American Economics Thread
- Thread starter Bernard
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That publication is pretty retarded. It basically claims the US manufacturing is doing great by comparing it to other G7 economies which also had their industrial sectors collapse as production moved to China. But if you look at the charts, the population working in the industrial sector in the US decreased, at the same time population in the US increased. Which means the US is de-industrializing. Claiming production is increasing by looking at "value added" also means little when in some cases the value added is sticking a label into a product. If you look at hard numbers like steel production, electricity consumption, the US has certainly not kept up with its population increase.
The US produces less steel today than it did at the height of the Cold War.
The fact that most US steel production increasingly uses electric arc furnaces also tells quite a lot. Those are typically used to recycle steel. Not make new steel from iron ore. The US has an ever increasing population which keeps recycling the same steel or buying it subsumed into products imported from China.
The article underestimates the effects of globalization. Where at one time the Boeing 737 was made in a full production cycle at Boeing's US plant in Seattle, today it uses doors imported from Malaysia as we saw from the latest incident with the MAX. And that is for an existing product. For the 787 things are much worse. The wings come from Japan and other parts of the airframe come from Italy. And then they joke about how the C919 has little Chinese made content in it and isn't supposed to count as a Chinese plane. What about a 787 with the Rolls-Royce engines? How much US content is in it? Claims that the design and expertise is still in the US also gain little traction. As we saw with the MCAS software developed in India for the 737MAX. Or the issues Boeing had with aircraft design teams located in Ukraine and Russia when a couple years ago the conflict there started. Boeing's answer to the issues of lack of engineering talent after the conflict started were also kind of interesting. Instead of creating new jobs in the US to replace those in Ukraine or Russia, they opened a new design office in Brazil and basically hoovered talent from Embraer.
The US produces less steel today than it did at the height of the Cold War.
The fact that most US steel production increasingly uses electric arc furnaces also tells quite a lot. Those are typically used to recycle steel. Not make new steel from iron ore. The US has an ever increasing population which keeps recycling the same steel or buying it subsumed into products imported from China.
The article underestimates the effects of globalization. Where at one time the Boeing 737 was made in a full production cycle at Boeing's US plant in Seattle, today it uses doors imported from Malaysia as we saw from the latest incident with the MAX. And that is for an existing product. For the 787 things are much worse. The wings come from Japan and other parts of the airframe come from Italy. And then they joke about how the C919 has little Chinese made content in it and isn't supposed to count as a Chinese plane. What about a 787 with the Rolls-Royce engines? How much US content is in it? Claims that the design and expertise is still in the US also gain little traction. As we saw with the MCAS software developed in India for the 737MAX. Or the issues Boeing had with aircraft design teams located in Ukraine and Russia when a couple years ago the conflict there started. Boeing's answer to the issues of lack of engineering talent after the conflict started were also kind of interesting. Instead of creating new jobs in the US to replace those in Ukraine or Russia, they opened a new design office in Brazil and basically hoovered talent from Embraer.
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Agricultural payrolls in the U.S. decreased for decades as the U.S. population has grown. Does that mean agricultural production is down?
US farming isn't as big of a deal internationally as it used to be. It has major competition today from Brazil and Russia in grains for example. This is thanks in a huge deal to the US government's idiotic insistence on its biofuels program. Namely corn ethanol.
US employment in the farming sector also hasn't decreased at nearly the same rate over the past two decades as in manufacturing. Employment in the farming sector is basically flat.
The United States is a highly competitive agricultural exporter; that ofc, doesn’t it doesn’t have competition or that it doesn’t make any policy mistakes
Is US agricultural production higher or lower than it was in 1960?
US manufacturing is down compared to six years ago in 2017
It’s not. (for everyone else) Industrial production is both not a measure of manufacturing per se, it’s three parts: manufacturing, utilities, and mining; it’s also a measure of gross, instead of net production.
regardless; the point (which I tried to illustrate with the agricultural example) is that declines in payroll are not necessarily declines in output. If output per worker increases dramatically, then the need for as many workers declines
US wheat output has been decreasing. And at the same time there is increased pressure in corn and soybean imports from Brazil and Argentina.
The only reason Brazil and Argentina don't produce even more Soybeans is because it is hard to send the products to the world market and sell them without improving the infrastructure. New railways and port facilities need to be built. Brazil is expanding its rail infrastructure.
So yes: agricultural (soybean) production is up substantially since the 1960s
broadsword
Brigadier
The US economy is charging ahead.
By
published about 18 hours ago
The U.S government wants to crack down on the ballooning energy consumption of Bitcoin miners.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
The U.S Energy Information Administration (EIA) is now requiring large-scale commercial cryptocurrency mining operations to report their power consumption. This initiative is part of a larger effort to regulate and penalize cryptocurrency mining due to the exorbitant amount of energy the industry consumes yearly. For now, the EIA is only collecting data, but this new data should give birth to new regulations that will penalize miners in the future. This comes as the company has (first reported on by ) suggesting that cryptocurrency mining represents up to 2.3% of U.S. power demand.
“We intend to continue to analyze and write about the energy implications of cryptocurrency mining activities in the United States...,” EIA administratior Joe DeCarolis . “We will specifically focus on how the energy demand for cryptocurrency mining is evolving, identify geographic areas of high growth, and quantify the sources of electricity used to meet cryptocurrency mining demand.”
DeCarolis' words summarize that the United States will pay close attention to the environmental challenges cryptocurrency mining might be causing. We can surmise that the United States government specifically wants to crack down on mining operations that impact the reliability and sustainability of power in highly populated areas. Potentially leading to higher residential power costs and power shortage issues during peak hours. As of January 2024, the EIA has identified 137 cryptomining facilities.
EIA Note: "The representative size shown for a facility is based upon estimates contained in our bottom-up approach. Number in brackets represents the number of facilities." (Image credit: U.S. Energy Information Administration)
The EIA found that crypto-mining operations in the United States has grown substantially over the past few years, to the point where all U.S-based crypto-mining operations consume 0.6% to 2.3% of the nation's entire electricity consumption alone. For comparison, the total U.S. Bitcoin mining industry consumes the annual power budget of Utah or West Virginia. The estimated power draw of Bitcoin mining worldwide is projected to be anywhere between 0.2% to 0.9% of global demand, equating to the same power draw as Greece or Australia by themselves.
Bitcoin mining is very power-hungry in the United States specifically due to the exorbitant amount of mining that actually takes place within U.S borders. The EIA found that the global share of Bitcoin mining that takes place in the U.S. grew from 3.4% in 2020 to a whopping 37.8% in 2022.
The incredible power demands of the Bitcoin industry are a result of the Bitcoin mining algorithm becoming more and more difficult every single year. Bitcoin today isn't what it was eight to ten years ago, where you could mine it on a single computer and net a decent profit. Nowadays, Bitcoin needs to be mined on hundreds of specialized mining devices (ASICs) to be gathered at all. The continuous difficulty of the Bitcoin algorithm, in turn, creates higher and higher power costs as the cryptocurrency gets harder to mine.
We can expect this power phenomenon to become greater as Bitcoin . 2024 is expected to be one of the most eventful years in Bitcoin history, with the cryptocurrency expected to blow past its record $69,000 high sometime after its halving event in April (when the reward for Bitcoin mining is cut in half) thanks to reduced mining profit and large-scale institutional adoption.
Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power — government now requiring commercial miners to report energy consumption
By
published about 18 hours ago
The U.S government wants to crack down on the ballooning energy consumption of Bitcoin miners.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
The U.S Energy Information Administration (EIA) is now requiring large-scale commercial cryptocurrency mining operations to report their power consumption. This initiative is part of a larger effort to regulate and penalize cryptocurrency mining due to the exorbitant amount of energy the industry consumes yearly. For now, the EIA is only collecting data, but this new data should give birth to new regulations that will penalize miners in the future. This comes as the company has (first reported on by ) suggesting that cryptocurrency mining represents up to 2.3% of U.S. power demand.
“We intend to continue to analyze and write about the energy implications of cryptocurrency mining activities in the United States...,” EIA administratior Joe DeCarolis . “We will specifically focus on how the energy demand for cryptocurrency mining is evolving, identify geographic areas of high growth, and quantify the sources of electricity used to meet cryptocurrency mining demand.”
DeCarolis' words summarize that the United States will pay close attention to the environmental challenges cryptocurrency mining might be causing. We can surmise that the United States government specifically wants to crack down on mining operations that impact the reliability and sustainability of power in highly populated areas. Potentially leading to higher residential power costs and power shortage issues during peak hours. As of January 2024, the EIA has identified 137 cryptomining facilities.
EIA Note: "The representative size shown for a facility is based upon estimates contained in our bottom-up approach. Number in brackets represents the number of facilities." (Image credit: U.S. Energy Information Administration)
The EIA found that crypto-mining operations in the United States has grown substantially over the past few years, to the point where all U.S-based crypto-mining operations consume 0.6% to 2.3% of the nation's entire electricity consumption alone. For comparison, the total U.S. Bitcoin mining industry consumes the annual power budget of Utah or West Virginia. The estimated power draw of Bitcoin mining worldwide is projected to be anywhere between 0.2% to 0.9% of global demand, equating to the same power draw as Greece or Australia by themselves.
Bitcoin mining is very power-hungry in the United States specifically due to the exorbitant amount of mining that actually takes place within U.S borders. The EIA found that the global share of Bitcoin mining that takes place in the U.S. grew from 3.4% in 2020 to a whopping 37.8% in 2022.
The incredible power demands of the Bitcoin industry are a result of the Bitcoin mining algorithm becoming more and more difficult every single year. Bitcoin today isn't what it was eight to ten years ago, where you could mine it on a single computer and net a decent profit. Nowadays, Bitcoin needs to be mined on hundreds of specialized mining devices (ASICs) to be gathered at all. The continuous difficulty of the Bitcoin algorithm, in turn, creates higher and higher power costs as the cryptocurrency gets harder to mine.
We can expect this power phenomenon to become greater as Bitcoin . 2024 is expected to be one of the most eventful years in Bitcoin history, with the cryptocurrency expected to blow past its record $69,000 high sometime after its halving event in April (when the reward for Bitcoin mining is cut in half) thanks to reduced mining profit and large-scale institutional adoption.