Maybe not a huge jump but inflation has been ticking up. But inflation tracks both employment and wages. The theory goes: full employment -> competition for labor -> higher wages -> increased prices.
Inflation is counter-acted, however, by productivity increase as the price of products go down. With the adoption of tech in more and more industries, we may see productivity increase supercede inflation.
Assuming some orange asshole doesn't come along and impose border tariffs....
Even the labor force participation rate is not a very good indicator. Since all it is is taking all people working divided by total population. It doesn't account for the distribution of people (particularly based on age). So if you had more seniors and children (as has happened in the past decade), the LFPR will drop naturally.
Erm...they *are* used. On BLS, search for "full-time employed". Then "part-time employed". There's even a distinction between full-time employed with health benefits vs not.
Data is collected and if you even do a cursory amount of legwork, can be collected and interpreted.
How well do you trust the official unemployment estimates? Looking around, the signs of unemployment are up, while the unemployment statistics say it's down. But every time I go out I see more homeless, more empty storefronts.
Anecdote != data. Your immediate surroundings are not indicative of 320+ million people.
While "unemployment" can be a fuzzy number, "people with full time jobs with benefits" is much easier and less fuzzy to answer. And you can take the total 18-65 population count and subtract the number of full-time jobs with benefits to get to the most basic of "unemployment" numbers. As a percentage of population, it's decreased over the past 8+ years.
That being said, the absolute number is growing as the population grows. Which means the economy isn't growing enough to give everyone reaching the age of 18 a job to fill. Now, historically that has always been the case. We've always hovered around some percentage of unemployment that's similar to today's numbers (with slightly higher highs such as in 1990 vs lower lows like in the 1970's). So maybe there's just nothing we can do about it.
Give everyone $20k. Living now costs $18k more. Everyone currently with a job will feel a lot poorer as they're paying more in taxes than they get from the government and on top of that inflation is going up.
I'm not sure I buy this. In an isolated scenario, you'd be correct. However, even today, we have a large swath of the population covered under some kind of safety net program that would be replaced by UBI. And those programs have not caused living costs to rise as much as the safety net funding.
The problem as I see it is that programs in the US are always half-assed. We don't ideologically want UBI, so instead we institute 50 different anti-poverty programs that end up doing 70% of what UBI would do and costing 100% more for administration and "means testing".
Even the military-industrial complex is basically one giant welfare program. Tons of money goes in, very little actual tech comes out. Most of that money is appropriated because said defense contractor "creates jobs" in areas where congress-critters need votes. Are those jobs actually adding value? Or are they jobs for the sake of giving someone a job? And what's the difference between that and just cutting a citizen a check directly? Wouldn't it be more efficient?
So while in principle your analysis of increased income would lead to increased prices, a cursory look at current data doesn't seem to suggest that.
I would theorize that the increased productivity from having basic needs met outweighs the inflationary forces that increased universal income would cause.
Realistically, the CPU ISA isn't all that's holding back apps from running cross platform. The biggest difference would be the UI. Macs don't have a touchscreen and a mouse isn't a good replacement when it comes to gestures, which a lot of iOS apps use.
A Surface-like multi-mode OS would work. But you'd have similar problems as the Surface in that a legacy OS like MacOS/Windows doesn't have some of the niceties of a mobile-first OS like iOS/Android when it comes to fast sleep, always-connected, push notifications and background restrictions. Not to mention simplified memory management to reduce page swapping.
Trying to put the two on the same device would be...problematic. Not impossible. But problematic.
Anecdotes show that. Data shows otherwise. Few people who use Medicare think it's a mess. In fact, people have better experience with Medicare than they do with many private insurance companies. Medicare prices are also consistently lower than private insurance because of the massive bargaining power it has.
If you want a demonstration of what Federal healthcare would be like, look at Medicare.
"All of that shit has gotten worse since the 1950s!"
Really? You were able to fly for $49 each way between major airport hubs in the 1950's? Hell, even in 1950's money, it wasn't $49. Flying from SJC to Burbank costs me routinely $49 each way.
You were able to buy a 70" 4k TV for $900 in 1950's? How much *was* your TV in 1950?
How much was a Big Mac relative to average income?
Perhaps, just perhaps, you're looking at the past with rose-colored glasses. "Back in my day..."
He's talking about many major cities who've increased their minimum wage. It's not nation-wide but it affects quite a lot of people (the majority of people live in cities nowadays).
Add that to Federal employees (1.4M of them) as well as Federal contractors (many many more) having a $10+ minimum wage (thanks Obama?) and the average minimum wage is quite a bit higher (though not 15) than it was in 1997. Easily 2x.
"We're not getting more affordable prices, though."
This isn't really true either. The average prices for things that have increased productivity have indeed gone down relative to average wage. Think about how much a computer costs today compared to say, 20 years ago compared to average wages. At best, the top-of-the-line costs about the same in absolute dollars but wages have increased (slowly, but still about 2x 20 years ago).
Think about clothes. What percentage of the average income is required to buy a t-shirt nowadays?
Or food. At least basic food. How much has the price of a big mac changed compared to wages? Today, it's around $9/hour according to glassdoor. In 1997, that was around ~$4.50/hour. A big mac in 1997 was $2.49. Today it's $3.99. Wage increased 100%. Price increased 60%. Relative to wage, that's a price going down.
The issue is not everything people buy has increased in efficiency due to various reasons. The biggest line-item and the elephant in the room is housing. There's only so much land, and the population is increasing. And with city ordinances and NIMBYism run afowl (as well as patchwork solutions such as tax incentives) and dozens of other things has prevented gains in efficiency when it comes to housing supply.
So much so it brings the average consumer price index up such that it seems prices aren't going down. In reality, most prices have gone down. Except for the biggest price everyone pays: keeping a roof over their heads.
"ALL MONEY IS SPENT, and by spending that money, the economy expands."
I agree with most of what you wrote but even this basic assumption appears untrue. We've injected a crapton of capital over the last 8 years through QE into the markets. But productivity and employment haven't exactly skyrocketed. Indeed, the data would suggest that investment capital alone doesn't cause economic expansion. From my portfolio, that capital seems to have gone towards:
1. Tech startup speculation. The number of people hired is fairly small compared to the trillions of QE. 2. Financial gambling. The market for trading derivatives is turning more profit than ever. Some financial "analysts" get hired, but again, the number is fairly small. 3. Shuffled around in equities trading. Stock prices inflate but companies aren't making the equivalent amount of money.
For reference, here's the price to earnings ratio of the S&P500 companies: http://www.multpl.com/
Notice something? The median is ~15 and we're at 25+. That means the price of the company's stock (basically traders betting money with each other) is increasing faster than how much business the company actually has (consumer buying stuff).
That doesn't lead to productivity or employment increase, because that money, while indeed invested, isn't all invested in things that increase production (and thus employment) nor increases consumption (which higher employment and wages would).
The conclusion is, not all investments are equal. And other catalysts are required for capital injection to increase productivity.
Your theory doesn't really hold water either. At least, not to the broader market. Here is the average profit margin for every sector in the S&P500: http://www.businessinsider.com...
It's roughly 9%. With tech being the obvious outlier.
Walmart, for example, has a net profit margin of only 2.59% (https://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin).
So the idea that these companies are somehow squeezing out efficiency and sitting on cash instead of lowering prices (or burning more money on expanding, i.e. hiring) is mostly untrue. There are some exceptions (a certain fruit company). But in a competitive landscape (which Walmart definitely is in), they don't have the choice of keeping prices high if they increase productivity.
In the very long run, the argument is true. However, that doesn't mean automation -- especially rapidly advancing automation -- doesn't cause temporary swaths of unemployable people. And by "temporary", I mean a generation's time (20 years or so).
People in their 50's who are 10-20 years from retirement aren't very likely to pick up skills for advanced robotics. Nor (unfortunately) are they mentally flexible enough to suck it up and go back to the junior role. That's the unfortunate American mentality. And this being a representative democracy, they'll enact public policy to keep their obsolete jobs instead.
So I'd prefer a solution that doesn't involve "it's ok, wait 20 years or so and the jobs replaced by automation will be filled by something else". Because that "something else" needs a new generation of people who are trained for it.
Macro-economic theories are great....until they forget human psychology.
I'd prefer a basic income rather than forcing employment by companies. With at least basic income, the company is free to squeeze out efficiency and make product prices go down (benefits everyone). *If* they make profit, that profit can then be taxed and given to support the unemployable/underemployed.
The point is to de-couple "people need money to survive" and "companies need to be efficient". Tax+UBI only taxes profits. Minimum wage and employment mandates hurts *revenue*. So even companies that don't make profit are hit.
The description from their website: "presents a half-hour satirical look at the week in news, politics and current events.".
How is my characterization not addressed in their description? Their intent is to present news, politics and current events with a satirical look. They also present themselves as an informative source of information that people use to become informed on topics. How are they not a news outlet?
Your sentence breaks down into two:
1. Their intent is to present news, politics and current events with a satirical look. - this is stated 2. They also present themselves as an informative source of information that people use to become informed on topics. - this is not stated nor intended
As with Jon Stewart before him, the side-message has always been: "research more into this yourself, I'm not the definitive nor complete source".
At the scale that Apple is at now, one could argue that his "pet projects" are better PR than all of the 1984 ads Jobs ever came up with.
But you are right that they haven't really come up with anything revolutionary for a long time. I doubt that that's because of these "pet projects" though. Apple has enough resources to throw at just about anything now.
Well, you'll have to hire some people to fill in some of the spots the robots can't. Or maintain those robots. Or improve those robots.
It won't be the level of jobs that happened at the rise of automotive manufacturing. Those days are gone. But it's better than having that manufacturing powerhouse in China.
There's also the issue of intellectual property. Not just in the products you make but in the equipment and logistics required to manufacture it. That's valuable knowledge that you'll have a tough time keeping secret when you manufacture in China.
Incidentally, having an NHS-style national healthcare system is the most effective way to drive down that $55k bill. Because no one on the consumer side will have more bargaining power than the Federal government. More importantly, part of that $55k is, as the GP mentioned, due to the hospital having to eat the cost of people without insurance going to the ER.
Ultimately, the data out there shows that some level of nationalized healthcare leads to lower cost per person. With the US being double the cost/person of the next developed nation.
That doesn't mean we have to go full NHS like the UK. I like the Australian model where the government provides a basic level of health insurance and anything beyond that is privatized.
There's already such stipulation. All money spent towards capital expenditure or R&D (or payroll) aren't subject to tax. That's true today and has been true for about as long as the corporate tax has existed.
The only thing corporate tax actually taxes is profit left over that you haven't spent on business expenses (such as paying people, buying equipment, buildings, etc. etc.). And intend to either keep in a bank/security or distributing to shareholders.
The have billions of dollars (in foreign currency). However, it is doubtful that these money can be used to create jobs
Baloney. If they do pretty much anything economically useful beyond simply gathering interest from securities, jobs will be created. But as long as they keep that pile of money sitting in the figurative bank no jobs of any kind will be created. There is no task you can do that involves billions of dollars that will not create meaningful numbers of jobs. But they have to actually try to do something first. Apple hasn't taken a significant risk since the iPhone was released. It's just been incremental improvements and variations on existing technology for the most part.
I doubt this. It's the typical "trickle down" argument but data doesn't correlate. We've just come off 8+ years of unencumbered injection of capital into the markets. There's never been so much free money showered into the investment pool at ridiculously low interest rates. Yet job creation, while happening, hasn't exactly exploded.
In fact, there's nothing stopping Apple from "using" that money overseas. Just like with the stock buyback, they could take out a ridiculously cheap loan (which they have, to the tune of 50B or so) with the cash they have overseas as collateral.
But they didn't use that 50B on "job creation". Or they could use that cash to create jobs overseas where that money currently is. They haven't. The ability to move capital is not hindering this magical job creation that somehow throwing money at is supposed to create.
Could it be that capital injection isn't all that's necessary for a healthy job market? Could it be we actually need *consumer demand*?
At least in the Keynote, they mentioned that all information sent over the internet (Siri context search) uses an anonymous "siri ID" instead of your name/login/userid. And encrypted end-to-end.
USB-C is the connector type, not the protocol. Thunderbolt 3 is the protocol. All current Thunderbolt 3 implementations use USB-C as the connector type. Not all USB-C connectors attach to devices that support the Thunderbolt 3 protocol. It's essentially 1 cable/connector that supports many different protocols (USB 3.1, Ethernet, Thunderbolt 3, DisplayPort, etc).
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Maybe not a huge jump but inflation has been ticking up. But inflation tracks both employment and wages. The theory goes: full employment -> competition for labor -> higher wages -> increased prices.
Inflation is counter-acted, however, by productivity increase as the price of products go down. With the adoption of tech in more and more industries, we may see productivity increase supercede inflation.
Assuming some orange asshole doesn't come along and impose border tariffs....
Even the labor force participation rate is not a very good indicator. Since all it is is taking all people working divided by total population. It doesn't account for the distribution of people (particularly based on age). So if you had more seniors and children (as has happened in the past decade), the LFPR will drop naturally.
Erm...they *are* used. On BLS, search for "full-time employed". Then "part-time employed". There's even a distinction between full-time employed with health benefits vs not.
Data is collected and if you even do a cursory amount of legwork, can be collected and interpreted.
How well do you trust the official unemployment estimates? Looking around, the signs of unemployment are up, while the unemployment statistics say it's down. But every time I go out I see more homeless, more empty storefronts.
Anecdote != data. Your immediate surroundings are not indicative of 320+ million people.
While "unemployment" can be a fuzzy number, "people with full time jobs with benefits" is much easier and less fuzzy to answer. And you can take the total 18-65 population count and subtract the number of full-time jobs with benefits to get to the most basic of "unemployment" numbers. As a percentage of population, it's decreased over the past 8+ years.
That being said, the absolute number is growing as the population grows. Which means the economy isn't growing enough to give everyone reaching the age of 18 a job to fill. Now, historically that has always been the case. We've always hovered around some percentage of unemployment that's similar to today's numbers (with slightly higher highs such as in 1990 vs lower lows like in the 1970's). So maybe there's just nothing we can do about it.
Give everyone $20k. Living now costs $18k more. Everyone currently with a job will feel a lot poorer as they're paying more in taxes than they get from the government and on top of that inflation is going up.
I'm not sure I buy this. In an isolated scenario, you'd be correct. However, even today, we have a large swath of the population covered under some kind of safety net program that would be replaced by UBI. And those programs have not caused living costs to rise as much as the safety net funding.
The problem as I see it is that programs in the US are always half-assed. We don't ideologically want UBI, so instead we institute 50 different anti-poverty programs that end up doing 70% of what UBI would do and costing 100% more for administration and "means testing".
Even the military-industrial complex is basically one giant welfare program. Tons of money goes in, very little actual tech comes out. Most of that money is appropriated because said defense contractor "creates jobs" in areas where congress-critters need votes. Are those jobs actually adding value? Or are they jobs for the sake of giving someone a job? And what's the difference between that and just cutting a citizen a check directly? Wouldn't it be more efficient?
So while in principle your analysis of increased income would lead to increased prices, a cursory look at current data doesn't seem to suggest that.
I would theorize that the increased productivity from having basic needs met outweighs the inflationary forces that increased universal income would cause.
Realistically, the CPU ISA isn't all that's holding back apps from running cross platform. The biggest difference would be the UI. Macs don't have a touchscreen and a mouse isn't a good replacement when it comes to gestures, which a lot of iOS apps use.
A Surface-like multi-mode OS would work. But you'd have similar problems as the Surface in that a legacy OS like MacOS/Windows doesn't have some of the niceties of a mobile-first OS like iOS/Android when it comes to fast sleep, always-connected, push notifications and background restrictions. Not to mention simplified memory management to reduce page swapping.
Trying to put the two on the same device would be...problematic. Not impossible. But problematic.
"If Apple, or anyone, decided to spread around the money, there would be jobs created. Fact. Why?"
I like how I just cited data pointing otherwise and you still hammer on this like it's "fact".
Point is, companies have more money than ever and they can get access to using it pretty easily through financial instruments.
Yet, they have not resulted in this wild explosion of job creation.
You can yell "my logic is bulletproof" all you want but the data doesn't agree with your assumptions.
Anecdotes show that. Data shows otherwise. Few people who use Medicare think it's a mess. In fact, people have better experience with Medicare than they do with many private insurance companies. Medicare prices are also consistently lower than private insurance because of the massive bargaining power it has.
If you want a demonstration of what Federal healthcare would be like, look at Medicare.
"All of that shit has gotten worse since the 1950s!"
Really? You were able to fly for $49 each way between major airport hubs in the 1950's? Hell, even in 1950's money, it wasn't $49. Flying from SJC to Burbank costs me routinely $49 each way.
You were able to buy a 70" 4k TV for $900 in 1950's? How much *was* your TV in 1950?
How much was a Big Mac relative to average income?
Perhaps, just perhaps, you're looking at the past with rose-colored glasses. "Back in my day..."
He's talking about many major cities who've increased their minimum wage. It's not nation-wide but it affects quite a lot of people (the majority of people live in cities nowadays).
Add that to Federal employees (1.4M of them) as well as Federal contractors (many many more) having a $10+ minimum wage (thanks Obama?) and the average minimum wage is quite a bit higher (though not 15) than it was in 1997. Easily 2x.
"We're not getting more affordable prices, though."
This isn't really true either. The average prices for things that have increased productivity have indeed gone down relative to average wage. Think about how much a computer costs today compared to say, 20 years ago compared to average wages. At best, the top-of-the-line costs about the same in absolute dollars but wages have increased (slowly, but still about 2x 20 years ago).
Think about clothes. What percentage of the average income is required to buy a t-shirt nowadays?
Or food. At least basic food. How much has the price of a big mac changed compared to wages? Today, it's around $9/hour according to glassdoor. In 1997, that was around ~$4.50/hour. A big mac in 1997 was $2.49. Today it's $3.99. Wage increased 100%. Price increased 60%. Relative to wage, that's a price going down.
The issue is not everything people buy has increased in efficiency due to various reasons. The biggest line-item and the elephant in the room is housing. There's only so much land, and the population is increasing. And with city ordinances and NIMBYism run afowl (as well as patchwork solutions such as tax incentives) and dozens of other things has prevented gains in efficiency when it comes to housing supply.
So much so it brings the average consumer price index up such that it seems prices aren't going down. In reality, most prices have gone down. Except for the biggest price everyone pays: keeping a roof over their heads.
"ALL MONEY IS SPENT, and by spending that money, the economy expands."
I agree with most of what you wrote but even this basic assumption appears untrue. We've injected a crapton of capital over the last 8 years through QE into the markets. But productivity and employment haven't exactly skyrocketed. Indeed, the data would suggest that investment capital alone doesn't cause economic expansion. From my portfolio, that capital seems to have gone towards:
1. Tech startup speculation. The number of people hired is fairly small compared to the trillions of QE.
2. Financial gambling. The market for trading derivatives is turning more profit than ever. Some financial "analysts" get hired, but again, the number is fairly small.
3. Shuffled around in equities trading. Stock prices inflate but companies aren't making the equivalent amount of money.
For reference, here's the price to earnings ratio of the S&P500 companies:
http://www.multpl.com/
Notice something? The median is ~15 and we're at 25+. That means the price of the company's stock (basically traders betting money with each other) is increasing faster than how much business the company actually has (consumer buying stuff).
That doesn't lead to productivity or employment increase, because that money, while indeed invested, isn't all invested in things that increase production (and thus employment) nor increases consumption (which higher employment and wages would).
The conclusion is, not all investments are equal. And other catalysts are required for capital injection to increase productivity.
Your theory doesn't really hold water either. At least, not to the broader market. Here is the average profit margin for every sector in the S&P500:
http://www.businessinsider.com...
It's roughly 9%. With tech being the obvious outlier.
Walmart, for example, has a net profit margin of only 2.59% (https://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin).
So the idea that these companies are somehow squeezing out efficiency and sitting on cash instead of lowering prices (or burning more money on expanding, i.e. hiring) is mostly untrue. There are some exceptions (a certain fruit company). But in a competitive landscape (which Walmart definitely is in), they don't have the choice of keeping prices high if they increase productivity.
In the very long run, the argument is true. However, that doesn't mean automation -- especially rapidly advancing automation -- doesn't cause temporary swaths of unemployable people. And by "temporary", I mean a generation's time (20 years or so).
People in their 50's who are 10-20 years from retirement aren't very likely to pick up skills for advanced robotics. Nor (unfortunately) are they mentally flexible enough to suck it up and go back to the junior role. That's the unfortunate American mentality. And this being a representative democracy, they'll enact public policy to keep their obsolete jobs instead.
So I'd prefer a solution that doesn't involve "it's ok, wait 20 years or so and the jobs replaced by automation will be filled by something else". Because that "something else" needs a new generation of people who are trained for it.
Macro-economic theories are great....until they forget human psychology.
I'd prefer a basic income rather than forcing employment by companies. With at least basic income, the company is free to squeeze out efficiency and make product prices go down (benefits everyone). *If* they make profit, that profit can then be taxed and given to support the unemployable/underemployed.
The point is to de-couple "people need money to survive" and "companies need to be efficient". Tax+UBI only taxes profits. Minimum wage and employment mandates hurts *revenue*. So even companies that don't make profit are hit.
The description from their website: "presents a half-hour satirical look at the week in news, politics and current events.".
How is my characterization not addressed in their description? Their intent is to present news, politics and current events with a satirical look. They also present themselves as an informative source of information that people use to become informed on topics. How are they not a news outlet?
Your sentence breaks down into two:
1. Their intent is to present news, politics and current events with a satirical look. - this is stated
2. They also present themselves as an informative source of information that people use to become informed on topics. - this is not stated nor intended
As with Jon Stewart before him, the side-message has always been: "research more into this yourself, I'm not the definitive nor complete source".
At the scale that Apple is at now, one could argue that his "pet projects" are better PR than all of the 1984 ads Jobs ever came up with.
But you are right that they haven't really come up with anything revolutionary for a long time. I doubt that that's because of these "pet projects" though. Apple has enough resources to throw at just about anything now.
Well, you'll have to hire some people to fill in some of the spots the robots can't. Or maintain those robots. Or improve those robots.
It won't be the level of jobs that happened at the rise of automotive manufacturing. Those days are gone. But it's better than having that manufacturing powerhouse in China.
There's also the issue of intellectual property. Not just in the products you make but in the equipment and logistics required to manufacture it. That's valuable knowledge that you'll have a tough time keeping secret when you manufacture in China.
Incidentally, having an NHS-style national healthcare system is the most effective way to drive down that $55k bill. Because no one on the consumer side will have more bargaining power than the Federal government. More importantly, part of that $55k is, as the GP mentioned, due to the hospital having to eat the cost of people without insurance going to the ER.
Ultimately, the data out there shows that some level of nationalized healthcare leads to lower cost per person. With the US being double the cost/person of the next developed nation.
That doesn't mean we have to go full NHS like the UK. I like the Australian model where the government provides a basic level of health insurance and anything beyond that is privatized.
There's already such stipulation. All money spent towards capital expenditure or R&D (or payroll) aren't subject to tax. That's true today and has been true for about as long as the corporate tax has existed.
The only thing corporate tax actually taxes is profit left over that you haven't spent on business expenses (such as paying people, buying equipment, buildings, etc. etc.). And intend to either keep in a bank/security or distributing to shareholders.
That's not an Apple (or any other company) problem. That's a Congress problem.
They hire a lot of Americans....
Actually most of Apple's staff is in the US IIRC.
The have billions of dollars (in foreign currency). However, it is doubtful that these money can be used to create jobs
Baloney. If they do pretty much anything economically useful beyond simply gathering interest from securities, jobs will be created. But as long as they keep that pile of money sitting in the figurative bank no jobs of any kind will be created. There is no task you can do that involves billions of dollars that will not create meaningful numbers of jobs. But they have to actually try to do something first. Apple hasn't taken a significant risk since the iPhone was released. It's just been incremental improvements and variations on existing technology for the most part.
I doubt this. It's the typical "trickle down" argument but data doesn't correlate. We've just come off 8+ years of unencumbered injection of capital into the markets. There's never been so much free money showered into the investment pool at ridiculously low interest rates. Yet job creation, while happening, hasn't exactly exploded.
In fact, there's nothing stopping Apple from "using" that money overseas. Just like with the stock buyback, they could take out a ridiculously cheap loan (which they have, to the tune of 50B or so) with the cash they have overseas as collateral.
But they didn't use that 50B on "job creation". Or they could use that cash to create jobs overseas where that money currently is. They haven't. The ability to move capital is not hindering this magical job creation that somehow throwing money at is supposed to create.
Could it be that capital injection isn't all that's necessary for a healthy job market? Could it be we actually need *consumer demand*?
At least in the Keynote, they mentioned that all information sent over the internet (Siri context search) uses an anonymous "siri ID" instead of your name/login/userid. And encrypted end-to-end.
USB-C is the connector type, not the protocol. Thunderbolt 3 is the protocol. All current Thunderbolt 3 implementations use USB-C as the connector type. Not all USB-C connectors attach to devices that support the Thunderbolt 3 protocol. It's essentially 1 cable/connector that supports many different protocols (USB 3.1, Ethernet, Thunderbolt 3, DisplayPort, etc).