Leopards Ate My Face

Bring on the downvotes but the correct answer is don't. Free trade causes jobs in each country to align with recardiant advantage in those countries. We have the jobs we want now. Unless we are in the middle of a depression we don't want government to "provide more jobs". We don't need more jobs. We want better jobs. The whole reason why manufacturing has slowed down in the US is that the global market for manufacturing doesn't pay as well per man hour as other opportunities we already have.

Tariffs disrupt existing jobs to bring back old jobs. Old jobs we shouldn't want as much as the jobs we have now.

If you want to work a job that someone else is doing right now you should probably expect to make close to what they are making while doing it. Actually less because you are increasing supply. Do we want Americans to make Chinese wages? Now some manufacturing in the US doesn't pay Chinese wages because its work only we can do, hence why it is here, and pays American wages. But if you want to "take back manufacturing" then you are talking specifically about manufacturing they have already demonstrated they can do. So any of that manufacturing will pay at most a Chinese wage. Why the hell would you want those jobs?

I can tell you! It's just not a quick, easy, single bill that we can pass. It takes a fundamental change in the way Americans think, it's gonna take at least 2 generations to make this move.

Here's the plan: we're gonna promote cooperation. We're gonna get people to notice the systematic problems in the way they are treated by their authorities. We need to aggressively be better than our enemies, both in practice and knowledge.

Here's the method: (Essay ahead).

We need to disrupt almost every single system that currently exists. They're basically all fucked. Start with the ones that get the most people motivated - their basic needs first, entertainment second, their wellbeing third. That feels wrong and it is, we need 2 generations to fix this because we've been beat down by this system so bad the priorities aren't even correct anymore. I've been using this tagline recently "People in homes, food in bellies, minds entertained and health maintained."

You as an individual can and, if you want to have an impact of saving literally the world and not just America, probably should start doing your part for this plan. Give away what you can, but never what you need. And be careful, because you might need that later. Never let that get in the way, though, of giving what you can. Bring your neighbors grocery money when you have a bit of extra cash, and offer to start a food co-op to make sure they never go hungry. It sucks, because I know damn well I wanna go spend that extra 20 bucks to treat myself and you probably do too. But if you go give it away instead, it'll come back to you. Not immediately, and not always symmetrically. But it will come back to benefit you in some way. We need to shift the focus towards the community instead of the individual. I have plans for the other steps, if you'd like I can go into them. But the food co-ops are the best first step IMO

Where did you get the idea that tariffs are supposed to increase domestic production in any way?

can anyone tell me what the alternative plan was to bring manufacturing back to the states?

what’s the alternative?

A better plan would have involved local subsidies and tax rebates for various industries that have the ability to be cheaper than existing outsourced infrastructure if they were to be developed with a large enough economy of scale, to incentivize them to engage in local production.

And for industries in which we wouldn't experience lower prices even with larger local economies of scale, such as those involved in mining mineral deposits we simply don't have enough of here in the states, we just... wouldn't do anything to tariff anybody or provide incentives if it wouldn't be something we were capable of benefiting from via local production?

And wasn’t that always going to make things more expensive?

These other methods would make things more expensive too, (albeit much less so) but they would directly incentivize local production, and crucially, only cost money when production was actually made locally. Nobody would get a tax rebate or subsidy if nobody was actually starting local production. With tariffs, however, everyone begins paying a higher cost, regardless of if local manufacturing is even happening, let alone if it's cost effective or possible in the first place.

Tariffs are just an inefficient way of incentivizing local production compared to other options, because they primarily exist to punish other countries and their economies, rather than uplift our own. They can be used to incentivize local production, but if not properly linked with subsidies, rebates, and job programs, they aren't terribly effective at doing that, and they will almost always lead to higher prices on an ongoing basis.

yeah, the point of being nice is to create a better world with better people who will be more capable of being nice.

and because it feels good.

but being nice to nazis doesn't feel nice, and it makes the world a more dangerous place, where being nice is harder and riskier and less pleasant.

laughing at their suffering is pretty great though. pointing and laughing at their suffering maybe makes the world a slightly better place, long term.

So ask yourself we someone who voted for Trump whines about tariffs. Is this person just dumb or a total piece of shit?.

I say both. They are stupid racist homophobic assholes and deserve any pain they get for their choices. And though we should do everything we can to help those who will be hurt by Trump's policies, I sincerely hope that every single person who voted for that POS experiences an absolute fuck ton of pain and suffering in the coming months and years.

They're a tool for correcting price alterations on the seller side. If China is subsidizing the manufacturing of Fidgets, a matching tarrif on the import of Fidgets protects domestic manufacturing from artificially cheap competition by preventing consumers from seeing those low prices.

The subsidies don't even need to be hostile. The US subsidizes food to lower domestic costs, ensure a stockpile, and keep farmers happy. The side effect of driving down world grain prices is incidental.

Additionally, they strike me as the stick that pairs best with a carrot to spur domestic production of whatever you've put tarrifs on, along the lines of the CHIPS act.

Schools should really put much more focus on explaining what science is and what it does

Hard agree. The US is currently speed running to third world status and its entirely because of education, and i assume its happening elsewhere based on the rise of conmen in leadership. Anyone who thinks for themself who has ever had a conversation with anyone MAGA on why they believe what they believe, will know that it was just because they were told to believe it. They do not have any sort of internal reasoning, they look to someone that fits their world view of what a leader looks like and then they believe every word that they say. It is the same way most people relate to religion, do not think about it, just have faith.

So when you mix together a wildly de-funded and heavily politicized education system that turns out followers who outsource reasoning to authority figures, with modern American solipsistic culture that allows the worst human beings alive to be seen as role models, then it was always just a matter of time before conmen took the reigns of the country. Anyone who is ever trying to argue their point with reasoning and facts will appear on the defense to any conman that is just riffing innacuracies, and the uneducated masses will see the conman as in control, which will then make them trust that person, it doesn't go any deeper than that.

Humans are fucking stupid.

It was killing me with the pandemic. ''I'm not sure about mRNA vaccines, I'm doing my own research'' homie, researching a vaccine means you are running a immunology lab. You're not researching, you're listening to a nut trying to sell you an unregulated vitamin in place of real medicine.

I have had "researcher" jobs that were not 'doing science'. I needed either journal access, or scihub/libgen, putting together shit my boss wanted to know.

Here in the UK properly researching topics was something we did in multiple classes in secondary/high school. Not just googling shit for an essay but checking our sources as well as source authors and dates.

I long for the time when people said "I read a Facebook page"

Generally my circle watches 12 45-second videos on TikTok which gave them bias from assuming seeing it more places made it more right. They don't even have to go to the comments to get bamboozled.

I don't see how that would help. In the ideal case of a finished product, tariffs artificially raise the effective price for the buyer; they don't change the math on the cost of production. Usually, they hurt the producing/exporting firm by forcing it to increase the asking price, which reduces sales. It reduces sales because the buying/importing firm has to pay higher prices. If the buying/importing firm gets tax reductions that are directly tied to the tariff, then its out-of-pocket expense hasn't changed, and it can just keep buying the imported product with no effect on its profits. That means that the producing/exporting firm can still sell exactly the same volume of product at the higher price, covering the tariff cost, with no effect on its profits. Nothing much has changed, except a bunch of extra paperwork and transactions.

There's only incentive to move production locally if the buying/importing firm can switch to a cheaper, local product, but retain the tax benefits, allowing it to keep more money. But that means the tariff money is no longer being collected, so somebody else is paying the taxes while not getting the benefits. In short, tariffs can only work by causing pain to somebody locally.

That's 2 if's. Sure, IF both of those things were true, maybe it would net out, but still be a paperwork and cashflow delay for the company (pay the duty today, get the money back at some point in the future) which sucks liquidity out of the market and generally holds back growth and investment.

But that isn't particularly relevant since neither of those two things will ever happen. The tax cuts will go to the top earners, and retaliatory tariffs are very much a thing and cannot be ignored.