A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
Our Goals
Sounds like business per usual for Americans.
This is the system working as designed. I'm not sure how anyone missed that.
And while tariffs were in place Amazon was passing on those savings, or lack thereof, to customers. So they mostly didn't see any losses from paying the tariffs. Then they get refunded, and then it's less that the government actually paid Amazon anything, they just gave them a reason to charge people extra in shipping, for no good reason.
Whether those costs were rendered in the shipping cost on Amazon, or by simply marking up the prices so that they could account for those extra costs, doesn't really matter.
Consumers ended up paying this bill. The 650M "refund" was just the government exempting them from costs that the government should not have collected from them in the first place.
And note how prices didn't plummet afterwards. It was a universal price hike on all Americans disguised as regulatory issue.
They never do.
"The Democrats caused this by not letting the tariffs go to reducing my income taxes"
-Future Americans
That's the way it ALWAYS is. Some corporation does something terrible to consumers, and the government fines them a fraction of the profit from the terrible behavior, and then celebrates with a press release about how great they are.
Meanwhile the consumer is still screwed, the corporation still made a profit on their corruption, and the government got their beak wet.
When we take it back, these sorts of corporate fines should be much more onerous (minimum $1 billion per count), including confiscation of entire corporations and entire estates, and the money placed in the "America First Fund" (irony intended), to be the seed money for all the Social program we're going to launch - health care, college/trade school, pre-K, student loan forgiveness, UBI, etc. Use these fines to directly help the people that were hurt by corporate misadventure: the Citizens.
"Fixing America on their dime, while punishing them for their crime" could be the program's slogan.
Are they though?
Spoiler: No
I'm pretty sure you guy's fought a revolution over this...
Not really, that's just how it's been portrayed over time. The American revolution wasn't led by American workers, it was agitated by the founding American aristocracy who were angry that there was a higher power than them controlling how they made their money. Many of the founding fathers made their fortunes from smuggling operations.
It's not like they abolished taxation or gave broad representation to average Americans. The American revolution was a revolution for the rich by the rich. It's the reason why we have a bicameral Congress, where senators act as overseer over the decisions of the common people. It wasn't until the 17th amendment passed in 1913 that senators actually started to be elected by the people.
Yup, and IIRC the colonies did benefit from the taxation. King George built infrastructure and provided soldiers and shit.
"Revolution? Nah, that takes effort and I'm not about to do that!! Next you'll be wanting me to protest, or something. Pfffft. Plus we all know protesting is almost impossible in today's age of instant communication...
Anyway. Listen. Listen. The midterms. We'll totally destroy them in the midterms. You'll see. After the midterms they'll all be leaving the country, or be in prison. Just wait for the midterms, bro!!!"
Yes and, any effort to disenfranchise voters from voting is an effort in favor of the red Republican party who is actively doing gestures tiredly at everything
Customers pay the tariffs. And then tax payers (customers) pay for the tariff refunds. Which the corporations pocket because it's too difficult to return it to the customers.
Don't forget the interest on the debt acquired to make the repayment!
Difficult for cash sales maybe. Anything paid with a credit card should be dead easy.
I think Cards against humanity are giving people their tariff back.
If I go to Walmart and pay by credit card, well in the old days they didn't track what the individual bought, just the total. And they probably don't want to admit it if they do. Online like Amazon keeps track.
Americans are not going to do anything about it lol.
Say that after the Midterms.
I hope the rigging attempts won't be successful
It's extremely hard to rig a Midterm, too many tiny Congressional races. All you can do is manipulate them through gerrymandering and propaganda and hope for the best. It will help them a little bit this time, but they are going to be so overwhelmed by Dem votes that seats will flip that people didn't think were even in contention.
What, are they supposed to NOT use Amazon, for starters? Are you actually insane? That's no way to live where they cannot get their labubu delivered on the same day!
I always said the Americans wont fight back until there are only 30 brands of cereal on the shelf to pick from.
As long as they have their comforts and false sense of superiority, they will grumble but ultimately accept their authoritarian regime.
That's true for pretty much every society that's fallen to fascism. People often don't start rocking the boat to the extent where it affects change until food scarcity starts.
It's one of the components of humanity's Great Filter, IMO. The other being the sociopaths that take advantage of the complacency.
This headline is well over a year old.
Tried so many times to argue why revolution and resistance is right choice here but i've given up by now, it's hard to feel angry or sad at this theft when it's just normal
Maybe 5% of your population understands what you do about this massive wealth transfer.
Trump knows exactly what he is doing because he is being told how to do it.
This will not end until the US economy is destroyed or all workers become neo-serfs.
People who think the average American is realizing this have no clue just how uninformed the average person is on the US economic policy.
Shit, people still think that you can lose money from getting a raise due to taxes.
I feel like in the olden days, when stuff like this happened people would form up into a miltia shaped mob, march down to the rich person's house, and deal with the problem.
That happens today, too. Just not in the US lol
They didn't have cameras everywhere back then.
I would do that but I cant afford to get to where the rich people live, it’s days of travel away cuz flying is a no-go for me these days.
In the olden days that was not the case, and money/goods couldn't travel that far either. You could torch the owner's house cuz it was in town. You knew where they lived. It was accessible.
That's the best part: Global warming will eventually ix-nay the whole flying thing, and then the wealthy will have to outrun the poors.
That's why they have bunkers in NZ. I just hope it becomes apparent to their security teams that they do not contribute anything of value-- Assuming it happens before their fantasy of autonomous security.
Oh and they are keeping the prices at the same rate as when they were paying tariffs!
Burn them all at the stake.
Prices never go down once they are up.
Considering he keeps "ending" the war on Iran to play with oil prices while he buys low sells high; makes me think the price gouging followed by tariff refunds was the real goal all along.
Yup we known this was the plan for over a year. https://www.wired.com/story/cantor-fitzgerald-trump-tariff-refunds/
Tariffs are just a roundabout way to implement flat tax. That's why they talk about how tariff income will replace lost tax revenue.
And in this instance, they're being used because the SC said that Trump can't impose a broad import tax.
So he conveniently enacts tariffs on our trading partners, who make up 99.4% of our imports, because they "didn't do enough to ensure slave labor wasn't used."
Ding ding. We have a winner.
In case your unaware, that was the plan the whole time.
Americans actually:
It only takes 30% of Americans in the right states to feel that way and the entire federal government is theirs.
The slave states lost the big armed showdown, but won the war
The War isn't over yet.
I think the math works out that you only need 23% of the total vote to win an election? Number from a mostly remembered YouTube video a decade ago.
Assuming 50% plus 1 in the 40 least populated states and no votes at all in the 10 most populated states.