New Tractor Sales Are Declining

[rScotty]

I admire your optimism for humankind. I really do. I, too have to be optimistic just to keep going in my profession year to year.
However, I think you may be soon shouting your optimism into an empty warehouse.

These are fascinating times. One marvels at the technology. However, the human component is suffering because of the spectacular failures at the leadership level.
I’ve never seen people so determined to screw up our very existence and I am at the same time mortified by the people who continue to support them.

It's not just optimism, it's just that short term trends are so easy to work with. Easy to see, to change, and to see results. The downside to that is that you have short term downturns oscillating with short term upturns.... It can make a person dizzy and pessimistic.

I like to focus on the longer term. And it looks pretty good to me. Things world-wide are healthier, wealthier, and more free than ever before in mankind's history. We are exploring outer space and the bottom of the ocean. Fascination exists at every level.
And for tractors and equipment, nobody is forcing me to buy new; I can fix old things to my heart's content.

For proof of how all this is working in the good old USA, just take a look at our borders. Those people are fighting to get here, not to leave here for a better life somewhere else.

rScotty

 

[2manyrocks]

I agree with both of those. We always parked hot equipment on bare ground or gravel.... always have done that even back in the days before we had regenerative emissions equipment. Mufflers have always been hot.
Hmmm.... I wonder if the skid steer went into regen, so he picked up a leaf blower to blow it off while it was doing a running regen.
Naw....couldn't be..... could it?

I have no idea, but I'm not spending $200,000 to repeat the science experiment.

 

[Hay Dude]

It's not just optimism, it's just that short term trends are so easy to work with. Easy to see, to change, and to see results. The downside to that is that you have short term downturns oscillating with short term upturns.... It can make a person dizzy and pessimistic.

I like to focus on the longer term. And it looks pretty good to me. Thngs world wide are healthier, wealthier, and more free than ever before in mankind's history. We are exploring outer space and the bottom of the ocean. Fascination at every level. Nobody is forcing me to buy new; I can fix old things to my heart's content.

For proof of how all this is working in the good old USA, just take a look at our borders. Those people are fighting to get here, not to leave here for a better life somewhere else.

rScotty

Healthier? You can’t be serious. We just went through a pandemic where millions died, many of whom were needlessly sent to their deaths and we were given questionable techniques for combating the pandemic. I would say the overall health condition is declining as evidenced by shorter life spans

Wealthier? I’m not wealthier. I hear a lot of people complaining their savings are nearly depleted from higher prices and taxes and regulations. Wealth seems to be congregating to the oligarchs and multi-millionaires.

Exploring outer space? Seems like to me, moon landings have stopped and we simply continue to do “easy” orbits of the earth.

Borders? Think handouts. It’s all about the Benjamins.

 

[2manyrocks]

Long term trend since 2008 is to not only kick the can down the road, but make the balloon even bigger this time around.

Or do you mean the long term in which Keynes said we are all dead?

 

[MinnesotaEric]

Don't forget the global move to exit the petrodollar system with the formation of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

I don't think that shall ever be a problem because the world's oceans require navies in order to enforce globalization. Globalization came into being after WWII when the allies, having won WWII and the petro-dollar becoming the world's reserve currency, globally enforced a level playing field insofar as shipping goods throughout the world. With the collapse of the former Soviet Union, leaving the USA as the only remaining Super Power, Globalization became the Globalization of Liberalism which has started to be challenged with a new rise in Nationalism (as seen with the formation of BRICS, for example), but then who is going to enforce the free passage along the world's shipping lanes for that to work?

We blockade just two shipping lanes and within a year China runs out of food and energy.

What really is going on is the USA is already questioning why it needs to remain the World's Cop, a thing that if we pared our participation back would help give rise to increased Nationalism, and at the very least, a partial collapse of Globalization. If the petro-dollar was broken as the world's reserve currency (which it became at the end of WWII), then our motivation to remain as the World's Cop would diminish.

Right now, in the context of the outbreak and continuation of the Ukraine War, we've learned Russia's Army would get trounced by NATO or the US Army. The weakness of Russia's armed forces juxtaposed with politicians saber-rattling for nuclear war throws us back into a problem Robert McNamara rightly understood as a problem that needed to be solved in the 21st century when he wrote his 2003 book, Wilson's Ghost. As I understand it, the thing that shut Putin up about saber-rattling nukes was our privately letting him know that we know exactly where he is at any given time, and if any nuke cooks off, we are killing him (the very same thing we did to Kim Jong-un during the last Administration by sending him photos of him personally watching a rocket launch). Unfortunately, we have hawks in the west that are continuing to saber-rattle for increased western effort in the Ukraine war, a thing that may put nukes back on the table for Russia if they are backed into corner.

Meanwhile, we continue to maintain a military that is capable of fighting a two-theater war.

 

[rScotty]

Long term trend since 2008 is to not only kick the can down the road, but make the balloon even bigger this time around.

Or do you mean the long term in which Keynes said we are all dead?

The term varies with what it is. For financal things, the term is shorter than for changes in society. Since you asked, I'd say - Don't get caught up in dates or definitions. Count your progress in terms of simple positive changes.
If you do that long enough, the short term changes will become a trend for you. That's a start.

 

[MinnesotaEric]

Throw into the mix the current climate of economic catastrophe, funding a war with Russia and spending all this money and it all looks very bleak.

Sadly the hawks look at the proxy war as a zero sum where in order for us to win, Russia must lose.

 

[Hay Dude]

Sadly the hawks look at the proxy war as a zero sum where in order for us to win, Russia must lose.

And Putin/Russia losing could very well mean Putin launching. Guess where the ICBMs are landing?

 

[TN8Man]

Three years is what I would call "short term".

Yes and that's my point. The economy has drastically changed for the worse in just 3 years and the forecast from economic experts say its going to get much worse.

 

[drumminj]

spectacular failures at the leadership level.

I'd offer that part of the issue here is centralized leadership. Failure would be less of an issue if it was more localized, but over my lifetime there's been a trend of centralizing power which IMO is another negative trend.