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

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[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

That's not what a synonym is.

[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

My point exactly. The bet was about whether "tariff" and "tax" are synonymous. They aren't synonymous if they describe different things, even if one of those things is a subset of the other. (This is complicated a bit by the fact that synonymity is context-dependent so in some contexts they can be synonymous. I'm assuming a general context.)

To give a different example, every iPhone is a smartphone but not every smartphone is an iPhone. The two terms aren't synonymous except in specific contexts like when discussing the inventory of an Apple store.

In a general context, I would argue that the bet is lost – tariffs are taxes but taxes encompass more than just tariffs. The definition of synonymity is not fulfilled.

The actual point of the bet, namely to illustrate that tariffs are paid by people in the country that raised them (because they are taxes on imported goods and services), remains valid.