subject.
Wheres the lie?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTW0y6kazWM
Made me laugh, and my great grandmother was 1/4 Creek.
I love the body language when he identifies her with “your people”.
That’s the kind of thing you can’t hide.
Your a douche.
“I personally think that this is the single best thing to have happened to America in the past century. We’ve been pursuing all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons for so long people came to believe that the way things were somehow, normal. They aren’t and they haven’t been and now it’s time to sober up and reassess the meaning of life on a grand scale. And in every time of crisis and change there exists opportunity for those willing to read the wind and take the risks.” Great comment! It would be the greatest irony in history if the globalist wrecking the current global economy didn’t lead to their Great Reset but to ours – local, national industries and supply chains and no massive evil corporations.
Glad to see morons still read TBP. Here is a bit of reading to educate those willing to learn: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/april/us-manufacturing-really-declining
I think Llpoh is making his attempt to channel Stucky as well as his continue his own cranky diatribe.
Gibberish much?
U.S manufacturing as a percent of GDP is a meaningless metric (gibberish) that is fluffed by 100’s of billion$ in arms production which we give to dictators, or generously abandon in-theater to our reputed enemy de jour…
…so we can manufacture moar.
If we didn’t manufacture more arms (and enemies) than the rest of the world, combined, U.S. manufacturing, as a % of GDP, would be zero point something.
Now that ‘you people’ stole France’s invitation to the nuclear sub building guild, you’ll also become upside-down manufacturing powerhouses.
I thought Lloph had a vagina for sure, for years.
Fed propaganda measuring the PRICE of all things manufactured in the country. The problem with that article is that, despite adjusting for inflation, it still merely measures the aggregate in DOLLARS.
Simplify it down to the manufacture of only two goods, widgets and wudgets, produced in equal measure (50/50). If the cost of producing one, widgets, domestically rose such that it could only be produced overseas (if you expected to be able to sell any) that would eliminate 50% of your manufacturing. If, then, the cost of producing the other (i.e. “wudgets”), increased such that the price doubled, but production remained domestic; then the dollar value of things manufactured domestically would remain constant … despite having LOST 50% of domestic manufacturing.
What the Fed “researchers” in that article are measuring is the aggregate COST of manufacturing things domestically. As that COST goes up, more production is moved to other countries, and yet — BECAUSE the cost has gone up for all manufacturing — it appears as if you’re manufacturing the same amount …. if you’re a dolt. Reality is that you’re measuring ever increasing costs of domestic manufacture of fewer and fewer domestically manufactured goods.
Another factor is that when new products or technologies are introduced they tend, initially, to be manufactured domestically, but over time manufacture gets moved more & more overseas IN SPITE OF developing economies of scale. Because of the ability to cut costs by moving manufacturing elsewhere.
If you wanted a true measure, you’d need a ratio of the total number of units (of everything) produced domestically vs the total number of units (of everything) consumed domestically. Nobody has that data easily accessible.
But, “WORLD RENOWNED EXPERT” of all things manufacturing, keep believing what the Fed tells you, especially when they measure it in almighty $dollars$.
(hint: when they measure anything in dollars — including and especially GDP — they’re lying and they know it. Even if they “adjust for inflation” <– another batch of b.s.)
Weapons is all that the US produces. And fat libtards.
You forgot porn and Yelp reviews.
I don’t read online reviews.
My point exactly.
We make what no one needs.
Glad to see people double down on stupid.
Guess I’m a moron too. I agree with Doc… Chip
Yup, you are also a moron if you think the US produces nothing. Buy the narrative ignore the facts.
Dear Loopy, In my lifetime, I have personally witnessed the dismantling and total destruction, and I am talking infrastructure here, of the entire textile industry in the South, along with their many associated vendor facilities. Entire towns have been impoverished to the point that many have become basically ghettoes. This not only had a major effect on the standard of living in all these towns, but created real physiological damage to the blue collar workers who lost their self-respect at no longer being able to feed their families.
As you well know, these thousands of manufacturing facilities cannot be rebuilt overnight or even in a decade, plus the machinery that produced the raw and finished products may no longer even exist.
I don’t know much about northern manufacturing, but in the South, manufacturing is a mere spectra of it’s former self.
Textiles have about vanished from the US, for sure. But you are incorrect re how long it would take to get moving. Certainly it would not take a decade. Textile manufacturing is largely unchanged in the last hundred years. It is simple stuff, hence why it moved to Bangladesh. No kidding, it is about as simple as it gets to make cloth and such, and to sew it, etc. In a previous life I ran a textile plant. Those plants moved as there was a limit to how far the industry could be automated, and that limit was pretty much reached. So it was far cheaper to pay the Bangladeshi a dollar a day rather than an American $15 an hour. That sucks but that is the truth of it. Americans would not pay an extra $10 for a pair of US made jeans. And it is pretty nigh on impossible to discern a quality difference in a sewn product.
That is the whole gist of my original post. Follow the F’ng money!
Doc – buyers make the decision, not the sellers. The companies moved once it was clear buyers preference price over all else. If buyers don’t buy Bangladeshi textiles, the production will return. Business is amoral. But people needn’t be.
Touché…but, unfortunately, the majority are amoral. Stay safe in “The Land of Oz” and enjoyed the jousting.
Supply & Demand is indeed a disturbing concept. I can see why you loathe your own customers.
To return to former production capacity which means rebuilding these entire city blocks of facilities that were torn down and acquiring the machinery which is no longer made here I would think ten years or longer. And there’s vendors , which no longer exist that supplied the thousands of little accessories needed to make the mfg process happen, too . They will need to be restarted. But it’s not just textiles in my region.
We recently lost an mfg industry making modular homes that accounted for 1200 jobs and a coal burning power plant that had 2,000 coupled with several plywood and MDF manufacturer closed tasking another several thousand jobs with it.
Outside of mom and pop shops, mfg is almost done here.
Everyone I know making any money works for the government and those jobs are plentiful. I just wonder how it’s all supported.
They have discovered a way to create money out of thin air?
Because individuals can be relied upon to do what is in their best interests, countries must do the same thing and those 2 can and should be at odds. Because the country should be doing what is best for its people, such as making sure corporations don’t get to go overseas and hunt wage arbitrage.
This is more in line with The Wealth of Nations than any dishonest free market interpretation.
LLpoh,
You’ve always been an asshat. The first time you opened your mouth about appliances showed you were full of crap.
You have absolutely no experience is textiles, let alone clothing, if you actually think that quality cannot be discerned in a sewn product.
Just shut up and go away.
Everyone should remember that Llpoh is the prick who thinks he can mandate vaccinations if it is good for his bottom line.
That alone shows that you are so removed from reality that you should be banned from talking when the adults are having a conversation.
Converse was selling its made in USA sneakers for about $15.00 and it went bankrupt. Nike bought the brand, moved production to China and Vietnam and raised the price to $35.00 and they started selling like hot cakes.
Converse held the prices down to sell more product. Turns out people stopped buying them when the company held the price at $15.00 for so long because they thought that at that price point that they were of inferior quality. And that at $35.00 the ones being made in Red China were being made to a higher quality.
When it was the opposite.
90% of the factories in a 200 mile circle of my birthplace have closed since 1975.
Well, given that it now takes only about 20% as many workers to make the same amount of goods, that isn’t real surprising, is it?
Assembled in America is not the same as made in America.
You’re angry, aren’t you? Yes? No?
To really restore balance in the universe I would personally appreciate you seeding that pile of brass on the outskirts of Boulder. Circle of life and whatnot. The last thing we want is all that Progress in Boulder making a run for the environs of us dirt people and are deplorable ideas about the natural order and the Truth when the TPTB finally turn off the lights.
Ah! “The People’s Republic”. How I survived undergrad there I truly cannot fathom.
Agreed. This is 100% deliberate and pre-planned. My only disagreement is that we purebloods are going to be defeated by the globalists.
Let’s Go, Brandon.
As I’ve said numerous times, my cousin Jeff (he prefers Jeffrey) Crowe could rectify this in a week. But, he’s a Republican.
Started Landstar from scratch. Along with my uncle Curtis (his dad).
Zero Hedge has an article saying they’re through the worst of the supply chain backlog. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/top-warehouse-operator-says-supply-chain-crisis-has-reached-peak
“We’re through the worst of it. I think we’ve reached the peak,” said Malcolm Wilson, the CEO of GXO Logistics Inc., the world’s largest contract logistics provider that has more than 860 warehouses across the globe.
To me, that sounds like he’s enough of a big shot where he might be incented to cover for the failures of the ruling junta with a bullshit story about how things are getting better.
Zero Hedge has another story about how US Marines are training Taiwanese troops on Guam. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-marines-training-elite-taiwanese-troops-base-guam
China could seriously fuck us up by withholding spare parts for …well, everything… if we irk them over Taiwan.
Sucks to be Taiwan, but we have no part in a Chinese civil war.
In what? Critical Race Theory?
Calling Adam Smith a free marketer completely misrepresents Adam smith and free markets.
“For a while now preparedness advocates like myself have been warning about the incessant bottlenecks and weaknesses within the U.S. supply chain, a system highly dependent on “just in time” freight. It has been saddening to see our warnings go unheeded for so long.”
I disagree. Look at your readership over the years. If even only 10% of those readers heeded your warnings, then that’s a huge plus. Personally, I think its more likely 40-50% of your readers that are heeding the warnings. Between here and at Gab.com, I’ve found entire communities of people who not only have heeded the warnings, but acted on them wholeheartedly. It’s not all doom and gloom. There are far more folks paying attention and prepping than you think.
You got that right.
You forgot to mention trains. The criminal federal government is including them in their vaccine mandates. These mandates are strictly designed to cause massive disruption of supply chains, massive inflation, energy shortages and so on. Make no mistake about it, we are at WAR. We are being attacked from all sides. The hot war is coming soon.