Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

xp. oh yeah, phenotype caused by genotype.

that the sort of NPR chin stroking liberal op ed set took (takes?) this guy seriously is nearly as galling to me as ‘intellectual’ conservative MAGA apologia

and over the long haul may be more damaging

I expected the Hillbilly Elegy guy to look more like the rapist SEAL Missouri governor and less like an adult baby tbh

that book was fucking awful, and even its polical-economic antipode (Neel's 'Hinterland') is racist trash afaic.

A much more informative (and funnier) Matt Levine column on Greensill today, with details from the Bluestone complaint. Good line on the payday loans analogy: "Greensill basically gave Bluestone a payday loan for a job Bluestone hadn’t yet applied for."

Yeah, that is pretty wild.

usa! usa!

Wealth concentration at the very top now exceeds the peak of the Gilded Age pic.twitter.com/ElmqWUXp13

— Gabriel Zucman (@gabriel_zucman) July 6, 2021

A 1972 MIT study predicted that rapid economic growth would lead to societal collapse in the mid 21st century. A new paper shows we’re unfortunately right on schedule.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xw3x/new-research-vindicates-1972-mit-prediction-that-society-will-collapse-soon

I’m not sure people appreciate just how quickly rents are rising right now. There was a lot of chatter about rent drops during the early pandemic, but look at THIS.

+14% (!!) since January!@lszini and I wrote some words this week about why this is happening.

(1) pic.twitter.com/IIaaepbnwW

— Rob Warnock (@robnock_) August 27, 2021

good thread

What's going on with global supply chains? (aka "why are we running out of everthing," "why is shipping so slow," "why are things more expensive"). A link roundup thread:

— Matthew Hockenberry (@hockendougal) September 16, 2021

That is a good thread. The (admittedly luxury brand) deodorant that I've been wearing for the past decade is out of stock everywhere in the US due to shipping delays, and on eBay, sellers from Hong Kong are marking it up 200%, in some cases.

It's going to be a bit of an adjustment getting used to a new scent on my body, because I can't wait another month until those delays clear up.

small potatoes, of course, but yknow.

Just stop wearing deodorant that stuff is useless

Maybe for you, stinky

maybe if everyone stops wearing deodorant the proletariat will rise and seize the means of production and expropriate all private property

silby jobs over here

that's a good thread but i realllly would've preferred to not read something that dense on twitter

Antiperspirant changed my life.

I will not use the stuff, way too many weird chemicals that make me feel squeamish. I'm not an unhairy guy, but the deodorant i've been using really works for me.

would you say it hirsutes you

https://www.lexisnexis.com/LegalNewsRoom/resized-image/__size/550x0/__key/telligent-evolution-components-attachments/13-07-00-00-00-00-14-94/ContentImage_2D00_GradeAPlus.jpg

Ban the stuff

the 35th Director of the United States Mint loves coins!

Got a very nice email and follow-up from former Mint Director @PhilipNDiehl, which I reproduce here with his permission, that provides useful context on the underlying legislative intent behind 31 USC 5112(k) and reinforces the case for #MintTheCoin. pic.twitter.com/FGIhSgtaoQ

— Rohan Grey (@rohangrey) October 6, 2021

ha i don't really understand all the context of this but it is super refreshing and pleasing to see a bureaucrat with a passion for their particular thing! have to assume this guy was a major numismatist (i admit i looked it up) before getting into it as a career

😘

Private quits rate 🚀 pic.twitter.com/sJb2ZrvAX9

— Conor Sen (@conorsen) October 12, 2021

pardon the dumb Q but what are "quits"?

people quitting their job

YES

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/12/jolts-workers-quitting-august-pandemic/

Jennifer Booth quit her information technology job at a national retailer in August, after months of working as many as 90 hours a week during the pandemic to help the company revamp its e-commerce system.

i mean 90 hrs a week is insane and borderline illegal in a lot of countries so it’s “good” that people are fed up but i’m not sure this is a story about progress

2 of my friends in low-level positions put their two weeks notice in on friday so SSS but yeah quit them jobs bros!

I quit a couple months ago myself. BS got made a supervisor over 5 people with 3 open positions in other states with no title and no raise - still having to do all had in my regular job. IT staff was down to 21 from 34 and ticket count went from like maybe a total for everyone of maybe 100 or so a day to pretty much hundreds open at all times. Literally some days I was having to update 100+ tickets in a day as there was so many device return tasks from the constant churn of people entering and exiting posts.

Had many days I would get up at 5am to get to work at 7am work 9-10 hours then have to go home and do BS billing work until like 11pm or midnight then wake up and do it again. Coup de grace was stupid offshore SCCM team had not tested shit for over a year and broke literally over 100+ devices that had never gotten updated to w10 on top of the mess. I thought I was going to have a breakdown by the end. Going through that last year at work pretty much had me wishing the f'ing sun would go supernova and wipe this grease stain of a planet out of the heavens. I'm a bit better now but have been busy as heck at home doing all the crap I never had time to do for the past year.

holy shit, i feel like absolute dogshit when i work more than 6 hours a day lol

unless i'm doing outdoor work, then i have no problem going for longer, because there's always some time to "rest" and take a nice long toke

but office jobs? fuck, i think the longest i ever worked at an office-type job was the week i pulled 37 hours, and that was because my manager had the flu. most weeks in my life i've managed to do about 32 or so. any more is absolute bullshit afaic, a job can go fuck itself.

yeah i have no idea how people do more than 40 hours in an office job, i would just completely fall apart

are people in low-level jobs able to quit because of pandemic money?

No just stopped buying lattes

i honestly don't know, sorry i don't pay much attention to this stuff.

i think it's great if workers have leverage but .... it kinda seems like workers don't really have leverage you know?

The only workers I know with appreciable leverage are those with highly specialized technical skills/knowledge in a rapidly expanding job category. Much rarer is the worker with skills/knowledge that is exclusive to their current position in a company, making them effectively irreplaceable without their consenting to train their replacement.

when i had an office job i was in the office 40 hours a week but only really working for 20-30 tops

I can’t speak to most industries but it’s really hard to find a paralegal right now and the ones that interview certainly seem to believe they have leverage and options.

Doing tax prep, I see what my clients made last year on Unemployment, and I was a bit envious tbh

I have to assume the paralegal thing is partly women with kids dropping out of the workforce due to childcare impossibilities (also couldn't find an after school babysitter btw, even offering what everyone told us was "above market"). In past interview cycles, 80-90% of our candidates have been women who either outright mentioned kids or were in the age range of someone who might have kids.

god is dead pic.twitter.com/JuBFlGk9Iz

— 𝒥𝑜𝑒𝓁, 𝒶 𝒻𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓃𝒹 (@joeljohnson) October 24, 2021

wow. and i thought it was bad when the chicken fingers shortage happened!

At a casino buffet that could lead to riots.

Monthly job growth has averaged 561,000 jobs a month in 2021. It's 612,000 a month since March. The average for June-July was 1.026 million jobs a month.

Big upside revisions, never really covered, are part of why you aren't aware of this, but also because it's off narrative. https://t.co/4xjUZGVW8w

— Mike Konczal (@rortybomb) October 26, 2021

Interesting. I probably understand less about economics than I do about epidemiology, but it does seem like the economy doing relatively well, or at least recovering pretty quickly, is what's causing at least as much of the bad stuff as good. The Great Resignation is real, but some people are taking advantage of it to get better or better paying jobs, and bigger paychecks leads to inflation. At the same time, people are spending more, too, which post ("post") pandemic is putting strains on supply and production, which is also causing prices to go up.

I find the elusive PS5 a pretty fascinating example. We get a next generation video game console launched in the middle of a pandemic, at a time of historic instability, at a pretty high price point, in the midst of a chip shortage, etc.. And yet, it continues to sell and sell out, and in fact is selling more than other consoles, iirc. So it's an illustrative conflation of lots of different economic concerns, supply and demand, discretionary spending, consumerism, supply chain issues, and all sorts of stuff that emphasizes the complexity of a global market that might be doing better than it seems.

I’m a paralegal. If you’re hiring in the LA area I will gladly accept a mountain of money in exchange for my labor.

Legal market been white hot recently. If I don’t get a bonus or a raise this new year I’m going to be looking around. Mostly because I had to buy a new car recently and I could use the money. =|