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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I’m not going to pretend I’m an economist, but the idea that the government prints money is not new to me. If the government is “funded” via destroying money (because there is an inflation rate they are attempting to keep constant meaning they can spend X for every Y they destroy) then taking in “funding” via tariffs allows them to either print more money to make up for the additional “income” (aka increased government spending ideally on the public good) or need less money from other sources (lower other taxes - not how it happens but theoretically a possibility), or apply that “excess” to the debt (basically print directly to the debt holders). This does not make taxes or tariffs irrelevant. It is the way the government is “funded” since it needs income to maintain inflation. Is this not a correct reading? I’m legitimately open to learning something right now, but replacing “spend” with “print” and “tax” with burn does not really affect anything considering inflation is a constraint. I understand it’s not 1:1 but that does not mean taxes are “disappeared” in any meaningful sense in this context.



  • The commenter above said “The money exacted for tariffs leaves circulation is entirely, it’s basically destroyed.” They are talking about money that was spent on the tariff already. What you are talking about is the larger impact tariffs have on the economy.

    I am not on the side of tariffs. I’m not against them on principle, but the implementation has never really been stellar. I appreciate your perspective, but in my opinion the OP made a somewhat misleading statement that is not really related to your point. People could walk away thinking that tariff money is basically just put in a big pile and incinerated. The money continues to exist and in fact could be directed toward a specific thing. So if we build luxury yachts here and people start importing them, we can add a tariff to them and allocate those funds to retraining programs for people who used to make yachts. I’m not advocating for that, but in that case the money would reenter in a specific location and affect a specific sector.




  • Maybe, but you probably don’t know a lot of people in the trades. This article is bad, sure, but I know a lot of college grads in “respected” professions earning way less than people that went into trades. I wouldn’t have met most of these tradespeople had my life not taken me in a circuitous path, and I’d be comparing my college grad friends to my couldn’t get into college/did poorly in college friends. I know people who should have been in a trade and instead went to college and did poorly and now can’t get work. Their family was doing what they thought was right but they were failed by this idea that they needed college. College isn’t for everyone and we should do a better job of making robust education to employment opportunities funnels that don’t just amount to college and networking.

    We also need better employment laws so that working as a cashier or stocking shelves can still pay the bills for your family.


  • I understand that and that’s probably the best option for a company like Disney where realistically too few people will actually boycott, so making pirating easy is probably best, but for other companies I don’t always agree. It probably differs by size, but if I pirate a game for PC and mention how fun it is online or to my friends, maybe they don’t have PCs so end up buying console versions, or they don’t think to or don’t want to pirate. At the end of the day I’m now doing PR via word of mouth for a company I don’t want supported. I think so long as you’re not part of a culture talking about it and just quietly consume the media while helping people pirate it’s the best of both. Though obviously this is about pirating in theory. In practice I’m sure we would never do that. Pirating is reserved for AI companies only.



  • I don’t know why the concept of a boycott is hard for some people. Boycotting a product or company does not entitle you to still have access to the product. If you can still get it without supporting them, fine, but the premise of a boycott is generally saying that you would rather go without than support the company. They can just, not watch zootopia. If that is not an option for them then they are not actually interested in boycotting. If anything, it’s more effective if people don’t pirate. That way there’s less people talking about the thing and less general interest. People who still watched it are the outliers and when they ask why no one has seen it you can explain why. I get that they are a huge company, but this is how boycotts actually work.







  • This is not meant to intimidate him as much as bring to Americans attention how close his ties are to Russia.

    Witkoff got into politics because he’s willing to suck up to Trump and has been saying Russia should keep the areas in Ukraine that it hold because they “want to be Russian”, even though we all know that’s a lie and even if it were true, you can’t just militarily invade a country and take the land. Offer them visas or citizenship if you really are concerned.

    Don’t have any sympathy for this guy. He knew what he signed up for. Putin is playing games with the American people, not with this guy, showing us how far gone even the illusion of propriety is.


  • I think there’s a big generational gap and people just don’t understand how younger gens integrated technology into their lives. Plenty of millennials have “online friends” and their boomer parents would have told them that’s extremely dangerous. Some of it undoubtedly was, but online friend groups are a real thing. I think the same is true of location sharing.

    I have family who are older who share it and it’s helpful to know that they’re safe without having to bother them whenever I worry. I also have younger people in my life and they use it for scheduling purposes with each other. “Oh X is still at practice so can’t help with this right now I should reach out to Y who is at home”. Kids these days are just more interconnected and that is probably more ok than we think it is. There are definitely some problems with it, but it’s just new and different. Kids will bully or create drama about whatever, so it may cause some rifts, but if it wasn’t that it would’ve been something else.


  • What you said was pretty clear to me at least. I have that user tagged as a misogynist so it’s not unusual that they’d go out of their way to defend incels for no reason.

    For what it’s worth, it’s unlikely that the incel in question would have the location of both those people in the first place. Generally, location sharing is done among friend groups and not entire peer groups, so it’s unlikely the crush and the person they were seeing would have both shared their location with this other person unless they were all close, which is not the case in my experience.


  • There’s a handful of accounts I see repeatedly going to bat for centrist (or extreme right or antiwest) positions and they universally have thousands or tens of thousands of comments in less than a year or two. I will sometimes still engage because it’s important people don’t think it was just left at their comment, but they are clearly not average people. They are either astroturfing or some kind of unwell sycophants. No one posts that much regularly brown nosing to people who actively do not care about you. The platform I use allows tagging of users. I’ve found that helpful so I at least can recognize them without having to remember their names. I try not to bring too much attention to the fact I’m aware of who is likely engaging in bad faith because it encourages them to change tactics, but I’m sure they know their tells already, but we are not at the point where enough average Lemmy users care or notice. Once more people start to notice hopefully we see them shut down more often. You’re not alone in noticing this.



  • I see people mentioning that Trump has staff to inform him of this etc etc, but I think it’s also pretty common knowledge that you don’t comment on someone’s grasp of a language unless you’re teaching them or it’s necessary. As a country of immigrants, Americans deal with a lot of immigrants, and that thought goes either way. You don’t mention a heavy accent or a lack of accent. I grew up around a lot of ESOL, and even if their English was impeccable, it’s quite othering and often condescending to have someone mention it. Some people don’t mind it, but always better to err on the side of caution. I understand this is not someone from the US, but they’re a foreign dignitary and there’s no need to say something that would even be perceived as condescending.