The dollar strengthened against the CAD in 2025 compared to the figures I used. It really only weakened against the EUR and RMB.
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[1] https://www.zerowaterfilter.com/blogs/zerowater-knowledge-ce...
This is not correct as of 2024. In 2024, Ontario had a GDP of CAD 1.17B. [1] In USD, this is (at .73 exchange rate, which is favorable for these calculations) this comes to US 854B.
In 2024, the following US states had greater GDPs [2]: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and tied with Washington. GDP growth in 2025 was worse for Ontario than these states, and it would be expected Ontarios' position to continue to decline.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/248023/us-gross-domestic...
Watching these discussions from the outside are statistics like four in ten (43%) Canadians age 18-34 would vote to be American if citizenship and conversion of assets to USD guaranteed [1]. I don't think the political similarities or differences between the American right and the Canadian right are what can result in one or more Canadian provinces joining the US; I think it's economic discontent.
[1]: https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/43-percent-canadians-would-vote-...
If I may ask, what cities? For example, Austin has seen a 6.6% asking price decrease for 0- to 2-bedroom units [1]. The big problem is there is an absolutely massive hole, and very few places are building "enough" to make a dent.
[1] https://www.realtor.com/advice/hyperlocal/austin-rents-are-g...
Are they, though? I am not aware of any indicators that software costs are precipitously declining. At least as far as I know, we aren't seeing complements of software developers (PMs, sales, other adjacent roles) growing rapidly indicating a corresponding supply increase. We aren't seeing companies like mcirosoft or salesforce or atlassian or any major software company reduce prices due to supply glut.
So what are the indicators (beyond blog posts) this is having a macro effect?
Forex rates, balance of trade, and relative strengthening are great ways of understanding international fluctuations. They are exactly the way to understand reserve currency movements
> 2. How much your personal basket of monthly expenses costs in terms of dollars. Ignore a basket that someone on the news told you to care about, like CPI. I mean your personal basket, all the stuff you personally buy, how much is it in dollars, now, a year in the future, a year earlier.
This hits at a major part of the issue: goods that have no importable replacement good (housing and healthcare, namely) are a huge part of what lead to the huge bout of inflation. But those are domestic economics, not international economics.
Yes, but my point is exactly the opposite has occurred for imports: the US is still roughly flat in terms of import inflation. Since Nov '22, import inflation has been sub-3% without exception and sub-2% since 2023 without exception. The US is still exporting inflation effectively, and US inflation is due to factors other than currency fluctuations.
That's the real issue: the USD weakened 8% against the EUR, and prices remain the same. For eurozone exporters to the US that's an absolute disaster.
There isn't anything like "dollar devaluation has been keeping up with the US inflation". You are interested in what is called the import/export price index [1] and for imports that has been relatively flat for the past ~24 months(import +.3%, export +3.8% for TTM). So in a sense, imports for a fixed good are relatively unchanged in constant-currency terms.
It's more along the lines of "if the EUR goes to 1.5, what does this do to eurozone economies?" and the answer to that isn't pretty for europe. This would greatly impair the economy of Germany and other large eurozone economies pretty substantially(see this article for why [2]).
And finally, remember: the US actually exports inflation [3]. Most economies cannot simply say no to this effect.
[1]https://www.bls.gov/mxp/ [2]https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-10-06/europe... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-18/strong-us...
Devalue against what is the main question though, isn't it? The real longer term issue is that the USD is devaluing against the Euro, but even that has serious issues for Europe's export oriented economies [1].
Those are risks. Risks are insurable. However, death is a certainty. It is very reasonable to discuss what we believe society should subsidize for end-of-life care as it will impact everybody, myself included.
> Or if you’d rather, there are millions of children without healthcare in the United states. Would you forgo your access to healthcare for them?
I don't see what pediatrics has to do with end-of-life care in the context we are discussing (Medicare), but I would much rather subsidize pediatrics than elder care.
> That’s all? Musk alone is worth twice that, and who knows how many QALYs he has left but it can’t be that many. He seems pretty miserable most of the time.
Musk is worth 244B [1]. Even if we could tax wealth 100% into cash, we would fully exhaust the wealth of the 25 wealthiest American families within 7 years. These expenses, however, will likely continue for the next ~20 years. We need to discuss benefit cuts or tax hikes on the American population writ large.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_Americans_b...
Not everybody gets cystic fibrosis, or HIV, or aggressive cancers. These are a risk. That is fundamentally an insurable risk. However, we will all die. No matter how much money is spent, death comes for us all in old age. Discussing how much is an appropriate cost for end-of-life care when aged is very much a societal question.
> Or if you’d rather, there are millions of children without healthcare in the United states. Would you forgo your access to healthcare for them?
This remains a question, even in Europe. See [1] for a discussion as early as 2000 regarding rationing in the NHS.
> That’s all? Musk alone is worth twice that, and who knows how many QALYs he has left but it can’t be that many. He seems pretty miserable most of the time.
That is a cost each year, and Musk is currently at 244B [2]. We have roughly 20 years of this level of spending or greater. Even if we assumed we could tax Musk 100% (which isn't practically possible because who liquidates his positions), where do you propose to acquire that level of ongoing cashflow? Within 7 years, we would fully exhaust the wealth of the 25 wealthiest American families, even at 100% tax rate. End-of-life care is mind-bogglingly expensive for the United States economy. This either needs to be a tax hike which realistically will it everybody or a benefits cut.
[1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1173526/
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_Americans_b...
I appreciate this view, but it is ahistorical and does not reflect the history of Medicare law.Taken from [1]:
> By the late 1970's, the growing expenditure trends and the changing demographics (an increasing proportion of the U.S. population 65 years of age or over) combined to endanger the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund. The rapid increases in expenditures for the Medicare program, as well as health care services in general, constrained the ability of the Federal Government to fund other health and social programs. To a certain extent, the growth in expenditures also endangered the Nation's overall economic productivity.
> At the same time as health care expenditures were escalating, some say uncontrollably, the political landscape began to change dramatically. The national mood brought calls for fewer taxes, for reduction of budgets, and for deregulation of market sectors, such as transportation and health. This conviction of less general involvement by Government was reinforced by mounting public pressures surrounding growing budget deficits; Medicare, like other Federal programs, increasingly competed with more global policy objectives. In the space of a few years, the Nation moved from an era when health care was considered a right for all citizens to an era when cost considerations became the dominant issue.
And bear in mind, this was just ~10 years after Medicare was introduced. The nation has always prioritized the future over the past, and has either reduced or restructured benefits to ensure a healthy economy ahead of Medicare.
> You could argue the same for the end-of-life, in at least two ways: * the end-of-life patient has already produced cash flow to the government, just in reverse order from the student * Good education produces a higher taxpaying adult, the investment you refer to. I would argue the assurance of end-of-life healthcare also produces a higher taxpaying adult.
This lacks an understanding of Medicare. Medicare is fundamentally a PAYG mechanism; the trust fund was a short term surplus which is slated to be depleted by 2033 [2]: a mere 8 years from now. Part of this occurs due to poor investment strategy (treasuries only, effectively) but the biggest contributing part of this was the demographic boom. The time for "more cash flow to save for Medicare" isn't today it was 30 years ago. A failure to raise taxes 30 years ago should not constitute an obligation on the youth of today and placing the burden of an excessive tax because of poor demography and unwillingness of prior generations to raise taxes on themselves only harms economic growth at the expense of the elderly.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4195088/#:~:text=By...
> In my opinion, it is no different from how adult taxpayers finance public education for children. It is a rolling responsibility from generation to generation.
This hits upon the core issue: the next generation is substantially smaller than the last and relative costs have ballooned due to greater availability of therapies. The generational contract is that you pay your taxes a percentage of wages -- in effect, a PAYG mechanism. If wages do not rise sufficiently to cover increased costs, that does not imply that the generational contract was unfulfilled; the taxes were paid.
The demographic pyramid and weaker than necessary wage growth really renders the care demanded burdensome to the point where we have already provided elderly cost advantages in insurance in the form of cost premium multiple maximums and medicare from payroll taxes while beggaring the rest of the population in the process.
> In my opinion, it is no different from how adult taxpayers finance public education for children. It is a rolling responsibility from generation to generation.
Fundamentally, children are an investment. They produce cash flow (taxes) from increased public health. The end-of-life are not; by definition, they will be dead soon. It's a horrible thing to say, but in the face of ever increasing elder care burdens and weak public debt/gdp ratios, what real choice is there?
[1] https://www.wrvo.org/health/2019-09-30/ten-percent-of-all-he...
I am always curious about people who are strongly oriented towards one thing (computing) but somehow wind up in another area, such as construction.
That price is holding at the current demand ratio of GPU availability/consumption. If the large companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic cease training new models and accepting loss-leader lines of business such as free consumer inference there is a reasonable chance of a GPU glut. This GPU glut may drive down prices Oracle can command for their cloud services.
The fundamental problem is not the market as it stands today. The problem is where will the market equilibrium shift from increased capacity and reduced demand due to VC subsidy reduction.
Useful use cases at what price? It's totally possible that after VC money dries up the price increases far beyond what customers (both business and consumer) have been paying, resulting in demand destruction rendering the investment a net negative for Oracle.
With what money? LA was recently downgraded [1] and adding poor people who need social care harms not helps the city budget.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-04-26/city-of-...
It's basically the consequence Google v. Oracle and the cases leading to it.
I think <5% of labor falls under what you are speaking about.
If I can ask, what is it you think of work as? Most jobs are just that: a job, an economic transfer from employer to employee to perform specific tasks.
I hate to say it, but what do you think most Indians working for google, or facebook, or any of the other companies that open centers in India see their purpose there as?
But more or less only the euro. The USD has strengthened or held steady against INR, RMB, CAD, AUD, etc. The euro is strengthening even more, however.
People doom too hard.