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.
"Pay to play? You mean the peasants get to play? Why?"
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My rental, charges to use website to pay, but that's the only way they pay $5 for website, $2.00 credit/debit card, $1.00 checking direct route. So yeah pay to pay, there are fees on everything I pay online
"By existing within these borders through no conscious choice of your own, you are indicating that you agree to these terms."
Socialize the losses, privatazie the games. It's crazy when people complain about socialism while these billionaire companies get to reap the best parts of it.
Which is why it needs to be burnt, and then built better.
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.
And you never will. Thanks for playing The Decline of Democracy and Sanity.
No refunds 😆
What in the jesus brother. I take it you're voting in november
I'm voting for Troy Jackson in Maine hopefully he beats Collins. Going to go out canvassing and call some people so that if he loses I can't say I didn't try.
🫡
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.
IKR why don't they think of the shareholders, the profits they need so we can't survive? I don't need to eat, or have shelter.
Man for a second I thought you were serious and was getting my pitchfork ready. Bravo.
I mean... don't put it away. You should still take the opportunity to make sure it's nicely rusty and dull. We do need everyone to have them ready. That sarcastic message of mine is still describing what the government and corporations actually did to us. And they're not raping and killing their own kids. Well... they probably are raping their own kids too. But not killing or possibly eating them.
Since they're now all in charge of investigating and arresting themselves and their buddies and passing laws to stop their own blatant corruption it seems that us stepping in with pitchforks might be necessary very soon.
If you, as a consumer, directly paid one of the illegal tariffs, you can get a refund via the shipper who acted as an agent for you.
For example, here's the form if you shipped something over the border using UPS and paid an illegal tariff to get it released from customs.
Neat. I paid a business that forwarded the costs to me. Who do I appeal to?
Depends probably on the nature of what "forwarded the costs" means.
If the business collected the costs from you and then forwarded them to CBP while acting as your agent, then you can demand a refund from them or sue them.
If you agreed to purchase goods for one price while also agreeing to pay a separate "tariff reimbursement fee" in exchange for purchasing the goods, you're probably shit out of luck.
Various shades in between might be arguable or litigatable one way or another.
Does this mean UPS is going to stop sending me demand letters for extra money on a thing I already bought, paid for and received?
I keep wondering if they’ll escalate, but I’m refusing on principle.
Yes, technically the truth. In practice the vast vast majority of consumers bought from a business that imported the item. So it's good to highlight people have options, but the broad point of the post stands, that the businesses have the option of pocketing the difference and most of them seem to be taking that option.
So we were all robbed. Again.
That was always the plan, my friend.
This is why I can't be angry at regular criminals, they're just mimicking the world they see at the top.
I'm not sure what other system is even conceivably possible in the general case. There's no straightforward universal relationship between tariffs paid by businesses and prices paid by the customers of those businesses.
I think the best system would be not to allow tariffs to be illegally implemented in the first place. But I realize that's asking a lot.
We could at least not have taxpayers foot the bill for businesses to get free money.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany moment now....
... it's going to start to trickle down.
Don't buy anything not entirely necessary until this shit is done. As usual consumers hold the bag.
Fines like this should go to the consumer, but that's impossible, so they should go into the America First Fund (irony intended), which be the seed money to provide the initial funding for all the social programs we need to start - healthcare, college/trade, student loan forgiveness, pre-k, UBI, etc.
As we investigate and prosecute MAGA crimes, any fines and confiscations, which should be harsh (including the confiscation of entire estates of treasonous families like the Trumps or the Ellisons), should be put into the America First Fund. The level of the fund should be mentioned in the evening news every night. Rich people can take note of the Dow, and workers can take note of the America First Fund.
Americans will put up with anything. Fucking losers
It's ironic
They have to work so hard to survive, and yet, when it comes to thinking, they're incredibly lazy
I genuinely pity them, because I know that as a society, they're only in such a situation because they're beaten into submission and apathy
They're placated by unbelievable convenience, having everything an hour's delivery away, and numbed to the fact that that means someone is slaving (I use that term deliberately) for their laziness
The mental gymnastics to justify every part of that shitty, exploitative excuse for a society are endless
And when they see other cultures, where we are actually free, they point and laugh, because they are too ignorant to understand
I spend a lot of time in 'Murica, under duress
I hate the place, I see the cruelty and ignorance, and I would gladly offer asylum to those who deserve it, but even amongst the relatively civilised, that's a small number
They've been trained from a very young age to never question the system. Pledge of allegiance before classes. Anthem before every match. Flags everywhere. Hollywood teaching everyone America will save the world yet again. It's very hard and impossible for many to break that programming.
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.
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.
They should go to Free Parking, and if someone happens to land directly on the square, they get the refunds. Life is just a massive game of Monopoly, ain't it?
The civilised world has always sneered at 'Murica
But now we look upon the disaster with great pity for those who have been unfortunately born there who deserve better
Please and Thank You.
I want better for us, and I'm fighting for it, but I have very limited personal power to enact change.
The way "we" looked at those "third-world" countries when I was a child feels like how everyone should be looking at us. Our squalor is not that of unclean water (but that is still true in places) or of systemic violence by the government (but that is still true in places) or of lack of reliable food (but that is still true in places). We have cellphones and internet, cars and roads, and air-conditioning, so we should be happy.
Our squalor is in the apathy and even antipathy a bulk of our fellow citizens have towards others.
The fix is education and awareness, but the means of enacting it have been hijacked. How do I reach someone on the west coast to be kind when I can't touch them from the east coast?
There was a post recently, and I'll link it if I can find it again, about Kevin and his truck, and how helping others builds community. Very wholesome. Community has been lost here outside of the uber-wealthy (they all know each other), or the "poor" who need it to survive. The "middle class" has lost the plot.
Those halftone rosettes bring me back to my printing days.
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