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Instant Inflation

James Lileks
@jameslileks
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Put some items in my Amazon cart last night, didn't check out. Wanted to see if I still wanted them in the clear unsparing light of day. Called up the cart tonight, and every item - USB cords, a sweatshirt, a power converter - had increased in price by a dollar. The presumption, I gather, is that the replacement cost of the items will be greater in the future. It makes me want to scour Amazon for everything made offshore that I know I will need, and buy it now before the price leaps up again.

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Discussion (144)

  • MarciN@MarciN

    When you sign out from Amazon, go to the Census Bureau "Trade in Goods with China" page here. Because of the table formatting, I can't reproduce the chart I'm looking at, but the bottom line is that as of January 2025, so far for this year alone we have exported to China $9,901 million and imported from China $31,737 million. That is a whopping trade imbalance. That's not good for us.

    We have a dependency-vulnerability issue in our country, which we saw blatantly during the pandemic. We saw it when the dock workers' strike was a possibility last fall.

    Becoming more self-sufficient will help us avoid some of the bad effects that have accrued from globalization. If we think centralization from Washington is bad, wait 'til we get it at the international level.

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