Drlee wrote:And you Mr. @Hindsite are afraid the democrats with fuck up the economy?
The economy is in the tank mostly because of lockdowns by blue state governors. Yes, I know you are going to disagree with this assertion, but start thinking long-term--beyond the election. Trump's big harm to the economy is the travel ban. Interest rates are zero, the Fed is buying everything, and Congress has passed a major stimulus package. Yes, rioters are coming down with coronavirus in big numbers now, but that's to be expected since they threw social distancing out the window.
This recession is going to have big long-term impacts, because a lot of people who can work remote will demand to work remote now. You've lived in the Bay Area. They opened a new BART station in my area a few years ago and the first thing that happened was the parking lot was jam packed. Even with people going back to work now, that parking lot is largely empty now--like less than 20% of capacity. BART could be in very serious trouble.
BART Outlook Gloomy, Even Beyond Coronavirus Fallout.
Despite $250M in stimulus funds, the transit agency says it's looking at $40M revenue loss by year's end
Give some long thought to what this means to blue model. Walter Russell Mead has some good articles at the WSJ on this. I'm a Barron's subscriber, but not a WSJ subscriber. He's been talking about the problems with the blue model for almost a decade now as the fallout from 2008 hit. For example:
The Once and Future Liberalism from 2012, but it is still spot on.
California jacked up the gas tax again this year. Do you know what happens when people decide to continue working from home? Government coffers dry up.
With state and federal taxes, gas taxes in California amount to $0.61 per gallon. Painful. Yet, revenues are way down.
Additionally, businesses will need a fraction of the office space they used to need in urban downtowns. Our building has been boarded up since the pandemic started--an 18-story office tower that was jam packed, and we thought we'd need more office space. However, 1/3 of our employees already worked remote, and now that is 99% of the company. When a company realizes it doesn't need that much office space, do you think they are just going to go back to the old way of doing things? I really don't think so. In San Francisco, residential rents are falling. Why? Because people can work at home, so they don't need to live in San Francisco and pay $4k a month rent. People are breaking their leases and fleeing the city.
Yes, I know you hate Trump and like the Democrats, but there are going to be major long-term consequences for the way blue state governors and urban mayors (mostly Democrats) have handled the pandemic. Whereas, I got fucked in the last recession, I'm absolutely golden right now. I'm considering moving out of California too. I'd easily save $20k a year in taxes. I hear the same thing is happening in New York. What happens when the high earners decide to leave?
Now anecdotally, there are spots of the economy booming. I bought a jetski as a complement to the house boat, and so my buddies kids could have a bit more fun. I took it in for its 10-hour service. You know what the wait is? Three weeks! That's the backlog! It was getting busy when I got my ski, but I worked a deal on a 2019 model that was sitting in the warehouse. Now? There is no inventory. They literally sold out of every jetski within a month of me buying one. Apparently, this is happening with RVs and boats too. People aren't going to Hawaii or the Bahamas this year, so everyone is buying boats, jetskis and RVs and vacationing nearby. You may feel slighted by the EU's travel ban, but it's a boon to travel destinations within the lower 48.
Walter Russell Mead wrote:The blue social model rested on a novel post-World War II industrial and economic system. The “commanding heights” of American business were controlled by a small number of sometimes monopolistic, usually oligopolistic firms. AT&T, for example, was the only serious telephone company in the country, and both the services it offered and the prices it charged were tightly regulated by the government. The Big Three automakers had a lock on the car market; in the halcyon days of the blue model there was virtually no foreign competition. A handful of airlines divided up the routes and the market; airlines could not compete by offering lower prices or by opening new routes without government permission. Banks, utilities, insurance companies and trucking companies had their rates and, essentially, their profit levels set by Federal regulators. This stable economic structure allowed a consistent division of the pie. Unionized workers, then a far larger percentage of laborers than is the case today, got steady raises in steady jobs. The government got a steady flow of tax revenues. Shareholders got reasonably steady dividends.
You're old enough to remember that. I'm old enough to remember the end of it. Tainari88 says things like you just can't cut off world trade. Look what has happened with the airlines. Yes. We actually could. Think of how many car companies Germany and Japan have? They cannot possibly sustain that without an export market. Yet, Mitsubishi is leaving the US market this year. They can't hack it. There is simply way too much competition--way too many Japanese auto manufacturers. Yet, they simply couldn't exist without the US open market. We didn't see much in the way of Japanese cars until the energy shortage of the 1970s. Yet, then they became dominant.
There are going to be big changes coming, and I think one of them is going to be that blue states are going to have to slash staff and budgets.
Gov. Cuomo's Right: The Rich Are Leaving High-Tax New YorkWe don't often praise New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but we have to say, we appreciate his recent frankness on taxes.
On Monday, he told his state's citizens that income tax revenues were coming in $2.3 billion below the expectations of just a month ago. "That's as serious as a heart attack," he said.
Now, I'm a big believer in Say's Law. Supply creates its own demand. A glut of class A office space in big cities will eventually lead to new location-dependent businesses. However, we'll be in for a painful transition in the interim.
Joe Biden will not be able to fix anything. A Biden presidency will be much like you thought Trump's would be. He won't be running a thing. He is basically the neoliberal/neoconservative package, and they chose him because they know they can run things with Biden at the helm. They simply didn't trust any of the other candidates. It doesn't matter though either way. Stimulus will ease some of the pain, but the only thing the establishment has to offer is more government spending. It doesn't matter which party wins. That's what they will provide. What's going to be interesting is the economic dislocations, and I think that the big cities--particularly in blue states: San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago--are in for a reckoning.
There's a reason so many people are moving to Tennessee.
2020’s Tax Burden by StateBeren wrote:I actually don't see how the GOP means to adapt to the 21st century, do they really mean to do it with Trump?
Trump isn't the future as such, but he highlights what is wrong with the establishment.
"We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
-- Joe Biden