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Comment by apawloski | Hacker News Reader

You're currently in the "Yes everything is going to be more expensive but it won't be THAT bad" stage. How will you justify a recession when it comes? Or is that acceptable too because it also hurts the "laptop class" in addition to working class Americans?

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Yes, I think America’s addiction to disposable Chinese consumer products is a bad thing and it’s good for those things to be more expensive.

I don’t know why you think “Chinese made products will become more expensive” is a dunk. Yeah, that’s the point. That was common knowledge when this stuff was being debated in the 1990s. The working class opposed free trade back then, fully understanding that the pitch for free trade was cheaper foreign made goods.

To be clear, my point is that everything will be more expensive and that a recession is objectively bad for all but maybe the richest Americans.

J.p. morgan predicts a 1.5% consumer price level increase this year from the tariffs. The 43% example in the article will be at the extreme high end.

Recessions affect different people differently. The stock market boomed during the Obama recovery from 2008, and during Biden, but most people didn’t feel it so much. A financial recession would be borne mostly by the laptop class.

This feels like a return to initial point. "yes, it is a recession, but it won't be THAT bad"

>A financial recession would be borne mostly by the laptop class.

This is where I think you're not living in reality. Recessions are bad for the middle and working classes. They eliminate jobs, deflate wages, and make important things unaffordable. And it really feels like it could have been avoided.

Kicking the can down the road to avoid a recession—like Obama dis with quantitative easing or Biden did with massive deficit spending—hasn’t proven to be a good idea.

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