[lazide]

Bwahah.

How easy was it for a normal American to buy a house, get an education, and get health care (in hours of labor) in 1950 vs now?

How about fixing a broken bone? Or getting a basic checkup?

Taiwan makes all the fancy chips.

Apple designs things, but China makes them.

The best cars are generally made in Japan.

The vast majority of daily household items come from China.

Food comes from the US for the most part, and some random heavy manufacturing and other parts.

The US may have the largest GDP, but that is a measure of turnover - and is supported by the Dollar being the reserve currency.

We’ve been inflating it a lot. And we’ll see what happens.

[shiroiuma]

>The best cars are generally made in Japan.

And this isn't even a new thing: it was absolutely true (in fact, more true) way back in the 1980s and 90s, and really started in the mid-to-late 1970s. American cars were utter garbage: poorly engineered, poorly performing, and poorly manufactured, with terrible quality.

So why do people seem to assume that other American-made stuff in that era was so well-made? Sure, there's a few shining examples such as HP test equipment and printers, but the American auto industry was churning out truly bad products, so why isn't it also assumed that other domestic industries were plagued by the same poor standards and management?

[lazide]

It’s all relative. There was competition to compare against, so one can say ‘terrible’ vs ‘good’. Otherwise, it just ‘is’.

Notably, compact transistor radios were quite a marvel - and came out of Japan around that time too. Same with the Walkman, shortly afterwards.

Tools were more commonly American made, and were very heavy - but often durable. German equivalents were notably more expensive but ‘better’. Chinese made tools were originally terrible quality, but by around the early to mid 2000’s that changed.

I forget exactly when, but Mitutoyo (Japanese) started being notably ‘better’ in what - the 90s? Hitachi made power tools are pretty good, but I think that’s been about the last 10 years.

TVs were at first terrible from Asia, then started to get much better. By the 90s, they were pretty much all Asian manufactured no?

[hasty_pudding]

chips, household products....what you're saying is manufacturing has left the US.

fungible shitty unnecessary goods have rock bottom prices. costs of things human beings need to live like education/training, health care, food housing have skyrocketed.

I completely agree with you that getting off the gold standard and letting a leprechaun like Yellen skyrocket inflation to cover for bad political mistakes, is a terrible idea and 1971 is a huge inflection point in United States on numerous economic graphs and indicators, as we've both seen the website.

Keep in mind the late 60s were also when immigration started it's upward trajectory as well with the 1965 immigration act, and now we're letting in the equivalent of an entire new U.S. state every year.

[lazide]

The Bretton woods change was to allow stimulation of the economy - because things at home were losing momentum (relatively speaking) as other countries manufacturing bases and economies recovered from the damage from WW2. It was a way of keeping the US a few steps ahead.

Printing gold backed dollars quickly doesn’t work very well when you can’t increase the rate of mining gold quickly. Non gold backed dollars are a lot easier.

As long as goods and services can be made cheaper every year, it works well since inflation isn’t felt badly - there aren’t any supply restrictions where something is going to get noticeably too expensive.

All the things I talked about though all have that issue - they can’t be made cheaper somewhere else. someone can only build so many houses in LA before there is literally no more room, and someone building a house in Shanghai doesn’t help anyone in SF live closer to work. Building a new college/university in Vietnam isn’t going to help a kid in Oregon get their degree.

We’ve been exporting inflation because it’s worked. But when other countries stop being so much cheaper, or costs of critical things for the population finally exceed affordability, it doesn’t.

Yellen, Powell, and others are just following the rules and mandate they are given.