Mostly negative, but ideas.

The income gap will increase as the markets do better because people with money tend to invest that money to make it grow. Three of the biggest increases in income disparity occurred in the last 25 years. The rich getting richer has nothing to do with any sort of wild conspiracy around Project 2025. The rich will naturally get richer because they have a lot of disposable income. Or put another way, it's a lot easier to make money when you have money. This isn't rocket science.

Most of the things that have been touched on here relate to actions taken by the Fed to slow consumerism. The regretful part is that the Fed waited until inflation was running red hot before acting which then caused a prolonged fight with inflation.

Stagflation has been discussed as a potential outcome of the fight against inflation for at least the last 18 months. Some articles on the economy argued we were seeing stagflation at work since late last summer.

Did somebody mention free burgers?

^^^ Ya gotta order 3 by 9/12 to get the free one. Better off just downloading the McDonalds app.

Patrick, there are not that many people like you, fewer ever day, so a young gentleman like your boy is a rare treasure


My best friend runs the kitchen at the academy where corrections and CHP officers are trained. Cadet classes are less than half the size they historically have been, and 20% of the new corrections officers quit in their first week. Why work in a prison when it is mandatory they pay $20 an hour at a fast food place? One is an actual career, but nobody thinks of that. A lot have fled California, almost exclusively taxpayers. A lot of the ones left either do not want to work or are retired and staying to be around their families. Taxing something discourages it, why are we taxing income?

Historically, California has been at the leading edge of where America is heading. I do not think California is heading the right direction


Like what?

I don’t have kids, but if I did I would leave them a nominal amount, nothing life changing. Our entire estate, investments, houses, everything, will be donated to charities of our choosing. Some small amounts for loved ones and friends kids but that’s it. Maybe I’m just weird, but that feels right to me.

Well, a lot of the US manufacturing investment in recent years is going to end up “stranded”.

Starting about 2022, US manufacturing investment surged.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1LAt7

Most of this was driven by semiconductor, EV and battery, solar and renewable energy projects. Companies were responding to CHIPs, IRA, and to a lesser degree to Covid-exposed supply chain risks.

https://delmorganco.com/us-manufacturing-rebuild-2025/

Manufacturing investment peaked in 2024 and has been declining in 2025. (See FRED chart linked above.)

The EV, battery, solar, renewable projects are being cut back or cancelled for obvious reasons. If a company made a big bet on these, they are now pretty screwed as the government is cutting the legs out from under those industries and investments as fast as it can.

The semi projects are continuing, thanks mostly to TSM as the rest of the semi industry is generally pulling back on capex.

In 2025 there have been annoucements of new US manufacturing investments. The nature of these has changed - it is now mostly AI and some pharma. I think the reasons for this are also obvious.

Most of these look to me like political theatre - of course NVDA is going to announce AI computer assembly in the US and in return receive permission to resume AI chip sales to China; of course AAPL will announce unspecified new investment (looks like an AI data center, pretty vague what else) in the US and in return get exempted from tariffs on China and India-assembled iPhones. The pharma announcements have political aspects too, both threatened drug price control and pharma tariffs are involved. Pharma has to be worried though, since the government is looking pretty hostile to that industry now.

Meanwhile, look at US manufacturing employment. This peaked in 2022 and has been declining since.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/manemp

Also look at manufacturing PMI. This also shows manufacturing shrinking (PMIs in the mid-40s are significantly contractionary).

I have a couple of bets on any US “manufacturing renaissance”. LONN-SWX, JBL, Fanuc.

Right and that’s just the politics of the former potus injecting $$ into the EV economy as the whole national priority.

The factory job aspect is an interesting one. I met a head hunter for the Hyundai plant in GA who stated that he’s struggling to hire. Starting wage at $15-16 a hour… Obvious why they can’t hire at those wages when the COL is so high…

Thanks!.... but that's not what I asked you. Ford made pledges during Trump's first term that were actually exceeded. Novartis made pledges for additional investment that were met.

Manufacturing peaked in the late 70's and has dropped ever since. The massive drop happened sometime around 2000. It's almost as if something happened in the late 90's and early 2000's that massively changed manufacturing. Hmmm what could that be???

Not sure what you are asking, but suggest you answer whatever it is yourself - I’m not into guessing.

Poking around the internet, I found this map from the US BEA. It is pretty telling and sort of explains a lot of what we are discussing.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1755528718.png

Watching.... Let's keep it out of parf...

South will rise again? LOL

It’s actually very interesting to see the sprawling industry of the south, then head to the northern states and see fentanyl/narcan billboards.

Kids should all be made to do a year or two of economics at school.

It annoys me to see a bunch of ***** on the TV complaining stop mining, stop farming, everyone ride a bicycle, government should pay for it.... Jeeze, someone has to work to pay all their dole money.

Found some of these links from a Yahoo Finance piece. Thought some might find them interesting.

First the main piece;
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/a-suite-of-retail-data-is-set-to-decode-the-resilient-consumer-100033397.html

https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/current-policy-perspectives/2025/why-has-consumer-spending-remained-resilient.aspx#c3cdcbeb-3616-4a09-8995-5df753c57616

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/corporate-earnings-tell-2-different-consumer-stories-100037725.html