Comment by metalman
9 hours ago
depends, on which side, of the tarrifs an economy happens to be and where, geopoliticaly.
AI, or whatever a mountain of processors churning all of the worlds data will be called later, still has no use case, other than total domination, for which it has brought a kind of lame service to all of the totaly dependent go along to get along types, but nothing approaching an actual guaranteed answer for anything usefull and profitable, lame, lame, infinite fucking lame tedious shit that has prompted most people to.stop.even trying, and so a huge vast amount of genuine human inspiration and effort is gone
The thing about tariffs is you’re guaranteed to be on both sides because the other side retaliates.
Farmers get screwed twice because our tariffs increase the costs of their inputs and the retaliation reduces the value of outputs.
If I was a farmer I’d be tearing my hair out about now.
Farmers stand to benefit from the current administration's trade and immigration policy; bailouts are part of the program. Bailouts were given out during the trade wars in 2017-2020. Bailouts are expected to pay out in early 2026 as part of the annual farm aid bill due in November.
Farmers voted for tariffs so they should be happy. What, they didn't think tariffs were going to be bad when just slammed on the table? Maybe they should also think about higher education, to learn how things work beyond high school education.
They've had the education system they depend on attacked and weakened for generations, they've had fear and distrust of science, experts, and scholars drilled into them, and they've been told countless lies including very comforting lies about what tariffs would mean for them by the very people they were told were the only ones who could be trusted.
I can see the appeal of blaming farmers for getting exactly what they voted for, but honestly they were suckers who were victimized. My hope is that many of them will feel betrayed enough to break free from their indoctrination and start looking for truths and answers outside of the circles which have played them for fools, but that's not going to be an easy process since it'll mean challenging their closest held prejudices and the tearing down and rebuilding of core parts of their identity. That sort of thing is hard enough to do when your world isn't falling apart around you and the last thing the ones who are willing to try need is everyone telling them they deserved what was done to them and that they'll get no sympathy from anyone.
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In the last trade war (2017), the farmers got 18 billion dollars in bailouts. It's the same guy, so they're waiting again for their handouts.
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