Maybe it’s because I took economics as far back as high school, but even just from reading high school history books I knew what a Tariff was. How the FUCK did they not know that?
I am also willing to bet that they will eventually blame the democrats for breaking the system, as they always do.
There’s a fair portion of people 21+ that have difficulty playing blackjack because they can’t add to 21. Last night I was asked by a grown man what 9+1+3 is.
You’d be surprised how incompetent some people are.
I worked in customer service for 7 years. I am aware… so very aware…
To give you an idea, when I worked for Verizon mobile, it was a few times a week that I came across a client who did not know how to hang up their cellphone calls. No joke. It took such a while to get them off the hook it wasn’t funny. And if you ask me why I wouldn’t hang up on them, it was because Verizon had a strict no hang-up policy. You were not allowed to hang up on a client no matter what. It was grounds for immediate termination.
Maybe it was a HR call to test your patience with customers
Holy shit. I never put this together.
Last time I was at a casino I kept asking myself: who honestly thinks any of this is a good idea, or thinks that any of these are “games” in the conventional sense? Now I know.
Edit: I have also been confronted with people that simply cannot do addition, period. It’s wild.
Funny you should mention a casino. Remember when Donald Trump bankrupted multiple casinos? That is actually quite impressive given how often casinos attract people even during recessions as they get stressed and desperate.
The quickest and easiest way to win at a casino is not to buy in, don’t play. You’ve got the right idea!
Even if you’re competent at arithmetic in school, those skills can definitely atrophy. I say this as someone who’s unreasonably slow at basic arithmetic despite being an ex-mathlete; I got complacent because I’ve been learning and using graduate level maths, so I thought that would keep me from getting rusty. Nope — it turns out that basic arithmetic that you’d use in daily life is a different “muscle” to the kind of maths you use in academic research (which is obvious in hindsight)
I can’t imagine how much I’d be struggling if I didn’t have a good foundation to be starting from
You aren’t alone. Historically before calculators were common, engineers and mathematicians would actually have books with basic arithmetic answers already done, or they would hire people (usually women) called ‘computers’ (no joke, that’s what the term was used for before computers as we know it were invented) to do the basic calculations for mathematicians so they can focus on the more complicated stuff.
So even a highly talented mathematician from the 1910s and 1920s would still struggle as you do.
This is only tangentially related, but I’m reminded of a thing from Plato where he was complaining that communicating through writing was a bad way of doing philosophy. His concerns weren’t just around communicating ideas between people; he was even opposed to writing as an introspective tool to help a person think through their ideas, or make notes to come back to.
"And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.”
- Plato, “Phaedrus” ^([citation needed])
It’s interesting because I don’t think he’s necessarily wrong about the skill atrophy angle of it. It’s just a question of to what extent we need those memory skills in the modern era.
There is a question of just how much better or worse human memory was in the old days. Some say it was better because there just aren’t that many things people need to remember, so they can remember what they consider to be important more easily.
Laws were generally far more rudementary and easier to remember. People didn’t need to remember as many numbers as we do now, and as a general rule, the amount of news and events that the average person contended with within their lifetimes was also far fewer. I remember learning a fact that the average amount of news and information a person gets in just one week today is actually more than what the typical farmer would get in their lifetimes. That is mind boggling when you think about it.
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Math anxiety is real tbf, I can add that up real fast without the pressure of someone looking at me waiting for me to solve it, but the second another person is watching I can’t even think about the math I just obsess about how I should be solving it faster and how they now think I’m dumb because instead of doing the math I’m thinking about this bullshit and it’s taken 10 whole seconds which is a lot longer than it sounds…
One thing that fascinates me is that Trump’s definition of tariffs seems more like the definition of kickbacks.
As he was (is?) a landlord, he may also think of it as seeking rent, like how malls get rent from the stores inside.
As a foreign asset, I think Trump is just actively performing a proxy war to drain the US of money, power, and resources for Russia. If you think he’s going to be doing anything else - lol.
It can be both. Lying is more convincing when it’s felt as truth by the liar.
Or a tax?
Extracting rent can be seen as private taxation. He’s not a “career politician”, so I’m trying to understand how he’d see it from the private realm.
An entry fee, a toll, a tax, a rent - whatever. In the end, the cost will be added to the products going in. It’s not a usual tariff, but the outcome is the same. Maybe he thinks that this trickery helps avoid problems with “free trade” conventions.
Maybe thr PA education system didn’t include things like the great depression
Just read estimates his tariffs would cost the average household 7600 annually. I told my folks and they didn’t understand why I thought it was funny. I told them they wanted this.
I posted a meme last week before the election about a lot of my fellow Americans being depressingly ignorant and a bunch of people got pissed off about it.
I’m just saying…
Yeah, a lot has been said about why the ‘Democrats’ failed; sure they were/are imperfect.
Where are the articles bemoaning our stupid and/or mean citizens who have no curiosity and think being obstinate will work like a time machine? I’m frustrated to hell with apathy of my countrymen.
“Democrats” is too vague to be meaningful in this discussion. I do put a lot of blame on the DNC organization for deenergizing their base, but also the working class for not understanding basic economics and being taken by a carpet bagger.
And the huge shift right by male GenZ people. Reading posts by them specifically today: they felt marginalized by democrats and ignored. They felt like Maga cared about them, and they could belong in the Republican party. And some of them simply wanted revenge and to feel powerful.
Now this isn’t everyone, but I gotta say:
WTF are you doing thinking about feelings? And fitting in? Look at the damn effects your choice is going to make based on “feelings”. That group is going to lose consumer protection, worker protection and safety, medical coverage, relief on college tuition, housing subsidies, debt relief, small business loans. What they gain is higher prices, worse infrastructure, and possibly the nastiest thing of al:l the direct path of their income going to the wealthiest people and perpetuating generational wealth for the very few.
Because they wanted to “feel” like they were seen and heard as men. You got played!
Their ignorance is equally as valuable as your knowledge. To them, anyway.
Both sides-ism in a nutshell. Nailed it.
This tells me the information pipe to voters is broken, and hacked.
People live in their own social media realities. There has always been ignorance, but it’s never been so widely personalized. And Trump and the GoP played it like a fiddle.
And just watch, the Dems are going to learn precisely nothing from this and campaign like it’s the 1950s again, thinking policy was their problem.
The sheer stupidity of the dems is kinda astonishing. The reason why Obama won is because he had a goddamn narrative. Yes we can! Change you can believe in! It’s almost like they were onto something… then they did nothing.
Dems learned nothing and are all out of ideas!
Silicon valley: Here is a device that makes it possible to exchange information to everyone, everywhere, immediately.
GOP: Oh, you mean I can disseminate anything I want? How about lies? That’d be neat.
Silicon valley: No, not like that.
One thing that I observed is that the right wing had/has the more progressive campaign, from a technology and media use standpoint. The DNC, on the other hand, was still more or less using the same moves they had back in the 1990’s, relying on extinct concepts like the fairness doctrine, debate performance, and journalistic integrity of news outlets (fact-checks anyone?).
It’s not just the Overton Window that has moved: our information diet has completely changed too. To win at politics today, the entire landscape has shifted to propaganda, bombast, showmanship, clickbait, and leading the 24/7 news cycle by the nose. You must be louder and more interesting than the other guy. I think it’s possible to play that game ethically though, without disinformation, but what’s clear is that billionaire-owned media isn’t going to do it for you anymore.
Silicon Valley is laughing all the way to the bank enabling this.
They are the root cause, because no one told them they aren’t allowed to rot brains with relentless engagement optimization. Modern politics would still be bad, but it wouldn’t be so apocalyptic without the monsters they built.
This is what happened in the UK with Brexit.
Some companies have already said they’re going to pass the extra cost onto consumers, so while the companies will pay more, they’ll make a lot of that back from the consumers that can still afford the products.
Electronics will probably be the hardest hit, with prices of cell phones, laptops, and game consoles increasing quite a bit.
Low inflation statistics have been helped significantly by cheaper electronics. So everybody who voted Trump to lower inflation is in for a surprise.
Medical devices too.
Good thing I got a new computer now. They’ll just blame democrats (who do have a lot to blame for not countering the bullshit of the Republicans over the past 45 years) for it and insist that the tariffs would have brought prices down if they were done without democratic interference…
They’ll absolutely blame Biden. Their god emperor is incapable of doing anything wrong.
It’s like in 1984 where the Party blames all problems on Emmanuel Goldstein, and even if he was dead or long dead it was all the machinations that he put into place that is causing all their issues.
especially seeing how trump intends to treat Taiwan, home to TSMC
They’re supposedly opening a semiconductor plant in Arizona. I think Biden and Trump are attending a groundbreaking ceremony or something.
They’ll find a way to blame everyone else when all the Chineseium junk on amazon suddenly isn’t so cheap.
Not only do US companies pay the tariff but they pass it on to their customers and other countries put counter tarrifs on US products.
This is definitely fake, but it’s tremendously funny so I choose to believe it’s real
This is definitely fake, but […] I choose to believe it’s real
2024 election in a nutshell
It’s like Brexit, but in America.
It’s sad to see that the people that do the most honest work are always being played by people doing the most dishonest one.
I get where you’re coming from, and I sympathize with what is sometimes referred to as “low information voters” (though I don’t know how I personally feel about that term), but it’s important to point out that they are not NO information voters. They have heard at least some of what Trump has to say, and are willing to overlook blatant racism/fascism/misogyny/homophobia for what they think will be lower costs (or another either equally empty promise or overtly harmful promise). I am not by any means well off, but if someone said they could decrease my costs if I assented to rounding up X group, I would not take that deal. They have. They might not know the extent to which he will do others harm, but they are willing to take the deal because they do not think it will harm them directly. Hence the leopard/face jokes. They might be doing “honest work”, but that does not make them good people (though “some, I assume, are good people”).
I have family that voted for Trump who would be classed as “low info” and they only know he’s “gonna put god back in schools”. They don’t go out of their way to physically injure people different from them, but it’s clear that not only do they not care about those people, they want to force them to conform or leave. Imho, that’s not indicative of a good person. In fact, it’s often indicative of a bad person. Say what you want about “different values” or how dems are more open minded or whatever the studies show, at a certain point, conservatism makes you a bad person.
Sure, we can debate about where that line is, but the further back you want to “conserve” the worse you are in my experience. Wanna go back to the 90s? Probably economically motivated, but willing to throw the lgbt+ community under the bus. 70s? Them and women are not important to you. 50s? Just blatantly racist at this point. Anything before that and they might as well want to bring back ownership of people. At the end of the day what are they trying to conserve? Their own power. They just differ in who they’re willing to trample to take it back.
I think what a lot of Americans don’t want to admit, as imperialists, is that our relatively good quality of life was because we grave robbed and enslaved people for it.
When people say that there’s economic booms after wars - that’s not like, from no where. That’s from all the dead bodies and looted countries. We sifted through pockets and took their change. And that’s not better for growth or the economy than just keeping everyone alive btw - it is far superior to just keep everyone alive, educated, and fed and they will produce goods for the economy without sacrificing local people (eg Irish potato famine). Like healthy societies don’t engage in war.
We could be getting played by some random person on tiktok showing an unsubstantiated claim from another random person.
I’m not saying it’s definitely fake but don’t just blindly believe this when spreading stories without evidence is the EXACT sort of shit dishonest people do. They’re eating the dogs, etc.
Story of my life right there.
Drawbacks of living in a country where half the people are dumbshits. It’s the new normal and we better get used to it. When you are out in public doing anything, look around. Roughly half the people you see are fucking idiots.
Half seems optimistic, especially because of how many people didn’t bother to vote
The association of anally sourced statistics estimates the portion to be closer to 75%.
The New York Times - which has about as much credibility as the AASS - says it’s 92.5%
I see you’re also an AASS man!
Yeah half is definitely an underestimate, which is really what’s getting me down. A stark realization after so much optimism that we were finally coming out of our national funk.
country
*planet
Does Trump not know what a tariff is? Or does he know, and he is deliberately misleading his followers?
He likely understands what a tariff is well enough. His problem is that he either doesn’t understand the implications or chooses not to communicate that part to voters.
He understands tariffs in his terms - that “tariffs” is a useful word to trick people into doing what he wants. How tariffs work in the real world is irrelevant to him, the word gets him what he wants, and that’s all he needs from tariffs.
except he “renegotiated” nafta and is now threatening mexico with tariffs. He’s a childlike negotiator playing geopolitics backed by like 5 giant media conglomorates and silicon valley guys who reinvent busses and trains every 5 years.
The reality is the crypto people are going to stash their crypto as the economy tanks intent on living like millionaires. Then the big money will cash out and crash that market leaving all the small holders in the dust.
Trump understands tariffs, as far as they sound fancy and like a threat to foreigners, his followers understands it even less. Using fancy words make you sound authoritative. Trump’s followers like authoritarian leaders.
Trump couldn’t even spell tariff let alone define it.
In general, I say why assume malevolence when ignorance explains it as well… Trump is an exception to that rule.
Does anyone know if we are paying tariffs for face eating leopards? I can foresee high demand.
I’m taking options on the rise of leopard stock, imma be rich
this looks truthy
Sometimes in order to learn something is bad you need to experience it.
Like, say, from January 20, 2017 to January 20, 2021?
Yep your right that’s why we got Biden. The other side also learned and they double down on their base, pretty much declaring themselves Nazi. That gain them more voters along the way. As for people who did not vote or voted the wrong guy will just have to learn the hard way. Perhaps it did not affect them on the personal level before despite we had the COVID pandemic.
