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"He was told the other countries pay the tariffs", by a bunch of liars and he believed the liars.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Real answer is in the last line there. If 60% of people we're capable of doing their own research (and arriving at the correct answer) then we wouldn't have anti-vaxers, flat-earthers and non-billionaire/non-bigot/non-christian nationalist republicans.
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"
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?
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
It's by design.
It is highly regional, too.
Despite the existence of the Department of Education (which Trump is trying to dismantle), there is no national standard for education in the US. In general, each state is free to decide upon its own policies and standards.
Some states, such as those in the northeast, have very high-performing school systems. So when that "1 in 5 are illiterate" statistic is mentioned (I actually have not verified that number, just quoting the prior claim as an example), it would be caused by low-performing states where the situation is much more dire dragging down the national average.
Here's a general look at quality of education in the US by state, though recommend folks look up their own numbers because I haven't validated the numbers pulled in the article I grabbed this from.
It's not a perfect divide between red states and blue states (Florida appears good, California less so, as an example), but in general we see the lower performing states located mainly in the South where the Republicans have more support. Basically, a less educated populace is easier to manipulate.
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.
Man, this isn't even "doing your research" it's just knowing what very basic words mean.
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".
Your mistake was referencing a woketionary.
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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.
Where was this posted?
Oh, Reddit! Thanks.
No problem. I remembered seeing the self.[subredditname] sometimes in the reddit is fun app, before they killed it.
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?
Did you read the post? It sounds like they explained it thoroughly to them prior to the tariffs going into effect and it went in one ear and out the other.
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.
The most charitable argument for Trump would be that foreign businesses reduce their prices such that the price paid by their US customers is the same as before the tariffs to remain competitive in the US market, but I think most MAGAs literally just never thought about it.
Hire smarter employees.
Those cost more, and with the tariffs I doubt he can afford it
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.
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.
You forgot that the tea now costs $7.50 which is paid by the consumer. The tea company sure as shit isnt taking a 50% loss to sell tea now. So the american consumer pays the tariff. Shitler and goebbels pocket the 25% that comes out of an american workers paycheck.
Or, we can hold the fucking media accountable for telling blatant lies about the impacts of tariffs.
Fox News got around that by claiming they're entertainment, not news.
Per their own arguments in court, no reasonable person would consider Fox News to be factual.
Ignorance is not an excuse. Fire all MAGAs for taxifs.
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.
"The Big Lie" is what Sanders is calling it.
How many "big lies" are we up to now?
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.
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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.
nice of you to assume there's gonna be a NEXT election.
...next election?
You know, the one Trump wins with 106% of the totaled votes.
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, thatβs 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.
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.
I'm of average intelligence so if I can understand it, so can they.
Honestly I'm dumb as hell, and when I didn't understand something I just trust my friends who I know share my values. MAGAs seem to have decided they trust Trump over their children, for the most part.
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Some people are just dumb. It doesn't help that our education system is designed to produce worker bees and not educated citizens.
Worker bees don't even get to have sex with the queen-president!! :'''(
Are the male bee drones the cabinet circle?
Male bees have sex once mid flight and die.
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