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Comment by refulgentis | Hacker News Reader

It's somewhat disturbing to see pop economics discourse recently - if I turned this in as a paper in a 200 level+ class at my middling statue university, I'd get D >= X >= C+, where X is my grade. The reason beings:

- I lead with a thesis about health care jobs.

- I immediately discount it as unknowable based on the data.

- It's a novel idea to worry about job concentration in a particular industry in a modern capitalist economy.

- Adding 20-50% taxes on imports is a hare-brained, earth-shattering, idea. I can't think of an analogue in computers, other than legislating computing is only secure moving forward if we use terenary instead of binary.

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> I'd get D >= X >= C+, where X is my grade

Mostly as a curiosity, what you've written here is impossible, lol. I think you mean your grade would range from a D to a C+, inclusive. But you have written that your grade would be greater-or-equal to a C+, yet less-than-or-equal to a D, which would be.... impressive :D

edit: Closed intervals are great for communicating this kind of thing in general. You could say your grade is in the interval [D, C+], where the brackets indicate that D and C+ are included in the options. Compare to the open interval, which would indicate that D and C+ are excluded -- ie (D,C+) includes only the entries D+, C-, C.

So you're fundamentally objecting to the statement D >= C+ then?

In germany we grade from 1 (best) to 6 (worst) and I always just mapped these to A (best) to F (worst) in my mind. makes perfect sense to me. :)

Oh that's interesting! I guess I was never explicitly told that A>B>C, it just 'feels' right haha. What you're proposing makes sense too though

Because I'm.. not young.. all throughout my education we were 'awarded' 4 points for an A, 3 for B and so forth to calculate Grade Point Average (GPA.)

Due to this system I have always considered A > B > C, etc.

Some of my children lived under a different regime in elementary school, which common core and non-letter grading assessments. Target, Near Target and Below Target.

A = 1, B = 2 reminds me of cryptography for some reason. That's probably due to reading Neal Stephenson.

I read the article differently, but it still comes out as a series of non-sequiturs.

> Concern about the Fed being unable to meet structural issues

Sounds like a problem IFF there are extensive structural issues.

> Concern regarding weak labor demand in healthcare

> Concern regarding weak labor supply due to new immigration policies

Shouldn't these two problems tend to balance out?

Also:

> Falls in labour supply can impact inflation, economic growth, and public finances. They can add to inflationary pressures—as employers compete for scarce employees by raising wages, adding to the cost of producing goods and services.

It should balance out, shouldn't it, because demand for the resources will decrease as the supply of laborers decreases as well?

I don't think you really know whether the tariffs are going to work or not. It's not hare-brained, as you say because it has two purposes: 1) To attempt to bring manufacturing back home and 2) To raise capital in order to pay down the debt.

If you look at the debt clock, 2 is working. As for 1, it's a long-term project and you're being too impatient. Also, you are subject to the mass media hand-wringing propaganda that states that everything Trump does is automatically terrible because Trump. It's childish and nonsensical to think that way, however. We need people who think outside of the box and it's not like Trump came up with "tariffs" by himself without the input of smart economist thinkers.

The point is, you lack the big picture.

On point #1, if the US ends up in a shooting war with China (because China is expansionist) it would be very bad for us if we are unable to manufacture critical supplies, particularly semiconductors, whose manufacture is concentrated in Taiwan, a brittle and untenable situation for the entire western world.

Be a crybaby and downvote me now, or listen and learn, your choice. I agree with the rest of what you said, btw--the whole article is just bs.

> If you look at the debt clock, 2 is working.

Only if you look at debt clocks based on government numbers. If you look at debt clocks based on independent estimates, you get an increasing deficit in 2025.

1. is obviously not a long term project because of the flip-flopping and arbitrariness. Tariffs change every month so nobody is doing any long term planning.

I guess I'm a crybaby for disliking your dumb manipulation thing at the end. Oh well.

As for your big picture items, #1 does not seem to be targeted correctly for that goal, and #2 is a really bad way to structure a general revenue tax and instead we should do things like not pass huge tax cuts.

You are, yes. You don't listen, you just think you know all the answers.

The downvote you earned had nothing to do with your opinions on any topic, it was about you being a jerk at the end in an unrelated paragraph.

And if you insult me instead of addressing the criticism I gave to your actual arguments then what am I even supposed to learn?

This is just hermeneutics for Trump. One person is setting the tariffs, and it's pretty clear he can be bribed to reduce them. Any rationale for tariffs goes away at that point.

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