Amazon is moving into NYC despite the lack of subsidies.
“The giant online retailer said it has signed a new lease for 335,000 square feet on the city’s west side in the new Hudson Yards neighborhood, where it will have more than 1,500 employees,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Amazon is taking the space without any of the special tax credits and other inducements the company had been offered to build a new headquarters in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, the company said.”
On mobile, sorry, but jobs report was real good today.
Still coasting on the Obama economy, waiting for the bottom to fall out on the Trump economy.
At the risk of being a heretic, the Republicans must be doing something effective. It's been 3 years now. Everyone thought they'd crash the economy by now. But we have to look at the world like rational people and accept when things don't fit our mental model. The rich guy tax cuts did seem to boost the economy and employment.
Most of us were expecting that China would jump out and start offering themselves with a more pleasant and smarter face to drag business out of the US, as opposed to also doubling down on brutal oppression and nationalism. The UK is also frantically repelling investment dollars.
And honestly Trump has benefitted from an existing swing back towards US workers that had begun before him, and he has only slowed down. Outsourcing was far less effective than companies hoped and there is a lot of onshoring going on.
The wealthy used those tax cuts for stock buybacks. I don't see any evidence that the unemployment rate would not have continued at its pace without them. The stock market is hiding a lot of the current economic cracks that have raised a few eyebrows because most people see it and think "This is fine".
The market itself has adjusted to Trump who basically waves big flags for insider trading when he yells out something dumb and something tanks, only to recover days later.
Outsourcing was far less effective than companies hoped and there is a lot of onshoring going on.
Huh, I did not know this. Care to explain?
Because of the money you have to spend in setting up the factory and training the people {most were built in very underdeveloped areas} so you have to train them that much more
Over time it costs more and more. Then you have all the costs of security both for your product and buildings and the cost of shipping it back
Outsourcing is still typically cheaper than on-shore ops, but automation (robotics/ai) is far cheaper still...
...if it works
Most BPO shops now offer multi-phased engagements:
Phase 1: offshore people processes to the
Phase 2: while handling people processes, the BPO’s engineers build bots to automate as much as possible
Phase 3: BPO repurposed people for new client while also rebranding/reselling the bots to others as well
Outsourcing was far less effective than companies hoped and there is a lot of onshoring going on.
Huh, I did not know this. Care to explain?
Because of the money you have to spend in setting up the factory and training the people {most were built in very underdeveloped areas} so you have to train them that much more
Over time it costs more and more. Then you have all the costs of security both for your product and buildings and the cost of shipping it back
This is the main part of the answer really. The companies moved to the poor nations to try to pay their workers a pittance. However, they realized the reason they were willing to accept low wages was that they were low skill, and that once they were properly trained it just cost more money to hire them. Combine that with the additional security and shipping costs and suddenly those expensive US workers dont look so expensive any more. Grid power reliability is a huge part of this too.
Effectively the company massively undervalued the skills of their US workforce and the infrastructure their taxes paid for, and found that not having those things were actually more expensive, not less.
Outsourcing was far less effective than companies hoped and there is a lot of onshoring going on.
Huh, I did not know this. Care to explain?
Because of the money you have to spend in setting up the factory and training the people {most were built in very underdeveloped areas} so you have to train them that much more
Over time it costs more and more. Then you have all the costs of security both for your product and buildings and the cost of shipping it back
This is the main part of the answer really. The companies moved to the poor nations to try to pay their workers a pittance. However, they realized the reason they were willing to accept low wages was that they were low skill, and that once they were properly trained it just cost more money to hire them. Combine that with the additional security and shipping costs and suddenly those expensive US workers dont look so expensive any more. Grid power reliability is a huge part of this too.
Effectively the company massively undervalued the skills of their US workforce and the infrastructure their taxes paid for, and found that not having those things were actually more expensive, not less.
It's not that simple either though. Because shipping costs are pathetically low. Like, insanely I-don't-think-most-people-really-get-it low. As long as you are willing to wait, of course. And because of that, shipping the stuff around is not the problem, it's labour and laws and such.
So what you tend to do is still leave initial production overseas where the labour is cheap and do the parts of the manufacturing where you benefit from a skilled 1st world labour force over here.
From my time in industrial manufacturing, low-variable/high volume was ideal for off shoring while high variable/lower volume was best to keep in the us. At least that’s what upper management kept saying. The first type is of course the type that’s most easily automated
Amazon is moving into NYC despite the lack of subsidies.
“The giant online retailer said it has signed a new lease for 335,000 square feet on the city’s west side in the new Hudson Yards neighborhood, where it will have more than 1,500 employees,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Amazon is taking the space without any of the special tax credits and other inducements the company had been offered to build a new headquarters in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, the company said.”
The reason they were getting tax breaks is they were building in boroughs where companies often don't want to build workplaces, especially ones with good jobs. They were going to have 25,000 jobs in Queens. Now this is 1500 jobs in Manhattan in a complex criticized largely because it is so inaccessible from poorer areas of the city.
They will also almost certainly get tax credits like the "Excelsior Jobs Tax Credits", just not the ones designed to encourage building Queens/the Bronx
Amazon is moving into NYC despite the lack of subsidies.
“The giant online retailer said it has signed a new lease for 335,000 square feet on the city’s west side in the new Hudson Yards neighborhood, where it will have more than 1,500 employees,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Amazon is taking the space without any of the special tax credits and other inducements the company had been offered to build a new headquarters in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, the company said.”
The reason they were getting tax breaks is they were building in boroughs where companies often don't want to build workplaces, especially ones with good jobs. They were going to have 25,000 jobs in Queens. Now this is 1500 jobs in Manhattan in a complex criticized largely because it is so inaccessible from poorer areas of the city.
They will also almost certainly get tax credits like the "Excelsior Jobs Tax Credits", just not the ones designed to encourage building Queens/the Bronx
Amazon is moving into NYC despite the lack of subsidies.
“The giant online retailer said it has signed a new lease for 335,000 square feet on the city’s west side in the new Hudson Yards neighborhood, where it will have more than 1,500 employees,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Amazon is taking the space without any of the special tax credits and other inducements the company had been offered to build a new headquarters in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, the company said.”
The reason they were getting tax breaks is they were building in boroughs where companies often don't want to build workplaces, especially ones with good jobs. They were going to have 25,000 jobs in Queens. Now this is 1500 jobs in Manhattan in a complex criticized largely because it is so inaccessible from poorer areas of the city.
They will also almost certainly get tax credits like the "Excelsior Jobs Tax Credits", just not the ones designed to encourage building Queens/the Bronx
On mobile, sorry, but jobs report was real good today.
Still coasting on the Obama economy, waiting for the bottom to fall out on the Trump economy.
At the risk of being a heretic, the Republicans must be doing something effective. It's been 3 years now. Everyone thought they'd crash the economy by now. But we have to look at the world like rational people and accept when things don't fit our mental model. The rich guy tax cuts did seem to boost the economy and employment.
Trump has been good to company owners and companies (sort of) leading to the individual metrics looking ok. However, wages have remained stagnant and many are still underemployed in jobs that don't pay much like gig economy.
Simultaneously, health care and housing costs have risen, meaning most are being paid the same or less with higher costs.
To quote a book I'm reading, if you have one hand in the freezer and one on the stove, on average you're comfortable. We have pursued financial performance at the expense of human quality of life and meaningful regulations (as places like the EPA are gutted)
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Amazon is moving into NYC despite the lack of subsidies.
“The giant online retailer said it has signed a new lease for 335,000 square feet on the city’s west side in the new Hudson Yards neighborhood, where it will have more than 1,500 employees,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Amazon is taking the space without any of the special tax credits and other inducements the company had been offered to build a new headquarters in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, the company said.”
The reason they were getting tax breaks is they were building in boroughs where companies often don't want to build workplaces, especially ones with good jobs. They were going to have 25,000 jobs in Queens. Now this is 1500 jobs in Manhattan in a complex criticized largely because it is so inaccessible from poorer areas of the city.
They will also almost certainly get tax credits like the "Excelsior Jobs Tax Credits", just not the ones designed to encourage building Queens/the Bronx
In what way were they going to have 25,000 jobs in Queens and now they're only going to have 1,500? The complex needs to warehouse, process, and ship the same amount of orders, no?
Amazon is moving into NYC despite the lack of subsidies.
“The giant online retailer said it has signed a new lease for 335,000 square feet on the city’s west side in the new Hudson Yards neighborhood, where it will have more than 1,500 employees,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Amazon is taking the space without any of the special tax credits and other inducements the company had been offered to build a new headquarters in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, the company said.”
The reason they were getting tax breaks is they were building in boroughs where companies often don't want to build workplaces, especially ones with good jobs. They were going to have 25,000 jobs in Queens. Now this is 1500 jobs in Manhattan in a complex criticized largely because it is so inaccessible from poorer areas of the city.
They will also almost certainly get tax credits like the "Excelsior Jobs Tax Credits", just not the ones designed to encourage building Queens/the Bronx
In what way were they going to have 25,000 jobs in Queens and now they're only going to have 1,500? The complex needs to warehouse, process, and ship the same amount of orders, no?
Probably in the same way Foxconn fleeced Wisconsin out of $4B. Pump up the proposed job numbers, get a tax break on those numbers, employ substantially less people, rake in the money.
IIRC, the 25K jobs number was from when they were seeking massive subsidies. Now that they're having to go through regular channels, it's the minimum they need to expend to get the job done.
Amazon is moving into NYC despite the lack of subsidies.
“The giant online retailer said it has signed a new lease for 335,000 square feet on the city’s west side in the new Hudson Yards neighborhood, where it will have more than 1,500 employees,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Amazon is taking the space without any of the special tax credits and other inducements the company had been offered to build a new headquarters in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, the company said.”
The reason they were getting tax breaks is they were building in boroughs where companies often don't want to build workplaces, especially ones with good jobs. They were going to have 25,000 jobs in Queens. Now this is 1500 jobs in Manhattan in a complex criticized largely because it is so inaccessible from poorer areas of the city.
They will also almost certainly get tax credits like the "Excelsior Jobs Tax Credits", just not the ones designed to encourage building Queens/the Bronx
In what way were they going to have 25,000 jobs in Queens and now they're only going to have 1,500? The complex needs to warehouse, process, and ship the same amount of orders, no?
Probably in the same way Foxconn fleeced Wisconsin out of $4B. Pump up the proposed job numbers, get a tax break on those numbers, employ substantially less people, rake in the money.
IIRC, the 25K jobs number was from when they were seeking massive subsidies. Now that they're having to go through regular channels, it's the minimum they need to expend to get the job done.
Or you know, the main expansion will now be done elsewhere that did give them subsidies and they are putting in a small office in NYC because it is useful for whatever reason.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Yeah clutch your pearls people, the giant corporation might have been a touch disingenuous to save billions of dollars.
Yeah, the situation with Foxconn and Wisconsin means any claim that the original numbers were totally gonna happen should be regarded extremely suspiciously.
Yeah clutch your pearls people, the giant corporation might have been a touch disingenuous to save billions of dollars.
Yeah, the situation with Foxconn and Wisconsin means any claim that the original numbers were totally gonna happen should be regarded extremely suspiciously.
Companies say a lot of things to get tax breaks.
Hq2 has 6 million sqft planned with a third of it in design phase now. That's in the ballpark for a 25000 employee office complex
Amazon needing a place to put 25000 new techies in Virginia or NY is at least an order of magnitude more plausible than Foxconn doing so in Wisconsin
Yeah clutch your pearls people, the giant corporation might have been a touch disingenuous to save billions of dollars.
Yeah, the situation with Foxconn and Wisconsin means any claim that the original numbers were totally gonna happen should be regarded extremely suspiciously.
Companies say a lot of things to get tax breaks.
Maybe we should look at punishing them instead of handwaving it?
Yeah clutch your pearls people, the giant corporation might have been a touch disingenuous to save billions of dollars.
Yeah, the situation with Foxconn and Wisconsin means any claim that the original numbers were totally gonna happen should be regarded extremely suspiciously.
Companies say a lot of things to get tax breaks.
Hq2 has 6 million sqft planned with a third of it in design phase now. That's in the ballpark for a 25000 employee office complex
Amazon needing a place to put 25000 new techies in Virginia or NY is at least an order of magnitude more plausible than Foxconn doing so in Wisconsin
The deal was 25,000 jobs over 10 years.
So it was obviously bullshit.
VW made big promises to Chattanooga and never came through to the number they pitched, and we practically gave the city away to get them.
That is what I feel is wrong when cities or areas lute businesses by bending over backwards for them then crying when it all goes wrong.
Most of the jobs in NM are either retail/service or with the state/fed government. There is little to no industry here. As one of the taunts I have been vocal about is it's not much to grow local business in areas that are lacking [like recycling] A tale of woe is when a solar cell manufacturer wanted to come to ABQ the city waffled on where they could build on three different times so that company went to Texas instead. Or my personal fav of Eclipse Aviation how they city went all in to lure them here and keep them here
Intel is another one as nearby Rio Rancho raves about having it but a couple of years ago there was the panges of doom when intel was debating about closing the plant {they only stepped up production because AMD caught them with their pants down}
In all it's not going to be pretty when it falls apart
my toilet was built in the 70's the flush value is from the 2010+ so there are times I have to flush it twice or add water to it flushing
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderatormod
that's enough potty talk
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
It's just the same thing as his beef with the lightbulbs.
It's not like these are new things. Energy Efficient lightbulbs have been around for years. I remember Michelle Bachmann having a fit over them. But companies have whole lines of them and are invested in them. Are manufacturers really chomping at the bit to discontinue all of these products?
It's just the same thing as his beef with the lightbulbs.
It's not like these are new things. Energy Efficient lightbulbs have been around for years. I remember Michelle Bachmann having a fit over them. But companies have whole lines of them and are invested in them. Are manufacturers really chomping at the bit to discontinue all of these products?
Oh I know it's the same battle. Were there any regulations in law for low flow toilets? Just seemed like an option for consumers like energy star. I'm sure it'll hurt low flow businesses though. And I'm not sure what the EPA looking into it means.
It's just the same thing as his beef with the lightbulbs.
It's not like these are new things. Energy Efficient lightbulbs have been around for years. I remember Michelle Bachmann having a fit over them. But companies have whole lines of them and are invested in them. Are manufacturers really chomping at the bit to discontinue all of these products?
Oh I know it's the same battle. Were there any regulations in law for low flow toilets? Just seemed like an option for consumers like energy star. I'm sure it'll hurt low flow businesses though. And I'm not sure what the EPA looking into it means.
There are definitely regulations around the maximum amount of water per flush. It's something like 1.6l.
It's just the same thing as his beef with the lightbulbs.
It's not like these are new things. Energy Efficient lightbulbs have been around for years. I remember Michelle Bachmann having a fit over them. But companies have whole lines of them and are invested in them. Are manufacturers really chomping at the bit to discontinue all of these products?
It's a right wing shiboleth signaling anti global warming views.
On mobile, sorry, but jobs report was real good today.
Still coasting on the Obama economy, waiting for the bottom to fall out on the Trump economy.
At the risk of being a heretic, the Republicans must be doing something effective. It's been 3 years now. Everyone thought they'd crash the economy by now. But we have to look at the world like rational people and accept when things don't fit our mental model. The rich guy tax cuts did seem to boost the economy and employment.
I was thinking about this the other day, and needed the weekend to look through some data:
The above graph shows change in GDP compared with a year prior, and the Federal Deficit (I've flipped the +/- so they're on the same side of the graph). The idea is to look at the net difference - i.e. is the government running a higher deficit than the economy is growing? This would be indicative (but not proof, since there's a bunch of assumptions baked in) that if you turned off the government spending tap you'd be in a recession.
You can see that this appears to hold pre-2013, where it looks like the government was propping up the economy during the Great Recession and the economy would probably have been fine on its own during the majority of the Bush Era. But it gets a little hazier from Obama's second term, so let's look at some aggregate data.
Obama 2014-2016
GDP : 16,849B to 18,807B = $1,958B Net
Deficit : 485+442+585=$1,511B Net (rounding)
Trump 2017-2019
GDP : 18,807B to 21,542B = $2,735B Net
Deficit : 665+779+984=$2,429B Net (rounding)
Both have GDP growth higher than the deficit, but the difference was larger under Obama's last 3 years compared to 3 years of Trump ($447B vs $306B) and the picture looks even worse incrementally - Trump spent $918B more than Obama to get $777B worth of growth. This is compounded by the fact that most economists feel that growth is going to soften, and Trump's tax cuts appear to be nowhere near paying for themselves (the initial estimates had the net benefit at $300B higher than where we are currently - I think the revised estimate has tacked on an extra $1.7T over 10 years).
On the jobs side, rather than look at the monthly change, this graph shows the change from the same point last year. As you can see - yes there was a surge last year but nowhere near 2014-2015, and it's slowing down. Since the jobs report on Nov 2016 when Trump was voted in until the most recent jobs report, the US economy has added just over 7M jobs in the last 3 years - compared with 7.9M the three years prior.
To put those two pieces of information into perspective, Trump could have used the excess $917B to pay those 7 million people a $43K wage for the last 3 years. That's more money than the $31K median national wage - and if he'd put them to work on, for example, infrastructure projects instead of wasting it on walls, wars (trade and otherwise) and golf trips, he'd probably be in a much better position for GDP too.
Two additional points while I remember. The reason I went for annual change for jobs rather than monthly is that there tends to be a number of revisions - taking a longer time frame reduces the noise from those adjustments (plus as I noted last month, the White House straight up lies about the revisions).
The other one is that Trump's campaign point of addressing the balance of trade isn't working - the difference is getting bigger. There's been an uptick in the last 2 months - that's probably China bulk buying as part of the Phase 1 negotiations, but (a) that's several months worth of buying compressed into a short space, (b) it's still well below when Trump took office.
While making a big song and dance about other countries, the one thing Trump can't or won't influence is Americans' desire for cheap foreign goods (MAGA hats anyone?)
Yeah, the economy is continuing to grow but the trend lines have softened. That's better than an outright contraction, but it points to a contraction on the horizon.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
It's just the same thing as his beef with the lightbulbs.
It's not like these are new things. Energy Efficient lightbulbs have been around for years. I remember Michelle Bachmann having a fit over them. But companies have whole lines of them and are invested in them. Are manufacturers really chomping at the bit to discontinue all of these products?
Oh I know it's the same battle. Were there any regulations in law for low flow toilets? Just seemed like an option for consumers like energy star. I'm sure it'll hurt low flow businesses though. And I'm not sure what the EPA looking into it means.
There are definitely regulations around the maximum amount of water per flush. It's something like 1.6l.
So this talk reminded me of a really fascinating video that Ask This Old House made on new low flow toilet designs, and why older ones are so hated.
After watching this video, I REALLY wish I could get one of these in my apartment. I know it is likely expensive, and has more parts to maintain, but if we could subsidize stuff like this it would be amazing.
You can do environmentally friendly and high quality at the same time, it just takes time and resources. Which is what is annoying. Things are better than ever, but people don't seem to have access to them because they don't have their fundamentals covered.
Posts
Most of us were expecting that China would jump out and start offering themselves with a more pleasant and smarter face to drag business out of the US, as opposed to also doubling down on brutal oppression and nationalism. The UK is also frantically repelling investment dollars.
And honestly Trump has benefitted from an existing swing back towards US workers that had begun before him, and he has only slowed down. Outsourcing was far less effective than companies hoped and there is a lot of onshoring going on.
The market itself has adjusted to Trump who basically waves big flags for insider trading when he yells out something dumb and something tanks, only to recover days later.
Huh, I did not know this. Care to explain?
Because of the money you have to spend in setting up the factory and training the people {most were built in very underdeveloped areas} so you have to train them that much more
Over time it costs more and more. Then you have all the costs of security both for your product and buildings and the cost of shipping it back
Outsourcing is still typically cheaper than on-shore ops, but automation (robotics/ai) is far cheaper still...
...if it works
Most BPO shops now offer multi-phased engagements:
Phase 1: offshore people processes to the
Phase 2: while handling people processes, the BPO’s engineers build bots to automate as much as possible
Phase 3: BPO repurposed people for new client while also rebranding/reselling the bots to others as well
This is the main part of the answer really. The companies moved to the poor nations to try to pay their workers a pittance. However, they realized the reason they were willing to accept low wages was that they were low skill, and that once they were properly trained it just cost more money to hire them. Combine that with the additional security and shipping costs and suddenly those expensive US workers dont look so expensive any more. Grid power reliability is a huge part of this too.
Effectively the company massively undervalued the skills of their US workforce and the infrastructure their taxes paid for, and found that not having those things were actually more expensive, not less.
It's not that simple either though. Because shipping costs are pathetically low. Like, insanely I-don't-think-most-people-really-get-it low. As long as you are willing to wait, of course. And because of that, shipping the stuff around is not the problem, it's labour and laws and such.
So what you tend to do is still leave initial production overseas where the labour is cheap and do the parts of the manufacturing where you benefit from a skilled 1st world labour force over here.
The reason they were getting tax breaks is they were building in boroughs where companies often don't want to build workplaces, especially ones with good jobs. They were going to have 25,000 jobs in Queens. Now this is 1500 jobs in Manhattan in a complex criticized largely because it is so inaccessible from poorer areas of the city.
They will also almost certainly get tax credits like the "Excelsior Jobs Tax Credits", just not the ones designed to encourage building Queens/the Bronx
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
It's 12 miles away from queens...
In/on Manhattan? Might as well be 120.
Trump has been good to company owners and companies (sort of) leading to the individual metrics looking ok. However, wages have remained stagnant and many are still underemployed in jobs that don't pay much like gig economy.
Simultaneously, health care and housing costs have risen, meaning most are being paid the same or less with higher costs.
To quote a book I'm reading, if you have one hand in the freezer and one on the stove, on average you're comfortable. We have pursued financial performance at the expense of human quality of life and meaningful regulations (as places like the EPA are gutted)
In what way were they going to have 25,000 jobs in Queens and now they're only going to have 1,500? The complex needs to warehouse, process, and ship the same amount of orders, no?
Probably in the same way Foxconn fleeced Wisconsin out of $4B. Pump up the proposed job numbers, get a tax break on those numbers, employ substantially less people, rake in the money.
IIRC, the 25K jobs number was from when they were seeking massive subsidies. Now that they're having to go through regular channels, it's the minimum they need to expend to get the job done.
Or you know, the main expansion will now be done elsewhere that did give them subsidies and they are putting in a small office in NYC because it is useful for whatever reason.
Yeah, the situation with Foxconn and Wisconsin means any claim that the original numbers were totally gonna happen should be regarded extremely suspiciously.
Companies say a lot of things to get tax breaks.
Hq2 has 6 million sqft planned with a third of it in design phase now. That's in the ballpark for a 25000 employee office complex
Amazon needing a place to put 25000 new techies in Virginia or NY is at least an order of magnitude more plausible than Foxconn doing so in Wisconsin
Maybe we should look at punishing them instead of handwaving it?
The deal was 25,000 jobs over 10 years.
So it was obviously bullshit.
VW made big promises to Chattanooga and never came through to the number they pitched, and we practically gave the city away to get them.
Most of the jobs in NM are either retail/service or with the state/fed government. There is little to no industry here. As one of the taunts I have been vocal about is it's not much to grow local business in areas that are lacking [like recycling] A tale of woe is when a solar cell manufacturer wanted to come to ABQ the city waffled on where they could build on three different times so that company went to Texas instead. Or my personal fav of Eclipse Aviation how they city went all in to lure them here and keep them here
Intel is another one as nearby Rio Rancho raves about having it but a couple of years ago there was the panges of doom when intel was debating about closing the plant {they only stepped up production because AMD caught them with their pants down}
In all it's not going to be pretty when it falls apart
Ew, who at the EPA has to look into Trump's toilet?
When you are as full of shit as Donald Trump I can imagine low flow toilets are annoying.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/07/politics/trump-americans-flushing-toilets-intl/index.html
It's not like these are new things. Energy Efficient lightbulbs have been around for years. I remember Michelle Bachmann having a fit over them. But companies have whole lines of them and are invested in them. Are manufacturers really chomping at the bit to discontinue all of these products?
Oh I know it's the same battle. Were there any regulations in law for low flow toilets? Just seemed like an option for consumers like energy star. I'm sure it'll hurt low flow businesses though. And I'm not sure what the EPA looking into it means.
There are definitely regulations around the maximum amount of water per flush. It's something like 1.6l.
It's a right wing shiboleth signaling anti global warming views.
Vice signaling
The above graph shows change in GDP compared with a year prior, and the Federal Deficit (I've flipped the +/- so they're on the same side of the graph). The idea is to look at the net difference - i.e. is the government running a higher deficit than the economy is growing? This would be indicative (but not proof, since there's a bunch of assumptions baked in) that if you turned off the government spending tap you'd be in a recession.
You can see that this appears to hold pre-2013, where it looks like the government was propping up the economy during the Great Recession and the economy would probably have been fine on its own during the majority of the Bush Era. But it gets a little hazier from Obama's second term, so let's look at some aggregate data.
Obama 2014-2016
GDP : 16,849B to 18,807B = $1,958B Net
Deficit : 485+442+585=$1,511B Net (rounding)
Trump 2017-2019
GDP : 18,807B to 21,542B = $2,735B Net
Deficit : 665+779+984=$2,429B Net (rounding)
Both have GDP growth higher than the deficit, but the difference was larger under Obama's last 3 years compared to 3 years of Trump ($447B vs $306B) and the picture looks even worse incrementally - Trump spent $918B more than Obama to get $777B worth of growth. This is compounded by the fact that most economists feel that growth is going to soften, and Trump's tax cuts appear to be nowhere near paying for themselves (the initial estimates had the net benefit at $300B higher than where we are currently - I think the revised estimate has tacked on an extra $1.7T over 10 years).
On the jobs side, rather than look at the monthly change, this graph shows the change from the same point last year. As you can see - yes there was a surge last year but nowhere near 2014-2015, and it's slowing down. Since the jobs report on Nov 2016 when Trump was voted in until the most recent jobs report, the US economy has added just over 7M jobs in the last 3 years - compared with 7.9M the three years prior.
To put those two pieces of information into perspective, Trump could have used the excess $917B to pay those 7 million people a $43K wage for the last 3 years. That's more money than the $31K median national wage - and if he'd put them to work on, for example, infrastructure projects instead of wasting it on walls, wars (trade and otherwise) and golf trips, he'd probably be in a much better position for GDP too.
The other one is that Trump's campaign point of addressing the balance of trade isn't working - the difference is getting bigger. There's been an uptick in the last 2 months - that's probably China bulk buying as part of the Phase 1 negotiations, but (a) that's several months worth of buying compressed into a short space, (b) it's still well below when Trump took office.
While making a big song and dance about other countries, the one thing Trump can't or won't influence is Americans' desire for cheap foreign goods (MAGA hats anyone?)
So this talk reminded me of a really fascinating video that Ask This Old House made on new low flow toilet designs, and why older ones are so hated.
After watching this video, I REALLY wish I could get one of these in my apartment. I know it is likely expensive, and has more parts to maintain, but if we could subsidize stuff like this it would be amazing.
You can do environmentally friendly and high quality at the same time, it just takes time and resources. Which is what is annoying. Things are better than ever, but people don't seem to have access to them because they don't have their fundamentals covered.