memes

I ordered a pair of boots from Mexico, they were shipped with all of the correct paperwork and should not have been tariffed at all. It added ~$60 to the original cost of $170.

When you submit a tariff refund request they warn you multiple times that if your submission is rejected you will be charged $100 per submission. It can be rejected for making a mistake on the paperwork even if they find the tariff was applied incorrectly. I almost didn't submit for it, and a lot of people won't but I decided to risk it. That was a few months ago and I still haven't heard back.

We pay. Then we pay again.

It's as simple as that and just as fucked up. Our so-called government does not work for us.

Well the companies paid the tarrifs, not the consumers.

This was so obvious that anyone paying attention could see this coming a mile away. I'm probably the unpopular opinion, but I think the government should have just not issued any refunds. I would rather the government get funds to potentially use for social welfare than to give it back to businesses. The only problem is that would create an incentive for the government to try it again for another quick payday. Some mechanism would have to be put into place to stop this. Take away the power from the president to issue tarrifs on his own. Which we should probably do anyway.

Let's be honest. The highest estimates I find are around $160 billion in illegal tariffs. If we split that evenly it would work out to around $640 for every person over 18 in the country.

What good would giving 250 million people each $640 do? For 99% of them it would be gone as soon as they got it. They'd waste it on things like rent, bills, food, gas money. Temporary things. Within a month almost no one would have anything to show for it.

But giving a relative handful of large companies hundreds of millions to several billion dollars each? For them it's pure profit. Their bills are already paid. They've already used the profits from that year for stock buybacks to get their wealthy shareholders more money and divided the rest giving their executives huge bonuses. And now suddenly they all have huge amounts more profit almost out of thin air.

It's money to invest in AI to replace human labor so the coming years can be even better, to do even more stock buybacks so that the people who own the most stock in each company see huge increases in their net worth, or do give CEOS a second round of yearly bonus. Months and years from now there will still be amazing homes, yachts, private islands, and new faces that we'll all be able to point to as the lasting good that came from this.

I kicked a trumper out of my D&D group after I finally got of tolerating his shit. He thought Trump would be better for our economy. No regrets.

So we were all robbed. Again.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany moment now....

... it's going to start to trickle down.