[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/layoffs-unemployment-jobs-econo...
Eventually the protected industries will be totally disconnected from global markets causing them to lose global competitiveness, to the point they cannot even compete with the black market markups. And then you are maga, er mega, fucked.
What markets do you have in minds? Can retail investors invest there?
So basically, everywhere else, proportionally. Even markets that have worse import/export restrictions, will still have relative changes in their attraction.
For a rough approximation non-US world index ETFs, which are available to retail investors.
What does "priced right" even mean? For whom? When a public company makes billions in profits by selling insanely overpriced hardware, then that's "priced right" for the shareholders.
When a supermarket gives out 25% discount stickers to use, then the price of the good is closer to being priced right for the consumer, as long as you apply the sticker. There is, of course, no reason to assume that the supermarket would operate at a loss or close to cost. These 25% are already priced in and anyone not using the stickers is paying extra.
Nothing has been priced right ever since they've (the collective of anyone willing to sell something) figured out that they can ask for however-much people are willing to pay, which is quite more than what MY FELLOW HUMANS would need to pay.
For everyone else, who aren't willing to pay deliberately inflated prices, there's usually always some form of discount for some product, somewhere to be found.
However if everyone is deluded about what the future payouts of different insturments will be, you can get $10 for $1 in one place and $0.001 for $1 in another (given that in both cases the influence weighted participants think they're selling you a dollar). That invalidates the picture of reducing the unknowns to the discount rate.
In your examples, you're talking about goods and services, which have different values to different people. They have an equilibrium price but as you say, that's not the "right price for everyone," like there is for say a bond.
This doesn't make sense though. The only reason I would buy an investment is if I believe it will grow in value from the point that I bought it. That means I'm pricing it at its future ccost.obviously other people are doing the same, so the actual cost of the investment will always rise above current value if people believe its a good investment.
So you have a self selecting system, that have (over time) proved itself. Whatever you might think of the effect of certain effects (such as immigrant labors) you can end up reflecting in your investments, as others do - and if you end up being correct, you'll have more power to influence the price in the future.
I agree that randos on twitter are a bad source of information.
Looking at salaries, senior developers working for the government get paid about the same as entry level software engineers who get return offers at BigTech. Well actually senior developers in government only about 10%-20% more.
And even if you did work in pub sec, if you were good, why would you want to work for the government when you can get paid a lot more working in the private sector and consulting for the government?
I know how much senior cloud consultants working at AWS make working in the WWPS. I was there as an l5. Amazon is a shitty place to work. But I doubt it’s any worse than the government right now. GCP and Microsoft (not just Azure) both also pay their consultants a lot more than government employees make.
I’m not saying the government isn’t needed. But the best and the brightest aren’t going to give up the amount of money they can make in the private sector - especially now that government jobs are far from a secure paycheck
Healthcare.gov was primarily developed by private contractor firms, not government employees.
> And even if you did work in pub sec, if you were good, why would you want to work for the government when you can get paid a lot more working in the private sector and consulting for the government?
Some people are motivated by factors other than pay, a concept that seems to be foreign to many FAANG corporate mercenaries.
https://www.businessofgovernment.org/sites/default/files/Vie...
And you are going to tell me that some people would rather work for the government now where they are constantly insulted, had to desk with DOGE and every year there is a threat they might not get paid?
Plenty of people will also earn their chunk of change as an l5 at Amazon or whatever, then transition to a lower paid job with more impact.
In fact, I know almost nobody who makes their employer decisions based on the pay factor alone.
Myself personally, I worked on the other side of the consulting - government divide. I saw a lot more people jump on the consulting side than the government side. I never heard one person say “I would love to take a 40% cut in pay and go into the office and deal with government shut downs. Sign me up!
But why in the heck would anyone want to work for a government that constantly insults them, forcing RTO and making people move to South (where I am from).
I'm ex Lockheed, where I worked alongside the NASA software engineers building and testing and verifying software for human spaceflight in the ITL. 70 to 80 hour weeks happened quarterly, and people worked with it. Because an important thing is actually being built and deployed and billions of dollars and human lives depend on it. I jumped ship because things progressed slow AF, but there was no shortage of people who wanted to build cool things at reasonable salaries (yes low for software, but not low salaries generally).
This same thing is what has driven SpaceX and Blue Origin in the private sector. The same thing drives the whole nonprofit sector. The government is a similar employer, though in the past couple of years obviously not as good.
Big Tech self selects for money grubbing and willingness to chase it at expense of everything else in your life. Many others are happier at smaller companies with lower pay scales and healthier work/life balances, or where they get to work on interesting problems with huge scales and they are paid enough to not worry about money anymore (this is possible in most non VHCOL places).
sigh If only the department of education was as well funded as the department of war.
Estimates of criminal activity, for example, are frequently counted as GDP in places like the UK. And even if you’re working in violation of visa rules, the IRS will still expect and enforce taxes.
The larger point that they may be omitted on reports like this may still stand, but it’s not because every single one is unable to be tabulated in the count by definition.