Nothing is just clear, that's the whole point of this disc horse.

Yeah, this might be a combination of rates + high valuations (that have grown much faster than inflation) + decreasing prevalence of cheaper options, which has basically also happened in the auto market at the same time.

How durable the EU and Canada's realignment/thawing with China is given China's anti-democracy and support of Russia/Iran is one of the bigger open questions, I agree.

Yeah, everyone wasn't going to go back to the old world without a fight, because there are too many advantages to not being like Trump/US right now, which is also why Trump is going to get obliterated in the midterms as even the short-term costs prove politically insurmountable.

Yeah, even in the Trump era, the US has broadly positive views of immigrants compared to almost every other country.

It's just that our dumbest voters keep getting taken for a ride by President Conman.

I believe this is a plausible option I will fight to make real.

I'm not willing to say he's permanently ended the US comparative advantage in either, especially given how bad the rest of the world is regarding sentiments towards immigrants, but the idea he's at least created the opening for longer term damage is certainly plausible.

The big caveats here are basically to what extent Trump II has permanently undermined the US ability to 1) draw immigrants from just about everywhere (capping future human capital growth) and 2) draw foreign investment (capping savings/investment capital growth).

I'm not even stating a side on the latest Discourse - I'm simply saying: the goal of this shit published from the Beltway punditocracy, a group we KNOW loves Republicans & wants them to win, is to get YOU, personally, to despair & see enemies everywhere, to convince you the real war is against Dems

I'm probably more pessimistic than you are about our status as an immigration haven after this Admin, but our real competitors for top talent are going to be places like Europe, Japan, etc (requires them to stop hating immigration so much, which is a very large lift) or staying in place.

Honestly, this is also part of Trump's reelection. A bunch of people wanted President Business to make it 2019 again, because while Trump was President during the actual start of COVID, Biden had to be President during a bunch of the period where people were, at some level, emotionally reckoning.

Is South Dakota as absolutely boned by the Canadian trade wars as North Dakota?

I know it's popular to meme on the idea that eventually the natural replacement of Boomers/Gen X with Millennials/Gen Z will be bad for the GOP, but by the numbers and with the exception of Trump's mysterious ability to never be considered obviously lying, this is still the case.

Knowing things about others is something you do when you're not the most powerful country in the world, thankfully an immutable characteristic and not something that can be squandered by a profligate generation cutting their taxes and electing a pedophilic Mad King because brown people scary.

"AI, in the form of LLMs, will be an effective productivity enhancement with some winners and losers, but not the end of scarcity and the idea of the economy" was always the obvious and correct take, but as per usual, we had to go through a dumb hype cycle led by grifters to get here.

We're driving full speed at a wall because grandpa is too proud to press the brakes since it might mean people criticize his driving, and as such when we hit the wall the results will be more devastating than anyone has a plan for.

Trackable is load-bearing here, I think.

One can measure height, facial ratios, weight, and income, but actually measuring how appealing your personality is? Borderline impossible as a quantitative exercise, so better to latch onto things that can actually be measured.