Unsurprisingly, sales declined.
This is a bigger story that isn’t being told properly often. The recent BRICS currency move is about them panicking over increasing dollar global dominance.
Checking recently I can’t find any major currency that is up against the dollar over last 10 years. US productivity is running away from the rest of the planet is another variable and with rapid on shoring of numerous industries, especially semiconductors, there is a possibility that US economic dominance is about to go into hyperdrive.
That version is something the media never mentions.
Our biggest export is dollars. We accept ship loads of consumer goods and in exchange send the ships back empty. What a deal.
> there is a possibility that US economic dominance is about to go into hyperdrive.
Like a broken clock I’m sure they’ll eventually be correct.
From dictionary.com:
anemic: a lack of power, vigor, vitality, or colorfulness
Interesting that you'd characterize the response to 2008 financial crisis as 'lack(ing) power'. The response was unprecedented in scale and scope, at least in terms of intervention from the Federal Reserve. The bail-out of the automakers was also controversial due to its size and lack of precendent.
Or, are you referring to a lack of regulatory response?
And all of that was anemic compared to what was needed. From January 2009:
> I see the following scenario: a weak stimulus plan, perhaps even weaker than what we’re talking about now, is crafted to win those extra GOP votes. The plan limits the rise in unemployment, but things are still pretty bad, with the rate peaking at something like 9 percent and coming down only slowly. And then Mitch McConnell says “See, government spending doesn’t work.”
* https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/0...
The Fed's actions help on the 'back end' of things in the financial sector, but not on the 'front end' of things with regards to the real economy and jobs. Obama had a long slog to get unemployment down because of the lack of stimulus.
The demographics of Europe, China, Japan and S. Korea are all terminal at this point. Outside of UK, France, and to some extent, Germany, most of these countries don't even have an immigrant culture to make up for the shortfall.
America, meanwhile, has decent native birth rate AND a culture that's always willing to accommodate new people.
Not really true, for example: Sweden has been doing above EU average on both immigration and higher birth rates (for its development level) to account for the shortfall, it's not that clear cut in Europe as a whole.
Source ChatGPT.
what is summary of height for every swede person
what is average of 181 and 167
multiply 1.74 by number of swedes
divide 18,064,000 by height of statue of liberty in meters
ChatGPT can't do math right. It did both the multiply and the divide wrong, which makes it even worse than usual to have that many digits on your final answer.
How tall are all Swedes together measured in the Statue of Liberty?
... Therefore, the total height of all Swedes measured in the Statue of Liberty is approximately 0.065 meters, or 6.5 centimeters.
And I'm very confused by what that last number is.
Meanwhile in America, median household income for Vietnamese Americans—who also started immigrating in the 1970s, as refugees—matched the national average sometime in the 1990s.
What are the statistics for Poles, Italians, Russian Germans? Heck, what are the statistics for Vietnamese Germans?
The US has plenty of minority and immigrant groups for which convergence is... far from happening.
Maybe find and share, if you looking to refute the point.
Why don't Americans put all German speakers into the same group as well and call them Germanics?
Household income of these four groups is also higher than median household income. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...
US per capita income is higher than US median personal income (that’s what happens with concentrated-at-the-top instead of normal distributions.) But you probably mean “mean” rather than “median” since that’s what your source actually provides.
Household income is higher than per capita for all groups.
I picked large, visible minority immigrant groups that have been in their destination country for more than a generation.
> What are the statistics for Poles, Italians, Russian Germans?
There’s far fewer of those than Turks, and many are ethnic Germans to begin with.
> The US has plenty of minority and immigrant groups for which convergence is... far from happening
There’s only two: black people and indigenous people, neither of which are immigrant groups. Economic migrants go the US, such as Germans, Italians, and Irish, all economically assimilated decades ago. Hispanics are on the same track: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353.
Per this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
* France, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland: 1.8
* Iceland, Czech Republic, UK, Latvia, Netherlands, Belgium, Lithuania, Norway: 1.7
* Romania, Slovenia, Estonia, Albania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Germany, Switzerland, Austria: 1.6
Yes, there's some countries that have even lower levels (eg Italy and Greece), but that's a large chunk of Europe with a pretty similar fertility rate to the United States. I wouldn't give America a pass on any future sort of demographic discussion regarding this. Heck, China (which you list at "terminal") has a fertility rate of 1.7.
"Ability to buy a house or similar" and "affordable daycare" are probably enough to have a huge impact. We don't need a long list of possible answers.
- Reasonable maternity leave allowances.
- Good affordable (or free) healthcare.
- Good affordable (or free) child care until school age.
- Free education to university graduate level.
- Affordable housing.
The super-rich have no interest in allowing this to happen, so countries where having a child is a significant cost will continue to have low fertility rates.
I don't think you're necessarily wrong BTW but it's not that simple.
The two main hurdles to increasing birthrate are:
1. Convince couples with no kids to have one. 2. Convince couples with two/three kids to have one more.
The list might help but the question is how much for each.
No, it doesn't. It's about 1.8 and dropping, and most of the higher values in that group are from recent immigrants, which are also having fewer kids. Educated folks also have lower fertility rates.
The US is basically a mirror of Western Europe in this regard:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/226292/us-fertility-rate...
> AND a culture that's always willing to accommodate new people.
I'd argue that the biggest factors by far these days are:
1. English (very accessible due to music, movies, TV shows, etc).
2. Lots and lots of natural resources facilitating lots of businesses which aren't really feasible in say, Germany, France, Japan.
3. Large population bringing economies of scaling facilitating advanced businesses paying high salaries.
Otherwise someone who travels around the US and Western Europe, for example, will be quite surprised at the cultural convergence and immigration levels.
Most of your comment is a perception from 2-3 decades back, at least.
The OECD average is 1.67. America has a relative advantage
Here's a dataset of various countries' fertility rates: https://splash-db.eu/dataset/population-indicators/
And America always has the option of simply opening the gates a little and fill up the gap with practically any immigrant group it wants.
Huh? My understanding is the US scores lowest of any country on objective measures of both.
Which country has less Xenophobia and racism? People throw out Canada often but I believe empirically that is false.
Counter-example: Certain Arab gulf states, extremely large and diverse immigrant populations from all of Eurasia. Yet still super xenophobic to anyone who isn’t an Arab.
Define racism I suppose. Is racism inequality or inequity?
If a "developed" country wanted to stop migration they would work to raise the living standards at the source. There is less chance of that happening than removing xenaphobic behaviour from the natives however.
Or the "developed" society becomes more brutal than the place the migrant are fleeing from, so they stay away out of fear.
Biden at least nominally adopted such as policy. See, for example, "U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America", https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Root-C...
But, AFAICT, it's mostly been a quiet public-private approach that in dollar terms isn't very substantial. See, e.g., https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
If you look at Haiti, Venezuela, etc, it seems the limiting factor here is an unwillingness of the U.S. to leverage any political muscle, either domestically or internationally. I presume that's partly a consequence of Iraq and Afghanistan, but also probably because for some large factions, especially on the left but increasingly on the right, in American politics any form of involvement is unacceptable. It's almost like a radical ecological argument: the rest of the world is in a state of nature, and any intervention by an external agency is per se morally evil; the moral imperative is non-intervention, outcomes are irrelevant. Even those who don't hold this belief (explicitly or implicitly) at least understand the consequences: any perceived failure in intervention will be blamed on them, and nobody wants to face the ire of the religionists.
The USA will get flack if it meddles and if it doesn't meddle, they really shouldn't worry about world opinion at that point. More to the point, it is impossible for America to fix the rest of the world, even if that were the moral thing to do. Welcoming some immigrants from countries having problems is probably the best we can do.
People being afraid of the warrior princess is probably a good thing.
Not true. If you look at OECD data – https://data.oecd.org/pop/fertility-rates.htm – the latest year for which the OECD has complete data is 2021, in which it records a US TFR of 1.6. The following countries all recorded higher TFRs than the US – Israel (2.9); Mexico (2.1); France, Colombia and Turkey (tied at 1.8); Costa Rica, Czechia, Denmark, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden (all tied at 1.7). The US, at 1.6, was at the OECD Average (1.6), tied with Australia, Belgium, Chile, Estonia, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Slovenia and the UK.
I suppose you might argue 2020 was a rather abnormal year due to COVID. Well, 2019 was pre-COVID, in which the US was still only 1.7 – just a a bit above the OECD average (which was 1.6 in 2019 too). In 2019, US fertility was tied with Australia, Costa Rica, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden; it was beaten by France, Colombia and Iceland (all 1.8), Turkey (1.9), Mexico (2.1), and Israel (3.0).
US fertility is not an outlier at all by developed world standards. It is somewhere between average and slightly above average. And I realise some OECD members might not be considered "developed" by everyone's standards – such as Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico or Turkey – but the US is regularly equalled or bettered by countries which generally are accepted as such, e.g. Australia, Denmark, France, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Sweden.
This doesn't seem to be a big factor in the boom industries in the US: tech, finance, pharma. It does matter for construction, the biggest employer.
The US still seems like a more welcoming place than western Europe. Or at least you can take comfort in a suburban home and drive to people/institutions that are from your immigrant group.
We have an immigrant ethos that exceeds that of the UK, France, and Germany. Plus, our large number of decent universities means the masters/F1->OPT->H1B pipeline works well for many educated workers.
Exxon, Chevron, Marathon, Valero, Philips 66.
5 American oil and gas companies in the worldwide top 100 by revenue. A bunch of pharma & co, also dependent on cheap oil and gas.
Again with the outdated mindset. Those countries have as many immigrants or more, per capita, as the US.
> Plus, our large number of decent universities means the masters/F1->OPT->H1B pipeline works well for many educated workers.
Those work well for drawing people in, but how well do they serve second generation immigrants or minorities? Universities in Europe are cheap or free, that's a whole lot more egalitarian.
The US speaks English, is big and has a TON of money. The US basically brute forces everything, which I guess works.
I personally know peolle that left US for UK because they found your immigration system unacceptable.
If you are from india, you might have to wait 10 years to get citizenship after fulfilling all requirements.
Uk immigration system itself is worse than that of France and many other countries.
It costs $10,000 to apply for visas for a family of 4. Thats just the money you pay to the government, assuming you never need a solicitor to help with the paperwork.
I read somewhere that the waiting line for Indian people is 180 years, not 10.
Of course that makes it very difficult if you are from India for example, but it doesn't make the system as a whole less welcoming.
And a society that burdens people with debt causing them to work every waking moment while avoiding costly things like health care, because they might miss a day of work or become even more indebted through the cost of said health care. People just pick up opioids so they can handle the pain and keep working two jobs.
I know hardly anyone in my country that works more than 40 hours a week. In fact, most people I know work 36 or 32. Two jobs is pretty much unheard of over here. I hear plenty of stories in the US though, about teachers working a second job somewhere else.
Yeah, the smart ones find a better school district to work in or leave the profession entirely. None of my friends in teaching are working 2 jobs. They can find a better paying non-teaching job, easily. Our son has 8 classes and 6 teachers. The school proudly announced at the beginning of the school year they were fully staffed. Currently they are at 85% with a revolving door of educators. We're in a HCOL city and school board is going forward with plans to build housing for teachers because they simply can't recruit them any other way.
This is a good policy also found in safety-net-having countries like Finland.
Implying I don't know America in real life, never lived there, never visited and don't know actual people there. All not being true. I have zero friends in my home country who work multiple jobs. I have multiple in the US.
> The Americans work 34.5 hours a week.
In my country it's 32. So almost 8% less. Which I'd call significant if working hours is directly correlated to productivity as a country.
In the bottom 10-15% of the society there is some truth to what you wrote. However are you sure you are comparing that with the same segment in your country?
Yes, I come from the bottom of society in my country. I grew up surrounded by people without jobs, blue collar workers and parents that worked in factory and hospitality jobs. Luckily, my country takes care of people in these situations, provides them affordable homes and health care and income and helps them to go to school without ending up with crippling debt.
And of course, gender also matters here with men working around 40.5hr/wk and women working around 36.5hr/wk.
The real question is why average hours have dropped so much in just a year or so. The most likely answer has a lot to do with underemployment.
What America are you talking about? Immigration to the USA has always been hard and a very contentious topic.
The previous president was largely voted in on his anti immigrant policy (both for legal and illegal immigration). We’re still undoing his damage to the immigration system today.
Prior to that, America has had a very fraught history with immigrants and abuse.
It’s not a culture that’s willing to accommodate new people. It’s a capitalist machine that sees new people as valuable buyers and workers.
Immigrants have always been treated as a form of cheap labor to import. Whether that was the boom of Italians or Chinese or Mexicans in the past. Then they’re immediately vilified after the work is done.
I think what the culture has in difference to others is valuing the results of capitalism more than anything else.
Currently most of immigration works by enslaving the hardest working people for years by not giving them a chance for proper health insurance, bank accounts and a way to live peacefully just because they were born on the wrong side of an imaginary line, it’s disgusting.
The Trump administration's H1B reform was focused on paying immigrants more money [0]. This did not have the effect of reducing high-skilled immigration, nor was it its intention.
> It’s not a culture that’s willing to accommodate new people. It’s a capitalist machine that sees new people as valuable buyers and workers.
The US is one of the few countries that accepts immigrants not based on education/skills merit[1] (except for H1B, which is largely gamed by Silicon Valley to acquire foreign talent). This is in contrast to Canada or Australia, where the only hope you have to immigrate to those countries as a national from a country with a very high volume of immigration (e.g., India or China) is to get an advanced degree.
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-announces-...
[1]: https://econofact.org/should-immigrants-be-admitted-to-the-u...
Try getting a green card even as a trained European. Good luck :)
Not that I'd ever be interested in living in the US. I prefer a country with a decent social security safety net and socialized healthcare. And where people can't just run around carrying guns.
Spain is not perfect but I have way fewer things to worry about here. So I can relax and enjoy life more.
I’m confused, my understanding was that changing jobs is much much more frequent within the US middle class than elsewhere. How does that make sense if as you say quitting is so risky.
What specifically is risky about the US setup? Of course it encourages not being unemployed as healthcare when unemployed is a problem but most people just line up a new job before quitting.
Also, being married makes it safer (but you might be relying on two incomes) and Obamacare is good in some states.
Best I can tell for many European countries the situation is significantly worse in terms of access.
There is a lot of strange misconceptions about US quality of life from people in other countries.
I'd love to see where you got that statistic. IME, I have to wait months for any kind of specialist. And when I finally get to see one, my insurance underpays and then I spend endless hours fighting with both the provider and the insurer. This crap happens every single time I need to see a doctor. I can't wait to retire and move to a second world country that has US trained doctors who give you their personal cell number.
Heathcare in the US has become a terrible joke.
Ok sure so just realize when you retire in that 2nd world country the wait is for GPs! forget specialist.
> https://www.england.nhs.uk/gp/case-studies/routine-gp-appoin...
The average has dropped to 10 days! The US wait for equivalent of GP is like next 1-2 days, or even same day if you get triaged by the group.
Also they are seeing 30+ patients a day which even in busier US locations is at least 1/2 that rate.
It’s a myth that US healthcare is worse than other countries.
Again, I'd like to see the stats on that. I wanted to see my Dr for an annual checkup and was told it was a 2+ month wait and if I didn't want to wait I could see some random nurse practitioner.
There are 2nd world countries where it is incredibly cheap to call your doctor's cell phone and have them come to you in a day or two.
I waited 20 min last time I went without appointment.
Specialists is a different story, the worst being psychologists/therapists (wait time counted in years where I live).
Wait for specialists and surgeries are significantly less in the US than all other G20 countries.
Here is an example item, wait time for knee replacement surgery, or any standard surgery. I’m fairly confident the US is lowest among all G20, by significant amounts.
Your annual checkup wait isn’t an appropriate measure, they do that as they are prioritizing care much better than in bureaucratic socialized medical care. That doctor you are calling on cell likely has much less resources than the nurse practitioner you can be seen in 15-20 mins wait almost 24/7 in every major population center in the US at urgent cares, rapid cares, and worst case ERs. Instant testing, imaging, medications on site.
I don’t think you are comparing apples to apples when people claim they would prefer medical care elsewhere, they have some incorrect assumptions about greener grass, or we are discussing the experience of very lowest income segment of the population.
I do agree that bottom 10% might be slightly better off medically in other countries than the US. That is definitely possible. But for 90% I don’t think it is even remotely competitive.
> The average has dropped to 10 days! The US wait for equivalent of GP is like next 1-2 days, or even same day if you get triaged by the group.
Unfortunately NHS is in terrible shape at the moment after many cuts. It is performing at the level of a 2nd world country.
Czechia has canver survival 30% higher than UK does.
I lived in Czechia, we had a proton therapy center for Twenty Years. England got one just recently.
There is a story where larents in Britain had to steal their child from a hospital, to take her to czechia for Proton beam therapy. The UK doctors have declared her terminally ill, refused to let parents take her for other treatment and after parents kidnapped tbeir own child, theyl parents were declared wanted in Interpol, launching internstional manhunt.
They foung in court to get thei4 chance to treat a child, took child to czechia, went through therapy and now child is in scholl and free of cancer
If theu had trusted the NHS their child would be dead.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-32013634
I also know a bloke who was struggling with backpain for 4 years and could not get it sorted in UK, he through he would become handicapped and retuned to Romania to live it out in peace. Turns out it wss really bad Vitamin D deficciency, which makes your bones soft and allows nerved to be pinched. He is living a full life now.
There is state provided insurance and none of the US horror stories ever happen here.
I'm with Anthem and I've gone directly to various specialties with appointments within 1-5 days.
Coming from the UK I would have picked the NHS as it was when I left 10 years ago over what I have access to here, but the Tories have really run that service into the ground in the interim.
Worse than my experiences in nz, Australia and UK.
I'm sure the healthcare in the US is world-class considering how much it costs. But that cost is the biggest problem for me.
But really, I'm a socialist and considering that this is a swearword in the US for many people, I just don't want to ever live there. My world view is just too different. I've never even visited.
The US simultaneously under-treats poor people while over-treating rich people. This is why health outcomes in the US are so bad across a range of indicators.
Gun violence is a tiny fraction of death/injury here. You’re much more likely to die in a car accident.
> From 2019 to 2020, the relative increase in the rate of firearm-related deaths of all types (_suicide_, homicide, unintentional, and undetermined) among children and adolescents was 29.5%
If you control for this, and include rates of homicide using other means of destruction (i.e., explosives or knives), it starts to look a lot more even compared to other OECD countries (albeit still above average).
This is despite all the weird laws in the US against collecting, analysing, and reporting statistics.
Suicide or not, doesn't that seem concerning? Hmm... Some people say it's the top way children die now by gun. I remember growing up and having active shooter drills in elementary school but it's nothing like they are now. I think we are one of the few countries where children dieing by firearm has increased 46% in the last twenty years or so.
Where I grew up it wasn't rare to hear about stabbings or shooting but it does put me on edge hearing about a mall I used to go to having an active shooter etc.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/magazine/gun-...
www.kff.org/private-insurance/press-release/firearms-are-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-in-the-united-states-but-rank-no-higher-than-fifth-in-other-industrialized-nations/amp/
Only 0.18% of all gun homicides were committed during a mass shooting. https://www.maciverinstitute.com/2022/05/debunking-every-maj.... The chances of you being killed in a shooting are less than being struck by lightning. If you don't plan on joining a gang, frequenting a bad part of Baltimore or St. Louis, or committing suicide, it becomes orders of magnitude less likely, to the point where you're no less safe in the USA than any other country.
Cut it off at 18 and it wouldn't work, since it would exclude gang violence. Start it at birth and it also wouldn't work, since the statistic would include infant mortality. Unfortunately, that would debunk the fact that gun violence is a widespread problem in the US, rather than something that's happening exclusively in a few poorly run municipalities with excessive levels of poverty, violence, and organized crime.
Maybe so, but I believe you are also more likely to die of a car accident in the US. There's no getting around the fact that amongst western nations, the US has certain aspects to its culture that make it a more dangerous place to live in many ways.
Here in Barcelona a flat rate of 20 euros a month takes care of all my travel needs on metro, bus, tram and train <3
The number of non-cops I've seen openly carrying in public is... One.
Having stayed there 1-3 months at a time so far, it’s pretty hard to find fault.
The present phenomenon where unions and local power groups can extract massive rent is coming to an end.
America will fracture unless she accelerates. San Francisco is the earliest example of that.
The old must die or make way and they are not.
Talk about a weirdly polarizing figure. He's like a clock that's right once per day. Every time his name comes up here on HN, it's a flame war. To reinforce what you state though - at least he raises some interesting topics for us to all discuss.
A great example is the price cap -- enacted via insurers -- on Russian oil, which was a remarkably creative measure. PZ was spot-on about the precursive factors, specifically a) that insurance concerns dominate global shipping, and b) that the world was in for some serious pain if Russian oil stops abruptly.
I figured out a while ago that anyone who mentions the "petrodollar" in a geopolitical context knows knothing about geopolitics.
Bonus idiocy points if "BRICS" is mentioned in a way that implies any kind of formal collectivity, as opposed to a catchy nickname Goldman Sachs created 20 years ago for certain large emerging economies.
I'm curious about this. The petrodollar is clearly a real phenomenon and policy decision. You might say that it's the replacement for when the dollar was backed by gold; instead of being convertible into gold, it's now the currency that's de facto required to purchase oil (which is basically liquid gold), as well as being the currency of the world's foremost military that protects the trade of oil.
The problem is... it just doesn't have much relevance to geopolitics. The people who try to link it to such imagine that the US has a major foreign policy plank in upholding the use of dollars to price oil, to the point of starting wars purely to do so, despite such proponents not being able to offer a shred of evidence that any US official cared about this, or even being able to articulate what the supposed benefits the US receives from such pricing is.
A good comparison I got from twitter is Amazon credit. If you get $50, yeah it's fine, you'll spend it. If you get $5000 of it, you'll look very, very closely into all options to get your dollars back.
New Israeli shekel is really, really close — 3.56 to 3.62 both now and 10 years ago.
CHF, but not by much.
While I think you're correct regarding the crypto bros, every fiat currency is imaginary.
Well, the USD is backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States government" which, however you may feel about it, isn't imaginary. Each dollar is a claim to a piece of output of the world's largest economy with the strongest military.
Generally at some point a person wants to get some goods and services from their neighbors and barter only goes so far.
The fact that you are in a society with 330M other people who all use the same "imaginary" currency makes it incredibly sticky.
Exactly what I said. It's imaginary, just that it's a collective imagination.
At some point these things we conjure up out of our collective imagination are every bit as real as the ground hitting you if you jump off a building.
I.e. imaginary.
Your phone bill is just another level of abstraction on top of the USD imagination.
In the middle ages witches were believed to be real by enough people to burn them on the stake. The full power of the state was behind this. Unless there's scientific evidence of sorcery now I think witches are imaginary.
It doesn't make the burning sensation less real.
The value of cryptocurrency is just far more imaginary than dollars, euros, or even gold.
False, and you give two examples that disprove the claim:
> The USD will be no exception. Honestly, BTC will be no exception either.
See, that’s two that have not gone to zero (there ate lots more), but which you merely conjecture will.
The minimum wage in the US in 1964 was $1.25/hour. Notably those five quarters were 90% silver worth about $20 US today.
The British Pound Sterling originally referred to £1 being exchangeable for 1 pound of sterling silver or 1/270th of it’s original value.
It’s technically true that they haven’t gone to literally zero, but I would hazard to say it is close enough.
Like, Russia's purported election interference and general political destabilizing activity starts to sound like a (ethically awful but) economically sensible move. In the extreme, the US falling into a civil war would ease that pressure on BRICS etc.
It's important to not paint BRICS as an actual political entity. It literally started as an investment term made up by Goldman Sachs.
Especially India has its own problems with China and China's Israel (Pakistan).
I've seen it a number of times since last summer. Perhaps you're reading the wrong media.
From an economic perspective BRICS (which on a net basis are exporting nations) should really be worried about more dollar weakness. However I think the recent moves away from the dollar are not due to macro economic reasons but due to political ones instead. The confrontation between Russia and the West made these states realize that having dollars (or euros) can quickly turn into a liability: If they do something the US or EU doesn't like then their funds will just be frozen.
Due to higher US productivity even with the strong currency the cost of production for goods is significantly lower for same quality. US companies are generally gaining market shares in all high value goods.
> On the other hand the strong dollar has been great for the US consumer (cheaper to import stuff)
This allows higher quality of life at lower price. I’d like to point out that EU member gdp per capita are worse than the poorest US states. This is surprising to me as well, but true.
> From an economic perspective BRICS (which on a net basis are exporting nations) should really be worried about more dollar weakness.
How is that true? I’m not following. They need dollars to buy imports and with strong dollar it’s harder to buy imports for same exports. Take Turkey as prime example currently.
> If they do something the US or EU doesn't like then their funds will just be frozen.
I agree that is a big concern for them. However I don’t think a currency pact using Yuan will help much. They really want to give that same power to the Chinese? who have even less due process. This is actually a big reason I’m bullish on Bitcoin it’s probably a better reserve in long run.
On a net basis they are exporters. Meaning (again on a net basis) dollars flow into these countries and goods flow out. If the dollar is strong then companies exporting from the US are more expensive then comparable exports from other countries (which can sell for a lower dollar amount and still pay their staff, raw materials). If the dollar is weak then companies exporting from the US are comparably cheaper. The US is usually a net importer because due to a strong dollar (and high wages) it's just cheaper to import stuff from abroad.
The USA is an impressive beast in this regard. It just never fails to lead and now with AI it's simply light years ahead of the nearest competitor. There's literally thousands of AI startups here - it's just amazing.
Lots of people like to opine on the downfall of American hegemony and global financial and cultural dominance but I'm a believer in the lesser traveled idea that the American Empire hasn't even begun yet.
All of Western and Central Europe, Israel, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, parts of South America, and a few other places are already vassal states of America as it is. I expect more to become over the coming decades.
I have yet to see quantitative numbers that suggest a downfall for the American empire. The discussion always turns to hyper political issues and problems, like race or guns, or healthcare systems.
Yet if we look at more practical questions like productivity, innovation, efficiency, energy, food, … etc. What downfall? It looks like it is growing and I agree there is a possibility that the American Empire is only just starting, not ending.
Swissie and BTC make sense as safe havens for the sanctions and seizure risks of USD. I do expect those to continue to strengthen.
The past year it's gone from almost 21 to the dollar to nearly 18. Certainly sucks for me losing 15% on the conversation rate along with the general inflation that has happened. My food bill in Mexico is up like 40% over the past six months in dollar terms.
It really isn't! I actually thought that the dollar was doing very badly because it has been going down in price in comparison to my local currency for the last 9 months or so (around 15%) (back to 2016-2018 levels).
And such a decrease hadn't happened in more than a decade.
That means if the dollar was very strong at release, the machines get very expensive in foreign currency.
They are just not realizing they are self sabotaging in terms of opportunity costs.
If they adjust prices to purchasing power, with at least 30% profit marge, windows laptops and chromebooks would be having crisis talks right about now.
People would prefer the Apple stuff, but not at that price. Even if you can easily afford it, if you are from a protestant nation, you couldn't live with yourself spending your money so irresponsibly. The value deal isn't there, unless you are using it professionally. But for leisure? No way.
People delaying purchases, or buying lower spec models or alternatives now may well want to upgrade sooner when their financial situation improves. If Apple sacrifices margins they risk losing out on those high margin sales return in a few years time. In the long term it may be better to take the temporary hit to revenue now in order to preserve their margin structure long term.
What they might do is introduce down market models, or more likely keep older models around in the lineup longer than they otherwise would at a slightly reduced price. That would still mean taking a hit on sales at the top end, as here with M2.
Changing the official price is not the only way to go. Apple is one of very few places which doesn't regularly run sales and promotions to adjust the sales of their products. They could easily run an Easter sale that takes a month, then something else again. This wouldn't change their margins long term.
It seems pretty likely that most of their supply contracts are using USD as the currency, even if the production is not happening in the US.
Apple states its quarterly results in USD, which is all their investors/media care about, so of course Apple cares enormously about profit/revenue in USD. in addition, much of their design/engineering/management/etc costs are in or coupled to USD.
They quite demonstrably don't. They care about profit-share, and about making what they see as the best computers they can.
As others note, Apple already takes either a plurality or a majority of the profit in computer sales. What incentive is there for them to reduce their average margins, take on a lot more support responsibility, and have to ramp up production significantly, just to capture a notoriously fickle and unrewarding segment of the market?
>What ruined Apple was not growth … They got very greedy … Instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision, which was to make the thing an appliance and get this out there to as many people as possible … they went for profits. They made outlandish profits for about four years. What this cost them was their future. What they should have been doing is making rational profits and going for market share.”
Just look at the BOM cost of MacBook Air and an iPad Pro. There is not reason why MacBook Air cant be $799.
There can't be a grey market if you charge the same price globally.
I don't see why this wouldn't work. It's not like Apple users are going to rebel and refuse to buy Apple products because of something like this.
Here in Mexico Apple products are around 20-25% more expensive than in the US which is way higher than simply adding the 16% VAT.
Not only that, in the US it's common to have Apple sales in multiple retailers like BH etc. These are almost non existent here in Mexico. The best we get is some meager discount at Costco for the models nobody wants.
Though I'd argue that has hurt shareholders for far longer, they just didn't notice it as drastically.
Not to mention, in the past year the price of almost everything else has gone up too. So, it's easy to see why people have less money to spend on macs.
I noticed that a lot of users also seem to go for a used M1 because it got cheaper and it’s still insanely good.
The difference is just insane from a thermal standpoint (plus then you mix in how this thing runs laps around my 16" while staying cooler).
And it isn't just the MacBook Pro line, I have a gaming laptop is horrible to use actually on my lap.
I tried pushing the new m2 MBP with some video rendering and it did not break a sweat (literally).
It does kinda feel like the bar was a bit low for the improvements going from Intel to their chips. But I do wonder what their long term plan is, I can't see needing to upgrade this machine for at least 3 years with the performance I am getting out of it. Even 3 years feels pretty soon.
Good. Laptops shouldn't sweat
Hasn't happened yet. I've got M2 max in mbp for a while and I still have not heard the fan even once.