I hear that the Washington Post just fired 1/3 of all of it's reporters.
Otherwise, if so many jobs have disappeared, does that mean that my garbage company no longer needs to employ a staf on every truck to drive it and empty my trash recepticle into the truck?
It often takes years to show the effect of one administration’s policies? How do we know that Eisenhower’s policies didn’t “help” Kennedy job market ? Or that Obama’s policies didn’t “hurt” Trump job market? Picking two examples
This graph is too simple as there were also other macroeconomic situations at the time but this is interesting enough that I’d like to see a long article that expands on this one graph with other data
If it’s federal government employment that is dropping, or illegal alien jobs dropping, then some will view it positively (I’ve seen this perspective advanced on x.com).
Important context is January is historically the month where most layoffs are enacted. Not saying the number is insignificant, just not entirely unexpected.
Post WW2 was a time of labor scarcity the US benefited from - but eventually that went away with global competition. The tech boom years were another labor scarcity time, and that’s also going away.
Both these times were plausible ways of entering the middle class.
What does economic theory say should happen to labor when scarcity ends but capital is strong? Does the economy expand until there’s more labor demand? Or will structural and monopolistic problems cause capital to benefit while suppressing wages - making us all serfs?
Yet housing costs keep increasing. The working class is being squeezed between employers who are suffering lost revenue and can't pay US wages, and landlords and mega-corp shareholders who won't budge on price. I foresee a slow protracted "collapse" (or really renegotiation) that will bankrupt stuck-in-the-mud billionaires (like Elon) as their means of recourse - law enforcement and the military - come under such powerful social coercion that no amount of money will stop them from siding with working-class-friendly new leadership like Mamdani, as the workers (who, despite what Elon tells himself in his robot fantasies, are still needed en masse), use their REAL voting power - moving their home to jurisdictions that are working-class-friendly.
Furthermore, people are stuck thinking about the world in a worker/employer dynamic. But there are scenarios where everyone in New York state could be paid UBI. There are 20 million people in the state, let's say we pay each one $100k/year. That's $2 trillion. Conveniently, the current GDP of New York state is $2.3 trillion. If they can increase that to 5+, it should be no problem distributing 50% to the citizens. And how can they do that? By charging high taxes on any business that wants to do business in NY. By leveraging their strategic access to the NY harbors. By essentially turning the entire state into a business, everyone inside it an employee or shareholder, and everyone outside a customer.
That makes no sense...unless the economy is an a sort of death spiral where companies layoff employees, then stock goes, then companies layoff more, then stock goes up, so on and so forth.
Allowing individuals to hoard enough wealth to corrupt, at will, the system that gave them their wealth - maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all.
If you follow the American school of economics (Henry C. Carey), tariffs are actually a good thing, mainly because: 1) other nations all have tariffs (against the US and other nations) making free trade a delightful delusional idea 2) tariffs protect lesser industrialized nations from refining/enhancing raw materials into more expensive goods and selling them back to them. The systematic offshoring of industrial potential to cheaper labor places basically un-industrialized the US. I think it's very short-sighted to say tariffs are bad. What was bad was the de-industrialization of the leading superpower. The cure, if we may call it that, might be bitter medicine. Bitter, but necessary.
Tariffs are bad for the economy. Foreign countries are ditching US partnerships, contracts. Less travelers are coming to US. Wow I wonder when will we open our eye. In the middle of all these, US is ditching its allies and planning to invade sovereign countries (Greenland).
COVID saved Trump. His policies, such as the section 174 tax change, were tanking the economy in 2019, and we would have likely seen a recession in 2020-2021 instead of 2022.
His solution to COVID was to tell the public to inject themselves with bleach. Or just go get infected and let natural selection figure it out.
It was no more a joke than the racist cartoon he posted the other day.
An interesting addendum is the relatively weak new job creation through the 2nd half of 2025 (partly geopolitcs, partly ai; through the mechanism of diverting capital to tech capex rather than labour).
The economy feels in a tricky position to me. The last couple of days have shown that there are many people/institutions primed to bail out of the stock market at the whiff of any negativity (or things perceived to be negative). I suspect there is likely more bad news before there's good news so the short term looks like it could be a bit of a roller-coaster.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 53.4 ms ] threadOtherwise, if so many jobs have disappeared, does that mean that my garbage company no longer needs to employ a staf on every truck to drive it and empty my trash recepticle into the truck?
https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...
This graph is too simple as there were also other macroeconomic situations at the time but this is interesting enough that I’d like to see a long article that expands on this one graph with other data
JOLTS data for January 2026 has been delayed, but don't expect those tea leaves to change your opinion about what the future holds.
If it’s federal government employment that is dropping, or illegal alien jobs dropping, then some will view it positively (I’ve seen this perspective advanced on x.com).
Both these times were plausible ways of entering the middle class.
What does economic theory say should happen to labor when scarcity ends but capital is strong? Does the economy expand until there’s more labor demand? Or will structural and monopolistic problems cause capital to benefit while suppressing wages - making us all serfs?
We need all these monopolies and cartels broken up so that there is a dynamic competitive environment in all sectors of the economy
That makes no sense...unless the economy is an a sort of death spiral where companies layoff employees, then stock goes, then companies layoff more, then stock goes up, so on and so forth.
Ouroboros. The economy is eating its own tail.
But who knew?
Trump had a booming economy right before Covid, and took the brunt of the jobs cuts in 2020. Biden next year "created" the jobs per the numbers there.
Also, what's the breakdown between public & private sector jobs? Spending taxes on government jobs in not something to celebrate.
His solution to COVID was to tell the public to inject themselves with bleach. Or just go get infected and let natural selection figure it out.
It was no more a joke than the racist cartoon he posted the other day.
You need consequences.
The economy feels in a tricky position to me. The last couple of days have shown that there are many people/institutions primed to bail out of the stock market at the whiff of any negativity (or things perceived to be negative). I suspect there is likely more bad news before there's good news so the short term looks like it could be a bit of a roller-coaster.