The US will find out the hard way how much of their undesirable work is done by people that "steal their jobs". Jobs that no American wants to do.
The UK already has seen this with Brexit https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44230865
Both farms and hotels have an increasing number of jobs being automated where it makes economic sense, or for pure novelty’s sake.
https://www.farmprogress.com/technology/tethered-drones-can-...
I don't want to comment about picking crops, that's rapidly changing and I don't expect to be up-to-date with this. I've seen people being confidently wrong about "cows won't milk themselves" decades after there were machines cows could operate by themselves to get milked.
So, the example with most saliency for me (which may not be the hardest to deal with) is:
Imagine a hotel that is hosting a convention, and is fully occupied for five days. On day one, a norovirus infection event gets everyone, on day four everyone's digestive tracts are voided from both ends with about 40 seconds' warning. How well do the automation systems cope?
This example is probably quite close to the top of the list of things I expect cleaning staff to be hoping someone can automate/has already automated, because noro is hella infectious like that and who on earth would actually want to be the one who has to clean up after such incidents, but has this kind of cleanup actually been fully automated yet?
I had to clean up after a relative (which is why it's salient for me), and I think I caught it from them because I'd missed the inside of a cupboard door handle before removing my gloves.
> How about automatic cleaning of a clean room?
Positive air pressure, air filters, and requiring occupants to wear stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanroom#/media/File:Cleanroo...
Would be one of the easier cases, given they are work environments and by extension there's an expectation of reduced scope of things for the automation to be doing, though even then I'd expect some unplanned incidents require human intervention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortage
Increased capacity utilizing automation would introduce automation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productive_capacity
Increasing demand doesn't magically necessitate that technological resources sprout from nothing to replace human resources.
An introductory macroeconomics source instructs one on this
https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-fi...
Increasing automation and therefore productivity means an increase in profits to the owners, not a drop in prices, except in the most competitive industries.
Unemployment is already extremely low. There aren't tons of Americans waiting to step into these jobs. If unemployment were 10% that would be a different story, but we're close to full employment. So instead of the jobs going to Americans, the produce rots in the fields, and prices go up.
They want unemployment to be low so they can keep wages and salaries suppressed
High unemployment helps employers because they can put pressure on the workers, who are less likely to find a job with better conditions or at all.
The fact that low unemployment is associated with stagnating wages these days is a massive failure of the capitalist system. It means that the situation is deteriorating and some of the levers cannot be used. There is no way out without pain.
So my reasoning was "if there are not many unfilled jobs, it makes it tougher for people to find work, meaning the unemployment rate is low" which of course does not logically follow
My mistake
There are signs of upwards wage pressure in the last couple of years, we’ll see how sustainable that is.
Regardless of the fact that a lot of poor people don't live in the areas where most of those jobs are but they do get their produce from there..
The top 4 counties in the US for agriculture production are all in the central valley in California.
Which in turn will create more pressure to increase the salaries until it reaches the equilibrium that satisfies everyone.
The alternative is to use de-facto slave labor just for the sake of cheap food?
The lower your income is, the bigger the % you spend on necessities like food. So when those go up, the lower incomes are again hit the hardest as they spend a higher percentage of their total income on it. And these are necessities not nice to haves
I am not. You are confusing transient effects with the equilibrium state.
Btw, for low wage employees everything is a significant % of their wage. The only meaningful way to increase their wages is to decrease the supply of cheap labor. This is exactly what happened during Covid where no one was willing to work for $8/hr and the wages went up.
When people realize that their wage doesn’t guarantee good living they will look for a better job or demand a raise.
If a lot of the farm workers in California are gone how does that help the people in Nevada or Michigan that are unemployed... You think they're going to fill those positions?
> When people realize that their wage doesn’t guarantee good living they will look for a better job or demand a raise
Wow... When your job requires no education or training? I guess everyone who works 2 or more jobs in the us needs to talk to you. They're all missing this obvious point.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/31/634442195/wh...
Would Americans work those jobs if those jobs paid well?
Rising salaries will lead to inflation. Expecting anything else is fantasy
No. Riding salaries do not lead to inflation by themselves. What leads to inflation is the increase in money circulating on the market. In other words: printing money leads to inflation.
Not necessarily, if price of product A goes up and I have to buy that it means I have less money to spend on product B. Meaning demand on product B goes down so its price goes down.
If we go back to the point that we're talking about, being how it affects the lowest incomes, then you can see how an ever increasing % of their income is locked up in food/housing etc.
By your logic "What leads to inflation is the increase in money circulating on the market." Why is the rate of inflation even a value that isn't known beforehand? Surely we control our own printers, no?
This is nonsense. If an economy doubles and the money supply grows 10%, you get deflation. If the money supply is stable and half the country gets bombed, you get inflation.
Price levels are a function of both money demand and money supply. Ignoring the demand side of the equation doesn’t work.
Nope. This is one of the reasons we had insane inflation after Covid: we printed too much.
For example, here: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042015/how-does-mon...
You can have an economy with zero money printing that experiences inflation or deflation.
You said in the comment above.
How do you read “price levels are a function of both money demand and money supply” and get that?
Going back to the top, you claimed “riding [sic] salaries do not lead to inflation.” That is nonsense. Even if we ignore that rising salaries cause the money supply to increase through increased velocity, wealth effect and credit creation. (This is why when the economy is strong central banks raise rates to keep price levels stable. You have to destroy money to make up for the money being created by the private sector.)
In other words, to keep inflation at bay, one of the things you do, you restrict money supply.
Again, nobody said money supply doesn’t affect price levels. But in this example, rising wages caused the inflationary impetus without any money printing. To correct for that, the money supply must be reduced.
If you’re piloting a plane, deflecting the control surfaces will move the plane. But so will winds. If winds buffet your plane you have to deflect control surfaces to get back to where you were. That doesn’t mean the wind doesn’t exist.
Rising salaries can cause inflation all on their own. Even in an economy with a fixed money supply. (So can printing money, but nobody was debating that.)
Immigration is a distraction. Trump is deporting fewer folks than Obama did [1], he’s just doing it while pumping tens of billions to his buddies via ICE contracts.
Tariffs are a regressive tax. If food and metal is more expensive, service and manufacturing workers will be pinches.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-deportations-trump-six-mont...
Red herring. Nobody said this.
My point is Trump isn’t deporting that many people. His numbers are not economically meaningful compared to tariffs. To the extent there are labour pools that would benefit from deportation, they’re geographically concentrated along the border.
If Trump wanted to remove illegals from the American labour pool, he’d target employers. He can’t [1].
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/06/16/nx-s1-5430846/farming-industr...
I’m not sure if this is accurate, but for example: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/07/31/migrant-crossings-darien...
Having a recession is a proven way to reduce illegal immigration, and we're at least starting to see recessionary signals.
I’m saying irrespective of what you and I believe, the current administration isn’t meaningfully deporting anyone.
(To the extent I have policy views on this, it’s for coherence. You can’t do disruptive deportations while ignoring criminals all while launching on again off again tariffs which preclude both long-term domestic investment and trade-barrier reductions.)
Climate change does not mean just rising sea levels, but more extreme weather as well, which can include more flooding: warmer air holds more moisture, so when it eventually gets released it can be in downpours. See recent flooding in Texas.
Poor people tend to live in the highest risk areas because the safer areas are desired most and so the people with money bid up prices there.
When you hear headlines like "Trailer Park Destroyed by Tornado", and people ask "Who would live in 'Tornado Alley'?", the answer is "Poor people.".
It's hard to get a good measure of damage caused by climate change. There are much touted statistics that say billion dollar weather events are more common than ever, but that's mainly due to things being more expensive and increased development (i.e. beach front properties)
A more objective measure, although no perfect, is deaths caused by climate events. If climate events were more catastrophic over time, you would expect deaths to go up somewhat proportionally. To my knowledge, there haven't been major advances in rescue technology in the last 50 years or so.
But we see this number has come down pretty drastically over the last 150 years. In the US it has also come down or stayed about the same
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1269715/global-reported-...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fatality-rates-in-the-us-...
The Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC), for one, may disagree:
* https://thepointer.com/article/2025-08-02/ontarians-are-payi...
* https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/ca/news/catastrophe/can...
* https://www.lexpert.ca/news/finance-law/insurance-bureau-of-...
* https://www.ibc.ca/news-insights/in-focus/canadian-governmen...
It sounds a bit like the "Boots theory" of Discworld [0].
> insurance rates are often highly subsidized by federal government and actually a really good bargain
This feels a bit inconsistent with your previous comment about living in Tornado Alley being "not exactly a bargain".
What do you think about studies like this [1] which find a correlation between economic disparity and tornado risk?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01660...
Explanation: to a well off person, 25% higher gas or food prices is just an annoyance. Nothing in their day to day life will change because of that. To a poor person it's brutal.
You could set up a deduction system... But that's retroactive (poor people still don't have that money for a whole year) and dramatically complicates their tax filing burden and financial record keeping requirements.
The rich can afford lawyers and accountants, so the IRS has been going after lower and lower income folk for their slip-ups more often. So yet more punishing the poor.
This is not correct. The cost of tariffs are shared by the distributor and customer. The proportion is determined by the elasticity of demand. By this I mean that for goods and services which people rely on, like gas, they will pay almost all of the cost of the tariff because they need the gas to survive. For luxury goods and services, like Louboutin shoes, most of the cost of tariffs is paid by the distributor. This is because customers are willing to substitute for other options, or simply not buy that item. They don't need it.
The downstream effects are quite complex to calculate. For this reason, neoliberals prefer to avoid any tariffs at all. For example, the U.S. is a net gas exporter, meaning that total net local consumption can be satisfied without imports. In a perfect market, there would be no change to the cost of gas. However gas is a commodity, and there is the risk that cartels abuse their market positions to exploit the fact that locals must buy gas from them if they wish to avoid the tariff. For other goods like imported food, locals can substitute. They don't have to buy imported avocados. There are plenty of other affordable and nutritious foods available locally. However, the loss of avocados is, by some metric, a loss of quality of life. This isn't generally captured in economic data. Further still, some of these additional costs are offset by the fact that local businesses become more profitable thanks to said tariffs, and this ends up in the pockets of consumers. Because so much menial labour is currently offshored, the primary benefactor of tariffs is expected to be the poor and working classes.
See, I was with you until this (OK, mostly with you, luxury goods are price inelastic so the buyer definitely pays).
The primary beneficiary of a carefully designed tariff policy might be some working class people in some industries (and some wealthy owners, natch), at the expense of direct and indirect customers of those industries who may or may not be poor themselves. But an idiot imposing blanket unpredictable tariffs with promises to negotiate "great deals" that lift them in future costs far more of those manufacturing jobs than it protects, because on the one hand it creates enormous supply chain risk to US manufacturing, and on the other hand overseas companies aren't investing in building new facilities in the US because of a 40% tariff levied until the POTUS changes his mind in a few months time...
Luxury items are price elastic. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040715/which-factor...
see also: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/012915/what-effect-...
Because by and large, most of the jobs offshored by the U.S. have been lower skilled. As these jobs return, it is the lower skilled workers who will primarily benefit.
I agree that there are likely examples of necessities which cannot be produced cost effectively locally which will become more expensive.
The system is set up to ensure efficient allocation of capital. If it's more profitable for manufacturers to produce goods in-country, that is exactly what they will do. It's a bold claim that tariffs will have no impact whatsoever on investment and spending, because it's clear that they absolutely will.
Far too many people think of markets as some kind of magical supercomputational system. They're really just a heuristic that does avoid some spectacular failure modes, but easily gets stuck in local maximums. China did the work over decades to prime the pump so that industry picked up and moved, while our "leaders" facilitated the looting. One pathetic man throwing policy tantrums for spectacle isn't going to reverse these now-entrenched dynamics.
There is also the glaring issue that Chinese companies can just as easily set up factories in other countries with low US tariffs. They won't be paying import taxes on the equipment they bring there to do so (like setting up a factory in the US would require), and in fact they will probably receive favors from those countries' governments for the investment. So these blanket import taxes actually encourage the expansion of Chinese influence into other countries.
Yes. But that cost can be absorbed across the board. The manufacturer can lower their margins. The importer / distributor / wholesaler can do the same. The B2B / B2C seller can do the same.
It doesn’t all necessarily get directly passed to the buyer.
Another question that few are asking is: what has the off shoring of so much manufacturing cost the USA? Looking at the resident of the WH, it appears to be quite a bit.
Also market competition can be a factor: if competitors are not raising prices (or by smaller amounts), you might lose market share.
Of course the practical problem with this playing out in increased domestic production is that it's reasonably likely that in 2028 the tariffs will get rolled back, and any company that was depending on them to survive will die. That's a large amount of uncertainty for any industry where there's a significant income investment required to get going.
[1] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-...
Not to mention that tariffs on directly imported goods reduce the lowest earners' ability to pay for domestic products.
If the goal was onshoring too benefit the population, it would be coupled with a strong wealth redistribution to the least wealthy to allow them to buy domestic goods. But that's not the goal.
That's not true, even for items which undergo relatively little processing like milk:
1. Cows need feed, and in the US this is mostly corn. This corn is mechanically harvested, shucked, and transported.
2. Cows are milked by machine.
3. This milk is then transported to a larger processing facility where it gets filtered, clarified (fat removal for 2%, skim, etc), pasteurized, homogenized (fat is evenly dispersed), and bottled in a blown plastic jug.
4. After bottling, the milk gets palletized and trucked to grocery distribution centers, which will re-palletize it for shipment to individual stores.
At every step of the way, we use machines that require frequent maintenance and whose supply chains rely extensively on imported parts. On-shoring all of this would be expensive and risky both because Trump flip-flops so often and because our next administration may just reverse the tariffs.
Realistically, what's he gonna do? Shut down the company, which he oh so desperatly wants in the US? Tax them more, driving their cost up more?
Lots of options.
Other ways of reducing value are possible such as reducing quality control effort, reducing quality of inputs, and reducing manufacturing costs in ways that are known to reduce product quality.
Pushing costs to effectively underregulated externalities can also avoid price increases.
It is also sometimes possible to increase efficiency. Even a long term commodity can have potential for efficiency improvements that were considered not worth exploring under stable pricing pressures. (I suspect value reduction is easier and much faster than efficiency improvement.)
Sadly, reducing value can have a disproportionate cost to consumers. Reducing manufacturing costs for a Watchman's boots by 20% may reduce the lifetime of such by 30% and reduce the quality of use by 50% (which may be related to Samuel Vimes' theory: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory ).
This analysis fails to realise that there are simply other countries with which to trade with.
A question that I see ignored by people who ask your question, is 'what has off-shoring brought the US?' The answer is massive economic growth and improvements in quality of live.
Off-shoring allows you to make stuff cheaper by keeping the economic circumstances of the creator worse than your own. We can get cheap stuff from China because they work many more hours than people in the west do and they live in conditions that are much worse. Because we can get cheap stuff (like pocket computers, clothing, shoes, couches, cars and more) and off-shore most of the downsides (pollution, long working hours, dangerous workplaces), we improve our quality of life significantly.
So unless you prefer working in mines or working 80 hours a week in a dirty, dangerous factory, I think you're probably better off with globalization than you would've been without.
Where? Here in the USA? Hint: No. The point is, those gains elsewhere have come at the cost of the US middle class.
We don’t have who we have in the WH, we don’t have the federal debt we have because globalization has been good for the US. Full stop.
p.s. We can get into USA citizens being down graded to consumers, some other time. But that’s not a positive either.
Not a great example since energy and food are overwhelming domestically produced in the US. That doesnt mean there is no effect of tariffs in those categories, but it is much more muted than the headline numbers might suggest.
You also have little nuggets like https://www.npr.org/2025/08/04/nx-s1-5453731/nasa-carbon-dio...
The Cultural Revolution marches on. Carbon Dioxide is woke.