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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

#91

This needs to be repeated. Tariffs are a tax on ordinary citizens. Unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not progressive and therefore benefit the wealthy. These are the sort of things the poor and middle class voted for. To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.

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

#92
post #52

Austria, too. I know somebody working there in mid-management. They say the don't care about high or low taxes on the parcels they transport, but they need a straight forward way to execute, and there just is none.

Unless they're declared as gift <$100 or sent via Express.

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

#94
post #81

This needs to be repeated. Tariffs are a tax on ordinary citizens. Unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not progressive and therefore benefit the wealthy. These are the sort of things the poor and middle class voted for. To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.

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.

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

#95

This needs to be repeated. Tariffs are a tax on ordinary citizens. Unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not progressive and therefore benefit the wealthy. These are the sort of things the poor and middle class voted for. To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.

[deleted]

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

#96

This needs to be repeated. Tariffs are a tax on ordinary citizens. Unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not progressive and therefore benefit the wealthy. These are the sort of things the poor and middle class voted for. To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.

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

#97

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…

Thank you. And to further clarify, Japan Post provides a way to ship packages with the appropriate customs declarations.

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

#98

This needs to be repeated. Tariffs are a tax on ordinary citizens. Unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not progressive and therefore benefit the wealthy. These are the sort of things the poor and middle class voted for. To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.

I think it's quite the opposite. Tariffs are flat taxes on corporations AND can't be avoided with the tax shenanigans all big corporations use and many small ones can't. Implementation and motivation details aside I'm in favor of small tariffs for all but the most equal trade partners. Corporate taxes have the problem of small business paying much more proportionally than large ones and a flat tax on businesses that…

In the long run, tariffs basically all fall on the consumer because producer and distributor behavior is near infinitely elastic. Econ 101 predicts that the party who is less able to adjust behavior in reaction to the tax pays most of the tax.

In the short run, this isn't true: firms have goods they need to move.

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

#99
post #88

> "we will continue to accept letters, postcards, printed matter, EMS (documents), and postal items (small packets, parcels, and EMS (goods)) containing gifts between individuals with a value of less than US$100." So no, "mail" is not suspended. More accurate headline please.

Ecommerce of millions of people are facing a huge disruption. Think of Brexit. Commerce still happens between the UK and Europe, but there is a massive show-stopping level of friction now because people need to do Customs. That is a lot of paperwork. Millions of people are not used to this and many small businesses will get wiped out.

And this is worse than Brexit. As in that case both sides had very clear rules and processes already in place. It was significant new overhead and there might not have been border capacity. But at least how everything could be done was clear.

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

#100

This needs to be repeated. Tariffs are a tax on ordinary citizens. Unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not progressive and therefore benefit the wealthy. These are the sort of things the poor and middle class voted for. To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.

[flagged]

False dichotomy.
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