I wasn’t going to write about the Hyundai drama again in The Morning Dump this week, but I can’t help it. There’s just so much there to think about in the context of the larger policy goals of this administration.
The last time a White House disrupted this many norms, it was actually another wealthy New Yorker in the White House. The biggest difference might be that FDR inherited urgent twin emergencies (the rise of Germany and the Great Depression), and President Trump, arguably, is making emergencies out of some very real (immigration, manufacturing decline), but probably less exigent issues.
What the Hyundai raid revealed was that trying all of your policies simultaneously can have negative consequences. Initially, the “success” of the raid in finding individuals violating immigration rules was heralded as a big achievement for the administration.
Now, with the plant being delayed, it seems to be butting up against the President’s goal to bring more production and investment here. The bigger risk might be beyond our borders. The President has long held the position that we need to counter China, which is fairly bipartisan as positions go, but what if this pushes more of the country’s allies into deals with Chinese companies?
I usually end the week on an up note, but I’m going to end it on an icky one. Be prepared.
Maybe Building Advanced Plants In The United States Isn’t A Great Idea For Everyone
The Hyundai Metaplant battery facility outside of Savannah, Georgia, was supposed to be a huge win for local politicians–mostly Republican ones–even though it had its roots in a policy from a Democratic President.
I think when we look at what the Biden White House did and compare it to the Trump White House, the ambition wasn’t that much different in scale, but the timing was. For all the talk of ICE bans and the like, the Inflation Reduction Act was relatively gradual, offering both incentives for construction and penalties for avoidance, but both over a long scale.
The Trump Administration is, constitutionally, limited to a single term, and seems to be doing the full Michelle Yeoh. Sometimes, this works. Our institutions are sclerotic at best and incapable of making change at worst. Being able to ignore norms to try everything isn’t always bad, and there’s an argument to be made that FDR also pushed as far as he could within the then-contemporary understanding of executive branch power.
And sometimes priorities clash. This is what happened at the Hyundai-LGES Metaplant site last week. The goal of restricting immigration (both illegal and, in some parts of the Republican Party, legal immigration) and arresting enough people to fulfill a quota crashed headfirst into the goal of encouraging advanced production in the United States.
It’s important to point out that this raid didn’t wasn’t focused on people who crossed a border illegally with the intention to stay, but workers who were essentially invited here by Georgia’s leadership (which is Republican, btw) to help set up this plant, as NBC points out:
Most of the detained South Koreans either were engineers or they worked in after-sales services and installation, said Charles Kuck, an Atlanta-based immigration attorney who is representing at least seven of them. He said they were in the U.S. under various visa programs that South Koreans and other foreign nationals have long used to do business in the country in the face of U.S. bureaucratic delays and murky regulations.
Sarah Park, president of the Korean American Coalition, said Monday that the detained workers should not be blamed for the challenges companies face trying to secure the proper U.S. visas for employees who are key to getting new facilities up and running.]
What’s somewhat curious here is that the President’s own environmental policies were making an already flattening EV adoption curve that much flatter. America, at some level, wants battery plants, but if you’re not actively encouraging EV adoption, the investment is a bit more questionable.
This raid made it that much more of a tough sell (not to mention increased steel and aluminum costs and other tariff-related cost challenges). The White House has been in backtrack mode, and there is a move from South Korea to get Congress to approve more of the kinds of visas necessary to get these plants built.
But that’s its own problem. These types of advanced plants require specialized workers to install certain equipment, and few of those workers exist here. The goal from the Biden White House was to encourage more battery production here so Americans can get the training, but that doesn’t work as well if you’re arresting the people doing the training .
That’s the point The Washington Post is making in a story about how this threatens to derail President Trump’s industrial policy:
Building plants to manufacture the batteries and related computing chips for electric cars requires very specific technical knowledge, according to Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, former chief global economist at Ford Motor Co.
“You have certain positions that are very, very technical,” said Hughes-Cromwick, now a senior visiting fellow at the center-left think tank Third Way. “These are people who have installed the equipment before. … It’s really ludicrous to think that we’re not going to have foreign-born workers as part of our workforce as we get manufacturing back on our soil.”
Battery plants require electromechanical processes that are far more complex than those at traditional car assembly plants, with proprietary industrial systems that most U.S. workers are not trained to operate. The engineers designing and building the plant need to have deep experience controlling potential contaminants, mixing volatile chemicals, and installing equipment that can handle voltage loads exponentially higher than those at legacy factories.
If you were curious, Hyundai CEO Jose Muñoz is saying that this will delay the plant by months. This isn’t necessarily going to discourage Hyundai, which is already too far along, but it’s a warning to anyone else who wants to build a plant like this here.
Congress is capable of correcting this issue by issuing more visas, but not all of the Republican Party is currently on board with this idea.
The United States Has A Friend In Mexico, Maybe
I generally think that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has done a decent job of handling the back-and-forth with the Trump White House, and that includes siding with the United States on tariffs with Asian nations.
How is China taking that news? They’re not super pumped about it, according to Bloomberg:
China urged Mexico to “think twice” before levying tariffs, a warning that could signal Beijing’s willingness to retaliate over a move it sees as giving into demands from the US.
“Any unilateral tariff increase by Mexico, even within the framework of WTO rules, would be seen as appeasement and compromise toward unilateral bullying,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Thursday. “We urge the Mexican side to exercise extreme caution and consider carefully before taking any actions.”
If you’re between a rock and a hard place, and that hard place is thousands of miles across an ocean and the rock defines your northern border, I think you go with the rock.
There’s something that Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa said this week that also makes me believe Mexico is on the right track here:
The company, which has a large manufacturing footprint in the U.S., as well as in Mexico and Canada, is holding a “very productive exchange of ideas” with President Donald Trump’s administration, Filosa said in a Sept. 11 interview during the Kepler Cheuvreux Autumn Conference.
The CEO said the tariff environment was not yet 100 percent defined, but it is “getting clearer and clearer and we are ready to act.”
“Our capacity in the United States can accommodate important industrial moves. So we are still working with the administration to create the final scenario and very soon we’ll be able to communicate around that,” Filosa said.
Stellantis (and GM and Ford) need some relief on production in Canada and Mexico in order to survive, even if a lot of production shifts back to the United States. My guess here, and it’s just a guess, is that in the run-up to a USMCA II, Back In The Habit Of Being Normal Trading Partners, that manufacturers will get some sort of reprieve, and that this will benefit Mexico to a degree.
China Is Waiting In The Wings
While Chinese automakers are likely not going to expand in Mexico immediately, suppliers were all over the IAA show in Munich this week, as Nikkei Asia reports:
IAA Mobility 2025, which runs in Munich until Sunday, is notable not just for the record 116 Chinese auto exhibitors, but for the many parts makers and technology suppliers that aim to set up or expand production and partnerships in the European Union.
After showing the sensors, Jason Ji, research and development director at Zhejiang Wodeer Technology Group, told Nikkei about the workings of oil pumps that are essential for lubricating traction motors and gearboxes in electric vehicles.
While the sensors and pumps are already in mass production in China, Wodeer is preparing to open assembly lines to build them locally at a newly acquired plant and office building in the small German town of Adelberg near Stuttgart.
Alliances are shifting, and it means countries will have to decide if they’re better off sticking with traditional partners like the United States or inviting in more Chinese manufacturing.
GM Shuts Down Building After Employees Contract Legionnaires’ Disease
One of my weird fears is contracting Legionnaires’ disease from walking under a window A/C unit in New York City. If you walk around the city long enough, some errant moisture will fall on you. When it happens, I scream out: “I just got Legionnaires’ Disease” and cover my body in hand sanitizer.
I was reminded of this phobia by a recent report in the Detroit Free Press about GM closing one of its Warren buildings after two people tested positive for the pneumonia-like bacterial condition:
“GM was notified late Wednesday, Sept. 10, by the Macomb County Health Department that two Cole residents had tested positive for Legionnaires’ disease,” Kuhnen said. “Out of an abundance of caution, GM took immediate action to close the building and has ordered comprehensive third-party testing for the site.”
She said GM’s regular bacteria testing at Cole has revealed there are no issues, and, at this time, the building has not been confirmed as the source.
“The health and safety of our employees is our continued priority,” Kuhnen said.
Gross.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
What’s a good song for this Friday? Why not “What The Hell” from Canadian treasure Avril Lavigne… if only for the sweet Panther burnout.
The Big Question
What are you afraid of?
Top photo: Hyundai
Counterpoint: Yes it is, at least in the context of government. “Move fast and break things” is a shit policy when peoples’ lives are at stake. One reason it takes forever for the government to do things is that when it screws up, it screws up at a scale most people can’t comprehend. The government is an order of magnitude larger than any corporation in the US. Mistakes are also an order of magnitude worse (at least, maybe more given the critical nature of many government functions).
Government policy should be designed and enacted with the greatest care, not the whim of a “leader” with the emotional maturity of a 12 year old. Which is also why our government was designed to prevent any one person from holding too much power. Shame SCOTUS took a giant dump on checks and balances lately.
Oh, forgot this:
Whereas Trump is both of those emergencies. Whatever similarities there might be in their methods, their ideologies are polar opposites.
This is what drives me so effing crazy when people talk about government in business terms. The primary purpose of a business is to maximize profit while following the law (although here in the US we seem to have either made the laws irrelevant for businesses or not care when they break them) whereas the primary purpose of a functional government should be providing the most good to the most people.
Exactly. NASA doesn’t show a profit. DOD doesn’t show a profit. Bureau of Indian Affairs doesn’t show a profit. Why should USPS or any other part of government?
LOWER TAXES. I WANT A GOVERNMENT I CAN DROWN IN A BATHTUB. /s
so Somalia or Yemen?
God no… those that decry a functioning government have had lifetime access to and advantage of a functioning government.
Part of me wants to emmigrate to the EU at the first opporunity.
Same here.
I’m working on it. There are a couple of different routes I can go, but finding all the documents is a challenge.
Isn’t government making a profit one of the definitions of corruption?
I agree, I hate this attitude and the idea that it’s super cool to break the rules. It isn’t. The rules are usually written in blood. We need rules and regulations to keep our society on the rails because the reality of the situation is that the average person needs to have their hand held throughout life one way or another.
The government exists to be that hand because humans, especially in the US, cannot be trusted to consistently care about others or be willing to do anything for the greater good of the species. This idea that you can run the government like a fucking corporation is ludicrously stupid, but unfortunately a lot of people still haven’t seen enough to conclude that.
For example my father in law is a ridiculously smart guy. He’s an accountant with multiple degrees and former CFO who was so good at his job they gave him a ridiculously cushy offer to retire early, which he wisely took. I have all sorts of enlightening, in depth conversations about him and I love him dearly.
But if you ask him who should be in charge he’s going to say a businessman, every single time. We dragged him away from voting Trump a second or third time kicking and screaming as a result. He’s not bigoted in any way, he’a a good and honest man, he’s empathetic, he cares about other people, he wants the world to be a better place and to do his part…but in his capitalistic brain the businessperson is always the most qualified to run anything.
This is the case with an alarming amount of people. I think it’s one of the myriad tragic side effects of capitalism. We are all wired to bow to the whims of capital and in our society nothing matters more than wealth. Businessmen are the most wealthy people, ergo…well, you get the rest.
But those people don’t get to their positions because they’re the best at anything valuable…they get there because they’re the best and most ruthless capitalists, and I don’t know how to change that.
I frequently think about the James Madison quote “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” and I wish more of the “small government” types would as well. If you want a functioning society with less regulation you need to stop abusing the regulations you already have.
Given how ingrained capitalism is in US society, I fear the answer to that may be catastrophic.
Ironically, sensible businesspeople really want stability in government. No one likes the rules changing all the time.
It’s frustrating that my dad is a SBO and a righty and when we talk about big issues, we ultimately come to the same conclusion that big corporations are bad and do bad things. But he can’t seem to connect that with running the gov’t like a big corporation is also bad.
Yeah conservatives whined about big tech before trump got elected and now they all seem to love them? The hypocrisy of the right is what is so sickening.
The whining isn’t in earnest, at least at the top. It’s part of a strategy of “working the ref”, and it’s been quite effective.
The issue is capitalism is not a form of government. I don’t know how to get that through people’s heads in this country. That is our economic system. People just aren’t smart in this country anymore. I am not talking about intelligence in the normal sense, they just have no ability to see through bullshit. Critical thinking is completely absent from a huge portion of the population.
It’s not just this country. Look at some of the voting patterns in Europe. Though I will say that they’ve got a better reason to be bothered about immigration and migrants than Americans do. Immigration to Europe simply wasn’t THAT common historically, whereas our country has immigration as part of its culture.
Move Fast and Break Things is a stupid philosophy in any context.
It only exists because we have idiots in charge (of government and private industry) who have no concerns past the next bonus check (or whatever the government equivalent of that is. Do they get more bribes or speaking engagements?).
There are times in business where it has definitely worked. Whether that’s a good thing or not is debatable though. Things like Uber and DoorDash basically moved faster than government regulation could keep up and broke a lot things (including laws, arguably), but they got big enough that now it would cause a lot of pain to regulate them. Crypto did the same thing.
From a societal perspective I would say those are all bad things, but from a business perspective they’re smashing successes.
If not for Uber Eats during the pandemic, we’d be saying ‘Hey, remember Uber?’ Door Dash also benefitted, but at least they were a new thing. Uber’s entire idea was ‘Hey, what if Taxis but we put all the costs on the underpaid drivers and discregard all laws and regulations, up to and including altering our software to keep regulators out of the cars?’
I’d love to see an AI video of Travis Kalanick getting curb stomped. (I’d love a real video more.)
TK is a very special kind of sociopath.
Uber’s plan has always been to gather enough capital to last long enough for driverless cars. The business model wouldn’t have worked to make operating profit at the prices they originally charged.
Besides, taxis in most American cities were terrible, and the whole medallion system was ridiculous.
lol, no not arguably. They broke TONS of laws in TONS of places. They undercut the cabs long enough to get the people who enforce the laws to use them, and then change the law to continue using them or just pretend the laws didnt exist.
Then they raised their prices.
I disagree there. I worked on a skunkworks R&D team (unrelated to any of Musk’s endeavors), and we were all about testing ideas to failure, quickly learning from it, and moving on. That kept us 3 steps ahead of the competition. The key difference is we were developing industrial products, not running a country.
We also did said experiments safely in tightly controlled laboratories where people and the environment wouldn’t get hurt. As quickly as we worked, there was a very serious safety culture that was fostered from the top down.
It was a perfectly reasonable philosophy in context: as a large but not yet dominant social networking site, that had not yet become a major source of news and communication for the world, the company made the deliberate (and temporary!) tradeoff: tolerate more bugs and problems in exchange for faster product development velocity. The slogan was to make it clear to people that yes, that’s really the desired trade-off and you won’t get in trouble for it.
By the time it started being a thing in general and blindly cargo-culted regardless of circumstances, the company that created it had already moved on.
Move fast and break things was a thing in software development, where figuring out if something could work was more important than that if it was a good idea, because that’s then you might fix things of just decide it was a bad idea even if it worked, and you might be trying several ideas at the same time.
This is as opposed to the waterfall approach where you make a bunch of Gantt charts spend years planning commit to the whole thing working perfectly, and then start building it. Gantt shirts are great for building battleships but lousy for building software because by the time you have finished the process the conditions have changed too much
Unfortunately, the phrase and not even the concept has been applied to lots of other stuff that it has no business being applied to.
Public policy is far more similar to building battleships than it is to building consumer facing software that has a half-life of about six months and then you start over.
“Information wants to be free” is my other favorite misunderstood quote, it’s simply means that information once it is widely known is impossible to suppress. People keep thinking that it means that information wants to be very, very, very cheap.
“ information doesn’t want to be free. It would like dinner and a show first.”
I didn’t make that up myself, but I can’t remember who said it.
Arguably this process works well for rocket development, too. Launching over water makes it relatively risk-free to make mistakes and do agile project management. Clearly it is working better than most other rocket manufacturers.
Musk is execrable, but he really doesn’t run SpaceX anyway.
Breaking things is fine when it’s your things that get broken.
And you clean up after yourself.
Oh, and you aren’t a landlord.
It’s fine for product development. It’s a much better strategy than the Cooper Stage Gate process that guarantees half of your engineers will spend their day working on presentations instead of products.
It’s much less good as an overall corporate philosophy. It doesn’t work well when applied to Accounts Payable or Payroll.
I had to google Cooper Stage Gate, what a nightmare.
It was.
When they sold it to the company, they rolled it out to us. On the page where they showed other companies using that process, one of the companies was Guinness.
Not a company known for its new products.
The only saving grace for me was that the headquarters was in the UK and video conferencing (and broadband for that matter) was still kind of crude. Once or twice a month you could just drop out of a meeting and blame it on the equipment or connection.
I am afraid my late-career collection of freelance gigs is going to fall apart before I am ready to retire. I am getting close to my original retirement savings number, but with inflation I think I need to increase it by 30%. Then I also need things to do if I am not working for money – I will not be a good retired person… so much to stress about!
I also worry about my family – especially the extended family that is in or recently graduated from college – it is a jobs desert out there.
Similar situation with me and my wife. I’m in my late 40’s, aiming to either retire or semi-retire when I’m 55. We are fortunate in that our house is paid for, we have been saving and investing for years and live cheap. But I have no doubt that if I lose the job I have that I will not be able to find another one in this field. ALL of the people I know ranging from my friends to former colleagues who have been laid off are not even getting responses. And on top of it all, as my career has been in the creative industry, AI will likely take more and more of a role in that area.
My backup plan is that I work on a lot of vintage stereo systems and even though I don’t advertise stay pretty busy. If I got serious about it I could probably do ok there. But I just need to somehow make it at the current job until I turn 55- if I can hold on.
Its bad out there. Really bad.
I’m an engineer who turns 50 next year. Retiring at 55 or even 60 is a pipe dream for me. I’m hoping that by 65 I can quit the rat race, maybe hang a shingle as a consultant.
If you are working for a big company in the US, they will figure out a way to fire you when you are 55.
Mid-size company, I’m a well placed subject matter expert and manager, finishing a business master’s degree this month (the dark side) for my future career health. There is still opportunity.
I was a paid speaker every year at the industry conference at my last company. Engineers would contact me early in their design process to plan to integrate our products. I could get in touch with anyone at any level of the industry.
I started with them when they just opened their US office. The office didn’t even have filing cabinets yet when I started (and filing cabinets were still a thing you needed then).
The problem with building up a small (in the US, mid-sized overall) successful company is that a much larger company can walk in, buy the company and then insist that everyone needs to move to Michigan. I did not move to Michigan, but did have to spend a lot of time there (enough to know I made the correct decision) post-acquisition.
We did buy another US company before we got bought, and I did play a role in throwing their world into chaos. I guess what goes around comes around.
I got into tech designing UI for GENIE. General Electrics competitor to AOL and IBM and Sears’ Prodigy online service.
Then browsers happened and everyone assumed I knew more than I did, but I could figure out it out fast enough that it didn’t matter. Plus nobody knew anything anyway.
My career pattern was:
Do some consulting work for a small company or contractor on the basis that nobody knew how to do it and I just made it up as I went along. Because farmers and artists do that.
It works splendidly so they decide to develop a project in house and hire me at 200 times my day rate to leave the project. Do I tell them I bill about 80 days a year most years? I do not.
The second or third customer for the project decides what they really want to do is buy the company, to complete their customer management system. now I am a mid level manager/lead developer with a shitload of stock options.
Soon after a big telecom equipment manufacturer buys the second company to acquire their call center software, based on on the language we developed at the first company.
Stock vests and weeks later craters, but nobody told me to sell before the end of the year, so I owe taxes on the value of the stock on the day I received it which was about a million bucks more than at the end of the year.
Meanwhile, at the big company with the recently cratered stock, management wants to know why the software that they “give away“ so that their call center equipment can do something useful is written in some sort of weird hybrid of postscript/forth/SQL ( it wasn’t but we had to describe it somehow). They also get upset that only five people in the world seem to understand the language because we wrote it, that it’s nearly impossible to test because it’s a language.( not helped by us documenting really bad things that could happen and the idiot testers testing to see if really bad things do indeed happen on the production network, taking down the entire global sales network because that was the Ethernet port they plugged into that day!)
Also the company paid a bonus for meeting stretch goals, so we would add a feature, then they would freak out that we had blown the test budget. Also we kept finding bugs in the other projects, or pointing out design flaws before stuff shipped.
So naturally they fired the lot of us.
Could have made more working at Trader Joe’s
Awesome story. I am old enough to remember Genie / Prodigy, but I was more of a local BBS guy at that time. I was a SIGop at several BBSs, usually in charge of their Amiga special interest groups (where they existed).
I’m just stumbling my way to retirement, knowing that I need to cover a BMW lease payment worth of property tax (yay, MA!) until I die.
The good thing is that I don’t care what’s left when I go. I hope I get very financially irresponsible at the end.
You reminded me that I have a large amount tied up in the Michigan company’s stock that I need to move elsewhere before the world goes completely sideways.
It could be worse – you could be in New Hampshire – much higher property taxes. Also check with your town clerk – some Mass towns/cities have abatement programs for seniors.
I’m not quite that old yet, but the town does have a very low rate for agricultural uses. I could start growing orchids under grow lamps in the barn or something.
I think the agricultural use has to reach a certain level or percentage of household income to qualify. Won’t work now, but may in retirement.
I like NH, but they do some weird stuff like being the only new England State without legal cannabis. I know they’ve missed out on a few years of vacation rentals from me because of that. Not that it’s the point of my vacation, but I am too old to be arrested for that so I won’t risk it.
I don’t know the state level stuff, but I just read an article that said the feds will count your property as a farm if you sell a minimum of $1,000 worth of farm-grown products. That’s why the US supposedly has two million farms; the vast majority basically just sell enough to hit the minimum.
What are the Mass. towns/cities abatement programs for seniors called? I’m thinking of maybe moving to Great Barrington as an alternative to the Hudson valley.
I’m leaving California for the last time.
Moving from CA, you can probably get closer to the coast and still find a rural-feeling area.
Great Barrington is nice, but I’d personally prefer to be in VT if I were looking for that vibe. VT has a cool property tax structure, where they charge like twice as much to non-resident property owners because there were so many NY/NJ folks who owned second homes in the state.
You’re really not much closer to anything other than Hartford or Worcester in North Barrington vs VT.
BBSes! I know you did it for work, but did you ever play Tradewar? I loved that game but didn’t get to play as much as I wanted to because we didn’t have a second phone line until like 1994 and by then I was all about the WWW.
That wasn’t work, just community involvement.
Of course I played Trade Wars. I also used to wait around for my Fido Mail.
Yeah, that is a huge problem with incentive stock options – you get taxed when they are released into the public market – but you usually have a six month lockup. This is a real problem because the options are taxed as income, but the stock loss is taxed at capital gains rates, so you end up with a net tax of 25%+. Note the vulture capitalists warrants are taxed as capital gains so they do not have this problem – it is a worker bee problem. Really wish our legislators could fix this problem – but it benefits the little people not the oligarchs, so nobody lobbies for it.
It wasn’t an ipo, but was a stock swap so I managed to be in a third category, it was a capital gain, and a capital loss, not income, so I paid capital gains tax, and had a capital loss to carry forward. If I didn’t have any capital gains I could take $3000 a year off my taxes for the next 92 years.
Of course locking it up as a capital gain was what precipitated the problem.
Deals like that can lead directly to the Oval Office.
Hugh 2024!
I wish we could go back to 2024 and elect pretty much anyone else.
I’m a firm believer that if Romney won in 2012 we could have skipped this whole mess with Trump.
I’m pro-capitalism, but they really need to stop taxing capital gains at a different rate than W2 income. I feel even more strongly about that now that I understand that the current system is screwing over some workers with options.
Well, if you are actually rich, you never sell anything, so you never get taxed, but you borrow using what you own as collateral, maybe even deducting the interest, then when you die, everything resets and your heirs get it tax free.
Of course if you own a farm, you get taxed like crazy.
Yeah, I forgot about that trick.
Genie & Forth… I got into computers as a kid so I wasn’t working back then but that brings back memories of reading PC Magazine when it was like hundreds of pages. I wish I’d been born ten years earlier sometimes, but I did make a little money making websites for some local businesses when you needed to write the HTML by hand. I remember Mosaic!
These days I work with M code on occasion. You can probably guess the software, because I don’t work for a bank.
I tend to agree. The idea of being young/starting out professionally now or in the recent past is sobering. Some will manage it successfully of course, but I fear a larger percentage of those entering the work force will endure a much more marginal existence. I managed to retire before 60, though it could have gone much worse had it not been in my nature to live within my means, OR had I been born 25 years later than I was.
BTW, I love vintage electronica, especially old stereos, and routinely enjoy watching videos about such stuff from Skylabs on Youtube and others. If you can make a decent retirement career doing something you enjoy, more power to you! 🙂
It was pretty bad when I moved to Cali in 2000. Right when the dot-com crashed. None of the people I graduated with were able to get anything other than crap jobs for years. I spent the first 3 years here working in a lumber yard before finally getting my first office job. This time around might be a lot worse for recent grads.
My particular “skill” with the old stereos are old 50’s and 60’s large wood cabinet consoles with turntables, etc. Tube powered stuff. And moreso, German stereo systems, which for some reason scares off others to work on them. If I whispered I work on those I would be flooded immediately. There’s three in the garage now and that was only because someone told a friend that they knew someone who knew that I worked on them.
I moved here in the early ’90s, not long before the Northridge quake and after the start of the decline of the SoCal aerospace industry. Prices were pretty affordable then, so I scrimped and saved, living in a super-cheap rental apartment w/o a fridge or AC, and routinely working 80+ hour weeks, and managed to put a deposit down on my current home in ’94-5. The timing was pure luck of course… the same decisions today wouldn’t go as well.
Should I ever get more into vintage stereos and need work done, I’ll look you up Ben. 🙂 -Scott
Luck is very much a part of California real estate. If you’re lucky and can time it to where its when people are NOT buying homes then you can get into one. I worked with a guy at one of the startups I was at earlier in my career. He had bought his house in 1997 or something.
We waited until 2011. That was when the housing market had both tanked and stagnated enough to where prices were lower, rates were also lower and there wasn’t as much interest in buying. That’s when we bought and it worked out. Almost as soon as we did it wet right back to massive price hikes and bidding wars. I told my brother to pay attention to the market. Its definitely cratering. And there’s no bidders to compete with. They are about to buy the house they rent. The prices have come down enough to where its doable.
Bought my home in 2010, demand was low and money went far. I refinaced during Covid when rates cratered.
My only regret is that I wasn’t in a position to refinance during Covid due to job changes. That has slightly screwed me.
But I assume lower rates are coming through frantic stupidity and I will jump on them when they do. They will surely be followed by a stagflation period that will have us all wishing for Jimmy Carter.
Now, I find myself occassionally nostalgic for G.W. Bush. I’d not have thought that possible, but there it is. It’s almost beyond imagination, but maybe there’ll be an even worse President in our future, so much so that we’ll look back on today with rose-tinted glasses?
I refinanced a few times when it was opportune to do so during my mortgage… it’s not exact, but I think you’ve got to be able to get a 3/4 point interest reduction (or greater) to make it worthwhile (a generalization… it varies per your own financial details). Being self-employed makes refinancing (or getting a mortgage initially) much more difficult.
Still, I can always just turn off the news and walk around outside with my dog. It’s almost always nice out.
I once had a major bank tell me they would write my mortgage if only my Elise was on the mortgage – not only did they not value my self-earned income they were afraid of it… we found a better bank and then refinanced with a local bank when rates were really low mid-pandemic.
This was put up during the Obama years, but I agree with it now:
george-w-bush-billboard-that-was-put-up-in-wyoming-2010-v0-fwdtihw134yd1.png
I think GWB wasn’t evil himself, though he had some evil people working for him (Cheney, Rumsfield, etc…) which is almost as bad of course. I like that he mostly keeps his mouth shut re: politics in retirement, and paints.
Current rates are still a few whole percentage points higher. I’m not in a bad place, just missed out on the rock-bottom ~2% rates that were available for a bit.
And we can take the dogs for a walk through the woods out back. Weather varies drastically, but it’s still relaxing.
We bought our townhouse at the peak in 2004. I knew I was buying at the peak, I also knew I wanted a garage to finish my SR swap S13 so that’s what we did.
Luckily we were in a position where we could buy the next house and keep the town house. I would have sold it at a loss otherwise because we had 80/20 financing on it and I didn’t realize my wife had been paying down the principal. It really took the wind out of my sales because I was looking forward to just leaving the keys on the kitchen counter and walking away from that place.
Whatever, though. I’m older and wiser and hopefully healthy enough to make it to retirement age (whatever that turns out to be).
I bought in 2017 in CA and was afraid I overpaid for my house. COVID sucked but it let me refinance at 2.5% in 2021 and lowered my mortgage by $1k a month, and the house doubled in price. Definitely luck, though part of the reason I moved here was that I could use my house to augment my retirement; sure stocks make more profit, but I can’t live in my portfolio, and the weather sure is nice.
Man… we had a console TV growing up until 1984? I remember the repairmen coming for that beast a few times. Dad bought a 20″? in a slim case with a remote control in maybe 1984? The future had arrived. Then a VHS in 1986 IIRC.
I think we got our Emerson VHS around 1985. But it was attached to a big old console 25″ tv.
My dad would not spring for a unit with a remote control. He had six kids, changing channels was our job.
I didn’t know that they ever made a VCR without a remote. I assume that’s what you meant because if you had a VCR you could have just changed channels through there.
My uncle had a top-loader with a wired remote.
There was a remote for the VCR, but it didn’t work for the cable channels. I think it may have worked for the low-number channels, but didn’t work for the higher number channels or the premium channels that required the black decoder box that was wired in-line before the cable box.
The cable boxes at the time were still wood-grained (Jerrold).
Ah, yes, I forgot about the damnable cable boxes. I’m pretty sure ours had wood grain through the 80s at least.
My 20 yo daughter is working full time as a nanny, no desire to go into college debt for a worthless degree. Has ambitions outside of traditional college. I honestly can’t argue. I see a massive upheaval coming, and AI ain’t coming for your hands on job.
Yes, but the hands-on job will come for her knees in about 30 years.
Nothing wrong at all w/choosing a non-college path. But not all degrees are worthless and for some professions, they’re required. Also, not all colleges are going to put you into debt: I went to what was purported to be (at the time) the most expensive college in America that wasn’t a medical school. I carried the maximum number of credits (because I wanted my money’s worth). I also worked up to three part-time jobs simultaneously. And despite the stratospheric tuition, I left school with just a few grand of debt, which I had paid off within a year or two, despite my first post-college job having a modest salary.
Better IMO is going to a city/state college, where tuitions are just a fraction of those of private/big name schools, especially if you’ve established in-state residency. I went to a city college for a couple years to get all the prerequisites out of the way before moving on to the big/pricey school, and IIRC, the city school (NYC being the city in my case) wound up costing me zero debt at all: it was cheap, they had some decent professors/facilities, and I actually learned stuff too. I even got laid now and then… what more could a young person preparing to go out into the world want? 😉
With that said, trade schools are awesome: mechanics, electricians, plumbers, etc… most of them make more starting out than a cop or firefighter. Those jobs are worth respect, and difficult to out-source. Until the U.S. starts issuing work visas for those professions, anyone willing to work in them will enjoy job security and make a decent living.
I hold an engineering degree from a private, out of state school. Once we crunched the numbers, it was the best fit and no more expensive than the local in state university (1990’s). I paid off my college loans, about 35k IIRC, within 5 years or so. I have had a fullfilling, specialized career I would never trade.
The same time, I see a lot of rudderless youths going to college just to go to college. My daughter does not want to get into that debt without a return, and still is uncertain of her future path.
I fully support the trade programs, I work in manufacturing environments and there is a dearth of skilled labor. Learn a trade. You will work hard for your living, but you can work for a living just about anywhere in this vast country that you choose.
People of my generation (Oregon Trail generation – right on the edge of GenX/Milennial) were heavily steered to college. I probably would have enjoyed the trades more, but my body is somewhat happier this way. My race to retirement isn’t against my body, and thankfully the tech work I do isn’t easily automated.
Yep, my contractor makes more than my wife and I combined, and we both make what I’d consider good money. The trick is to grow the business and hire others for the hard physical work before your body breaks down.
You can’t outsource a lot of the trades, and there is a real shortage of folks who can do the work. Word is a lot of Gen Z folks are headed into the trades.
I hope so, for their sake. I’m not quite 60 and my back is f-ed beyond repair already. I wish that I’d been more careful… I always figured ‘if I can lift it, it must be ok’ but of course, that’s not true. I don’t care about the three hernias since they were fixable w/minor surgery, but once messed up, the back never seems to recover.
If I could do it over, assuming that astronaut/racecar driver/Playboy photographer and all the other boyhood dreams of what to be when grown up were still unlikely, I’d probably have preferred to be some sort of engineer. Barring that, I think electrician would have been best… maybe develop a specialty w/home automation, home theaters, solar PV systems, etc… Still some physical work, but no heavy lifting, and you’re using your brain and your hands. I think that would have been good.
Tube systems? – I have a VTL pre-amp that isn’t working ;-). It supposedly is mostly one of the old Dynaco PAS setups?
I didn’t buy a house until I was 36, but luckily it doubled in value and I live in Orange County, so that’s considerable. It’ll definitely help my wife and I retire, but the flip side is that we’ll have to sell the house to do so.
Considering how things are going here, I think we’ll probably rent after we sell this place. We’re certainly never going to see another 2.5% mortgage anytime soon.
Retired for 3 years here. Please hang tough, and save every dime you are able to.
Cat food does not make a good supper…
Youtube and Tiktok will be full of catfood recipes in five years.
At least they’re already used to a ramen diet.
California’s laws intended to protect Uber and Lyft drivers (which ironically ended up exempting) have made it very difficult to be an independent contractor here. I considered going back to contract work but I’d have to move to another state – and not work in CA – to get around it.
I love living in CA but this is by far more irritating to me than just about anything else here. It impacts my livelihood.
I am afraid that midterms go his way thanks to all the gerrymandering.
I’m afraid of that too. But… that will only work if trump has the same level of support he did in 2020. He and his advisors are insanely incompetent and trump has completely miscalculated the response from the rest of the world, which has had enough, has other places they can do business with and probably see the US as more of a liability. Keep in mind that the extreme high prices we have now is only the start. All of the major retailers, manufactures and suppliers went on a huge buying binge to stuff their warehouses before the tariffs took place. trump assumed the same thing would happen as the last time and everyone would bow down and negotiate and this would be over by now. Well those supplies are running out. And with that is going to come massive price increases. And all it takes is to piss off enough middle American soccer moms to change the math in both red and blue districts. I can see this totally going the other way, where the level of anger against those high prices will cause such a massive landslide that no amount of Gerrymandering will offset it.
We’ll see. The mouthbreathers here will still blame the high prices on Biden and continue to have faith in their Dear Leader.
I like how the Orange guy can’t stop blaming Obama for the current shit show. Always good for a laugh.
BTW is he dead yet? LOL.
I said it the other day, I’ve been in a few big retailers recently and the shelves are NOT overstuffed with wares. Many spaces were empty or only had a few of each item. MASA – Make America Soviet (or Scarce) Again.
Being contrarian, is this the way to finally break our cycle of overconsumption? Much as Covid killed the Thanksgiving evening Black Friday sales (rest in Hell).
And I’m sure you’ve been to the grocery store lately, right? The prices are obscene. And whenever I see those prices I think to myself that for those making less than me, which is probably the vast majority of what trump’s supporters make that this will hurt them financially in a major way. I hope that translates to anger. A lot of town halls these days are full of people looking for blood.
Yes…we are pushing more of our purchases to Aldi and my partner is realizing that buying all-organic (Whole Foods) is not sustainable in this economic climate. The produce departments everywhere are thin (likely because of ICE).
I don’t support or condone the exploitation of others, but the dirty fact is that the enitre US agriculture and hospitality industry is (semi)reiliant on poorly paid (and often undocumented) labor.
My Aldi salad dressing was89 cents 3 years ago. Surprise it’s over $2 now. I make my own. Perhaps the rapid increases will snuff out demand for the other 46 flavors or Oreos, while some of us bake our own cookies.
We signed up for a full-share CSA this year for the first time and are thankful we did. We also have friends who have a grass-fed cattle farm and picked up a half-cow this fall.
Because I have done a lot of work in the food-service industry, I tend to be offered cheap equipment, and our two commercial chest freezers are full. I figure we could have soup for about two years at a dollar a serving. This isn’t done out of any prepper delusion; my partner is just incredibly cheap. They haven’t purchased any new clothing other than shoes and underwear for ten years.
A lot of elected maga officials no longer have the guts to hold town halls.
Because the GOP leadership told them to stop having the town halls because at EVERY single one of them the result was angry combative crowds screaming at an overwhelmed Republican dipshit who merely repeated whatever propaganda they were told to use. They have absolutely no clue how seriously angry people are at them. They will learn what that translates to in the midterms.
Are they angry enough to realize they’ve been used and duped, supporting a party and policies that will make their lives worse? When this happens, it’s all over for the Republican party. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
People are generally stupid. They are reactionary. And they will blame whomever is in power and the NUMBER ONE thing to get them to do so? When they are hurt financially.
We can only hope.
And pray.
Thoughts and Prayers, as they say…
Yup – bought a loaf of sliced white bread for $7 and a gallon of whole milk for $8 earlier this week. WTF.
Aldi is always the answer.
Can’t wait for an Aldi to open closer than 200 miles away. Loved Aldi when I lived in Germany.
Around here its Grocery Outlet.
Yeah, the first time around, Trump had competent folks in the administration. This time around, he picked people based on loyalty because he hated the competent folks telling him he couldn’t do things.
I swear, his cabinet are like a parody of the worst possible people for their positions.
The more likely issue is that the midterms will be rendered meaningless if they fail to deliver what MAGA wants. They have zero issues with using the military to quell anyone who complains. They have made their intentions very clear on multiple occasions and have now done their pressure testing on using the military in U.S. cities, and found there are no meaningful restrictions on their actions.
That’s the other fear. I’m drinking a lot more lately.
I went through that phase eight years ago. I have moved on to the no drinking and working out five days a week phase. I figure I need to be as prepared as possible.
I have to take mental health breaks from mainstream news. I feel powerless to change anything.
I struggle with sobriety myself – this helps.
Be careful with that. Seriously. Covid did that to me. I always liked drinking before but really started hard core during Covid. And then it became a habit. I stopped drinking a year ago. But not after going down a nasty path of putting away the booze to a pretty harmful degree.
How did you stop? What did you replace the booze with? I’m struggling myself.
If you live in a state you can get a weed card it can be very helpful. I know substitution isn’t a cure, but eating a gummy every day seems way healthier to me than a 12 pack.
While I am very concerned about all of this, Pritzker fended them off in Chicago. All is not lost. There are elections going on and so far they are basically going blue. We still have to be aware of the situation though but I’m not that far off from you.
My thoughts on the issue are that the more critical it becomes, the more acute their actions will be. Right now, it is pressure testing. They are looking for reactions so they can judge how to prepare. They are also hoping for reactions that will justify more extreme actions on their part.
This also encourages them to be as terrible as possible, since that gives them the best chance at getting the reaction they are looking for. Of course, if they get no reaction, they win as well. So here we are.
My “gut feeling”, which might not count for much is that the people are actually really angry now. Not just liberals and democrats. But a whole bunch of ordinary average Americans including more moderate Republicans are pissed. The turnout in 2020 was really piss-poor. I am sure that by now anyone who chose to sit that one out and who care at all about whats happening now are very much ready to vote this time around.
I have never been this angry and enraged at an admin as I am now, which is pretty remarkable given I was also pretty angry during his first term. This time is different. We’ve got a man who is actively and intentionally hurting and going after people and institutions and all doing do completely out in the open. I have never seen a admin burn through what little political capital it might have had just 6 months ago.
So yeah… my sincere hope is the midterms are going to be an intense blowout. Everyone is paying attention. Everyone knows the stakes and knows this has to stop/
I don’t really trust the media anymore, but there have been suggestions that the point source that the ICE raid on the Hyundai plant was triggered by a (R) candidate for some Georgia state legislature position. She wanted to make a big stink about the ~500 jobs that were held by people who looked different from her holding jobs that she felt should be held by people who looked more like her.
How much money did these 500 short term jobs bring to her district? Hotels, restaurants, rental cars…. likely all on Hyundai’s dime.
If Republicans weren’t able to only think 5 minutes into the future they wouldn’t be able to think at all.
I travel a fair amount for work, I’m not penny pinching meals, tips, etc… on the expense account.
It was candidate for Representative Tori Branum that was outed by multiple sources as the instigator. She later came out and admitted she made the calls.
And the sooner the techs set up the factory, the sooner locals can get hired to run and work at the factory.
Facepalm.
What am I afraid of? Airplanes, cars, elevators, bugs, cancer, everything in the ocean, trains, quicksand, my teeth all falling out at once for no reason, guns, knives, power tools, literally everything bad that could possibly happen to my kids (especially the things I haven’t even thought of yet). Etc., etc., etc.
Anxiety is annoying and mine gets worse every year. Hooray!
I empathize. I’d add car accidents, flesh eating bacteria, the apocolypse, food poisoning, random violence, and degrading spinal conditions to that list.
Driving over or walking under bridges. Especially if trains are overhead in #2. I want to trust engineering, but will not trust the repairs and maintenance departments of for profit corporations or under or unfunded governmental departments
I’m afraid of this major life change decision I’m about to make. The dice have been rolled…
God speed, Parkso!
Pray to Nuffle.
Good Luck!
Good luck!! I hope it goes well for you with all my heart.
Third Way is a “better things aren’t possible” think tank. They are not center-left.
Getting rid of all the immigrants he isn’t married to, killing EVs and renewable energy, looks pretty consistent to me.
I am afraid of how quickly so many people buy into the idea that the reason Korean engineers were at the plant was due to a lack of skilled workers in the US. While it is theoretically possible, the fact that Korean engineers are typically paid less than half their US counterparts does seem to both relevant and ignored.
That is both true on the face of it and tangential to the current issue. For rapid scaling, Hyundai wants to do things the Hyundai way, with people they know. If the US wants to have an industrial policy that states they must hire US citizens for whatever percentage of jobs (even up to 100%), that’s fine. But you can’t just round up everybody like this without warning.
My company is pursuing an overseas investment. Damn straight US engineers (likely me included) will be on site during construction and startup. Add in specialized machinery, chemistries and training needs…
Good luck. First thing to do in the overseas venue is to find a good local lawyer that you can call upon. It would not surprise me if some country would decide to haul off in chains any US worker who has violated their visa conditions in any way.
This a South American country, so I may need more than a lawyer…
At the same time: we are investing in the local economy, hiring local people with legitimate, good paying jobs. Negotiations are in place to purchase what equipment we can locally. Most construction contractors will be local. But there are also things that they cannot do, or things that we must be able to field verify with our people.
Send lawyers, guns, and money.
The shit has hit the fan
I was not in any way defending the immigration raid. Just pointing out that the narrative that the workers were only here due to a needed skill gap is unlikely the full story. They were here because their skill to cost ratio was better than US workers. That could be because there are zero US workers with needed skills, however if there were US workers with the needed skill, they would be much more expensive.
Hyundai wants to control their destiny. I agree the situation is certainly far more nuanced than portrayed by all parties.
Anytime I visit our Canadian facilites visas are an issue. I have to only be consulting, training and advising.
South Korea isn’t where you offshore to if you want to save money.
When trying to building on something new, expertise and efficiency is something the South Korean workforce has in spades…it makes perfect sense to me that Hyundai wanted the best chance possible to be successful. Doing so required people and suppliers they were familiar with.
It’s a plant being brought up from nothing, with all of the design work done primarily in Korea, 299/300 detained Koreans left the US after being asked to stay by the administration should tell everyone that they were here on a temporary work assignment, and had no intentions of staying the US long term. If they really wanted to be here and to supplant US engineers long term, they would have taken that offer.
You arrest me at work and then ask a favor?
Pull the other one, it plays Jingle Bells.
Probably, it has more to do with being able to read Korean documentation to install Korean machinery in the same way as the factories in Korea, and communicating with Korean engineers and suppliers when their Korean managers issue a change order.
Yes, and the faster the place is set up, the faster they can staff it with cheap Georgia labor (the entire point of building a plant there).
This enforcement action just means more unemployment in GA for longer than necessary.
This. Exactly this.
The total bill for the Korean workers is likely much more than if they could find local staffing. But the thing is you cannot find local staffing with the required skills and experiences with this equipment, so Hyundai likely was paying more to accelerate the construction and startup by a couple or more years required to train local workers. And these Korean workers are less than 5% of the fully-staffed factory employment, so it makes sense for Georgia / the U.S. to bring them in to get lots of permanent factory workers rolling. Automotive engineers are some of the lowest paid engineers in the country, and I can only imagine that the pay rate for Georgia is on the low-end of automotive jobs – so very likely the Koreans are much better paid than American alternatives.
Since the US offshored much of the semiconductor industry, we indeed do not have the skilled workers in this country to set up a new factory. Biden’s CHIPs Act was meant to address this shortcoming, for the sake of both employment and domestic security. Guess who meddled with the plans?
This is about a battery plant not a chip plant. The US produced more GWH of lithium batteries than Korea did in 2024. The idea that there is more available skilled lithium battery manufacturing workers in Korea is a theory not a fact.
Do you understand in both cases, the factories are set up quite identically. Clean rooms everywhere, a lot of automated laser edge trimming and welding. There literally is no difference. I’m a supplier of optical instruments to both industries, working on-site.
But I am sure that the robots and machinery that put the batteries together were designed and constructed in Korea by Korean engineers, and whoever installs the machinery in the USA is going to have to get on the phone with the people that designed and built the machinery to troubleshoot it.
A Korean speaking engineer, ideally one familiar with Korean equipment in general could do in five minutes what might take a week for an American going through translators, etc.
Nice try fishing for ways to punk us, Matt. I’m not taking this bait. No, sir.
I’m afraid the transition away from Boomer-led politics, which is a statistical certainty, will take a lot longer than it should.
Yeah, but for it to take a positive direction, we needed Harris to win in 2024. Even if you didn’t like her or her positions or her technocratic solutions, we had to get past Trump to have a chance to avoid a hard ditch into fascism. Now it’s gonna be Trumpian podcast bros all the way down. For the rest of our lives. Just look at everyone glorifying that bigot who loved gun violence who just became a victim of gun violence.
It’s also a case of “you can’t do everything at once” since the FBI had nothing 36 hours into the search. It was gutted with the regional director having been “DEI” purged and those that weren’t headhunted into ICE. If they hadn’t gotten lucky with the suspect basically turning himself in with extra steps…
Those guys will lose a lot of support by around… 2033 or so.
Is this the same White House currently occupied by the renowned pedophile and convicted rapist who sent a birthday card to the equally renowned pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein wherein he described the secret they both share and told him how much he loved him? Or is that a different White House?
Now, now, he was never convicted. He’s an adjudicated rapist.
Technically correct, the best kind of correct.
He was never convicted of rape, per se, but he does have 34 other felony convictions, IIRC.
The “Law of Unintended Consequences” is bitch-slapping the administration. Will the person in charge learn from this? History says no.
Didn’t FDR say “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”?
True, but FDR didn’t see DJT coming in the future…
FDR dealt with Nazis and other fascists quite effectively. It’s why we won the war.
Not well enough, apparently.
No one, not even surviving veterans, ever foresaw having to do it again, on our soil.
My grandfather had an inkling. He was born in 1912 in a small town made up mainly of people of German descent. His first overseas deployment was to Germany after D-Day and was part of the armored division that liberated Buchenwald.
Prior to the war, there were a lot of “anti-war” people who were very sympathetic to the Nazis, and were fans of Ford and Lindberg. When he returned, he understood that while they no longer stated their support for Nazi Germany, and now flew the biggest U.S. flags, their ideology hadn’t changed.
The U.S. has always had significant fascist leanings. It shouldn’t be surprising for a country wrapped up in the language of freedom and liberty while being founded on genocide and slavery.
The truth is that many people aren’t surprised at all.
Color me not surprised
Being that the government is (I’m sure) working hard to set up the Early Sharknado Warning System, all your fears are unnecessary…
This government’s policies show the same level of understanding as “All bumpers should be magnets so cars repel each other and don’t crash.”
It’s a child’s understanding of the world (although magnets still managed to confuse ICP, who are adults).
I mean really, how do they work?!?!? 😉
Magic, duh.
I believe the conclusion of the esteemed scientists in protective face paint was ‘Miracles.’
Explain gyroscopes while you’re at it.
Conservation of energy?
The problem is that magnets don’t work when they get wet, so a little bit of rain and BOOM
Don’t steal Jeremy Clarkson’s ideas!
I’m afraid the coming Republican economic collapse is going to fuck my retirement so hard that I’ll be working until I’m 85, when I die.
If they lose the next election, the electorate will shift the blame of the failures here to the next party, or blame foreigners.
It won’t be labeled as “Republican” collapse, it’ll be the Spanish Flu instead.
I disagree. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, immortalized in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off by conservative think tank member and economist Ben Stein, made it quite clear. A Republican led administration and Congress created it, which led to the Great Depression. How pissed was the American public? They didn’t let another Republican anywhere near the White House for almost a generation. They remembered who caused the misery. Put the partisanship aside and see who really caused your pain and misery, or we’re all doomed.
It was shocking how many retired machinists started looking for work in 08. The 401K’s got destroyed and the retirement just couldn’t cut it. There were guys who were over 70 constantly coming in for work.
Also, I just bought a replacement part for my CNC from Korea, and I got stuck with a 40% tariff charge. People need to realize that the US citizen is paying for the tariff, not the exporter. No new tax my ass.
There was a big problem in my industry where promotions stalled because people just stopped retiring so there weren’t job openings at the bottom anymore. entry level became 3-5 years of experience and a license.
That’s where tech work is now in the valley. Good luck with a Computer Science degree fresh out of college.
Some of that you can chalk up to HR, which always wants 5 years of experience. I used to get in email arguments with HR when we would be trying to hire someone to work on a software project and HR would post a job listing that required 5 years of experience in something that had only existed for 8 months.
I’m retired, but from what I understand, the current practice is to keep adding useless requirements until the number of job applicants is manageable.
I spent 22 years in the tech industry. It stopped being ” fun” awhile ago. In hindsite, other than the pay it was the most unstable and chaotic experience in my career. Nonstop acquisitions, constant employee churn-including myself- and now the inevitable damage AI will continue to dole out as one aspect of engineering after another becomes automated. I got out of that industry and now work in al albeit less exciting but way more stable industry.
He got people to believe that Mexico would pay for the wall.
If you’re audience is that gullible / uninformed, why bother saying anything true?
All healthcare will be illegal unless administered by un-vaccinated workers educated only in the science of creationism.
Good luck making it to 85.
Pass the lance, I need to let some blood.
Rub some ivermectin on that and drink this glass of Lysol.
You’ll be fine.
Still, probably less uncomfortable than sticking a UV light and some bleach up yer ass.
Don’t kink shame me.
Never! 😉
Bleach
Can we start a betting pool over which previous Republican economic collapse this one will most resemble?
Numbers 3 and 4 combined.
I’ve actually never seen them tank it so hard, so early in the term.
Well, yeah, those were regular old Republicans. This one, not so much.
Herbert Hoover. 1929. The Great Depression.
As much as I’d like to hand it all to the current administration, things have been propped up and manipulated for a long time.
The economy contracted by like 30% during Covid. Housing prices continued to rise – at near record pace in a lot of markets. Talking heads on TV said it was because of people moving from cities to suburbs. For that to be true, property values in the cities would have to be falling, but they rose right along with suburban properties.
I don’t know what’s propping up the housing market this time, but this fall will be deeper and more rapid than 08 simply because the market has been manipulated more drastically this time around.
Housing prices once you are about 150 miles away from a major city seem to be dropping like a rock, but they are still going up in the cities, I’m shopping and there are amazing houses for dirt cheap but they are all out in the boondocks. Which is fine if you can work from home, which was jumpstarting rural economies, but the current administration hates working from home. Apparently getting stuff done is incidental to wasting time and energy commuting so the boss can gaze upon his vassals.
It’s almost like the nation is being run by someone with deep ties to urban commercial real estate values.
Also, this is a way for companies to reduce workforce without having to admit they’re shrinking.
I don’t find that to be true at 163 miles from Charlotte/75 from Winston-Salem (which is not major). Our real estate is rising here too.
Winston-Salem is pretty major, it has lots of tech, lots of academia and arts, it’s in the top 100 cities by population, its in the research triangle, all things that would predict an influx of people who can afford expensive housing. 75 miles is commuting distance. People commute 90 miles to San Jose, that’s what drives house prices here.
OK, fair. Winston-Salem is also far more charming than Charlotte (and is also our closest Costco). But we’re fairly social and I know literally no one that commutes to work there. Lots of folks go there for medical specialists and to shop, though.
The south is no longer the cheap steal of a place it was. My parents live 20 miles outside of Knoxville TN. For years after I moved to California I would brag that you could buy my parent’s property, which is on several acres, for under $150k. Now? Close to 600k. A LOT of people from the east and west coasts are moving in and not batting an eye at paying half a mil for a typical house.
I know that several people will chime in, but my old townhouse recently sold for over half a million dollars. It’s a two hour commute to Boston at peak times, whether by car or public transit. 2br, 1.5bath, 1090sf.
It was also built during a housing boom in the 1980s, so it is built poorly. You can hear the neighbors on eother side when they cough.
We used to wake up on Saturdays to our neighbor arguing with her boyfriend, being able to hear her side of the conversation clearly from bed (not against the wall).
On an interesting note, the boyfriend apparently liked to spend time with evening professionals (you know what I mean here). I met him when he was driving a $100k+ Mercedes and after his divorce he was rolling in a used Hyundai.
In the five years we’ve been in the Mountain South the prices have risen dramatically. Moving to an unknown town during covid seemed crazy at the time, but now it feels like we struck gold.
They only commute 90 miles for two reasons:
I’d have to get a good distance south of DC to find a place 150 miles from a major city (in Boston, MA metro area).
It’s not just the US. Housing prices across the world, in large cities and metro areas, are considered out of control. Why? Same universal reasons. Those cities and large metro areas are where all the good, high paying jobs are. They have the best educational clusters of universities and research labs, the best hospitals, the best cultural perks, and they tend to be in highly desirable coastal areas. People simply want to live there. That drives the run-up costs in real estate.
There has been incredible foreign investment in US housing over the past decade or two. Not just large apartment complexes, but single family homes also.
As not a billionaire, I do not know the structure of these investments. I believe I’ll find out with the rest of the world after the next crash.
The good jobs argument only works when there are also increased wages in the area – which hasn’t been the case. Housing price increases have far outpaced wages and for the past few years we’ve been dealing with relatively high interest rates.
The condo across the way from me in my bldg in Los Angeles has been empty for the last 4 years. Sort of. Every 2 or 3 months someone comes by and lives in the completely unfurnished place for a few days. I spoke to him, he is an employee of a large overseas investment company. They pay him to keep an eye on their mostly empty properties in LA. So, he goes from place to place with his suitcase and camping gear and lives in empty units. It’s a weird deal. The company is happy just holding these units unoccupied.
There’s a house down the street from me that is a similar situation. The house is well-kept, the lawn is mowed and someone even drops some seasonal decorations on the front stairs – but nobody has lived in it for seven years.
I know of a lot of those foreign investors, buying homes for their future engineering students, attending universities here in the US, in those very highly sought after areas.
We will see how it plays out. I live in coastal California and prices have been high here forever. Mainly because it has some of the best weather in the country but also because the jobs pay pretty well. But its still out of control here. At the peak of the pandemic bubble our not exciting 1960’s rancher home was valued at over 1.5 million.
Prices are coming down. I have a close friend who is a local real estate agent. According to him its like a switch was turned off. Nobody is buying anything. Condos and town houses are dropping value like a rock.
Its gonna’ get bad.
Similar situation here. Some of my neighbors managed to sell and move away (dunno where) near the peak, but more than a few waited till now and priced their homes as if it were still the peak. Needless to say, they’re all just sitting unsold. It feels (anecdotally) as if values are down about 15% where I live. I’m not too bothered really, since I have no need/desire to cash out and move, but of course some folks have to for various reasons.
I’m no expert (in anything) but I think condos/townhomes always suffer the worst (compared to detached, single-family homes) so it’s no surprise they’re doing the worst right now. Back east, it would be co-op apartments I think.
At least the weather is almost always nice in southern California, even if the cost of living is high. It costs almost nothing to just walk your dog around the neighborhood in the afternoon and smile at other dogs/walkers. 🙂
Ah yes. The whole sell the overpriced expensive California home, buy some big ass house in TX/TN/NC/OR/ID and live like a king off of the rest of the money from your California sale.
That ain’t working anymore. My parents live in rural TN. Its not cheap there anymore. As in- not so much lower that its such a slam dunk of potentially selling here and buying there and still have a lot left over.
We aren’t doing that. As soon as the election happened we decided we’re staying here in this state because of all of them, its the largest, most economically important, but furthermore most liberal along with a governor who isn’t taking shit. It makes me furious enough to go visit my parents and see the trump stickers and flags along with knowing a majority of the assholes around them think all of this is ok. Fuck that. I want nothing to do with those people ever again. Its not like we don’t have our own dumbass rednecks in this state: We were up in the Sierras a few weeks ago and jesus there were a lot of giant big ass jacked up trucks with the typical overly aggressive militant display of Murican’ flags and automatic rifle stickers. But then again the huge cities here override all of that.
Ever consider who all these people are that are buying these homes at these prices, getting into bidding wars with each for the privilege of living here? Just think about that for a moment. No one ever talks about the half of the situation.
Here in Cali or elsewhere? Here in Cali its because people make a shit ton of money and the NIMBYism means there isn’t enough housing stock. So around here forever its been people competing with some of these folks making 500k+ per year, more if its a working couple.
In TN and elsewhere? Not familiar with that. But what my parents told me was that for years people from the coasts were coming in and just buying the homes almost sight unseen and also without batting an eye at the prices. A $400k home might seem cheap to someone from NY/NJ or CA but out of reach for the locals. And now those prices have gone up so much that there really isn’t a advantage to moving there anymore. Not only is it not longer cheap but you’d have to live around a shit ton of really stupid dumbasses who you would know chose and voted for and probably still support all of the awful shit happening now.
I got stuck in that mess before.
Condos and townhouses drop first and rebound last.
On a positive note, maybe some young people will be able to afford homes soon.
I’m impressed that you plan to live until 85 regardless of economic turmoil.
Fucking genetics, how do they work?
I like your handle. Were you thinking of that crazy robot from Futurama who’s always wanting to stab people by chance?
It’s from a list of AI generated color names but let’s say it’s from Futurama.
https://www.aiweirdness.com/new-ai-paint-colors/
I had no idea such a thing existed… thanks for the link and the laugh!
To claim that the failure is doing too many things at once is just blatant hot garbage.
This is a very simple case of not understanding that actions have consequences, attempting to shift blame, and new evidence that they’re not actually “fixing” things.
Perhaps, sadly, that’s all intentional to score political football points.
It also minimizes the fact that most? a lot? many? of the things they are trying to do are just straight up dumb, corrupt, illegal, and flat out bad policies. Doing them all at once isn’t the problem, the policies themselves are.
It’s funny listening to the farmers this year, lamenting the state of crop prices, apparently oblivious to the fact that they voted for it.
And those farmers sit there blaming it all on everyone and everything except trump. Same with the people in Florida whining about the drops in tourism: State everything but the obvious- that this is all the result of what they chose.
Nobody voted for tariffs. Not farmers, not anybody.
Oh no, they did, they just weren’t paying attention.
Yeah, when shit just kind of objectively sucks it’s okay to say as much. It doesn’t make you a partisan shill.
How is a failure? They shut down a key part of the hated EV supply chain when it was dangerously close to completion. They were able to flex their police-state zero-tolerance anti-immigrant mojo. The only people they care about love this stuff.
Plus, it’s a distraction from somebody’s signature looking like pubic hair.
So much winning!
Yup. It isn’t that they are being done all at once, but that all of them are idiotic policies designed to appeal to the white supremacist human trash that voted for him.
By “one of”, we’re, of course, talking about the largest one by far. The Cole building consists of the engineering center and the large tower. It is gigantic.
Based on my recurring nightmares I am afraid of: being in a car with no brakes and finding out there is a test/assignment I wasn’t prepared for.
Is it a Yugo…Yu”go” but Yu don’t “stop” (I’ll see myself out…)
The makeup-encrusted, costumed people in leadership positions in our government right now appear incapable of learning. So the beatings will continue.
I’m afraid I’m not pessimistic enough for how bad economic conditions in this country will be in a year.
Dump truck drivers, they don’t give a single fuck on the roads, run red lights around here all the damn time, pull out in front of traffic at the worst times, and rarely have properly secured loads.
It’s all truck drivers that get paid by the load. When I lived near a port it was container trucks. Living near logging operations its logging trucks. Knew a union concrete truck driver that was more than happy to chill in Seattle traffic collecting overtime.
When I was in 6th grade I was waiting at the end of our long driveway for the bus. There was a rock quarry 2 miles from our house and the dump trucks were constantly flying up and down our road, which had no shoulders. One day another dump truck decided to pass another dump truck and the one being passed ran one of its wheels into the ditch, over corrected and landed on its side, skidding down the road right in the direction I was standing. I ran down the driveway as it skid right over where I had been just a second ago. Scared me to death. And the driver? He got out of the door now facing up and said” You see what that sombitch did?!”
If there are any readers of Jalopnik here, they’re reporting that Canada is bypassing the US for automobile purchases, now directly importing many from Mexico. I think Trump’s stupid tariffs and human rights violations (Korean workers) are going to lead to some deep financial troubles for US auto manufacturers.
This has been happening for a while. Nissan announced they stopped exporting from the US a few months back.
Hyundai, Honda, and Toyota have done similar.
Mexico was a recent announcement by one of their finance ministers.
My wife’s company brings in large expensive equipment from Japan and ships it out from US warehouses.
They are no longer doing that. The freight either goes direct from Japan or sits in bonded warehouses where it never technically enters the US. Bonded warehouses are expensive, but much less expensive than six figure tariffs.
There are a huge number of bonded warehouses five miles away. A few weeks ago, the roads were packed with trucks moving goods from bonded warehouses to regular warehouses to beat the new tariffs, or just putting stuff in containers in the parking lot.
It’s a lot more effort to achieve less actual work.
I guess this administration has the same disdain for the people in the US dealing with imported goods as they do for foreign manufacturers who dare to sell in the US.
(X) Doubt
Same doubt. Literally the most unqualified individuals, from top to bottom, are running the place.
Trump drained the swamp, found all the garbage that had sunk to the bottom and gave them positions in his cabinet.
Well, only until they need to report a fact that he doesn’t like.
What am I afraid of? Bees. Definitely bees.