My job has been impacted by Trumpas well. Stock prices falling and tariffs have caused them to do layoff of 2500 people. I fucking hate this so much. I work with many international customers and Trump/Musk has been brought up constantly and in my line of work people typically avoid political discussions but it’s kinda nice to hear our allies don’t actually hate Americans and know what the real problem is.
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.
Your telling me the US government can’t just demand other countries pay them money for no reason?
/j
Okay so, continuity error.
In the beginning his hours are being cut almost entirely, and at the end they’re in no danger of being cut?
It’s not good story but this is either a weird grammatical error or this is one those “things that didn’t happen” stories.
Not that I doubt people think that other countries pay for tarrifs because Daddy Trump has been saying that for months and months but …
Man, I wonder how basic reading comprehension played a role in the last election.
Actually the blame on this is his lack of paragraphs .
Thoughts should be separated!
Thoughts apartheid 🧐
Or dyslexia/ADHD
Read again - it was two different people he was talking about. It’s implied that they have different job positions so their hours were impacted differently.
Ahh okay so that makes sense.
So bring on the downvotes, but can anyone tell me what the alternative plan was to bring manufacturing back to the states? And wasn’t that always going to make things more expensive?
Granted, this is being done with complete reckless regard, and the effects could’ve been spread out, but what’s the alternative?
People will tell you subsidies and positive reinforcement but honestly that is just more government spending to make a few rich. The answer is, there isn’t an alternative. All options aren’t great.
Manufacturing working conditions are horrible. As a country develops workers rights, unions, safety regulations, etc, it becomes almost impossible to compete on a global scale for manufacturing. Naturally the manufacturers in countries where those things don’t exist do very well.
In certain countries, the labor is just a few steps off of slave labor, which we all know is highly profitable and highly unethical. In other countries their dollar is so weak that net exports are the obvious choice for profitable businesses. Manufacturing thrives in these conditions and attracts a great deal of foreign investment - because hey, if the shipping costs are outweighed by the operational savings - it’s a sound business plan!!
Tariffs upset that equilibrium and guess who pays American tariffs? AMERICAN COMPANIES. The government gets a benefit, US becomes less likely of an export destination for countries to trade with, the dollar gets messed with in funky ways, and there is some amount of global loss of productivity due to this forced shift.
Basically, I view tariffs as a tax on the benefits of cheap overseas labor.
I think you’re right. And I think the unspoken policy off anti-tariff politicians is, ‘We’re never bringing those jobs back.’
can anyone tell me what the alternative plan was to bring manufacturing back to the states?
what’s the alternative?
A better plan would have involved local subsidies and tax rebates for various industries that have the ability to be cheaper than existing outsourced infrastructure if they were to be developed with a large enough economy of scale, to incentivize them to engage in local production.
And for industries in which we wouldn’t experience lower prices even with larger local economies of scale, such as those involved in mining mineral deposits we simply don’t have enough of here in the states, we just… wouldn’t do anything to tariff anybody or provide incentives if it wouldn’t be something we were capable of benefiting from via local production?
And wasn’t that always going to make things more expensive?
These other methods would make things more expensive too, (albeit much less so) but they would directly incentivize local production, and crucially, only cost money when production was actually made locally. Nobody would get a tax rebate or subsidy if nobody was actually starting local production. With tariffs, however, everyone begins paying a higher cost, regardless of if local manufacturing is even happening, let alone if it’s cost effective or possible in the first place.
Tariffs are just an inefficient way of incentivizing local production compared to other options, because they primarily exist to punish other countries and their economies, rather than uplift our own. They can be used to incentivize local production, but if not properly linked with subsidies, rebates, and job programs, they aren’t terribly effective at doing that, and they will almost always lead to higher prices on an ongoing basis.
You’re singing my song. Everything you’re saying is spot on.
I think the eventual solve will be small batch manufacturing capability, progressively complex according to population density. But those means of production will need to be nationalized for planning & control, and it’s simply not possible under capitalism.
But the current power structure is built on “market solutions” by using collective punishment to force capitalists to make concessions without directly regulating them. It’s the whole reason the fed manipulates interest rates.
Where did you get the idea that tariffs are supposed to increase domestic production in any way?
That’s the openly stated goal of tariffs from both parties.
I can tell you! It’s just not a quick, easy, single bill that we can pass. It takes a fundamental change in the way Americans think, it’s gonna take at least 2 generations to make this move.
Here’s the plan: we’re gonna promote cooperation. We’re gonna get people to notice the systematic problems in the way they are treated by their authorities. We need to aggressively be better than our enemies, both in practice and knowledge.
Here’s the method: (Essay ahead).
We need to disrupt almost every single system that currently exists. They’re basically all fucked. Start with the ones that get the most people motivated - their basic needs first, entertainment second, their wellbeing third. That feels wrong and it is, we need 2 generations to fix this because we’ve been beat down by this system so bad the priorities aren’t even correct anymore. I’ve been using this tagline recently “People in homes, food in bellies, minds entertained and health maintained.”
You as an individual can and, if you want to have an impact of saving literally the world and not just America, probably should start doing your part for this plan. Give away what you can, but never what you need. And be careful, because you might need that later. Never let that get in the way, though, of giving what you can. Bring your neighbors grocery money when you have a bit of extra cash, and offer to start a food co-op to make sure they never go hungry. It sucks, because I know damn well I wanna go spend that extra 20 bucks to treat myself and you probably do too. But if you go give it away instead, it’ll come back to you. Not immediately, and not always symmetrically. But it will come back to benefit you in some way. We need to shift the focus towards the community instead of the individual. I have plans for the other steps, if you’d like I can go into them. But the food co-ops are the best first step IMO
Why would it take generations to fix an issue that only started a few decades ago? What a load of shit.
A few generations to fix
An issue that only started a
a few decades2 generations agoBecause generations are only 25 years, not the 100 that your generation will survive. These issues started, or at least became severely worse, about 3 generations ago with Reagan.
It took that long because they were attempting the slow boil method. We can course correct immediately.
There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.
We can but how do you as an individual plan to convince Americans to start the revolution? Personally, I think we need to build them up and show them the systemic issues they’re dealing with in order to convince them.
There are decades where nothing’s happensThere are decades where you don’t pay attention to what’s happening in the background, andthere are weeks where decades happenweeks where those decades of planning come to fruition.I’m not an accelerationist, but if I was then I would say Trump is doing it quite well. If this keeps up, people will be more open than you’d think to revolution.
I don’t disagree with you, and I’ve made this point to someone else as well. I’m not a revolutionary yet because people haven’t been burned enough to be convinced by a revolutionary yet
This was explained to people all over the internet. I remember people posting the dailyshow shirt guy interview where they explain to him how tariffs will impact his business. Some people didn’t care as long as it also hurt everybody they don’t like.
So ask yourself we someone who voted for Trump whines about tariffs. Is this person just dumb or a total piece of shit?.
So ask yourself we someone who voted for Trump whines about tariffs. Is this person just dumb or a total piece of shit?.
I say both. They are stupid racist homophobic assholes and deserve any pain they get for their choices. And though we should do everything we can to help those who will be hurt by Trump’s policies, I sincerely hope that every single person who voted for that POS experiences an absolute fuck ton of pain and suffering in the coming months and years.
The most unfortunate thing is that the pain and suffering will not only be limited to the people who supported Trump and his policies. Everyone is going to pay for their poor choices.
yeah, the point of being nice is to create a better world with better people who will be more capable of being nice.
and because it feels good.
but being nice to nazis doesn’t feel nice, and it makes the world a more dangerous place, where being nice is harder and riskier and less pleasant.
laughing at their suffering is pretty great though. pointing and laughing at their suffering maybe makes the world a slightly better place, long term.
Simple answers to complex questions is fast, and helps people quickly move into the phase where they’re expending energy on “solutions” rather than debating the issue.
We’re lazy. People are lazy - I know I am.
Something that’s sufficiently removed from our everyday experience is mysterious, and (someone we trust) tells us that it will work? No questions, here we go!
I might be wrong here, but tariffs can be very effective tools, but as a slow burn. The way they’re being wielded here is asinine.
If you want to affect behavior, tariffs are a long game. They’re passed by Congress so they aren’t tied to the whims of one man. If you don’t want US chicken or EU trucks, make a law and let decades of implementation change behavior.
If you just want them to hurt, you do them the way we are now. The unpredictability hurts businesses and individuals, inside and outside the US. It makes prices and markets volatile and sows distrust. It hurts the vast majority of people, but benefits people who have the stability and assets to buy low and sell high. Each tariff implementation and retraction is just a mini market manipulation giving people with advance knowledge of what is affected to profit.
They’re a tool for correcting price alterations on the seller side. If China is subsidizing the manufacturing of Fidgets, a matching tarrif on the import of Fidgets protects domestic manufacturing from artificially cheap competition by preventing consumers from seeing those low prices.
The subsidies don’t even need to be hostile. The US subsidizes food to lower domestic costs, ensure a stockpile, and keep farmers happy. The side effect of driving down world grain prices is incidental.
Additionally, they strike me as the stick that pairs best with a carrot to spur domestic production of whatever you’ve put tarrifs on, along the lines of the CHIPS act.
This administration doesn’t believe in carrots, only sticks.
The sticks loose a lot of their scaryness when they’re not consistently wielded. See the on again off again tarrifs on Canada/Mexico and their constantly changing scope. The lack of consistency and predictability makes it very hard for businesses to make decisions.
I distinctly remember learning about tariffs in Social Studies. That was back in elementary / middle school. I understood it then and so did my classmates.
Personally if I had to cut someone’s hours, all else being equal, the one who took 50 attempts to figure out tariffs would go before the one who took 2.
Trump & Co do love the uneducated.
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.
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.
Ah yeah I see I forgot this part, more bureaucracy and delay might hurt cash flow. Thanks that’s a good thinking.
It’s just a though experiment, in real life it’s not a nice math problem to solve like you said.
Dumbasses go from not believing everything a politician tells them to believing everything a politician tells them because he’s dRaInInG the SwAmP. Zero sympathy for anyone still buying their lies.
It’s not an issue of believing/not-believing politicians nearly so much as it is a media environment that’s fully saturated with right-wing propaganda.
What do you tell a person who has been listening to AM Radio for 30 years? What do you tell a person that was taught Ayn-Rand-o-nomics in High School while the teacher clutched a copy of Atlas Shrugged alongside her Bible? What do you tell a person who has never actually been involved in the higher levels of business management, because our economic model is so subdivided and the commodities so fetishized?
You can’t get mad at the loyal acolyte of a cargo cult for praying to the cargo gods if that’s all they’ve ever known. Neither can you simply ignore the Cult Leader, who has been blaring the message from a megaphone into everyone’s ears, for their entire adult lives.
I have immense sympathy for people who are pre-programmed to get hoodwinked by this shit and I count my lucky stars every day that I only get hoodwinked some of the time and mostly on things that don’t obliterate my quality of life when they come due.
But more than them, I feel awful for the people who come after us, because we at least got to enjoy that World’s Greatest Middle Class Life while it was on offer. The next generation is going to be fed all the same propaganda, but they’re going to be doing it from in the pod while eating the bugs.
I think comparing this to a cargo cult is a bit misguided. These people live in a world with unlimited information right at their fingertips. I get finding factual information is incredibly difficult these days, but that’s just all the more reason to not blindly accept the bias of one source. The propoganda machines are to blame for a lot of our problems, but that doesn’t let the assholes gobbling it up off the accountability hook.
These people live in a world with unlimited information right at their fingertips.
Unlimited inputs, certainly. But the signal-to-noise ratio is absolutely fucked. It is easy enough to be fully insulated from useful information, and easier still to be insulated from actionable information. That’s before you get into how all the old-guard liberal(ish) news sources - your 60 Minutes and NPR and local papers of record - have been gobbled up by right-wing advertisers or shut down by corporate cartels.
The propoganda machines are to blame for a lot of our problems, but that doesn’t let the assholes gobbling it up off the accountability hook.
Sure. At some point, you’re the guy in the DHS detention camp sodomizing an eight year old with a night stick because your ex-IDF police trainer told you it builds character. Or you’re a billionaire in your ivory tower, shoving ketamin up your nose and screaming “The Wokes want to destroy me!” at your third wife. You’ve given up even the pretext of your own humanity and we should treat you like the monster you’ve become.
But for the millions of middle Americans in states with failing infrastructure and polluted air and water and far-right mass media blaring into every eye and earhole, the demand that they line up to vote for Charlie Crist over Ron DeSantis or Jim Justice over Bill Cole or Eric Adams over New York Republican Placeholder Candidate becomes a fucking farce. The dogged insistence among Chuck Schumer liberals that we need more Liz Cheneys and Michael Bloombergs in the Democratic Party to save us from the Ken Paxtons and Pam Bondis of the Republican Party is fucking mental. And if people don’t go along with it, I can hardly blame them.
You can’t get mad at the loyal acolyte of a cargo cult
Yeah, I can. It’s probably not productive or helpful or change inducing, but boy, can I. And some days I don’t have energy to waste on regulating my feelings towards intentful idiots and then I do get mad. It doesn’t change shit but at least I don’t have to bottle all that up.
It’s probably not productive or helpful or change inducing, but boy, can I.
Alright, fair enough. But you cannot see the symptoms of the problem as the root of it.
It doesn’t change shit but at least I don’t have to bottle all that up.
No, no. Sorry. I definitely get that. But at some point you need to look past the guy in clown makeup dancing around your neighborhood to the clown college that’s churning these people out.
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This may be “unpopular opinion” stuff, but I frequently see highly upvoted populist pitches on Lemmy that are just the same; a supposed way of sticking it to the man that will quite obviously be borne by the little guy.
Delete Elon and Trump from existence and nothing will get better.
Why?
Because Americans are dumb as fuck and they’ll still be dumb as fuck when and if those two are gone.
I’m old enough to have seen the same pattern multiple times. Republican leadership fails spectacularly, even pissing off many conservatives in the process. But as soon as the next cycle begins, those conservatives are back onboard voting for the absolute shittiest candidates.
Because to them an actual, literal dictator is better than a Democrat as president.
Our society is circling the toilet and it almost certainly won’t get better within our lifetimes. Prepare yourselves for that.
I actually don’t consider this an issue of being dumb. It IS an issue with being under-educated (often deliberately in R states) and fed a ton of propaganda
There’s ignorance and there’s stupidity. Stupidity will stubbornly resist any attempt to correct its ignorance.
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.
Against stupidity we are defenseless.
Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.
For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
…
If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid.
That’s willful ignorance. While the willfully ignorant can be stupid (lack of intelligence) more often it seems to be due to arrogance and/or just being an asshole in general
It took Rome 1000 years to collapse. I expect instability in the us for the rest of my lifetime. I’m struggling to balance that reality and also living my life.
Also- I think COVID is to blame too. More people started living from the survival mindset and actually getting sick impacted their brain. Dictatorships help people feel safe.
It took Rome 1000 years to collapse.
I mean, if you want to get extra snarky, Rome’s still there. Still one of the wealthiest cities on earth, to this day. The infrastructure is what makes the city and that can be repaired or rebuilt, improved even, as generations come to their senses.
More people started living from the survival mindset and actually getting sick impacted their brain. Dictatorships help people feel safe.
I pin this far more on the toxic media atmosphere than COVID, although the pandemic definitely took its toll. That said, the current hysteria around migrants and Woke feels a lot more like the post-9/11 moment than COVID. Democrats rolling over sheepishly while a Republican wields unitary executive power to disappear dissidents and intimidate
What folks on here don’t want to accept is that this isn’t the first time we’ve had a President behave like this. Its not even the first time in our lifetimes (for the most part - sorry teenagers). This is more normal than not, in fact. Reagan’s War on Drugs, Nixon’s War on Crime, Eisenhower’s Red Scare, and FDR/Truman’s Japanese Internment echoed all the same fascist tendencies.
What’s really changed in 2025 is the abysmal long term economic outlook. Liberals in 1984 could duck their heads and glare at the rampant poverty around them and mutter “If those hippie slackers had earned an education rather than smoking dope and fucking around, they wouldn’t get picked on by the police”. But now… fucking kids at Columbia University are being targeted. Surgeons are getting targeted. Judges are getting targeted.
Literally the only thing you can do to avoid these purges is Be MAGA. And “Just be MAGA, you won’t get hurt” isn’t something liberals can quite bring themselves to do yet (although keep an eye on Gavin Newsom and Richie Torries and Andrew Cuomo, because its coming).
Dictatorship isn’t making people feel safe. It’s making them feel terrified and helpless.
The city of Rome still exists but the Roman Empire does not. That is the long term future of the us.
The brain drain is necessary for the dictatorship to fully take over. Just like in Russia, I also expect people to eventually have to play along - or lose their job, house etc.
Dictatorship only scares the non maga. Maga feels safer with it.
The city of Rome still exists but the Roman Empire does not.
Absent that brief ill-conceived stint at empire under Mussolini, sure. But the roadways and the ports and the political connections and the religious iconography that centered Rome within the ancient world continue to persist. It isn’t the center of a sprawling intercontinental kingdom, but it holds a privileged place within the modern sprawling intercontinental kingdom of NATO.
Just like in Russia, I also expect people to eventually have to play along - or lose their job, house etc.
Russia’s in a peculiar place precisely because brain drain and privatization and punitive sanctions and the latest round of pointless horrifying bloodshed has sapped it of so many talented and driven young people. But the dictatorship - the bourgeois dictatorship, anyway - came under Yeltsin, following the Gorbachev coup. It brought in an entirely illegal dismantling of public industry and services, a looting of pensions and public reserves, and a fire sale of military hardware which set off a wave of ugly overseas wars in Africa, Oceania, and Latin America.
Only after the country had been hollowed out economically, by a cartel of untouchable oligarchs, did the public warm to the idea of a new singular strongman dictator. And the call for dictatorship was, at its heart, a plea for someone to drag the cartels back into line as part of a national project.
People have to play along in every system, because we’re not self-sustaining little monoids. We are hugely interdependent and most efficient when we are working together in concert as collaborative specialists. What we’re searching for is leadership. But all we seem to be offered is different flavors of oligarchy or autocracy.
The city of Rome still exists but the Roman Empire does not.
That’s because its called Vatican City now.
They’re symptoms, not the problem. Even if they were vanished from existing by will of a djinni or something, another would just take their place.
