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

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 hour ago

I wrote a comment explaining Tariffs on a Fox News YouTube video a few weeks back, and the entire reply chain was people arguing with eachother about how tariffs work because "Trump said it's a tax on other countries, so that's how they work"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I recently learned that almost 1 in 5 Americans are illiterate.

How many Americans do you think are reasonably well educated, so that they would understand somewhat complex issues like tariffs? Or could seek out information if they didn't understand?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 48 minutes ago

Im still surprised by that , the quality of education in my country is low but holly fuck im stunned by the lack of education in the states

[–] [email protected] 3 points 54 minutes ago

Where was this posted?

[–] Kichae 9 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 minutes ago

Yeah, whenever people say "the other country pays" (well, before this election cycle) what they meant was that the higher price would encourage shoppers to buy domestic this the other country "pays" because they get less revenue. Prices would go up either way though because of the domestic goods were cheaper they would've already been the first pick. The thing about taxes is that it doesn't really matter if it's placed on the supply or demand side, the end effect is the same. Sure, it will feel different and there might be different short term effects, but it's the same regardless. The price is higher and government gets a cut.

So I don't really understand why people believe that even if the foreign country/company was paying the tariff why people would think prices stay the same. As if other countries are just going to get a 25% fee and not increase prices by ~25% to cover that.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 hours ago (2 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".

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago

Your mistake was referencing a woketionary.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I would've made you pay him. Every tariff is a tax but not every tax is a tariff. Of course your actual point still stands.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 hour ago

That's not what a synonym is.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

It's anti-intellectualism.

You don't need to understand any of it, you can just ask people who spend their lives researching this stuff.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 hour ago

Those cost more, and with the tariffs I doubt he can afford it

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 100 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Or, we can hold the fucking media accountable for telling blatant lies about the impacts of tariffs.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 hours ago

Fox News got around that by claiming they're entertainment, not news.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 hours ago

Ignorance is not an excuse. Fire all MAGAs for taxifs.

[–] [email protected] 70 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

The OP is battling against what Faux Newz, Dipshit Donnie, and other right-wing propagandist shitrags are telling his employee, all which the employee takes as indesputable truth. If he can override that much brainwashing he can convince anyone of anything.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 hours ago

But the guys in OP, they don't turn on daddy Trump. It can't be that they were lied to, then they'd have to do something alien to them like introspection. No, it must be...an honest mistake? Honestly have no idea how they'd justify it internally.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

"The Big Lie" is what Sanders is calling it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 53 minutes ago

How many "big lies" are we up to now?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

How does the saying about selling a lie go?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Well, a lie can be half around the world before the truth even has its boots on.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

That's because the lie's boots have already been licked clean.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

Three liars makes a tiger

[–] adarza 60 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

and every one of the millions who ~~were~~are just as dumb, will forget the lessons learned well before the next election and vote for it all over again.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago

nice of you to assume there's gonna be a NEXT election.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

You know, the one Trump wins with 106% of the totaled votes.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 hours ago (4 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Half of it is built out of unicorn dust and human imagination.

Economics is applied psychology at scale hiding behind the idea of math and using "businesses" and "markets" to depersonalize their findings and play pretend at describing natural laws. All it's really describing is the behavior of people, and a wildly nonrepresentative subset of people at that.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 hours ago

I'm of average intelligence so if I can understand it, so can they.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

For extra sad - what is economical is more intuitive bcs it's not just a human skill, it's a skill nature forces all species into in one way or the other.
'Economics' (the human science) however adds so many extra steps, scales, and logistics that is def not immediately intuitive (even in the simple cases when it is).

In both cases there is a certain element of future uncertainty so risk management is essential.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 hours ago

It's not that complicated that when a company with thin margins has to pay a tax, they have to pay it on to consumers.

Your finance department doesn't care about the difference between a more expensive part due to scarcity vs a more expensive part due to a tax.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Worker bees don't even get to have sex with the queen-president!! :'''(

Are the male bee drones the cabinet circle?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 minutes ago

Male bees have sex once mid flight and die.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I don't understand how they think this works

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

A lot of them think that the country with the tarrifs levied against them needs to pay the country they are exporting to to sell the goods there like a "If you want to do business here" tax on the country exporting.

But in all honesty even if it did work that way, the exporting country would just jack the prices up to cover it. The end result for US citizens would be the same.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

I think it actually can't work that way at all if he does that. Theoretically, it'll work upto 100% tarrifs but it's way worse.

Imagine mr T says 100% tarrifs on product X, that costs $20.

If consumers pay it then it just costs $40 and it's over. If the original country pays it then they have to pay $20 to sell $20 product, which is not profitable at all. But if they jack the price to $40, then they have to pay $40, again not profitable. So this system only works for smaller % tarrifs so that they can raise the price to cover that.

Suppose you have $2 profit (10%) on $20 item, and 20% ($4) tariffs. You can't pay more than your profit, so you increase the price from 20 to 26, now you have 30% ($8) profit, you pay 20% ($5) tarrifs and get total 10% profit. So you see with 20% tariff you get 30% increase in cost. So this would work worse than consumers directly paying 20% tariffs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

But in all honesty even if it did work that way, the exporting country would just jack the prices up to cover it. The end result for US citizens would be the same.

This. It doesn't matter whether the exporter or importer is payign the tariff, the result is the same - it increases the cost of goods, and that cost is going to get passed down the line, plus margin.