Yes! Absolutely! If merging business were confident in their price reduction tall tales they would be willing to bet on them. Unfortunately, both the corporations who abuse the policy and the politicians who put it in place understand perfectly well what they are doing. Structuring the deal in a manner that would avoid corruption would defeat the purpose of doing corruption.

Re: crystal ball, a biography of Louis Brandeis would suffice. It turns out we had this exact same problem with the Robber Barons. The arguments were the same, the talking points were the same (they didn't even update the story about Standard Oil lol), time is a flat circle when it comes to American antitrust. In any case, the Robber Barons were defeated in the early 20th century and Reagan was just bringing back the policy that served them well using the excuses that served them well. He was not inventing something brave and new that might reasonably have been expected to behave differently. Reagan and Bork knew exactly what they were doing.

Agree that measuring inflation is complex and expensive. It also glosses over devices getting new features and networks improving latency and bandwidth.

Unfortunately alternative measures are worse. Gold increased in price 37% in the last year. What does that tell me about the price of groceries? Housing prices depend on government committees approving what can be built where. We have no idea what a free market would produce.

I think we 80% agree: people should use a measure of inflation that includes more asset inflation than CPI. The American Dream was not to Owner's Imputed Rent a house. However, there's a balance to be struck with reasonable expectations, and "I want to own an increasing fraction of the world economy" isn't a reasonable expectation for everyone to have, but that's what jumping to a wholesale asset inflation measure would get you. The way I pick a midpoint is by fixing the asset: one lump of gold, or one house, are reasonable to use as reference points. But not "one billionth of the revenue from the search monopoly" or "one billionth of all newly mined gold" because those things might be expected to grow without robbing me of anything I care about.

I am in favor of apples-to-apples comparisons and viewing data points in context. Now sure how that has to with fiscal deficits.

Most of the references are not to actual price data, eg CPI basket of goods, so here is the actual link.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-pri...

Energy stands out as actually being noteworthy, but is not discussed in the article compared to food, consumer goods. It is pretty inelastic for most people, especially gas/diesel.

I think the only beef you can find for $5/lb is the ground beef that comes pre-weighed in sealed tubes -not at the meat counter.

> The US economy has outperformed every economy on earth for the last fifteen years

In nominal dollars, not production/output

Russia is hanging on by a thread, China is 1/3rd of global manufacturing capacity. The US coasts on dollar and US treasuries demand until it doesn't. The only thing the US builds anymore is grifts.

Russia:

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/russia-will-sacri...

https://www.euronews.com/2026/08/20/russia-runs-out-of-petro...

China:

The Next China Shock Is Here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49393566 - August 2026

> The biggest economic story in the world right now is China’s growing dominance across advanced manufacturing sector after advanced manufacturing sector — from electric vehicles to batteries to solar panels to software like A.I. and open models, where they’ve become a world leader. What is happening here is very different than what we call the first China Shock, when China became a big exporter of things that were not that important to advanced economies — things that mattered maybe for particular communities, for many jobs, but weren’t the frontier of economic growth. But now it’s different. China is very much at the frontier, and they’re dominating it, and that is going to transform geopolitics. It is going to transform the politics, many say of European countries, where China is pushing them out of manufacturing that has been the absolute cornerstone of their economies. So I think understanding this second shock is about as essential to understanding economics and geopolitics in the coming era as literally anything is.

https://www.axios.com/2026/08/21/europe-china-shock-manufact...

> U.S. tariffs have done little to slow China's export machine. Exports hit a record $3.8 trillion last year and are up 14% through July this year, even as shipments to the U.S. plunged.

https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...

> In 2024, China produced around 80% of the world’s solar PV modules and battery cells, and 70% of electric vehicles.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49288393 (citations)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45496507 (citations)

https://www.aspi.org.au/report/aspis-two-decade-critical-tec... (August 2024)

> Now covering 64 critical technologies and crucial fields spanning defence, space, energy, the environment, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials and key quantum technology areas, the Tech Tracker’s dataset has been expanded and updated from five years of data (previously, 2018–2022) to 21 years of data (2003–2023).

> These new results reveal the stunning shift in research leadership over the past two decades towards large economies in the Indo-Pacific, led by China’s exceptional gains. The US led in 60 of 64 technologies in the five years from 2003 to 2007, but in the most recent five years (2019–2023) is leading in seven. China led in just three of 64 technologies in 2003–2007 but is now the lead country in 57 of 64 technologies in 2019–2023, increasing its lead from our rankings last year (2018–2022), where it was leading in 52 technologies.

China Hunts for Scientific Talent. The U.S. Is Making It Easier. - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/business/china-scientific... | https://archive.today/vaapU - August 17th, 2026

> The US economy has outperformed every economy on earth for the last fifteen years.

"Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

"How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." -- Hemingway

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49379851 (citations)

Everywhere is cooked, but some places are less cooked than others. See how China reacted to the oil shortage: they just cut their oil imports and carried on. Arguably, China prevented a total meltdown in oil-dependent countries (USA).

Elison has his own island - wont take much to subdue the rest of it. Thiel's setting up in Argentina. A US in revolt is a markedly worse place for them than places already set up for repression.

Isn't that due to gig work (effectively -EV for a huge chunk of people) and other math shenanigans?