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

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[–] NotLemming@lemm.ee 2 points 22 minutes 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?

[–] Zenokh@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 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

[–] JOMusic@lemmy.ml 3 points 26 minutes 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"

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

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?

[–] gon@lemm.ee 1 points 17 minutes ago

Where was this posted?

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 15 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 10 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".

[–] towerful@programming.dev 2 points 23 minutes ago

Your mistake was referencing a woketionary.

[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour 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.

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 hour ago

That's not what a synonym is.

[–] ColonelMustard@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)
[–] loonsun@sh.itjust.works 2 points 47 minutes ago

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

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 14 points 2 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.

[–] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 67 points 5 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.

[–] Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works 7 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.

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] jabeez@lemmy.today 1 points 16 minutes ago

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

[–] WolfmanEightySix@piefed.social 5 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

How does the saying about selling a lie go?

[–] jagermo@feddit.org 10 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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

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

Three liars makes a tiger

[–] nul9o9@lemmy.world 91 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 16 points 3 hours ago

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

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 25 points 5 hours ago

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

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 58 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.

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 hours ago

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

[–] obinice@lemmy.world 24 points 5 hours ago (1 children)
[–] GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 44 minutes ago

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

[–] zephorah@lemm.ee 32 points 5 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.

[–] kiterios@lemmy.world 2 points 58 minutes 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.

[–] some_dude@lemm.ee 11 points 4 hours ago

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

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 2 points 2 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.

[–] Tramort@programming.dev 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.

[–] The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 0 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.

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 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.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

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

Are the male bee drones the cabinet circle?

[–] Goun@lemmy.ml 11 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I don't understand how they think this works

[–] Delphia@lemmy.world 23 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.

[–] thevoidzero@lemmy.world 1 points 31 minutes 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.

[–] Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 1 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.