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Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

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Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#191

Post by oblique »

georgeplusplus wrote: post #142
paxys wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all tax is the same. The left prefers progressive taxation (if you make more income you pay more tax), the right prefers regressive (if you buy or use goods or services you pay tax on them). Sales taxes and tariffs are in the latter category.

It’s disingenuous to consider one’s total income when weighing the fairness of a tax like sales tax. The thought that a sales tax is somehow benefiting one group over the other is ridiculous far left extreme thinking. You pay for a service and that service has a rate. To think that the only good kind of taxation are those that are progressive is the dumbest thing I ever heard.

The taxes will have to come from somewhere. Tariffs are a regressive tax because money spent on goods will increase sublinearly with income. The % of total income spent on tariffs passed onto the consumer is therefore higher the lower your income is. It's not "ridiculous far left extreme thinking", it's basic math.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#192

Post by ActorNightly »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #180
ActorNightly wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You can support some of trumps policies while thinking the insurrectionist peadophile should be behind bars You can also support tarrifs in principal but not support the way they have been implemented (club not calpol, used as a political weapon or to extract mafia style favours)

Yes, but that is not what is happening here.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#193

Post by bendbro »

os2warpman wrote: post #172
msgodel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not nearly as bad as income tax which would have to be raised if we didn't do tariffs. At least tariffs tax consumption rather than production. Taxing production/income is horribly evil and in better times (such as when the country was founded) people who insisted on it would have been shot.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#194

Post by ActorNightly »

stouset wrote: post #170
ActorNightly wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's absolutely insane. I know we don't want HN to devolve into political bickering, but this is a deeply important meta-observation about what's happening in our country right now. Trump's stochastically random decisions are so inscrutable, but his following is so cult-like, that his followers are forced to flail around to try and find any plausible justification for these actions. You'd think that at some point the…

I hate that this is somehow is still viewed as political, when the topic has moved far past that to the point where you are arguing with conservatives that can't comprehend actual reality.

Like this is philosophical more than political.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#196

Post by shadowgovt »

ghssds wrote: post #135
shadowgovt wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One alternative that has been tried (and is, arguably, still being tried) is Constitutional Republic. The difference is that some things get hammered into a Constitution and are indisputable without a significant process. That counterweights the populist "half of everyone is below average" effect. Someone convinces a whole bunch of people that maybe slavery is actually super useful sometimes? Thirteenth amendment. A…

> Someone convinces a whole bunch of people that maybe slavery is actually super useful sometimes? Thirteenth amendment. Actually the thirteenth amendment explicitely allows slavery to exist in a case a whole bunch of people (maybe even yourself) think is super useful.

I was handwaving around the exception for criminals, but I concede your point: it's an oversimplification to say slavery is strictly illegal.

(One can also make some interesting arguments around the notion of the draft).

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#197

Post by tempodox »

4ndrewl wrote: post #27

It's the price of uncertainty. Business can plan for low tax or high tax regimes. Not so much when it's just "unknown". Similar across Europe https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/25/postal-serv...

Main thing is uncle Donald gets his beloved chaos and unpredictability. God forbid anything could be predictable or knowable without his direct personal approval. After an appropriate tribute, of course.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#198

Post by bsimpson »

There was chatter about this in one of the NYC subreddits over the weekend.

Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are.

There's a frustratingly long list of goods that the US decided to put requirements on in previous generations, and then stopped maintaining. Sunscreen is one; other countries have invented sunscreens that feel better on your skin than the old styles, but aren't yet approved in the US. Motorcycle helmets are another. You may have seen the MIPS system - the yellow slipliner that's become popular in bicycle helmets. Scientists have realized that rotational impact leads to concussions and similar brain damage, but prior helmets only protected against naive impacts. Europe now requires helmets to protect against rotational damage. The US requires that manufacturers self-assert that they meet a very old standard that ignores rotational impact. They do not recognize Europe's new standard.

Closing these de minimus exemptions is making it harder for discerning consumers to buy higher quality goods than are currently available in the US right now. Protectionists are going to see this as a win.

More background on helmet standards:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BUyp3HX8cY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76yu124i3Bo

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#200

Post by ethbr1 »

cuuupid wrote: post #185
freen wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies have reserves, local stock etc. Fixed prices are a bet on TACO and hoping to avoid the orange rage: see what happens when you blame price increases on tariffs. Lots and lots of bribes have been paid. This is yet another.

We will definitely see but it's still a theory at this point, and one that has not played out the other way in the past with a reduction on corporate tax _across the board_ > Fixed prices are a bet on TACO Having been part of some of these conversations it's mostly a bet that democrats will win back control sometime in the next decade and do a full reversal. When that happens, you don't want to be caught out with les…

It's not a theory -- every business that imports product from international sellers is staring at their current import prices and their remaining pre-tariff inventory numbers right now. (See the huge import volume burst pre-tariffs)

What they're trying to decide is (a) do they eat the cost of tariffs in margin or (b) do they raise prices?

That's a decision that doesn't need to be made until they burn through warehoused inventory, but for high-volume businesses (read: retail) it's measured in months at most.

Once that hits, either (a) or (b) will be chosen, and neither is great for equities markets / the economy.

Moreover, there's no "hiding this under the rug" once publicly traded companies begin to report quarterly financial results AFTER burning through their pre-tariff inventory. They can't not explain to their shareholders why they've taken a hit to profitability.

Best possible case is retail prices rise, once, by the amount of tariffs, and that's that.

But a 15%+ price hike is going to be an uncomfortable narrative for those in power who insist tariffs won't raise prices... so I'm not betting that conversation goes logically.*

* See the reaction part of Amazon got when they "accidentally" line-itemed tariff charges as evidence on how dangerous the administration sees transparency around tariff costs

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