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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Most of this is "refined discussion", which I am generally not opposed to.

None of this refined conversation means that we can just look at the total wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost".

The answer is... sure.

But this is really where we are. And I think we can mostly jump to:

So when you say things like-

No refined conversation here would allow us to look at the entire amount that consumers spend at Walmart and conclude that the entire sum is "lost".

My instinctive response is to find this a claim needing justification I doubt you'd be able to provide. Not because you wouldn't have arguments, but because I doubt you'd recognize or acknowledge as worthy of respect paradigms where spending at Walmert could be concluded as 'lost.'

I would simply request a description of a single paradigm in which one can simply sum up the entire amount that consumers spend at Walmart and conclude that the entire sum is "lost". A single paradigm in which one can simply sum up the entire amount of wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost". I don't know whether I would recognize or acknowledge it as worthy of respect until I hear at least one. I don't think you've presented one. I think you're in the land of refined discussions of details and percentages and such, where things can be shaded slightly through some other valuations and other external reasoning. Nothing close to, "Yeah, that entire amount is just lost."

(Just so you don't have to guess, I am sympathetic to external reasoning about supply chains for defense/pandemics/etc. That is a far cry from simply saying that just the bulk dollar figure is "lost".)