[knollimar]

Democratically elected governments can't reorder a cookie right now.

We even had one out tariffs on steel, thinkinf this would be good for jobs here. If there was 0.1 seconds of thought they'd realize any manufacturing job you make from a steel tariff cuts 2 more well paid trade jobs

[steveBK123]

Democracies don’t necessarily pick the best leaders but they give a veto to the people such that the worst leaders don’t last long.

A technocracy can build high speed rail in a decade but it can also institute multi decade one child policy, multi year zero-covid, barricade people into their own homes and ban entire industries at the whim of a single leader. There is less course correction.

[kjkjadksj]

Worst leaders don’t last long? Boy I wish that were true.

[kelnos]

We have to define "long". On the scale we're talking about, 8 years of a bad US president is not long, even though it feels that way right now.

[kelnos]

I would rather society not be reordered at all, if the only parties capable or willing to do a reordering are big tech companies, especially of the kind run by people like Sam Altman.

[wizzwizz4]

I've thought about this for at least 15 seconds, and this remains mysterious to me. Could you explain, please?

[knollimar]

Sorry for being salty, a bit hyperbole perhaps in the 2:1 numbers.

I draft and write some code for construction companies and personally saw layoffs and not taking work due to increased material costs. The structural companies we worked with similarly did a few layoffs. The average pay of these jobs was 60k+.

Manufacturing of steel is very competitive and I haven't seen the American steel drop in price. I can't personally imagine it adding more than a few thousand jobs since it's so competitive (thin margins) and you would have to add a ton of production to add one job.

Meanwhile, the profitability of building a building is a direct feed into whether buildings get built. A building not being built directly led to laying off about 100 field guys for us.

[britzkopf]

What is the alternative to buildings? Outdoor schools, factories and dental offices?

[knollimar]

That sounds like some reductionist hackernews question that tries to hint at some clever insight but I'll assume no snark and answer with as much insight as I can.

You just make less of them. Some buildings are discretionary, like your big apartment buildings you probably want (these were the two that got cancelled).

Person funding can make x profit over building per year. Person loaning loans x for y sum. Building costing more than interest amortized profit means it doesn't get built.

And I just had a doctor's office fitout cancelled mid project (drafted it personally :) ). so apparently those are, too.

Public projects like schools rarely get cancelled. Factories I personally don't draft so I really can't tell you.

Healthcare absolutely has a ton of discretion for their buildouts.

What's the alternative to steel? You just make less if it's not profitable to make.

[britzkopf]

Funny that you're accusation of snark was not without snark itself. I'll take your word on it for the level of discretion on some public building, though I would have thought/hoped that whimsy would play no more role than a rinsing error. Especially in the current economy. Maybe it's good there is less superfluous building going on?

[knollimar]

Sorry, the question seemed like one of those low effort "have you thought about just not building buildings, hmmmmm?" that requires more effort to address than it took to ask. That "combatative-without-seeming-combatitive-for-the-purpose-of-seeming-like-the-good-faith-one" hackernews pretend good faith socratic argument is what it read to me. Apologize if it wasn't the angle you were going for.

If the stated goal is jobs, the tariffs aren't doing it from what I can tell.

It seems to be hands have been put on the scales, and to call cancelling the building that would have otherwise been built due to market forces good needs some testing. If it were doctors offices in already served areas, sure, but these were not subsidized but lower end apartment buildings in NYC. I'm hoping the guys who were laid off moved to some other company rather than exiting the trade.

[kelnos]

The alternative is usually more-crowded schools, fewer factories, and more expensive dental care (due to higher real estate costs). If the people in charge of these decisions can't justify the expense of building more, then the things that would have happened in those buildings just don't happen, and the existing infrastructure has to strain to keep up.

[xp84]

Not GP, but what all economists have been saying is that tariffing industrial raw materials - industrial inputs like steel, aluminum, lumber, is idiotic because the companies that make machines, cars, houses, makes a lot more money per ton of metal that is made than the mining, steel, lumber companies (etc) made making the raw materials. So, that tariff makes a winner of a very few small employers, while massively screwing way more and larger companies who employ orders of magnitude more people here (and those jobs are better jobs too).

And we are very competitive in machines, already set up to win.

It’s also fantasy that even 4 years of tariffs will convince anyone to build brand-new smelting operations, as they’re very large, capital intensive, take a while to build. And again, mostly worse jobs.

[mapontosevenths]

> again, mostly worse jobs.

This is the part everyone seems to forget. Any "new" jobs would be shitty low paying jobs, and it would mostly instead need to be automation.

Tariffs transfer wealth to the 1% and leave shit jobs that pollute the environment, which also happen to raise the cost of all goods, for everyone else.

[dgellow]

> If there was 0.1 seconds of thought they'd realize any manufacturing job you make from a steel tariff cuts 2 more well paid trade jobs

They knew that was the case. They don't care. The maga crowd isn't acting in good faith. Nobody other than the cult members and people who aren't paying attention thought that would actually bring manufacturing back to the US. The point of the tariffs is to devalue USD (something Trump wants to do since circa the 80s) and to strengthen Trump power/influence. He wants everybody in the world to be forced to come and negotiate directly with him so he can see them bend their knees. The whole thing is a power play

[jfengel]

I do think they believed and believe it, though the reasoning is less economic than that. Manufacturing "belongs" in the US due to our inherent superiority, and has gone elsewhere only because of ill-conceived notions of niceness.

By increasing tariffs they will have to pay their proper obeisance for their inferiority, and be inspired to actually work hard like us Americans.

[idiotsecant]

You need to be specific with 'they' in this case. Who are the 'they' that you think believed that steel tarrifs would improve domestic manufacturing?

[notahacker]

But would governments defined by a cadre of techno-authoritarians disproportionately close to Mr Tariff do a better job?

[knollimar]

Mr Tariff is probably slightly better to keep those around than not, but ideally I'd rather the government curate experts they employ to advise them.

I guess I kinda walked right into handing technocrats power, but I really just want the government to understand the tech they regulate. We'd rather have populist zingers on TV though.

[notahacker]

Technoauthoritarians writing pretentious manifestos disavowing democracy explicitly don't want the government to understand the tech they regulate though, never mind curating experts, which is why they're so keen on the likes of Mr Tariff.

[basisword]

Unfortunately they're choosing to surround themselves with experts who have a massive financial interest in things going their way.

[pstuart]

Mr. Tariff was trying to replace the income tax with tariffs with a bonus of having personal power over other countries economies by whatever tariff he decree'd. The "more jobs" was a smokescreen, and I'm sure you're aware of that

Trade policy should be as holistic as possible (tariffs, taxes, subsidies, etc), with the goal of aiding a robust domestic economy.

The 70's neoliberalism took Smith's comparative advantage argument and stripped it of context — optimizing for quarterly returns and capital mobility while ignoring the industrial ecosystem those returns depend on. You can't offshore your entire manufacturing base and expect to retain the innovation, workforce capacity, and supply chain resilience that made those profits possible in the first place.

Contrast this with "For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country."

That era was not without its issues as well, but there was a sense that "we're all in it together" vs the "greed is good" crowd.