We pay. Then we pay again.
It’s as simple as that and just as fucked up. Our so-called government does not work for us.
“Pay to play? You mean the peasants get to play? Why?”
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My rental, charges to use website to pay, but that’s the only way they pay $5 for website, $2.00 credit/debit card, $1.00 checking direct route. So yeah pay to pay, there are fees on everything I pay online
“By existing within these borders through no conscious choice of your own, you are indicating that you agree to these terms.”
Socialize the losses, privatazie the games. It’s crazy when people complain about socialism while these billionaire companies get to reap the best parts of it.
Which is why it needs to be burnt, and then built better.
As per its original design
As proposed by Thomas Jefferson; however, it is not assuredly by design because it was a group effort and the group was mixed.
Either way, the “decline of societies (at around 300y)” would support it anyhow.
Let’s be honest. The highest estimates I find are around $160 billion in illegal tariffs. If we split that evenly it would work out to around $640 for every person over 18 in the country.
What good would giving 250 million people each $640 do? For 99% of them it would be gone as soon as they got it. They’d waste it on things like rent, bills, food, gas money. Temporary things. Within a month almost no one would have anything to show for it.
But giving a relative handful of large companies hundreds of millions to several billion dollars each? For them it’s pure profit. Their bills are already paid. They’ve already used the profits from that year for stock buybacks to get their wealthy shareholders more money and divided the rest giving their executives huge bonuses. And now suddenly they all have huge amounts more profit almost out of thin air.
It’s money to invest in AI to replace human labor so the coming years can be even better, to do even more stock buybacks so that the people who own the most stock in each company see huge increases in their net worth, or do give CEOS a second round of yearly bonus. Months and years from now there will still be amazing homes, yachts, private islands, and new faces that we’ll all be able to point to as the lasting good that came from this.
IKR why don’t they think of the shareholders, the profits they need so we can’t survive? I don’t need to eat, or have shelter.
Man for a second I thought you were serious and was getting my pitchfork ready. Bravo.
I mean… don’t put it away. You should still take the opportunity to make sure it’s nicely rusty and dull. We do need everyone to have them ready. That sarcastic message of mine is still describing what the government and corporations actually did to us. And they’re not raping and killing their own kids. Well… they probably are raping their own kids too. But not killing or possibly eating them.
Since they’re now all in charge of investigating and arresting themselves and their buddies and passing laws to stop their own blatant corruption it seems that us stepping in with pitchforks might be necessary very soon.
What good would giving 250 million people each $640 do?
You say that, but something a lot like that already happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Stimulus_Act_of_2008
Most taxpayers below the income limit received a rebate of at least $300 per person ($600 for married couples filing jointly). Eligible taxpayers received, along with their individual payment, $300 per dependent child under the age of 17. The payment was equal to the payer’s net income tax liability, but could not exceed $600 (for a single person) or $1200 (married couple filing jointly)
Most everyone I knew spent it on HDTVs. Economic stimulus indeed.
You think I don’t rem… oh Christ, it was 18 years ago? There really are people here who wouldn’t remember it.
Yes. I know. I’m sort of surprised anyone could read my post and not see all the sarcasm. I do not really believe that spending money on food or rent is wasting it. It’s needing to use that money in order to keep living. Companies getting it all to make the rich richer and buy yachts and new faces is not something I actually consider to be better.
No matter what they spent it on, it was still stimulating the economy.
Even if it was $6, refunding it to us and showing a little respect for a major cash grab fuck up would work wonders.
You forgot to add ‘in greenland’ at the end. That’s why they want it they can set up billionaire land while the rest of the world is 50C in summer.
Ooh, good point. I hadn’t thought much on it beyond the minerals thing the news likes to go with. That’s far more likely.
Your argument amounts to “you dont get your stolen money back because you will spend it irresponsibly.”
Thats sovcit-level quackery.
You ate at the onion.
redacted
Sorry, that response wasn’t for this post, it was for another one. I’m not sure why it went to yours.
I ordered a pair of boots from Mexico, they were shipped with all of the correct paperwork and should not have been tariffed at all. It added ~$60 to the original cost of $170.
When you submit a tariff refund request they warn you multiple times that if your submission is rejected you will be charged $100 per submission. It can be rejected for making a mistake on the paperwork even if they find the tariff was applied incorrectly. I almost didn’t submit for it, and a lot of people won’t but I decided to risk it. That was a few months ago and I still haven’t heard back.
And you never will. Thanks for playing The Decline of Democracy and Sanity.
No refunds 😆
What in the jesus brother. I take it you’re voting in november
I’m voting for Troy Jackson in Maine hopefully he beats Collins. Going to go out canvassing and call some people so that if he loses I can’t say I didn’t try.
🫡
So we were all robbed. Again.
That was always the plan, my friend.
Fines like this should go to the consumer, but that’s impossible, so they should go into the America First Fund (irony intended), which be the seed money to provide the initial funding for all the social programs we need to start - healthcare, college/trade, student loan forgiveness, pre-k, UBI, etc.
As we investigate and prosecute MAGA crimes, any fines and confiscations, which should be harsh (including the confiscation of entire estates of treasonous families like the Trumps or the Ellisons), should be put into the America First Fund. The level of the fund should be mentioned in the evening news every night. Rich people can take note of the Dow, and workers can take note of the America First Fund.
This is why I can’t be angry at regular criminals, they’re just mimicking the world they see at the top.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany moment now…
… it’s going to start to trickle down.
Americans will put up with anything. Fucking losers
It’s ironic
They have to work so hard to survive, and yet, when it comes to thinking, they’re incredibly lazy
I genuinely pity them, because I know that as a society, they’re only in such a situation because they’re beaten into submission and apathy
They’re placated by unbelievable convenience, having everything an hour’s delivery away, and numbed to the fact that that means someone is slaving (I use that term deliberately) for their laziness
The mental gymnastics to justify every part of that shitty, exploitative excuse for a society are endless
And when they see other cultures, where we are actually free, they point and laugh, because they are too ignorant to understand
I spend a lot of time in 'Murica, under duress
I hate the place, I see the cruelty and ignorance, and I would gladly offer asylum to those who deserve it, but even amongst the relatively civilised, that’s a small number
They’ve been trained from a very young age to never question the system. Pledge of allegiance before classes. Anthem before every match. Flags everywhere. Hollywood teaching everyone America will save the world yet again. It’s very hard and impossible for many to break that programming.
I still remember when I first came to the US and my class did the pledge of allegiance. I was so confused, it was like I’d unwittingly joined a cult.
Oh, I know it
Even those who move to civilised countries still struggle to break the chains sometimes
Freedom doesn’t come with intelligence, morals or ethics, only consequences.
'Murica is one of the least free places I have ever experienced in the world
They are quite pathetic. All these decades of saber rattling and pleasuring themselves to the fantasy of American freedom and democracy only to be led passively by the collar into their prison cells.
as long as there things like tiktok, amazon, youtube,etc. yes. and many enough of a income to have creature comforts.
As long as i can have my 5 dollar burger for 20 dollars delivered home by a guy who makes no money, it’s all good
I’d like to see them at least stop melting down at each other and at least unify to remove their problem. I saw a post in the politics sub about Sanders asking them all to just vote and they’re attacking each other across the entire post. This is probably the smallest of the places out there to discuss but if it’s any indication, the same shit will happen this election as well.
They’re resigned to two options and the sooner they accept it the better off they’ll be. The first one is coming up in a couple of months and as many as possible need to be on one page about it.
I kicked a trumper out of my D&D group after I finally got of tolerating his shit. He thought Trump would be better for our economy. No regrets.
We should be doing a lot more than kicking them out of social groups. They’re traitors to our nation who are degrading our quality of life.
But we do what we can on an individual basis. I applaud you. I’ve removed all of them from my life as well. One of the best moves I’ve ever made.
Don’t buy anything not entirely necessary until this shit is done. As usual consumers hold the bag.
This was so obvious that anyone paying attention could see this coming a mile away. I’m probably the unpopular opinion, but I think the government should have just not issued any refunds. I would rather the government get funds to potentially use for social welfare than to give it back to businesses. The only problem is that would create an incentive for the government to try it again for another quick payday. Some mechanism would have to be put into place to stop this. Take away the power from the president to issue tarrifs on his own. Which we should probably do anyway.
But without the refunds, how would Cantor Fitzgerald (where Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s son is the chair) get their money from the rights to the tariff refunds they bought?
Nutlick needs to be the first into the woodchipper
Funded the war didn’t they
With only $160 billion? No.
Well of course trump and his cronies took their cut first
They should go to Free Parking, and if someone happens to land directly on the square, they get the refunds. Life is just a massive game of Monopoly, ain’t it?
Go straight to jail.
Fun fact. That is not in the rules for monopoly. Of included it drags out the length of the game.
Yes, it’s a common house rule not an official one (tho modern versions of the game do include this and other optional rules in the booklet). But it rarely, if ever, draws out the length of the game. There’s only just under 3% of a chance to even land on Free Parking.
The civilised world has always sneered at 'Murica
But now we look upon the disaster with great pity for those who have been unfortunately born there who deserve better
Please and Thank You.
I want better for us, and I’m fighting for it, but I have very limited personal power to enact change.
The way “we” looked at those “third-world” countries when I was a child feels like how everyone should be looking at us. Our squalor is not that of unclean water (but that is still true in places) or of systemic violence by the government (but that is still true in places) or of lack of reliable food (but that is still true in places). We have cellphones and internet, cars and roads, and air-conditioning, so we should be happy.
Our squalor is in the apathy and even antipathy a bulk of our fellow citizens have towards others.
The fix is education and awareness, but the means of enacting it have been hijacked. How do I reach someone on the west coast to be kind when I can’t touch them from the east coast?
There was a post recently, and I’ll link it if I can find it again, about Kevin and his truck, and how helping others builds community. Very wholesome. Community has been lost here outside of the uber-wealthy (they all know each other), or the “poor” who need it to survive. The “middle class” has lost the plot.
Just wondering how many more times in my life I’m going to watch dipshit Republicans make dipshit moves that require dipshit bailouts that aren’t for the people paying for the dipshit bailouts.
They are available to anyone who imported and paid a tariff. If you did that, you can get a refund. Being ‘a business’ or ‘a consumer’ is completely irrelevant.
The issue being that when these companies imported their goods they passed on the cost of tariffs to the consumer. And then they were reimbursed for the tariff by the government. So essentially this is the consumer giving those companies more money, but with extra steps to try to trick consumers into believing they didn’t.
Most don’t even directly pass the cost to the consumer, they pass them down the line to retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, etc.
Then those companies add the additional cost to the product as the sell them … So only the importer is getting the refund, and only a handful of very large resellers are actually importers. Most small businesses buy from importers or wholesalers, and they won’t get anything back either.
But those small businesses have the option to pass those losses onto the consumer, and with blanket effects like tariffs it happens across the board. I own a small construction business, this is what happens when inflation goes crazy for my pricing anyway and it has never made my business not competitive for pricing before.
Absolutely. …
I own a software company, but we sell computer hardware to about half of our clients as well. We passed the increase in hardware to our clients as our suppliers passed it down to us.
But I’m not an importer, and my main supplier imports about 50% of what we buy from them. The rest they buy from manufacturers that import their own product, or importers (or possibly even wholesalers that buy from importers), and we buy some stuff at retail, since we just don’t buy enough to justify wholesale.
We absolutely struggle to be competitive, and more so now than before. We don’t have VC money, or credit card processor backing that many of our competitors do, so can’t give hardware away at below cost, or for free. At the end of the day, we decreased our markup to help keep prices down, knowing that we’ll ultimately make it up on software licensing over the next few years.
Even then, our customers are all businesses that paid the increased tariff at the end of the day, so how do they get their taxes back, since most people are suggesting returning taxes to individuals.
The whole thing is a freaking mess, without any real good answer that will actually make everyone happy.
Yeah your situation sounds a lot more frustrating than mine my friend. And you’re right, it’s more complicated than how I laid it out. But its the long form version of what the core concept I put forward was; the wealthiest of us utilizing the tariff situation to squeeze more money out of small business and working class interests.
There’s no doubt that some super wealthy companies paid the tariff, raised prices, sold directly to consumers, and get the tariff back as pure profit.
But there’s also a lot of layers and nuance that people are missing outside of those dozen or so companies.
Most retailers (especially small ones) don’t import anything, and a lot of those tariffs were on raw materials (like steel or aluminum), or small parts that get imported by the container or ship load, and then broken up and sold through a dozen layers of wholesalers / resellers to eventually get to a machine shop or a manufacturer, that then gets added to other material to become a component or product, and sold to wholesalers, etc and passed through the same layers again, and possibly even exported as a complete product.
All of this is what makes the prospect of refunding all of the illegal tariffs directly to consumers a real mess.
if you wanted a refund you could have purchased the goods from another country and impoted them, accepting the risk that there is no refund.
Well I don’t live in the US so I don’t have to do that stupid shit. Bit for american consumers, that wasn’t what was fucking promised. What was promised was a cheque from the government as a reward for enduring the tariff situation. Instead what they got was screwed.
I don’t think that the government ever promised a tariff rebate to residents directly.
The rapist or Musk may have offhandedly suggested on social media that they would, but anyone that believes anything they say is a fool.
Well a lot of maga people took it as a promise. Whether promised or not, it’s been a talking point from a lot of them that I’ve spoken to.
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