American Economics Thread

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luminary

Senior Member
Registered Member
Fascinating articles on the US rural - urban divide and its history of secession. Really gives insight into American society and mindset (refusal to urbanize -> inability to get along with others / ingrained pervasive racism -> hostility and distrust of government):
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History and path dependency play a big role in antipathy to urban life. Aide from port cities being where immigrants landed (i.e, creating poor and decidedly alien neighborhoods), poor sanitation has a lot to do with hostility to cities. Dickensian London was plagued with a fair number of open sewers.

When the U.S. was founded it was a rural country, and of course, a lot of that rural life, especially in the South, was slaveholding agriculture. Something like 6% of the population was urban at the time of the American Revolution compared to around 30% or more in Britain. We were set up that way. The founding documents were hostile to cities.
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There’s something about our current capitalist system that produces inequality throughout the economy, especially in cities. Some of these economic forces are shared, but I think it’s heightened in the United States by political formations which are deeply tied to structural racism in our metropolitan areas.

The American form is to have a core city in a metropolitan area surrounded by often hostile, often mostly white suburbs, and that really distorts the returns from the economic engine that the city creates.
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Inequality in terms of housing issues is easily visible in wealthy cities – a real exacerbation of housing prices. Affluent people will get enclaves or pockets within the core city in places like San Francisco, New York, and to some extent Los Angeles. That, I think, creates more overt conflict internally within the core city in terms of politics. Most residents can’t access those resources that have gone to the suburbs.
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Mainstream urban economic analysis really misses four big things. One is the importance of industrial change. I’ve got three case studies in the book – New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles. They’ve all seen wrenching structural changes. In New York, it’s the loss of the unionized garment industry and its replacement with finance. In Detroit, it’s change in the automotive sector. In Los Angeles, it’s the loss of the aerospace sector and a wave of migrant workers who come to work in low-wage manufacturing. Mainstream economics doesn’t deal well with industrial structural change.
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I have
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for 20 years, and I think that it is not just a “
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” scenario anymore. In “
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,” my co-author and I go beyond narrow discussions of secession and the Civil War to frame secession as an extreme end point on a scale that includes various acts of
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that have already taken place across the U.S.
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Eleven states dub themselves “
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” and refuse to enforce federal gun restrictions. Movements aiming to carve off rural, more politically conservative portions of blue states
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; 11 counties in Eastern Oregon
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and
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as “Greater Idaho,” a move that Idaho’s
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.

Hoping to become a separate state independent of Chicago’s political influence, over two dozen rural Illinois counties have passed
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. Some
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Republicans back “Texit,” where the state becomes an independent nation.

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come from the Left, too.

“
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,” a plan for California to leave the union after 2016, was the most acute recent attempt at secession.
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HighGround

Senior Member
Registered Member
luminary said:
Fascinating articles on the US rural - urban divide and its history of secession. Really gives insight into American society and mindset (refusal to urbanize -> inability to get along with others / ingrained pervasive racism -> hostility and distrust of government):
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Articles like this are interesting, but they get a lot of things wrong.

For one thing, the "urban/rural" divide thing is just wrong. Even the US Census has a third category "suburbs".

Or let's look at this quote,

Not on economics they’re not. A lot of rural areas do not benefit from this rural/urban divide. There are a lot of poor people in rural areas whose politics are dominated by elites. Their wages are bad. Their jobs are insecure and moving. So I think economically there’s a lot that is similar to what urban residents experience. The culture wars are used to divert or distract from those issues. North Carolina is a great example of this – the state pioneered the anti-trans bathroom bill, and buried in that bathroom bill was also a prohibition on any city in the state raising its minimum wage. Economic policies that worked negatively against cities were smuggled in at the same time this culture war issue was stirred up. It really restricts cities from taking more progressive economic steps.
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I really don't understand what he's on about here. Because the challenges of rural and urban people are completely different. Even poor urbanites will typically have access to higher wages, high quality services, better infrastructure, and better social services. Cities, especially big cities, are always the first ones to get federal aid and federal money. The marginalized communities in cities are also the first ones to get help unlike the marginalized communities in "the middle of nowhere".

Furthermore, it is cities that are the engines of economic growth in America. Where are the biggest universities? The biggest research facilities? Where do companies build their headquarters? Where is the industry located?

There's a reason why both Boeing and Amazon are in King County, Washington and not Walla Walla, Washington.

And don’t get me started on the praise of the KKK and claims that the Reconstruction ruined “the fellow feeling between the darkies and the whites” in the 7th grade South Carolina history book my mother used as a public school teacher there in 1954 and 1955. I used that book as a show and tell item in second grade (peak civil rights era) to show how retrograde views about blacks were in some parts of the US.
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This just doesn't address the current problem. Nobody cares about what's in a history book from 1955. The current race debate in United States is essentially this,


Democrats: "Systemic racism is everywhere and we need to actively fight against it"

Republicans: "Racism is largely gone and Democrats only talk about racism and call us racist because they think it makes people vote for them"

Now I'm not going to comment on which side is right, if any of them are right/wrong, if any of them have a point, or whatever. That's not what's important. What's important is that both of these messages are about the same topic, race, but both of these messages simply do not acknowledge their counterpart. Democrats largely ignore Republican complaints and Republicans largely ignore Democrat complaints. This cessation of dialogue has gradually increased polarization between both parties. Today, it's all about mobilizing your base and scaring the "moderates" into voting for you rather than trying to "convert" anyone. You don't need a Ph.D. in game theory to see how this has consequences for national unity.
 
siegecrossbow

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
9dashline said:
Can you believe what just happened to me with Amazon?! This might be a sign of the impending economic collapse or something, but their service has hit rock bottom! Yesterday, I reached out to their so-called 'support' and I'm STILL waiting for a proper response! Here's the deal: I bought an RTX 4070 Ti graphics card, but guess what? They delivered a completely DIFFERENT item—a freaking tiny lens cover! Are they serious?!

The delivery driver's photographic evidence is right there, proving they left a pathetic thin package at my doorstep instead of the massive box I should've gotten. And yet, Amazon has the audacity to mark the item as delivered in my account!

I've been left in the dark with ZERO confirmation emails about them even looking into this mess. So, here I am, demanding a status update: will Amazon get their act together and either refund me or send the right product?! And if they need any more proof, I have the photo evidence ready to go.

Is this the kind of service we can expect now, with the economy going down the drain? Are companies like Amazon cutting corners and messing up deliveries left and right? Seriously, Amazon, get your act together! I'm beyond pissed and frustrated!

https://imgur.com/Fgo8VTF
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Return it and get a refund.
 
manqiangrexue

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
9dashline said:
Can you believe what just happened to me with Amazon?! This might be a sign of the impending economic collapse or something, but their service has hit rock bottom! Yesterday, I reached out to their so-called 'support' and I'm STILL waiting for a proper response! Here's the deal: I bought an RTX 4070 Ti graphics card, but guess what? They delivered a completely DIFFERENT item—a freaking tiny lens cover! Are they serious?!

The delivery driver's photographic evidence is right there, proving they left a pathetic thin package at my doorstep instead of the massive box I should've gotten. And yet, Amazon has the audacity to mark the item as delivered in my account!

I've been left in the dark with ZERO confirmation emails about them even looking into this mess. So, here I am, demanding a status update: will Amazon get their act together and either refund me or send the right product?! And if they need any more proof, I have the photo evidence ready to go.

Is this the kind of service we can expect now, with the economy going down the drain? Are companies like Amazon cutting corners and messing up deliveries left and right? Seriously, Amazon, get your act together! I'm beyond pissed and frustrated!

https://imgur.com/Fgo8VTF
Click to expand...
Wait, I know you're incredibly prone to gross overreaction but did you just say that because Amazon messed up your order and didn't have good customer service that, "This might be a sign of the impending economic collapse or something.."??? And you put this on the American Economics thread?? LOL

Personally, Amazon has always been easy to deal with for me and my wife. When they mess up the order, my wife calls them and they promptly fix the issue; sometimes they give us stuff for free to apologize for the mistake. Don't know how you're having so much trouble with them. But that's really not something I wanted to post on the US econ thread.
 
9dashline

9dashline

Captain
Registered Member
manqiangrexue said:
Wait, I know you're incredibly prone to gross overreaction but did you just say that because Amazon messed up your order and didn't have good customer service that, "This might be a sign of the impending economic collapse or something.."??? And you put this on the American Economics thread?? LOL

Personally, Amazon has always been easy to deal with for me and my wife. When they mess up the order, my wife calls them and they promptly fix the issue; sometimes they give us stuff for free to apologize for the mistake. Don't know how you're having so much trouble with them. But that's really not something I wanted to post on the US econ thread.
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First Walmart, now Mcdonalds

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I have ordered dozens of gpu from Amazon never had a problem, but now a $$$$ graphics card gets swapped with a $5 trincket?!

Has anyone ever in the entire history of amazon ordered a $5 lens cover on amazon and ended up getting a $3000 graphics card before? no? then this was intentional...

The wage slaves of Amazon empire are stealing high value deliveries with fraud is not a reflection of the true state of the US e-CONomy? then what is...
 
GZDRefugee

GZDRefugee

Junior Member
Registered Member
9dashline said:
Can you believe what just happened to me with Amazon?! This might be a sign of the impending economic collapse or something, but their service has hit rock bottom! Yesterday, I reached out to their so-called 'support' and I'm STILL waiting for a proper response! Here's the deal: I bought an RTX 4070 Ti graphics card, but guess what? They delivered a completely DIFFERENT item—a freaking tiny lens cover! Are they serious?!

The delivery driver's photographic evidence is right there, proving they left a pathetic thin package at my doorstep instead of the massive box I should've gotten. And yet, Amazon has the audacity to mark the item as delivered in my account!

I've been left in the dark with ZERO confirmation emails about them even looking into this mess. So, here I am, demanding a status update: will Amazon get their act together and either refund me or send the right product?! And if they need any more proof, I have the photo evidence ready to go.

Is this the kind of service we can expect now, with the economy going down the drain? Are companies like Amazon cutting corners and messing up deliveries left and right? Seriously, Amazon, get your act together! I'm beyond pissed and frustrated!

https://imgur.com/Fgo8VTF
Click to expand...
This is one of those moments where you charge back on your credit card/paypal.
 
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