The drop in demand for staples you're talking about is quite literally the poorest people eating less, using fewer basics, lowering their quality of life further.

"higher prices for the consumer" can include lower value at the same price. Size reduction seems a common method for certain commodities. This may result in reduced consumption (e.g., a consumer buying one package of ice cream every other week), as well as increase customer dissatisfaction when the change is noticed, and it can increase packaging cost per unit weight/volume.

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 ).

> fear of reprisals from Trump

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?

These jobs are not going to return. 'The system' is too profitable in its current form. What will happen is tariffs will cause prices to rise as companies pass on this tax to consumers (which is inflationary). In fact, they may go up more than that, same way as they did during covid. Even if say two years from now a new congress and senate remove these tariffs. The prices will not go down. Companies will not build new factories here because it is easier, after they get the new higher prices locked in, to just lobby to get the tariffs removed and then keep the difference as sweet sweet margin.

Strictly speaking luxury goods are income elastic (by definition) but can be either price elastic or inelastic at different points on the pricing curve, with profit-maximising suppliers attempting to set prices at the level where it reaches unitary elasticity. But when we're talking about designer brands (as opposed to the strict economic definition of a 'luxury good' which encompasses most of the shoe market), they typically price above that level anyway to maintain "exclusivity". Hermes made a point of publicly stating that it would pass on 100% of tariffs costs to consumers, and whilst I haven't tracked Louboutin shoe prices I doubt their customer base for shoes costing 10x their less fashionable equivalent is going to permanently refuse to pay a 15% price increase. Particularly not when it also applies to the brand's closest competitor in the form of other trendy European designer shoe brands. I suspect the tariff-eating that occurs in the US fashion market will tend to be US-based retailers cutting their margins rather than the foreign brand cutting its wholesale prices too...

see also: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/012915/what-effect-...

Not if you own your trailer without a mortgage. If you have a mortgage you're pretty much required to have insurance. Not getting insurance doesn't make this cheaper really as you'll just lose your property completely every few years. Besides insurance rates are often highly subsidized by federal government and actually a really good bargain

Right now, cleaning rooms cannot be fully automated at any price. The AI to control the robots just isn't good enough for how broad a term "unclean" can be.

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.

Except, of course, that this is completely backwards. Low unemployment shifts the balance of negociating power towards workers as companies have to compete to get them. See the massive growth in AI engineers’ wages for a nice illustration of this.

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.

What? That makes no sense, did you mix up your high/low words? Or could you elaborate on your opinion that is perfectly opposite all accepted economic understanding?

That seems to be inconsistent with the continued negligence with respect to housing prices. Maybe it would be fine if food cost more because agricultural workers got paid better but housing cost less because we stopped artificially constraining supply.

> You're missing an important piece here.

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.

Still killed a million. It is clearly the fault of Britain as Ireland produced much more food than it needed itself but peasants mostly only got to eat potatoes as most of all good food was exported because Brits owned most of the land so peasants didn't own what they produced. When they didn't have acces to potatoes anymore they had no food, and free market advocates in Britain argued that they shouldn't even try to help them.

> Riding salaries do not lead to inflation by themselves. What leads to inflation is the increase in money circulating on the market

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?

> Riding salaries do not lead to inflation by themselves. What leads to inflation is the increase in money circulating on the market

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.

I expect the numbers will go the way they want. Perhaps because of the cruelty. Perhaps because tariff games make the economy uncertain.

Having a recession is a proven way to reduce illegal immigration, and we're at least starting to see recessionary signals.

If you come here we'll torture you, how very American.

> sounds like you support deporting illegals, as long as we also eliminate tariffs

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.)