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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

#391

Post by ericmay »

donkeybeer wrote: post #387
ericmay wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that you somehow are pegging me as a leftist I didn't mean to do that, and I apologize for that. I just meant that to the extent that you are associating tariffs with communism that those on the left will applaud Trump's tariffs and trade policies as they align with that ideology. Though as an aside, you mention that we're sliding toward LATAM style communism (again I think it's mercantilism and not commun…

Quality is to an extent a personal function, each person may have a different idea of what factors to consider in quality. But the word here is personal, I find it highly unpleasant when a state uses its might so transparently to force these choices. You should also not discount price. You can afford to, I can afford to buy something more expensive because we consider some other aspects of the item more important. Ag…

[dead]

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

#392

Post by dangus »

tines wrote: post #195
dangus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Untrue, Congress gave that power over to the executive branch.

By what legislation?

19 U.S.C. § 1862, 19 U.S.C. §§ 2251–55, 19 U.S.C. §§ 2411–20, 19 U.S.C. § 2132, 19 U.S.C. § 1338, and 50 U.S.C. §§ 1701–10

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48435

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

#393

Post by zahlman »

coryrc wrote: post #259
zahlman wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Democracy" is the form of government; you are speaking of voting systems, which are an implementation detail, and not in the same natural category. "Alternatives to democracy" are things like despotism, monarchy, communism, fascism etc.

It's a spectrum. If we're being pedantic, the US is already not a Democracy, but a Democratic Republic.

It has always been a constitutional republic by design; its status as a representative democracy is the result of a tradition of electoral college voters deciding to be "faithful" and listen to their constituents (overriding them is to my understanding a constitutional right).

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

#394

Post by zahlman »

runarberg wrote: post #324
coryrc wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a spectrum. If we're being pedantic, the US is already not a Democracy, but a Democratic Republic.

I don‘t think it is a spectrum either (if we are even more pedantic), or at least no a linear scale spectrum, but rather a system of government where democratic institutions ensure certain rights and privileges to common citizens and residents. So maybe a multidimensional spectrum where if you fail to meet a vaguely defined and constantly evolving threshold you are not a democracy. The USA today will probably (and ho…

> Disqualifications may include

I don't see why; many of those have nothing to do with what I would understand the concept of "democracy" to entail.

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

#395

Post by kalleboo »

ericmay wrote: post #388
slipperydippery wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Says who? Uh, labor costs? I guess we could work to lower those, though. Like, a lot lower. Meanwhile if the $2 wholesale-in-China shirt costs $30 on the shelf due to tariffs and the identical-quality US-made one costs $40 because that's just what it costs, the latter won't even be made, zero factories will start up to manufacture them. You'd have to raise prices a lot for it to make sense to even try, clothes are…

American made t-shirts today don't even cost $30.

What does "American made" mean? Is the raw fabric also made in America or is it just cut and sewn together in America?

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

#396

Post by tsunamifury »

mlyle wrote: post #374
tsunamifury wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure ok. You’re being weirdly belligerent.

You came here in your first comment blindly disagreeing with "This is your missing analysis." Then you seemed determined to misunderstand, e.g. > > But it's hard to escape your consumers paying most or all of the costs of those tariffs. > I think we agree if I'm understanding you correctly, yes the Suppliers have more elasticity and must ultimately absorb this. This is really simple fundamental microeconomics stuff.…

Literally not arguing with you, asked a few questions and made open statements and tried to listen. Consider if you see everyone around you as the asshole who the asshole might be...

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

#397

Post by runarberg »

zahlman wrote: post #394
runarberg wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don‘t think it is a spectrum either (if we are even more pedantic), or at least no a linear scale spectrum, but rather a system of government where democratic institutions ensure certain rights and privileges to common citizens and residents. So maybe a multidimensional spectrum where if you fail to meet a vaguely defined and constantly evolving threshold you are not a democracy. The USA today will probably (and ho…

> Disqualifications may include I don't see why; many of those have nothing to do with what I would understand the concept of "democracy" to entail.

I am predicting (and hoping) that the concept of democracy will continue to shift towards ever greater inclusion and increased human rights as it has in the past two centuries, and a future vision of democracy would disqualify the current system as undemocratic for some of the points above.

Just like how we don’t view pre-civil rights USA as democratic by modern standards. For example, we would never consider a country with legalized slavery to be democratic today. Similarly a future concept of democracy is unlikely to consider a country which practices the death penalty to be democratic by that hypothetical future standard.

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

#398

Post by ericmay »

kalleboo wrote: post #395
ericmay wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American made t-shirts today don't even cost $30.

What does "American made" mean? Is the raw fabric also made in America or is it just cut and sewn together in America?

Here is an example: https://www.allamericanclothing.com/collections/shirts/produ...

According to the website it’s compliant with the Berry Amendment, made in California, $15. From what I understand Berry Amendment “compliance” means all raw material and manufacturing is exclusively US sourced and US manufactured.

A quick comparison I saw was this:

  A “Made in USA” jacket could have fabric from China but still be assembled in the U.S.

  A Berry Compliant jacket must have U.S.-made fabric, thread, zippers, and even labels!
There’s a lot of different variations of these products in general and this is just one example.

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

#399

Post by mlyle »

tsunamifury wrote: post #396
mlyle wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You came here in your first comment blindly disagreeing with "This is your missing analysis." Then you seemed determined to misunderstand, e.g. > > But it's hard to escape your consumers paying most or all of the costs of those tariffs. > I think we agree if I'm understanding you correctly, yes the Suppliers have more elasticity and must ultimately absorb this. This is really simple fundamental microeconomics stuff.…

Literally not arguing with you, asked a few questions and made open statements and tried to listen. Consider if you see everyone around you as the asshole who the asshole might be...

I think "this is your missing analysis" is a strong assertion to make to another human-- that sounds like an invitation to argue the merits. Through text, we don't have the benefit of tone.

If your intention was to be curious about it, your comments don't convey that.

> Consider if you see everyone around you as the asshole who the asshole might be...

And now you're just effectively calling names.

If you want to talk about economic concepts in a forum like this, you should either ask questions or fill yourself in on the foundational knowledge.

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

#400

Post by mlyle »

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…

> We will have to pay more, and we should, for those things.

No. US labor costs are high and working conditions are better, in large part, because US labor is worth it and US productivity is high. That labor is spent in high value industries and is often highly skilled.

We should accept we're better at some things and trade according to the principle of comparative advantage.

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