Comment by bill_joy_fanboy
16 days ago
> Then they’ve failed to imagine how much more difficult their life will become under excessive tariffs.
Again, these workers don't have jobs. When the John Deere factory closes down in your town and moves to Mexico, tariffs sound good even if it's just to punish such companies and the abuse of their workers.
If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life. Factories may even return, and your life may improve. It's better than just accepting your situation.
> If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life.
Prices going up on everything will absolutely make a difference in their lives. Even with government assistance and very low income, they still have to buy things to live - and they'll be able to afford even less. The poorer you are, the harder this is going to hit you.
> If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life.
Categorically false.
Tariffs raise prices for consumers. These tariffs will make it even harder for them to make ends meet.
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They are absolutely buying goods that are manufactured in countries subject to these tariffs. They have to buy clothes and all sorts of everyday items, and since they can't afford to buy things manufactured in the US (when that's even an option), it's very likely they buy things that are made in China/etc at a higher rate that wealthier people. Even going back to your examples, flour will be going up in price, as well as gas and car parts.
Your comment insinuates that people complaining about tariffs are disconnected from those living in poverty, but thinking that those living in poverty won't be affected by prices going up around the board is a much bigger disconnect.
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Yeah and when it does break down, the parts are going to cost more to fix it.
And what are they gonna do when their car breaks down catastrophically? Buy a used car? The prices of those will skyrocket once the price of new cars goes up.
Then really desperate people will steal cars as the value of them, and used parts start to skyrocket.
It doesn't even take half a brain cell to see how this works.
> They buy flour, they buy gas and they pray their car doesn't break down.
All of which are going to get a lot more expensive, too. We all swim in the same pool here.
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> They are not buying the latest igadget, or really anything chinese/gloablist for that matter, except for whatever junk at dollar tree. They buy flour, they buy gas and they pray their car doesn't break down.
You don’t understand how interconnected the economy is.
You don’t really think that flour appears on the shelves at the store without any coupling to internationally-sourced goods, do you? The parts for the farm equipment, the steel for the buildings it’s stored in, the vehicles that deliver it to the store.
This idea of the economy as an ultra-simplistic 1:1 line between raw product and the supermarket shelves is not how the world works.
Ignoring that, you conveniently glossed over the part about their car breaking down. What happens now when their car does need new parts? Tires wear out?
It’s also absurd to claim that poor people don’t enjoy things like access to cheap cellular phones.
Sure, I'll take you up on that offer. I grew up in a poor fishing family struggling to survive living in a trailer park so I'm very well aware of what it's like growing up in deep poverty.
Frankly I know more poor people than you pretend to know and the reality is that they are going to suffer far more under these tariffs than anyone else. All that stuff they buy at dollar tree because they have no other options are imported from all over the world because that's the cheapest stuff available.
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Tariffs will have an larger impact on low income people because they act as a flat tax on goods. There is a certain fixed dollar value that everyone needs to survive the month, and that value just got larger while income remained the same. When you're poor the smallest increase in cost of living pushes you in to the red.
This is why inflation was such a huge issue. I fail to see how this is any different.
> This is why inflation was such a huge issue. I fail to see how this is any different.
This time it's vaguely patriotic to pay more, I guess.
They’ll make things harder to afford but I get your point. They had one way to make money which was their factory and now it’s gone and orange man is promising he’ll bring it back. It’s a no brainer, of course you go all in on that one hope that you have.
> If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life.
Of course it will, since price inflation is going to hit the low (or no) income people the hardest.
And if the government assistance you mentioned is all cut away, it's going to be much worse.
> If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life.
That government assistance is also being threatened (often by adding work requirements to it), and those odd jobs can also go away or become much more scarce if the economy goes over the edge.
Finally, the cost of everything will go up, which will hit those that are scraping by with odd jobs and government assistance the hardest.
I hope it doesn’t happen, but when you assert things are as bad as they can get, that just doesn’t match the situation you described. They can get worse.
When their government assistance goes to 0 and the prices of everything they buy go up, I'm sure they'll notice.
This is the same group who voted based on the price of eggs increasing.
You might still notice the cost of everything you buy going up ~20%
Don't they have to buy things too?
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