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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

#331

Post by graeme »

folsom wrote: post #152
graeme wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tariffs are flat taxes on corporations The OP said tariffs are not progressive taxes. You are agreeing with them while believing you are disagreeing. Further tariffs are not specific to corporations. Individuals pay them. Small business pay them. Large businesses pay them.

Then you would agree that all corporate taxes are not progressive and are eventually paid by all consumers thus all corporate taxes should be abolished.

I recall my left leaning economics professor arguing for the abolition of corporate taxes along similar lines actually. You don't really deserve the downvotes other than perhaps for the aggressive tone.

(I'm not committing myself to the idea, only that it isn't obviously outside the norms of economic thought)

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

#332

Post by zymhan »

zahlman wrote: post #129
zymhan wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

This is not whataboutism. The argument described in GGP would apply the same way to GP's case. Cigarette taxes are a sales/consumption tax (specifically one aimed at discouraging consumption, but cigarettes are addictive) and they are necessarily, inherently regressive, for the simple reason that people with orders of magnitude more income and wealth cannot feasibly spend proportionately more on cigarettes.

It's bringing up an entirely unrelated topic as some sort of "gotcha". Cigarette taxes were not part of the GGP's comment. I.e. a red herring

> The communication intent is often to distract from the content of a topic (red herring). The goal may also be to question the justification for criticism and the legitimacy, integrity, and fairness of the critic, which can take on the character of discrediting the criticism, which may or may not be justified.

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

#333

Post by netfortius »

CalRobert wrote: post #6

You can still send letters- this is a big deal but it’s not -quite- as bad as I first thought since my ballot is mailed in from abroad…

Ability to send in a ballot (preventing such, that is) is being addressed by the supreme leader via another "initiative"

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

#335

Post by ajmurmann »

shadowgovt wrote: post #237
ajmurmann wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could rule by EO and just have them take effect further out, no?

And, indeed, it could be argued that past administrations have done that. Congressional deadlock has been an issue in the US for quite some time, and the administration has to go on anyway. Off the top of my head, I am reminded of Obama essentially ceding control of marijuana policy to the states by making it clear to the ATF that prosecuting federal possession crime in states that had legalized the drug was legal, w…

Nah, that's unfair! "Two weeks" seems to be a very popular timeframe as well.

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

#336

Post by Scoundreller »

solardev wrote: post #330
Scoundreller wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we used a similar methodology for testing cars, we’d be blasting watermelon heads from a cannon against windshields and sacks of potatoes against steering wheels. We’d benefit from more realistic models. But I guess our helmets would then cost $500.

Is the methodology that bad? What's wrong with it? From their test protocol ( https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/5e7... ), it looks like they simulate a fall (with a model head inside it) against a target at an oblique angle, at six different impact locations and two speeds each. They go through 4 of each helmet model for the rest. It seems a lot better than nothing (which is what we had before…

Crash test dummy on a mechanized bicycle falling off/hitting stuff.

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

#337

Post by harrydehal »

bsimpson wrote: post #308
johnbrodie wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DOT standard isn't good, but the US doesn't disallow helmets that meet other standards. You can buy Bell and Alpinestars MIPS helmets in the US today, no gray market needed: https://www.revzilla.com/mips-motorcycle-helmets

You're on a tangent of a tangent, but: Old school helmets use the philosophy that in a crash, you want your head to be harder than its opponent. New school helmet use the philosophy that a helmet should absorb or deflect as much energy as possible, so that energy doesn't get translated to your brain. They are actually diametrically opposed. Fortnine (the same channel I linked earlier) has a video on the SNELL standar…

"The Snell Helmet Standard is Meaningless"

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

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

#338

Post by voxl »

ericmay wrote: post #242
bsimpson wrote: post #198

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…

> 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. Everything has a trade-off. On the other hand, it also prevents companies from dumping artificially cheap and crappy goods (TEMU) on US markets and making it nearly impossible for others to compete. Unsuspecting consumers buy a super cheap (subsidized) crap p…

Everything does not have a tradeoff. This philosophy alone is bullshit.

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

#339

Post by Symbiote »

stouset wrote: post #154
bryzaguy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to pick a place to tax, the addictive, harmful substances seem like a good option. But that’s easy for me to say because I don’t smoke. I do like sugar though. Imagine the impact on our health if there were a sugar tax.

There is in some places. California has a hefty sugary-beverage tax, for example. I'm intuitively "for" things like this, but I'm curious if it's been long enough that we've been able to collect data showing any effects.

The UK sugary drink tax caused a reduction in sugar consumption, and reduced obesity and dental problems in children.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/09/uk-...

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

#340

Post by tzs »

monero-xmr wrote: post #307
tzs wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m open to the experiment where targeting a balanced trade with all countries as the goal Do you mean balanced trade as a whole, so it would be OK to have deficits or surpluses with individual countries as long as the total surpluses match the total deficits? Or do you mean trade with each individual country should be balanced?

I would be interested in balancing trade with each individual country, with magnitude of deficit taken into account (i.e. a tiny island country would have vastly less impact than China). Tariffs artificially increase costs of goods with another country. That should incentivize purchasing the goods from other countries, with the cheapest being our own. Of course we have very high labor costs, and lack a huge supply ch…

I don't see how balancing with each individual country makes sense.

Suppose for example the US needs to buy some natural resource from country X, which the US uses to build something that it sells to country Y at a very large profit. Suppose that the US doesn't export anything that country X needs or wants.

Balancing trade with X would mean cutting back on importing that natural resource, which would cut back on how much the US can build to sell to Y.

There will almost certainly also be loops in the graph of imports and exports. Things like A exports to B exports to C exports to A, with A, B, and C all having net balanced trade, but with each have a trade surplus with one of the others and a trade deficit with one.

If they all tried to force balanced trade with tariffs they just all end up paying more with no actual change in trade except possibly a reduction all around in the volume of trade.

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