Leopards Ate My Face

The whole thing was very purposefully talked about using the word "tariff" and never ever its synonym "import tax" exactly so that the traditional Fascist technique of redefining the meaning of words could be easily used: if all the Fascists' speech had been about "import taxes" they would not have been able to leverage most people's ignorance anywhere near this level because the very words "import" and "tax" were already reasonably well understood by most - unlike "tariff" - so the opinion makers would not have been able to miseducate their targets anywhere as easily.

I'm not saying that the people who fell for this are to be excused - if there is something important enough for you to put the effort into educating yourself, it's Politics - I'm saying it's understandable how so many were so easy to swindle.

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.

Next try telling him there's no God with an EKG. The same part of his brain will be activated, guaranteed. Not to dock religion. But US conservatism is a religious cult basically.

Isn't this the same debate as to how one country can (or cannot) force another country to pay for a random construction project that isn't in anyones interest (that wall)?

It's not like the concept is beyond (basically, 99.9+%) anyones cognitive abilities. It's just how ads (the science behind it is plentiful, it's a giant business sector) work on human brains.

Of course the employee is wrong, but the OOP isn't tackling the argument in a really productive way. There's an opportunity to meet the employee where they are.

People caught in the right wing noise machine always seem to understand that businesses pass on business taxes to the consumer. So, if other countries were paying the tariffs, why wouldn't they pass those costs on?

Some people genuinely are fucking dumber than a rock

Ive never been opposed to learning through experience rather than what others tell you. Dont trust anything you can't verify yourself.

Hire smarter employees.

Some people are just dumb. It doesn't help that our education system is designed to produce worker bees and not educated citizens.

God damn! This is so simple a third grade student can understand it. The US government has no authority to tax foreign governments, citizens or businesses. They can only tax American citizens and businesses. So Trump puts a 50% tariff (Import Tax) on tea from England. The tea costs $5.00. The person or corporation who imports it, pays the $5.00 cost plus the $2.50 tariff. The US government gets the $2.50. In this case, Trump and Musk are probably just stealing it.

I don't understand how they think this works

Where was this posted?