But at least we have fewer Home Depot day laborers and restaurant prep cooks.

*sheds tear*

...MURICA!

Living in the rust belt takes a toll on vehicles. It's rare to see anything from the 00s here anymore. You don't see 90s cars unless they were garage kept by grandma or bought out of state.

Just in time for completion of the Epstein Ballroom.

Because passing tariff costs to consumers is admitting it was nothing more than a new tax enacted by the dementia patient.

It’s 2025 and food costs double or even triple what it did 5 years ago. People aren’t going to shell out extra cash just to say the copper wire in their $40k base model car is American sourced.

You’ll notice it’s GM telling suppliers and not GM choosing new suppliers. Because factories don’t spring up overnight and imagine the nightmare when GM buys a million connectors from a new supplier that fall apart in six months.

Louis Vuitton made some really ugly looking iPhone cases. https://www.ebay.com/itm/40493...

Russia can withdraw from Ukraine and this wouldn’t be an issue.

That is true of everything sold as protectionist in developed countries. Developing countries do have a real need to protect their fledgling growing industries, but that is only true for significantly struggling developed countries. If you are among the top 10 economies in the world, 100% of everything your politicians tell you is done for protectionist purposes is hogwash.

The second half of this quote is the most critical part. You still see some hesitancy to trust German leadership in Europe, and that country has long since accepted their fascist past. Until the US has accepted what we have done thoroughly enough that our history books label Trump a fascist, I don't see how other countries can regain the level of trust they had in the US a decade ago when Trump descending that escalator was considered a joke.

https://9to5mac.com/2025/11/14/new-iphone-pocket-now-available-to-order-but-its-selling-out-fast/

"Many of the iPhone Pocket color and size combinations are already sold out, though."

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/hs8j2zm/a/iphone-pocket-by-issey-miyake-short-black

Since the article was posted, all variations are sold out online.

Not as bad a call as the original Slashdot take on the iPod, but just goes to show that Slashdotters are not an important demographic.

One can also study the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act to see how poorly that went. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I appreciate the UK being a guinea pig and providing more concrete data for future researchers to understand just how bad protectionist acts like Brexit are. While economists could simulate how bad things would be, that would never be as good as studying the real thing.

Unfortunately now my country, the US, will be giving even more data points showing the same thing a decade from now.

Oh, I don't disagree with that at all. My state is a bit of an outlier, in that our teachers ARE more lowly paid than national averages, but then my locality is one of the higher paying supplements to teacher pay.

Why do I say pay is a problem? I've seen what happens to many good teachers. They get burned out from having to deal with trouble maker kids who if they get disciplined or get bad grades the parents go ape shit with allegations of racism, sexism, abuse, whatever. They get burned out from dealing with helicopter parents. They get burned out from, in most parts of the country, being governed by elected shitty school boards. They get burned out because some miscreant has an IEP and a 504 plan and so his stealing from classmates and being constantly disrupted is considered a manifestation of his disability and everyone else just has to deal with it.

Good teachers have job flexibility. I've seen multiple _great_ teachers go to work for companies like IXL where their starting salaries are always higher than what they were making as seasoned teachers. Others go the administrator route and become principals, superintendents, etc. Others go to teach at private schools where the pay is often better.

What I would propose is basically 3 things:

1. Get rid of habitually low performing teachers--every year get rid of your worst teachers
2. Increase pay for high performing teachers
3. And the kicker that I have no idea how to do--allow schools and teachers to apply standards and discipline without fear of lawsuits.

*Citation needed.