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

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago

My job has been impacted by Trumpas well. Stock prices falling and tariffs have caused them to do layoff of 2500 people. I fucking hate this so much. I work with many international customers and Trump/Musk has been brought up constantly and in my line of work people typically avoid political discussions but it's kinda nice to hear our allies don't actually hate Americans and know what the real problem is.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

There are people who don't know how tariffs work?

If America is the sole buyer, then the tax would be shared between both countries. (Lower demand will lower the price that the foreign supplier can ask for, making up some of the extra tax cost). But since USA is doing these tariffs on so many countries, other countries will just lay new trading routes.

So yeah, USA will feel it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago

Your telling me the US government can't just demand other countries pay them money for no reason?

/j

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This was explained to people all over the internet. I remember people posting the dailyshow shirt guy interview where they explain to him how tariffs will impact his business. Some people didn't care as long as it also hurt everybody they don't like.

So ask yourself we someone who voted for Trump whines about tariffs. Is this person just dumb or a total piece of shit?.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

So ask yourself we someone who voted for Trump whines about tariffs. Is this person just dumb or a total piece of shit?.

I say both. They are stupid racist homophobic assholes and deserve any pain they get for their choices. And though we should do everything we can to help those who will be hurt by Trump's policies, I sincerely hope that every single person who voted for that POS experiences an absolute fuck ton of pain and suffering in the coming months and years.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

The most unfortunate thing is that the pain and suffering will not only be limited to the people who supported Trump and his policies. Everyone is going to pay for their poor choices.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 33 minutes ago

I'm going to say something that'll probably get me a lot of down votes here.

I think maybe we all deserve a little bit of pain. This country has done some fucking god-awful things to the rest of the world in the last 60+ years. I just watched a documentary on some of the crap we've done to Puerto Ricans, who BTW are actually full citizens of the United States. And they have been continuously and horrendously mistreated by our country all in the name of profit for the rest of the country. Look up the origin of the phrase "banana republic" and look at what we have done to 3rd world countries around the globe that have resources that our country has desired. So, maybe we deserve it. Maybe we deserve to feel some pain. And maybe that pain will help us to understand where we went wrong.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

yeah, the point of being nice is to create a better world with better people who will be more capable of being nice.

and because it feels good.

but being nice to nazis doesn't feel nice, and it makes the world a more dangerous place, where being nice is harder and riskier and less pleasant.

laughing at their suffering is pretty great though. pointing and laughing at their suffering maybe makes the world a slightly better place, long term.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I might be wrong here, but tariffs can be very effective tools, but as a slow burn. The way they're being wielded here is asinine.

If you want to affect behavior, tariffs are a long game. They're passed by Congress so they aren't tied to the whims of one man. If you don't want US chicken or EU trucks, make a law and let decades of implementation change behavior.

If you just want them to hurt, you do them the way we are now. The unpredictability hurts businesses and individuals, inside and outside the US. It makes prices and markets volatile and sows distrust. It hurts the vast majority of people, but benefits people who have the stability and assets to buy low and sell high. Each tariff implementation and retraction is just a mini market manipulation giving people with advance knowledge of what is affected to profit.

[–] ricecake 9 points 1 day ago

They're a tool for correcting price alterations on the seller side. If China is subsidizing the manufacturing of Fidgets, a matching tarrif on the import of Fidgets protects domestic manufacturing from artificially cheap competition by preventing consumers from seeing those low prices.

The subsidies don't even need to be hostile. The US subsidizes food to lower domestic costs, ensure a stockpile, and keep farmers happy. The side effect of driving down world grain prices is incidental.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Additionally, they strike me as the stick that pairs best with a carrot to spur domestic production of whatever you've put tarrifs on, along the lines of the CHIPS act.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (5 children)

i wish people were better at doing their own research

I hate anyone with a passion when they say that they "did their research" as it's always "I read a Facebook page"

People have no idea what the word research implies, or what goes into actuall real research

Schools should really put much more focus on explaining what science is and what it does

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It was killing me with the pandemic. ''I'm not sure about mRNA vaccines, I'm doing my own research'' homie, researching a vaccine means you are running a immunology lab. You're not researching, you're listening to a nut trying to sell you an unregulated vitamin in place of real medicine.

[–] ricecake 7 points 1 day ago

I did my own "looking into something and learning about it", and you know what? I came to the conclusion that a lot of those people are pretty smart and know what they're doing.

Research can mean something that's a synonym to what I said in quotes above since it doesn't specifically mean experimental research, but that still requires looking at a variety of credible sources and knowing how to interpret what they're saying.
Probably not what you're going to find on tiktok.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Here in the UK properly researching topics was something we did in multiple classes in secondary/high school. Not just googling shit for an essay but checking our sources as well as source authors and dates.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Schools should really put much more focus on explaining what science is and what it does

Hard agree. The US is currently speed running to third world status and its entirely because of education, and i assume its happening elsewhere based on the rise of conmen in leadership. Anyone who thinks for themself who has ever had a conversation with anyone MAGA on why they believe what they believe, will know that it was just because they were told to believe it. They do not have any sort of internal reasoning, they look to someone that fits their world view of what a leader looks like and then they believe every word that they say. It is the same way most people relate to religion, do not think about it, just have faith.

So when you mix together a wildly de-funded and heavily politicized education system that turns out followers who outsource reasoning to authority figures, with modern American solipsistic culture that allows the worst human beings alive to be seen as role models, then it was always just a matter of time before conmen took the reigns of the country. Anyone who is ever trying to argue their point with reasoning and facts will appear on the defense to any conman that is just riffing innacuracies, and the uneducated masses will see the conman as in control, which will then make them trust that person, it doesn't go any deeper than that.

Humans are fucking stupid.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 23 hours ago

Simple answers to complex questions is fast, and helps people quickly move into the phase where they're expending energy on "solutions" rather than debating the issue.

We're lazy. People are lazy - I know I am.

Something that's sufficiently removed from our everyday experience is mysterious, and (someone we trust) tells us that it will work? No questions, here we go!

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

I distinctly remember learning about tariffs in Social Studies. That was back in elementary / middle school. I understood it then and so did my classmates.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 day ago

Personally if I had to cut someone's hours, all else being equal, the one who took 50 attempts to figure out tariffs would go before the one who took 2.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 day ago (1 children)

After brexit, the searches of "What is the European union" skyrocketed in Britain.

Most people are morons who don't think for themselves.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

From what I've heard most pro brexit voters thought that leaving ment no non white immigrants allowed, they failed to understand the EU only let European labor in, the people from not white lands gained access from England's colonial past.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago

Trump & Co do love the uneducated.

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