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Also feel free to check out !leopardsatemyface@lemm.ee (also active).
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Real answer is in the last line there. If 60% of people we're capable of doing their own research (and arriving at the correct answer) then we wouldn't have anti-vaxers, flat-earthers and non-billionaire/non-bigot/non-christian nationalist republicans.
The problem lies where they "find" their "research" when they see the answer they want to see on social media rather than an actual study or any factual references.
"He was told the other countries pay the tariffs", by a bunch of liars and he believed the liars.
The real hard part is it's a partial truth.
The sellers do pay the tariffs, they just don't talk about what that does to the prices.
The other problem is it cuts both ways, and a number of the idiots will say as long as you're hurting them too, fine.
And then we have retaliatory tariffs, which also cut both ways.
IMHO, our biggest issue is we've been using cheap Chinese products and labor as a crutch instead of increasing wages. They've been able to cut down wages because Amazon, Temu and Shein have been providing products WAY WAY under marketable US made prices.
I recently learned that almost 1 in 5 Americans are illiterate.
How many Americans do you think are reasonably well educated, so that they would understand somewhat complex issues like tariffs? Or could seek out information if they didn't understand?
Important note - literacy isnβt simply about being able to recognize and pronounce letters and words. A person can sound out every word in English, and understand what each word says, and still be illiterate if they cannot comprehend the message the words express together.
Thatβs where this illiteracy arises - itβs a failure of reading comprehension. In this light, I imagine many of us have attempted conversation online with somebody functionally illiterate.
Im still surprised by that , the quality of education in my country is low but holly fuck im stunned by the lack of education in the states
It is highly regional, too.
Despite the existence of the Department of Education (which Trump is trying to dismantle), there is no national standard for education in the US. In general, each state is free to decide upon its own policies and standards.
Some states, such as those in the northeast, have very high-performing school systems. So when that "1 in 5 are illiterate" statistic is mentioned (I actually have not verified that number, just quoting the prior claim as an example), it would be caused by low-performing states where the situation is much more dire dragging down the national average.
Here's a general look at quality of education in the US by state, though recommend folks look up their own numbers because I haven't validated the numbers pulled in the article I grabbed this from.
It's not a perfect divide between red states and blue states (Florida appears good, California less so, as an example), but in general we see the lower performing states located mainly in the South where the Republicans have more support. Basically, a less educated populace is easier to manipulate.
I was reading into this recently and the reason Florida is so high on these lists is because post-secondary education is very cheap. Their K-12 education is on the garbage end of the spectrum.
For extra fun, look into where school districts allocate their funding and how it relates to their rankings. Some of the worst performing public schools spend a lot more on athletics than they spend on anything else. It's like they want to be professional athlete mills instead of functioning adult mills.
It's by design.
I wrote a comment explaining Tariffs on a Fox News YouTube video a few weeks back, and the entire reply chain was people arguing with eachother about how tariffs work because "Trump said it's a tax on other countries, so that's how they work"
Youβre doing godβs work in the hellish trenches
That's front line in "Trench Crusade" level of trenches.
Doing your own research or, you know, trust the experts? There's no way I will get deep enough into virology to get a proper grasp if I need a vaccination. But I for sure won't trust a random space Karen or brainworm Jimmy.
Some people genuinely are fucking dumber than a rock
The whole thing was very purposefully talked about using the word "tariff" and never ever its synonym "import tax" exactly so that the traditional Fascist technique of redefining the meaning of words could be easily used: if all the Fascists' speech had been about "import taxes" they would not have been able to leverage most people's ignorance anywhere near this level because the very words "import" and "tax" were already reasonably well understood by most - unlike "tariff" - so the opinion makers would not have been able to miseducate their targets anywhere as easily.
I'm not saying that the people who fell for this are to be excused - if there is something important enough for you to put the effort into educating yourself, it's Politics - I'm saying it's understandable how so many were so easy to swindle.
Man, this isn't even "doing your research" it's just knowing what very basic words mean.
I bet a coworker $20 that "tariff" and "tax" were synonyms. Motherfucker refused to pay up, calling merriam-webster.com, thesauraus.com, wikipedia etc. "fake news".
A tariff is a tax or custom duty on an imported good.
Tariffs can lead to a reduction and higher prices on foreign imported goods.[1] Like the corporate income tax, domestic consumers ultimately pay the tax in higher prices.
Your mistake was referencing a woketionary.
Arguing with idiots is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, the bird is going to shit on the board and strut around like it won anyway.
It's anti-intellectualism.
You don't need to understand any of it, you can just ask people who spend their lives researching this stuff.
Or, we can hold the fucking media accountable for telling blatant lies about the impacts of tariffs.
Fox News got around that by claiming they're entertainment, not news.
Per their own arguments in court, no reasonable person would consider Fox News to be factual.
Ignorance is not an excuse. Fire all MAGAs for taxifs.
The OP is battling against what Faux Newz, Dipshit Donnie, and other right-wing propagandist shitrags are telling his employee, all which the employee takes as indesputable truth. If he can override that much brainwashing he can convince anyone of anything.
"The Big Lie" is what Sanders is calling it.
How many "big lies" are we up to now?
Of course the employee is wrong, but the OOP isn't tackling the argument in a really productive way. There's an opportunity to meet the employee where they are.
People caught in the right wing noise machine always seem to understand that businesses pass on business taxes to the consumer. So, if other countries were paying the tariffs, why wouldn't they pass those costs on?
Did you read the post? It sounds like they explained it thoroughly to them prior to the tariffs going into effect and it went in one ear and out the other.
I read the post. I understood the post. Did you understand what I said?
You can be perfectly correct, or you can reach people who reject reality. You gotta decide on your goals, and understand that peacocking on the Internet isn't useful.
You gotta decide on your goals, and understand that peacocking on the Internet isnβt useful.
Is that what I did?
You implied that they didnβt read the short post, when they clearly did.
Isn't this the same debate as to how one country can (or cannot) force another country to pay for a random construction project that isn't in anyones interest (that wall)?
It's not like the concept is beyond (basically, 99.9+%) anyones cognitive abilities. It's just how ads (the science behind it is plentiful, it's a giant business sector) work on human brains.
and every one of the millions who ~~were~~are just as dumb, will forget the lessons learned well before the next election and vote for it all over again.
...next election?
You know, the one Trump wins with 106% of the totaled votes.
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