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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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This post gets some things wrong about economics.

A strong dollar helps American consumers while hurting American export-facing industries. American consumers get to buy cheap foreign stuff, while export-facing industries become less competitive as their prices implicitly rise. Cost of living doesn't rise for Americans because the US dollar is strong, unless perhaps they get laid off from their export-facing job? That's a small slice of the American economy these days anyways.

A strong dollar doesn't particularly impact insurance or real estate. It seems like you're just listing off sectors you dislike, using words like "financialized", and implying a strong dollar is somehow directly responsible. Housing is expensive because... people aren't building houses. The strong dollar isn't really involved, except indirectly.

Tariffs aren't going to fix much of what you listed, and they're certainly not going to make American consumers better off.

American consumers get to buy cheap foreign stuff

Which disincentivizes buying American. America deindustrializes and you end up with well payed service workers who are chronically broke.

A strong dollar doesn't particularly impact insurance or real estate.

It does, most of the world is doing business in American treasuries and the American financial system becomes the global money hub. The dollar system allows the US financial markets to swell out of proportion. It wouldn't be possible for the US to have this much money printing without hyper inflation if it wasn't for the petrodollar.

Which disincentivizes buying American. America deindustrializes and you end up with well payed service workers

This part is correct...

who are chronically broke.

This part isn't. Real incomes are up. If they're broke, it's their own fault for not managing their money. I also haven't seen any evidence that significantly more people are "broke" as you say. The meme recently was that Americans collectively thought the economy was doing poorly, but most individually said they were doing just fine.

A strong dollar doesn't particularly impact insurance or real estate.

You replied to this, but your reply was not pertinent to how a strong dollar specifically directly impacts insurance or real estate, at least to e.g. the degree that NIMBYs blocking housing construction affects real estate prices.