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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

#351

Post by ericmay »

phil21 wrote: post #343
ericmay wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The tradeoff here is “pay the middleman markup tax” for the most part. Instead of getting cheap Chinese made clothing for $5, you now get to pay Walmart $17 for the same thing. If we are going to outsource production in order to save on consumer goods costs, the consumer should be the one reaping the surplus - not capital. Properly informed buyers were quite capable of getting quality product out of China for a tenth…

> Instead of getting cheap Chinese made clothing for $5, you now get to pay Walmart $17 for the same thing.

Right... but now that is (arguably) cost competitive with American labor and manufacturing. Or at least it's more cost competitive than it otherwise would be.

I mean this is kind of the price of putting what we say first. Want higher minimum wages, higher environmental standards, unionized labor, benefits/healthcare, lunch breaks, etc.? We will have to pay more, and we should, for those things.

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

#352

Post by zahlman »

zymhan wrote: post #332
zahlman wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> It's bringing up an entirely unrelated topic as some sort of "gotcha"

Expecting people to be consistent, and treat similar situations similarly, is not a "gotcha". Challenges like this are raised exactly to hold people to their own standards and question whether they are really okay with the consequences of what they just said.

The topic described is not at all "entirely unrelated". There is a clear natural category which encompasses both tariffs and cigarette taxes.

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

#353

Post by donkeybeer »

ericmay wrote: post #351
phil21 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tradeoff here is “pay the middleman markup tax” for the most part. Instead of getting cheap Chinese made clothing for $5, you now get to pay Walmart $17 for the same thing. If we are going to outsource production in order to save on consumer goods costs, the consumer should be the one reaping the surplus - not capital. Properly informed buyers were quite capable of getting quality product out of China for a tenth…

> Instead of getting cheap Chinese made clothing for $5, you now get to pay Walmart $17 for the same thing. Right... but now that is (arguably) cost competitive with American labor and manufacturing. Or at least it's more cost competitive than it otherwise would be. I mean this is kind of the price of putting what we say first. Want higher minimum wages, higher environmental standards, unionized labor, benefits/healt…

You should trust people who live in countries that tariff a lot. You won't get quality crap. When tariffs cause the imported good to become equal to $200, the local good doesn't suddenly get cheaper it rises to match $180. Obviously any incentive that remained for local product to improve is now totally dashed too because of state forced back protection from competition. You end up paying multiple times the prices for the same shit sane countries buy much cheaper than you and life turns to shit, and the lower classes don't get better but end up loosing more money on the same crap.

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

#354

Post by dpkirchner »

yibg wrote: post #286
hdgvhicv wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Invisible hand forces prices down. If tarrifs on imported goods are high then people choose non imported goods (which might be substitutes for goods which can’t be made in America) as there are no tarrifs. They are dangerous though. If country A stops selling to US it sells cheaper to other countries. It also stops importing from the US (and chooses subsidies). Overall everyone loses out - at least in theory, as ever…

If non imported goods were price competitive with imported goods then tariffs won't be needed in the first place. Tariff's are there for artificially force imported good to be more expensive so the previous more expensive domestically produced products become price competitive.

And if the tariff is set too high domestic goods will become more expensive as well as there'd be no reason for a domestic manufacturer to charge substantially less than the price of the imported goods.

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

#355

Post by trenchpilgrim »

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…

The motorcycle helmet part of this comment is misleading. I can walk down the street to cycle gear and buy an ECE 22.06 rated helmet with MIPS. This is because ECE is a strict superset of DOT, so companies just sell the ECE version in the US with a DOT sticker added on. (I have spoken to the helmet companies about this directly - most respond to a quick email.)

It's not like ECE vs SNELL where the standards are incompatible.

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

#356

Post by trenchpilgrim »

93po wrote: post #203
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…

i appreciate you mentioning MIPS - i had no idea there was a new, better standard, and i'll definitely get one for my next helmet (motorcycle)

MIPS is a technology, not a standard. There are other technologies for rotational trrauma protection.

The current best standard for consumers is ECE 22.06.

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

#357

Post by jq-r »

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…

I think the obvious problems is that majority of riders actually have hair and from my experience the chin strap isn’t very very tightly strapped (you want to speak normally I suppose).

Hair gives you considerable slip area making the inner rotational liners redundant or maybe even too much.

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

#358

Post by trenchpilgrim »

jq-r wrote: post #357
solardev wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the obvious problems is that majority of riders actually have hair and from my experience the chin strap isn’t very very tightly strapped (you want to speak normally I suppose). Hair gives you considerable slip area making the inner rotational liners redundant or maybe even too much.

> from my experience the chin strap isn’t very very tightly strapped

Not on a motorcycle helmet! The double D ring system forces you to cinch it tight, and it does not restrict your jaw or make it hard to talk.

If you are experiencing this your helmet may be the wrong size. Most riders are picking helmets that are far too large.

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

#359

Post by slipperydippery »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #282
schmookeeg wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring the massive political elephant that exists in all of this stuff -- isn't this a good trigger, as demand for the "updated standards" products will force these companies (or resellers of these products) to either validate their products for sale in the US or force the US to recognize these EU standards? I suppose an immediate counterpoint is that the US Consumer seems unwilling to clamor for high-quality produ…

For sunscreen, they just make a separate less effective version for the US market. The market of people who would say "well, I won't buy sunscreen at all unless it's as good as foreign variants at blocking UV-A rays" is pretty small.

The real harm of the sunscreen thing is that the FDA being weirdly far behind the rest of the OECD at approving new agents means we're stuck with stuff that's a pain to apply and feels gross to wear. This harms health, because people will be less consistent about applying and re-applying when it takes more time than it might, and when the product feels nasty on the skin.

Many grey-market imported sunscreens apply in like 1/4 the time of US ones, feel like nothing at all once rubbed in, don't leave your hands feeling oily and like you need to scrub hard with soap and water right after applying, and have almost no odor. We're like decades behind on that tech, for reasons that I don't understand.

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

#360

Post by ericmay »

donkeybeer wrote: post #353
ericmay wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of getting cheap Chinese made clothing for $5, you now get to pay Walmart $17 for the same thing. Right... but now that is (arguably) cost competitive with American labor and manufacturing. Or at least it's more cost competitive than it otherwise would be. I mean this is kind of the price of putting what we say first. Want higher minimum wages, higher environmental standards, unionized labor, benefits/healt…

You should trust people who live in countries that tariff a lot. You won't get quality crap. When tariffs cause the imported good to become equal to $200, the local good doesn't suddenly get cheaper it rises to match $180. Obviously any incentive that remained for local product to improve is now totally dashed too because of state forced back protection from competition. You end up paying multiple times the prices fo…

I don't think we're comparing apples to apples though, and even so it's again just a trade-off we can make.

> the local good doesn't suddenly get cheaper it rises to match $180

Lowering prices isn't the goal, otherwise we could just export everything to (insert low-cost country here) and have products made as cheaply as possible regardless of working conditions or other considerations. The goal in part with tariffs would be to make it so that domestic products or products from friendly countries are cost competitive, not necessarily cheaper. Some folks just want the cheapest possible products and they don't care about any other issue. But that's just one factor among many for the nation. Some think that we should have lunch breaks and 40 hour work weeks and different environmental standards - that costs money and makes labor more expensive in countries like the United States.

I would disagree that there isn't an incentive to improve your local products, at least in the United States. The market here is big enough that we generally have competition regardless of whether or not competitors from other countries are participating in the market. But even so, it's not like competitors aren't participating in the market even with tariffs, it just changes the pricing calculations.

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