What are you doing right now?

[EndOfTheEarth]

Besides posting on here and replying to this thread. Original credit for this goes back to Fate and Nathan on MX.

[Hannah]

Almost got banned from my own debate club's fracking forum (which my own mother runs) because I was "mean" to a kid who thought we should put a 30% tariff on ALL Chinese imports. For no reason. Not as an incentive, just 'cause. I don't think that simply explaining to a kid WHAT A FUCKING IDIOT HE IS how our fragile economy works qualifies as "mean"... There may or may not have been a few grammar critiques thrown in, but the gist of it all was a civil, intellectual debate.

... Apparently he cried. I made a 16 year old boy cry... I feel kinda bad now...

[nathan_p]

You made him cry over economics.

 

That's... hardcore.

[Hannah]

He's also very... Soft. I mean, I wasn't even being that mean about it.

Just... Come on, 30%? On everything? I don't even know a lot about economics, but that's just nuts.

[EndOfTheEarth]

Depends on the product.

[Hannah]

EVERYTHING. A 30% tarrif on ALL Chinese imports. Yes, he is crazy.

[EndOfTheEarth]

Not exactly. When the product is a $.10 tchotchke, then the 30% markup won't be felt so much by the typical American consumer. However, with a larger product...luxury items for example, then yeah, it's going to make people less likely to buy. The real problem here is that the US pay system doesn't pay properly for the prices of US-made products, so it makes more commercial sense to buy from China because you can't afford US. The US economy would either need to change prices to compensate, or you'd have a much lower quality of life. So a 30% tariff could work, just not on its own.

[Hannah]

The point is that it's not benifitting anyone. As an incentive for China to do something, yeah, I almost get that, but it's not going to bring jobs back to America, it's going to send them to other places where there's cheap labor.

[EndOfTheEarth]

Like India.

 

The main issue that you ought to note though is that it isn't so much that foreign goods are superior pricing as that they are superior quality for that pricing. Technically, it is the fault of American industry for not keeping up with the demand, not that the demand isn't being fairly modified to meet the American industry.

[Fake]

Posted a new article on the MR forum.

 

I swear to drunk, I am god.

[EndOfTheEarth]

*Replied*

 

Damn you, I'm supposed to be writing a paper tonight!

[nathan_p]

So, I've taken up a bit of a public-service project lately, giving concrit to fic on the MR archive.

 

Like 50% of them are submit-a-character fics (aka glorified RPs), and it really makes me want to join an RP as a terribly normal person who just wanted some cigs from the Circle K and got dropped into a world full of crazy.

[EndOfTheEarth]

That's actually how I started on MDW. It gets old fast, and there's no gratification in the end.