4661

I would finger it, I like it so much!

4662

Isn’t it more about manufacturing processes and transportation became more efficient and cost effective at a global level?

Or more pointedly, when cost efficiency became more important than… everything.

4663

(Even your chart style is part of the joke)

4664

Pretty much this. The stock price and quarterly YoY profit growth became ALL. And if that means you cozy up to totalitarian governments like China’s, oh well.

4665

That’s brilliant.

Meanwhile:

“There is food being produced. There is food in warehouses,” said Julie Anna Potts, chief executive of the North American Meat Institute, a trade group for beef, pork and turkey packers and producers. “There is plenty of food in the country.”

“Our stores are getting stocked every day,” Ron Vachris, chief operating officer of Costco, said in an interview on Saturday. “Transportation is functioning, our suppliers are working around the clock and the flow of goods is strong.”

The National Chicken Council said it was not seeing any disruptions in production and noted that there were “ample surplus supplies of chicken in cold storage” — totaling more than 950 million pounds, according to government data.

Still, the fear is palpable. The more empty shelves people see, the more panic-buying ensues, the more food is out of stock.

The panicky buying is testing the food system’s capacity in the near term. Over the past few weeks, sales of rice have increased more than 50 percent, according to data from the research firm Nielsen. Canned meat is up more than 40 percent. And sales of other essentials like beans, pasta, peanut butter and bottled water have also risen substantially, with a sharp spike this month. Kroger told its suppliers that demand had surged 30 percent across all categories in recent days. (For comparison, the company’s sales for all of last year rose about 2 percent.)

4666

Though, you know what? Americans are getting pretty good at viral replication!

4667

I know it’s hip to talk about the U.S.'s declining manfacturing industry, but the facts are that the United States still produces nearly 20% of the world’s manufacturing output: more than any other country except China (and only barely less than China, which has four times our population.) It’s true that manufacturing is a smaller share of our economy and we employ a lower percentage workers in manufacturing than many other countries, but we remain one of the world’s premier manufacturing powerhouses.

4668

I’m kind of wondering when the price increases will happen. Not talking about the obvious cases of gouging by idiots buying shit and selling it on eBay. I mean the increases in prices for staple foods like rice, chicken, etc. Because they can.

4669
4670

Yep, the world economy globalized and changed accordingly so it makes perfect sense for manufacturing to happen in certain areas. “Not making shit anymore” and all that talk is ignoring the big picture. Germany still makes tonnes of shit yet it’s not much different than the UK, which mainly provides services nowadays and this situation is similar to the 1950s US, the rust belt produced stuff while the East Coast provided financial services, in example.

4671

Report from Costco, mid-day in Canada’s biggest city, the same day that leadership declared a province-wide state of emergency:

Civilized, quiet, people staying out of each other’s way, longer than average line-up, people saying ‘excuse me’, shelves pretty much stocked save toilet paper (whatever), chicken seemed to be running low.

Lots of trucks on the highway to get there, more than average it seems?

4672

If you Canadians need lessons in savagery, feel free to cross the Great Southern Wall and pay us a visit.

4673

A more accurate summation of the trend would be ‘we used to pay people to make shit’

We still make shit, we just don’t need to pay many people to do it. Prime example of the automation and computerization effects are in coal where since WWII we see tripling of output with 1/8 the workers.

4674

Most of the reports on China and South Korea emphasis how they are constantly taking people temperature. I know that temperature isn’t foolproof and obviously puts out a lot of false positives. But if we started putting temperature sensors at the entrances of all major building and then prohibited people from high temperatures going it would be a good start to controlling this sucker.

As I side benefit it would do wonders from reducing the severity of the seasonal flu each year.

4675

And if you are rich, it will just let you do it!

4676

I live in the Lower Haight neighborhood of San Francisco. Foot, car, and bike traffic are all much reduced from normal on these local streets. The difference in ambient noise outside my windows is striking — usually only gets this quiet on Thanksgiving when everyone’s out of town.

When I looked out my window before 9 this morning I saw just a couple lonely cars driving slowly and carefully, a couple of widely-spaced Wiggle bicyclists on their way somewhere, and one mildly disaffected young man smoking a cigarette as he hurried along. Then a yuppie couple in workout clothes passed holding their bottled waters, the she lecturing the him on some topic. I disliked them.

My chick (who has her own place a block away) asked me if I want to go for a walk this afternoon to get out of the house, and given that it’s only the first day it bothers me that she’s being as casual as that. I politely declined for myself, and I know she got the message. Hope she doesn’t die or kill me in her choice of keeping a light heart.

4677

I think it’s clear that, whatever we once were, we’re not that country any more.

4678

I think it’s mostly a question of political will.

4679

OK. For me, the root cause is that literally everythingin this country is now based on maximizing annual bonuses in C-Suites.

4680

Well, they all died off and were replaced with people like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh.