Wildberries in Russia actively sold military equipment to Russian soldiers and they did it openly, making it a legitimate military target. Although, economic warfare is probably the main purpose of Ukrainian strikes on Wildberries, which is the Amazon of Russia.
Sanctions and attacking Russia’s shadow fleet have hurt Russia’s economy, but Russia isn’t spending less on its military, it’s just making its citizens worse off.
Blockading Iran is hurting them economically. This could get them to the negotiating table, but it could take time and is quite costly for the US to maintain, both militarily, and the economic consequences of Iran mostly closing the Strait.
If Trump did not parade around the world like an asshole, threatening and attacking allies, there could have been a chance of a blockading coalition to help convince Iran the world will not tolerate them terrorizing the Strait of Hormuz. Oh well.
CNN brings fake experts who are more dishonest propagandists than serious intellectuals just so they can have a conservative side in their 5-minute debates.
The Census Bureau is a respected data institution, and the Trump administration has used think tank hacks to produce an obviously bad report under the Census Bureau’s name. This is a dangerous corruption of our data agencies that we depend on to understand our country.
Trump repeatedly said that he would lower or eliminate the debt. He did the opposite.
America’s biggest trade problem is China. Trump started a trade war with China, fought it foolishly, and lost. He escalated tariffs on all goods from China to a level the US couldn’t handle, and that combined with the US need for Chinese rare earths, forced Trump to back down. Tariffs were put on countries who are not rivals and who cooperation with has little to no downsides. Tariffs were put on all sorts of goods, making it difficult for American businesses to operate because they couldn’t afford the inputs to their businesses. China’s strategic cheating on trade affects the whole world. The US could have worked with the world and strategically fought a trade war with China. Instead, the president doesn’t appear to have a basic understanding of economics and world relations, so just blindly tariffed most countries and most goods in such a way that hurt the United States and its people.
Labors’ share of the national income is the lowest it has been since this has been measured.
We live in a world based on giant firms that are efficient and can do a lot of things with few workers. Needing less workers means workers have less bargaining power and therefore get paid less. Globalization also weakens bargaining power as companies can move some of the work overseas.
China has done a better job at building resilience to bad stuff happening in the world compared to the United States. Both US market actors and politicians have been too focused on short-term incentives rather than building resilience that helps in the long-run.
Economists on the left and right agree that rent controls are bad.
Rent controls lower rent for those currently in rent controlled apartments. But, they: lower the supply of apartments, decrease mobility because no one wants to move if they have an apartment because it will be difficult to find another one, increase rent in nearby areas, and decrease how well the apartments are maintained. Rent controls help a small group of people and hurt everyone else.
The solution is building more housing, although that is easier said than done.
Private credit is supposed to be people taking risks with business ideas and investments, and if it doesn’t work out, they pay the piper. But, Private equity is using insurance companies to take advantage of laws meant to bail out insurance companies to make it so the public is still on the hook for their risky investments. If the investments go well, private equity keeps those gains, if the investments go poorly, they offload the losses on an unwilling public.