Apparently the US still can’t sort out their ports. The backup in West coast ports appears to be an attempt to reduce imports from China and scare the Chinese. The US don’t dare go to the WTO for help so “logistics issues” will have to make do. The Chinese run their own internal, unofficial boycotts on companies who insult or attempt to harm China – Chinese sales can drop by as much as 80% for companies who find themselves on the other end of one of these boycotts.
The US “shipping congestion” policy means shooting themselves in the foot. Take Action is in the auto accessory business and points out the consequences to American small business when there is no inventory:
I just paid $10 per single din car stereo and $20 per double din car stereo to have 250 Kenwood units sent air freight from China. They limited me to just 250 units I tried to buy 2000.
This is just in my little world. I know how dumb it may sound to people here that don’t get it, but car audio and electronics are my life. We must have units to sell to support all of the families that work at my stores. Other stores that do not have the buying power that I do have nothing to sell.
From what I am learning, this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
On the other side of the table, the US economy is seriously top-heavy. It’s 85% built on rent extraction, both at home and abroad. International partners are finding it less and less necessary to rent US IP (intellectual property) and less and less appealing to finance through the United States. The end appears to be in site. Conservative US patriot Gospel according to me describes the precarious situation:
Look people, America is drowning in debt and this is all insane! Ships from China backed up with crap most don’t need and can’t afford. Almost two million people are behind on their rent and 750,000 face immediate eviction. But these fools can’t wait to get new I-Phones with their extended unemployment checks. Millions don’t even want to f###ing work anymore, just sit in mommy’s basement and trade stocks. This once-great nation is finished. We cannot produce almost no tangible goods and import 95% of everything on store shelves. “Consumption nation” will fail. We are now almost $30 TRILLION in debt with much more on the way. The Fed banksters have $8.3T on their balance sheets including failed corporate bonds and mortgages. Nobody f***ing cares! Millions are debt slaves and will soon regret their precarious situations. Our border is under invasion and these people will do any job for pennies. The congress is useless and won’t stop deficit spending thanks to their Fed enablers. Huge stock buybacks for the oligarchs and no new jobs for the masses.
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy…” Alexander Fraser Tytler
There is no way back now. If you live in a big blue city, get out now while you can. Slowly at first, then all at once.
Mass shootings are at an historic high of over two per day, up from 0.92 in 2018.
-2014: 271 [.74 per day] -2015: 335 [.92 per day] -2016: 382 [1.05 per day] -2017: 348 [.95 per day] -2018: 336 [.92 per day] -2019: 417 [1.14 per day] -2020: 611 [1.67 per day] -2021: 452 [1.90 per day]
The numbers are much lower in Red States (Republican) and higher in Blue States (Democrate). There are fewer and fewer police willing to work cities in states, where Democrat politicians have vilified the police (often for good reason, de-escalation is apparently not taught to US police). Imagine what another couple of years of lockdowns, underemployment, eviction moratoriums, foreclosures and defunded police forces will do to these cities.
Turning the ship around means clipping the wings of rentiers (not possible as they use part of the free money the government gives them to lobby/bribe the government which in turns gets them more free money) and going back to producing more – and, gasp, dare I say it – serving the common good. Reining in rogue cops and policing actively but fairly would be part of that common good. A society which pursues only money and hedonism is doomed, rotting from the inside. A society which entrusts its security to brutal, racist goons like ancien regime France, Tsarist Russia, South Africa, Israel or the United States is on its way to civil war and eventually revolution.