"Never mind the fact that many people importing the products did their damnedest to absorb the increases in tariffs because you've got your "truflation" index to trust!"

If they absorbed the increases then the prices didn't go up.

"Never mind that "truflation" doesn't really have a sound methodology behind it."

It's a blockchain with all available pricing data on it... there is no 'methodology.' As for the calculated numbers, they literally apply the official US govt formula for calculating inflation. If that isn't sound then take it up with the government.

"Just because you can find a number somewhere that supports your belief doesn't mean that it's accurate or economically viable."

Uh huh, good luck finding any credible numbers which don't support my belief because all the economic indicators are positive. Like it or not we are pulling up out of the economic nosedive we were on heading into 2020. Debate the why or complain about beef as the outlier if your cognitive dissonance and political leanings demand you make excuses but the facts are the facts.

"I have cards below 15%."

Not new ones you don't.

"Join a Credit Union. Open accounts with banks that are more picky about their clientele. Quit borrowing money from subprime lenders."

None of that has anything to do with a credit card...

"I have cards below 15%"

Is 15 the new 10? As I said, anyone with a decent FICO had 7.99% - 12.99% or ~10% just 10 years ago and they likely still do if they've kept those cards but your new cards certainly won't have those rates.

"No. This can be true in scenarios where your credit is tapped out and you're only servicing debt, but this is a minority of cases, and trying to legislate for them is pure idiocy."

False. Price + Interest is more than just paying the price and that is the only dependency my claim had. This is true whether you are tapped out and merely servicing debt or not.

"This is simply not true in practice.
I'm using extreme numbers to demonstrate the point. In practice, the low end isn't this low, and the high end is higher.
Imagine you only have $83 a month in discretionary funds.
Imagine you need a $1000 repair for your car.
With credit, you can make that $1000 purchase, for a monthly (decreasing) service fee of $16.
Without credit, you have to save for an entire year to make that purchase. And the fact is- only the very well off achieve this in practice."

So the credit gave them increased capacity [$1000] while reducing an already small $83/mo cash flow by $16/mo. That's exactly how I said it works. Even if they were a millionaire with no CC debt this would be the case, the card increases their capacity by whatever the limit is and if they use the card it reduces their cash flow.

Even with your cherrypicked example [the vehicle is a key tool for making money] this is a demonstration of predatory lending. If you can't afford to save $1000 minus interest to repair your car then you can't afford $1000 + Interest. The correct answer here is to use a rental/loaner, hoof it, or use a independent shop that will let you give them a partial payment and/or collateral [the title?] while you do side hussles for a week an earn an extra $1000.

The prices of consumer goods increased by ~1% in the quarter following the majority of tariffs taking effect. That isn't what I'm telling you, it's simply the FACTS taken directly from the truflation blockchain. Reality doesn't give a damn about your economic theories.

Tariffs tax sources of stuff not the stuff itself which is why 25%+ tariffs brought less than ~1% price increases when they kicked in and even that lasted less than a quarter and has been massively blown away by GROWTH.

"The credit acts as an expansion to the money they have at any point in time."

The credit acts as an expansion to the spending capacity they have at any point in time but actually utilizing that credit acts as a siphon on the CASH FLOW of the individual, the total amount of income they get a year stays the same but their net spending power potential is decreased.

Until the last decade nobody who uses credit spending responsibly [which generally means just keeping it active and siphoning benefits without really paying interest, which is still a trap waiting for an income interruption] had rates over ~10% on cards. Now ~20% rates are normal even for people with 800+ FICO. There is a reason people aren't allowed to charge rates over 10% on personal loans in pretty much every state and there is nothing magical about changing out the lender that suddenly makes a higher rate legitimate.

"But their quality of life may be worse."

Not in the long run. Their net worth will actually increase because they aren't paying all that interest AND because people have to actually pay the cost of goods the market won't tolerate such insane price growth on ever more temporary goods.

Here is the bottom line, in most states individuals are barred from personal lending over 9-10% because it is considered usury. There is absolutely nothing about a bank or certified lender that suddenly enables THE BORROWER to tolerate a higher rate. Either excess rates are considered scams/fraudulent/abusive as a universal financial principle or they aren't but this double standard makes no sense.

You are pretending people pay off the debt.

We try to make business costs deductible because business means more employment, goods, and services in the US. That's only true if the economic activity IS in the US though. One patch on this problem is for only native born labor and associated costs to be deductible. No matter how it is structured on paper [including separate incorporation and billing back as a service] outsourced and insourced related expenses shouldn't be deductible. In fact, it wouldn't be a terrible idea to make all foreign services and goods exempt from tax exemption.

Ridiculously subjective. High skilled indian workers? Low skilled workers who replace high skilled americans is the norm not 'highly skilled workers.' In the raw they are average alongside other sources of starting and unproven labor but we didn't have shortages 20yrs ago and haven't at any point in the decades of replacing american workers with cheap insourced and outsourced labor since then. Worse Indians have infected management and even executive ranks and they are racist, intentionally hiring other Indians, claiming they are better at math [whether the positions actually require it or not] and calling Americans and those they see as low caste as lazy and lacking the same work ethic.

I can see his young account belongs to him. I'm thinking this isn't your first account.

Support engineer is a $65k-$70k/yr entry level gig. If you define 'good work' as $200-300k+ in the valley then maybe but for every one of those there are tens of thousands of six figure gigs in tech that normal people consider 'good work.'

"this is all fantasy, do you even work in tech?"

No offense kid but what are you, twenty? I was discussing and debating some of the most famous names in open source and tech on this very site before anyone with an eight digit UID was born.

Labor and costs associated with foreign workers whether insourced on visas or outsourced operations [and I mean all expenses related to outsourcing which disregards paper structuring like self-dealing trust law] shouldn't be deductible. I'm a fan of 0% taxation for a corporation that is sourcing and hiring entirely domestic workers because they are investing everything back into the US economy... same reason the shareholders don't pay themselves dividends.

"Even before AI, going to a boot camp might have gotten you a $30k salaried position at a shitty software mill somewhere in Bumblefuck, South Dakota. And only if you were lucky."

Nah, a bootcamp/cert would easily get you an entry level enterprise position paying $65-70k and many places trained those new hires anyway... assuming you left Bumblefuck, South Dakota. In fact, they almost certainly wouldn't hire someone without a degree in bumblefuck because they only need 3 guys whereas the enterprise can afford to hire 20 for a year and only end up keeping 5-10.

This did get more and more difficult as the market flooded with H1Bs and churn culture.

"Demonstrable experience beats paper, full stop."

This. And that is exactly what demonstrable means. The little tech quizes everyone does really don't tell you much. Everyone I've known who is really gifted in tech is on the spectrum/adhd and/or has social anxiety... not only will they be answering a different question than you meant to ask but whatever their performance certainly won't reflect the hyperfocus they'll have on a real work task with an open book. If they have varied experience in blue chip land or small shops [which always mean varied experience] you'd be crazy not to hire them regardless of interview. If they've had a big role but only one... make that a six month contract; if the old dog wakes up he'll be fantastic and handily crush agism.

More than 20years wearing various tech hats with a heavy emphasis on security, code, and *nix. I've had the same experience and not only does it go the wrong direction but it will helpfully "summarize" code and loop and give up on paths just to circle back around and repeat "fixes" which have already failed.

"The weak job market has everything to do with pandemic-era over-hiring and current economic uncertainty"

The uncertainty is a big effort to spin the inertia of rampant inflation and recession we were in as the consequence of policy just a few months old; it's purely political in hopes of recovering the midterms. Hate the current politics for other reasons or say it's yet more inertia and credit the last guy, but the trendlines are pretty solid in the US.

Still, if they don't do any reform of tech labor/immigration it'll probably stay rough going forward. Obviously we never really had a shortage of bodies and domestic has better SNR on talent. Laying off a 100k workers and importing 100k new ones each year for the last couple decades has definitely helped stagnate wages and made it harder to find that signal [because the layoffs always follow business logic instead of tech talent]. Stanford degrees... that used to guarantee jobs but only due to ignorance. That's almost as bad as the current obsession with skills in place of talent. Talent can acquire skills almost as quickly as new hires can adjust to a new workplace. Sorry, you'll hire 10 to find one talented worker and there is no getting around needing an experienced and proven talented worker to get work out of them all while finding the one.