this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face

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[–] rekabis@programming.dev 23 points 3 days ago

Why else do Republicans love to defund education? Conservatism requires people to be ignorant about reality in order to have any chance at succeeding.

[–] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 42 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Real answer is in the last line there. If 60% of people we're capable of doing their own research (and arriving at the correct answer) then we wouldn't have anti-vaxers, flat-earthers and non-billionaire/non-bigot/non-christian nationalist republicans.

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[–] epicstove@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

Your telling me the US government can't just demand other countries pay them money for no reason?

/j

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 47 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Man, this isn't even "doing your research" it's just knowing what very basic words mean.

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 48 points 4 days ago (12 children)

I bet a coworker $20 that "tariff" and "tax" were synonyms. Motherfucker refused to pay up, calling merriam-webster.com, thesauraus.com, wikipedia etc. "fake news".

[–] towerful@programming.dev 27 points 4 days ago

Your mistake was referencing a woketionary.

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[–] Snowpix@lemmy.ca 28 points 4 days ago (8 children)

"Doing your own research" means watching one or two YouTube videos or Facebook posts as far as these people are concerned. No thought for themselves, just parrot what you hear.

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[–] Wanpieserino@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

There are people who don't know how tariffs work?

If America is the sole buyer, then the tax would be shared between both countries. (Lower demand will lower the price that the foreign supplier can ask for, making up some of the extra tax cost). But since USA is doing these tariffs on so many countries, other countries will just lay new trading routes.

So yeah, USA will feel it.

[–] zephorah@lemm.ee 42 points 4 days ago (6 children)

To be fair, economics is not intuitive. Half of it is built out of unicorn dust and human imagination. How else would bitcoin even exist? For those of you who are economists and love the money side, vs the behavioral side, that’s great, we need people like you to explain it to the rest of us.

I work with a real system that will still exist no matter what happens with politics or money, so it takes work, for me. That said, tariffs and inflation are not difficult concepts provided you simply take the time to learn.

I know someone who lost their job in December due to tariffs anticipation, and they were not alone in that group of layoffs. The effects are there even if you fail to learn the reasons.

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[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago

He's a sucker. And his news media knows it.

[–] Sceptique@leminal.space 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

By the way, if tariffs are directly sent back to the customer through tax reduction on the tariffed category of products, wouldn't it be painless for the company/customers (if you forget the retaliation tariffs) while increasing you local insensitive to production? (all things equal if you imagine companies reduce the cost of the products properly etc which is not realistic)

I don't see how that would help. In the ideal case of a finished product, tariffs artificially raise the effective price for the buyer; they don't change the math on the cost of production. Usually, they hurt the producing/exporting firm by forcing it to increase the asking price, which reduces sales. It reduces sales because the buying/importing firm has to pay higher prices. If the buying/importing firm gets tax reductions that are directly tied to the tariff, then its out-of-pocket expense hasn't changed, and it can just keep buying the imported product with no effect on its profits. That means that the producing/exporting firm can still sell exactly the same volume of product at the higher price, covering the tariff cost, with no effect on its profits. Nothing much has changed, except a bunch of extra paperwork and transactions.

There's only incentive to move production locally if the buying/importing firm can switch to a cheaper, local product, but retain the tax benefits, allowing it to keep more money. But that means the tariff money is no longer being collected, so somebody else is paying the taxes while not getting the benefits. In short, tariffs can only work by causing pain to somebody locally.

[–] vinniep@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's 2 if's. Sure, IF both of those things were true, maybe it would net out, but still be a paperwork and cashflow delay for the company (pay the duty today, get the money back at some point in the future) which sucks liquidity out of the market and generally holds back growth and investment.

But that isn't particularly relevant since neither of those two things will ever happen. The tax cuts will go to the top earners, and retaliatory tariffs are very much a thing and cannot be ignored.

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