"Pessimist" is a boring and typical way to spell "Realist".

It should be obvious that capitalism benefits capitalists, i.e. those with investment capital who then go on to invest it, more than anyone else.

It has become obvious to most that the alleged "job creators" focus is to destroy jobs for profit.

These results make it obvious that Republicans have a harder time seeing this fact, but we knew that already. They have more faith that the invisible hand of the alleged "free market" (which is an ideal, not an actual thing which has ever existed) will benefit them than do other people. Republicans are far more likely to believe that profits are deserved than Democrats. IME they are more likely to believe that jobs are created solely by investment by billionaires. But jobs are created both by those who invest in their function and the customers who purchase goods or services. Without both of them existing, the job does not exist.

Once the wealthy gain money it is spent twice on average before it goes into some type of tax avoidance scheme. When the working class gets their hands on it, it is on average spent five times before that happens. Allowing the capitalists to turn currency into capital therefore shrinks the economy. Then we ask how we're going to pay for social programs. The answer is conclusively not allowing capitalists to hoard currency.

This is not going to do that because...

...those are the same products your local B&M would be selling, because whole classes of product are no longer made in this country. It would take decades to bring manufacturing of those products and their components back here because it's chicken and egg. We shut down the companies that build the machines that make the products. As such, all of those products would be uncompetitively expensive even if customers have to pay import tariffs because the manufacturers would have to pay import tariffs on the components they are made from.

Most "American" consumer goods are now not only made in China, they're designed in China and just have an "American" (multinationally owned publicly traded corporation) brand name slapped on them. This is true of everything from spatulas to laptops. You are not getting a paradigm shift in production from an increase in tariffs when the same product that's $200 when ordered straight from China is $300-400 from Amazon and would be $400-600 in a B&M. Example, the stereo I put in my Versa, this is literally the kind of pricing I was seeing for (again, literally) the exact same product, which was sold under at least a dozen different brand names.

This exactly. The exact same stuff I buy from Aliexpress is regularly twice as expensive on Amazon, despite it often being drop shipped from China. The seller has to pay the Bezos tax. I would prefer to buy things in ways that create US jobs, but buying things from Amazon is only hastening the automation of US jobs, so buying from Amazon is actually speeding up economic collapse. They are putting A/C into warehouses to stop robots from overheating, where they were previously just working humans until they couldn't work any more and then replacing them with other humans. Bezos is an inhuman monster and giving him money is repugnant at best.

He made noises which suggested he believes it, but he lies constantly, so why would you believe him?

Like so many things.

The exporter creates a customs declaration when they ship the item.

Sometimes this is fraudulent, especially when it comes to small packages. But those packages are not going to be checked, because there are too many of them. I have three orders from Aliexpress on the way right now. Since de minimis ended for China in May, they all shipped after this change. All of them had a small (under 10%) fee for "Additional charges".

...which have happened with products imported in bulk and sold here in the USA by American companies. This change will not stop that from happening.

Yes, it's currently a hot topic where I live because the local Catholic hospital (which is rapidly becoming the only game in town) refused service to a woman who was hemorrhaging and sent her on her way with a bucket. This is the future^Wpresent that Republicans want.

It's been happening to white tourists. Also, those of us who have white skin but Hispanic heritage are going to be next. Both of my parents were born here. One of them, to a woman who fled Poland to avoid the Nazis. She gave birth to my mother in Wisconsin in 1938. Now I have to fear Nazis here in 2025.

Maggots should love Mohammed since he was a child fucker. But they hate him because he wasn't hard enough on homosexuals.

Restaurants must be laughing because they can sell water in a fancy looking bottle for 5x markup. The bottle probably costs more to make than the water in it.

They're actually trying to solve a non-issue with violence, which is even more American.

You have a negative balance of trade with your local grocery store. How exactly is this bad?

Ah, the classic
"If you're homeless, just buy a house. Duh!"

Its also likely less of an issue if you aren't from one of the latin America ethnic groups?

It's only a non-issue if you're white. If you're any other skin color, border agents have wide latitude on what they can do.

But between the increased scrutiny of everything, including searches of phones and other devices, the accidental possibility of being swept up by an ICE raid, and the possibility of getting jailed at the border, it seems like it's a risk not worth taking.

That's even why the general method is to cross the border by air - at many airports you can pre-clear US customs first before your flight. If they give you trouble, you can rightfully turn right around and leave. But if you do it at say, on US soil or at the border crossing on US soil, you can't and border agents can lock you up for a couple of weeks until they process you.

And right now, the only reason it hasn't fallen more is pretty much prepaid vacations - they booked the US flights and hotels and such ahead of time and changing it would lose them money. I expect it to get worse because all the pre-bookings have pretty much been used.

The only hope is FIFA but even that is looking rather grim with visas and such for players being iffy, and visitors from other countries possibly getting in trouble. There's even talk of moving more games to Canada to avoid the situation.

Conventions are booked years in advance, but you can bet Las Vegas is getting a bit worried. Who knew there were Mexican high rollers who basically are not visiting? Apparently their absence is causing a lot of hurt. And a lot of conventions where "other" (e.g., LGBTQ+) people often attend are also considering moving locations.

All for what, really? So he could take the economy back to the 1950s where manufacturing low value products ruled rather than high value high margin high skill manufacturing, or service oriented businesses like tourism where the marginal cost is low but the profits high.

EU is going in the exact same direction, for exact same reasons. Even methodology is mostly the same, such as cancelling de minimis loophole for imports (happened some time ago notably, before US), increasing import tariffs, changing postal payment rules, etc.

Most of those have always been in place for decades. The de minimis for most places is usually some trivial amount like $20 or so. This has been true for ages and the customs of the country expects it.

The US was unique in that they don't have many of those taxes - the de minimis being $800 dates to 1934, when you could probably buy a complete *house* from Sears for that price. US customs never had to process much in the way because for the most part, most shipments fell below the value.

What's doubly confusing is the way the taxes are being applied - you could declare the items contents and pay 36% of the value, or you could do the "flat rate". Additionally, the US is requiring all countries "pre pay" the tariffs - they have to be paid ahead of time.

In other countries, what happens is the item arrives, and Customs then assesses the duties and taxes and bills the recipient for them. The US is insisting on the amounts to be pre-paid before it enters the US, which is causing huge confusion because of the added paperwork.

Basically the US implemented a policy, the groundwork of which was not actually set up in time so now there's confusion on the whole thing.

That's the problem. It can be done - prepaying taxes and duties is soemthing Canada has had when buying from the US from many retailers who set up their systems to be able to prepay them. But it took years for it to happen. These days so many sites support it - Amazon and their "import fees", eBay with its "International Shipping" and stuff all supporting prepayment of the taxes and duties. But go back 10 or 15 years and we dealt with having to pay at the door, having to stay home to wait for packages to arrive (because they won't deliver without payment), etc.

The US is attempting to accomplish that in weeks what normally takes years. Fine if Trump 1.0 announced it, terrible because Trump gave basically no notice - he made noises, TACO, and the final policy wasn't written until literally the day before (well, a few weeks before, but big policy shifts take time).