What impact do you think it will have on you?
Are there critical items to purchase now that will be too expensive to afford next year?
Are you changing your savings or investments?
Somebody should make a website that tracks prices on goods and other items from the day Trump becomes president and throughout his term.
He said he would lower prices. His politics says the opposite. Let’s see.
That’s the Consumer Price Index.
There’s also the related Producer Price Index which unfortunately does not include tariffs but will be interesting to watch.
If you think government metrics during trumps presidency will be accurate, i have a bridge to sell you.
Most .gov websites are essentially useless the moment trump takes the throne.
The CPI is a key economic indicator. It’s unlikely that banks and markets would tolerate that kind of meddling.
But, if the CPI was changed for political reasons, there are other similar stats.
In plain language: Wall Street can make or lose billions of dollars based on correctly/incorrectly forecasting this stat, so you can bet your ass they have accurate data. Some of it is private; some is available to paying customers. Even if the data is not public, it is often publicly characterized, for example, in economic forecasts and in publications like The Economist.
Some examples of alternative CPI sources are: PriceStats and The Economist’s Intelligence Unit. Both require paid access.
Be aware that freely-available stats may be published with political agendas, by Fox News conspiracy theorists, etc.
Funny that you think they’re accurate now. Doesn’t matter WHO is in office, the feds tell you what they want you to hear.
Don’t forget the Big Mac index, apropos the incoming administration.
Far better would be something like:
- Go to grocery store
- Photograph the shelves in PriceHive app
- AI scans the images, detecting products and reading prices from the price tags
- Each is stored into a database as a price on a good at a location at a timestamp
After data pool is established from many users (or even just one):
- Go to grocery store
- Open PriceHive app
- Hold a product in the viewfinder
- AI identifies product
- app shows price history across time/locations
That kind of shit needs to be built. Government will probably find some way to make it illegal, but whatever.
If you are an American, how are you preparing for the upcoming tariffs and possible trade war?
I’m not. I would love to, but there’s not really much I can do as far as I can see.
What impact do you think it will have on you?
Are there critical items to purchase now that will be too expensive to afford next year?
Probably a lot of things. Contrary to what a lot of MAGA morons would like to claim, tariffs very rarely ever benefit the country establishing the tariff. Very few things are actually wholly made in America nowadays. With such a global economy, even things that are marketed as “made in America” are typically not made 100% in America. And even if they are, the parts are often sourced from around the world since, with modern shipping, that’s actually cheaper typically than sourcing it in-country. (Not to mention that some parts can’t be sourced in-country simply because no one exists to provide that service anymore.)
Are you changing your savings or investments?
Bold of you to assume that I have any extra money to put into either of those. I put in the same amount of money every week as I have the last while: whatever I can, which isn’t much. I don’t get paid shit for my job, yet prices keep going up. Sadly, it’s not like I have much money to adjust. :(
tariffs very rarely ever benefit the country establishing the tariff.
Well. It depends.
If tariffs are sustained, then it can make sense to establish domestic companies that can supply the goods that were previously being outsourced. In that respect, over the long term–and I’m talking, like 20-30+ years–it could be positive. One of the things that made the US economy strong in the 60s was the fact that we had strong labor, and strong manufacturing; outsourcing our manufacturing has harmed labor and the middle class.
But that’s all very long-term stuff. It’s taken us 40 years to get to where we are now, and bringing manufacturing, and strong unions, back can easily take just as long. In the short term, it’s going to be super-bad for the working poor and the middle class.
over the long term–and I’m talking, like 20-30+ years–it could be positive. One of the things that made the US economy strong in the 60s was the fact that we had strong labor, and strong manufacturing
Looks to me like the strong economy of the 1960s coincided with ending 20-30 years of high tariffs… Sooo…
A lot has changed since the 60s
Absolutely.
But the loss of the manufacturing base, and the subsequent decrease in number of people covered by labor unions, has been one of the single largest factors that’s harmed the middle class. It’s not the only thing, but a manufacturing base ends up being a pretty important part.
I bought two 16TB hard drives that I intend to fill with the content I generally pull down as I need it. Game roms, books, videos, a backup of Wikipedia(real). I’m already about 80% of the way there with preserving what I want to preserve. The other 16TB drive will be a copy. I can keep it in or around my toolbox at work just in case anything happens at the house, fire or flood, whatever.
I don’t seriously consider content being harder to acquire in the Trump presidency considering that’s mostly the Middle East, India and Romania if SoulSeek is anything to go by, but it gives me peace of mind.
As for spending… what spending?
I’m poor, but I already only spend on utility and literally nothing else. It’s helpful, really. I don’t buy crap and always have money for what I need, but I know I’m the minority, here. I’m always willing to suffer if it means I have headroom, to my family’s constant worry.
I cook constantly. I bake about two loaves of bread a week. My house generates baked goods on a constant basis for everyone around it, and I sell here and there. Flour is cheap, making variety is easy and everyone loves it.
You wanna survive this shit?
- quit streaming anything, pirate everything
- effort is money
- you don’t need it
- only pay bills that can’t be garnished or risk repossession
- name brand means poison
- see an ad? Never buy the product. Fuck em.
Run as close to the grain as possible. Don’t buy their shit. Don’t buy anything they’re associated with and if they try to control something, starve yourself of it. Fuck em. Don’t let the bastards win.
I grabbed a four-bay RAID and some drives for the same reason. I highly recommend you also get a UPS if you can so that random power outages (which are more likely) don’t crash your drives.
I already have a setup at the house. This 16TB is basically the master cold storage for everything(~12GB of content and personal files) and gives me peace of mind. I can restore the server apps in twenty minutes with its local backups, but… the Jellyfin content, my books, roms, etc, need some parity.
A few months later I might get another and make another copy. I usually buy refurb drives and test them out a bit before running them. I have pretty good luck with them. Most of the time, I’m writing the entire drive on first use so if there’s a problem, I’m gonna find it.
Have you actually accessed the wikipedia content locally?
I downloaded a backup once but just figured post apocalypse I’d have infinite time to fuck with linux and I’d figure out how to read it eventually.
I poked around and haven’t found a blank link yet. I only spent about an hour with it. I’ll use it in place of real wikipedia for a while and see if I hit a blank spot.
Tariffs amount to a higher inflation rate / a regressive tax, as they will not subsidize local industry to any significant level. You will not see wage increases or more jobs from it. Probably the opposite.
This will be a quantitative change, it will look like 2022-2024 but with a higher effective inflation rate, translating into a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.
More people will experience what it’s like to earn 10-20% less money and have fewer job prospects. One would hope that this teaches humility and solidarity, but in a country that only knows how to punch left, that will be an uphill battle that must nevertheless be fought.
As long as the rich get richer, the system is working as intended. Voting will not change anything other than how fast the wheels fall off this bitch.but we still have to, so we crash later rather than sooner.
Moved forward large purchases that cannot be delayed 5 years.
I am not changing my investments. My predictions on market impacts tend to be wrong. The stock market and the economy are not the same thing (market can be up during recession).
I am working to get healthier and update vaccinations. I don’t know what is coming but being able to run, climb, and lift are versatile.
My husband finally bit the bullet and upgraded his computer. I’m planning to upgrade my phone before the year is out, because mine is 6 years old and probably not getting security updates for another 4 years.
Not that these things didn’t need to happen, but having it forced on us last minute has sucked.
Considering using it as an excuse to upgrade my PC to an actual high-end rig to avoid tariffs on PC parts. Never had a PC that was actually “high-end” but this could be an excuse to build one. Aside from that, not much at the moment. There’s too much shit that’ll be affected by tariffs and aside from my PC, I can’t really see myself buying anything new that’ll truly last me four years. As such, there’s not much of a way for me to dodge tariffs.
That’s a good plan if only I had the money spare to do the same rn haha
Can’t do much but pay bills. If things get harder then they already are it will slow down or reverse my plan to drop 1 or 2 of my part time jobs.
there is nothing I could possibly do that would alter how much it affects me unless I suddenly got a lot wealthier
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I may buy more dried fruit and bulk t-shirts.
Business won’t let him do most of that. It was just loud fake superficial concepts of plans . His real task is staying in power. I think our biggest concern now is loss of immigrants.
ETA- i was initially pretty concerned and wanted to really cut back spending and increase savings. We will likely do some of that, but we’re still planning little holiday trips and doing work on the house.
Wouldn’t you want to do exactly the opposite in the face of really bad inflation?
Spend any extra money on imported goods that are consumable, especially chinese. As that money will quickly be worth less.
I have house projects about to start, so i will be buying stuff for that, but it’s mostly labor. Someone asked what everyone is buying now because it will likely get more expensive. Couldn’t really think of anything.
Yeah, I don’t have a ton of stuff I need either. Only planning on grabbing some non-perishable food stuff that’s imported that we enjoy, and maybe some mid level Chinese electronics that I never got around to buying that will almost certainly be twice as expensive a year from now.
I suspect businesses won’t let him deport immigrants either. They are all employed as cheap laborers.
Yeah, Texas industry has already been mentioning it’s worry for farming, construction, and restaurants.
So sad for businesses… The only way this stops is if they are irreparably hurt and realize that they caused it by voting him in.
Getting my financial situation shifted to risk adverse and saving as much as I can.
Finally getting a generator. I live in a rural area. Not having a generator was a huge hole in my setup. We also got a wood stove earlier this year for backup heat. I had longer term plans for solar but now it looks like that may be impossible since China makes all the equipment, and it’s already difficult to balance the utility with the expense.
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