Haha yeah, but I could do even better:

Tariffs bad because history

There’s a lot of oversimplification. But the US embargo on Japan in 1940 led directly to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The US embargoed all oil to Japan. Japan calculated it had less than 2 years worth of oil before it ran out, so it needed to capture the Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia, more or less) because they were a major source of oil. The American puppet state of the Philippines was between Japan and the Dutch East Indies, so they had to deal with that somehow. Their decision was to preemptively attack Pearl Harbor and hope that they could consolidate their gains in the Pacific by the time the US was able to counter-attack.

Japan’s actions in WWII weren’t directly about tariffs, but they were about spheres of influence, like the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

A lot of Trump’s posturing seems to be about bringing back these spheres of influence. The US wants to control North America, taking over Greenland and Canada, and leave Europe to become part of the Russian sphere.

Yeah that comment is wildly ignorant of Japan’s actions and aspirations pre1930. Fuck Trump and these tariffs, mind you.

But, the full scale invasion of China by happens around 1931, which then lead to the conflict that get China involved in WWII.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukden_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo_Bridge_incident

It’s also wrong on every account; Japan was already doing imperialist shit for decades and it wasn’t tariffs but oil sanctions to try to stymie their fuel supply that sent them raging.

It wasn’t American tariffs, we didn’t fucking matter nearly as much to the world before WWII as after

we’re at less than 5% unemployment

So far

Nor does the US need to make everything.

The US is a service economy. It makes money through capital and intellectual property. Being the first to innovate means also having the opportunity to wedge yourself as a permanent middle man and charge people around the world to pass go.

Think Uber eats for example. If I order food in Toronto from a Toronto based restaurant fulfilled by a courier in Toronto, 30% of my payment is going to them in silicon valley for managing that order.

Similarly, when you purchase an app on Google or Apple store, they are collecting 30%.

If I am in Norway purchasing a game on Steam from a Norwegian developer, you guessed it, 30% is going to Steam.

This is America’s strength now, not making t shirts, shoes or cars entirely domesticallty.

Most of the world was ok with paying the markup for convenience.

Since the US have gone rogue, many are calling for an end for respect to US intellectual property. Perhaps each country should have its own Uber, app store etc so that the cut can stay within our borders.

One case: Uber was charging 30% commission for managing rickshaw rides in India (a country with relatively low purchasing power per capita).

It was only after domestic options like Rapido or Namma Yatri undercut them that they moved to a subscription based model, charging drivers 20 to 40 rupees daily, rather than taking an exorbitant commission of 30% per ride. To India’s credit, it has a robust IT sector located in one of its major cities (Bangalore) which helps promote competition in this case.

we simply don’t have the workers

And the US is deporting a lot of it’s workforce for not being white enough.

AI will make it come true, promised! (/s, just in case)

There is a reason why this is not the case already. It’s more expensive.

at this point, visas are very easy to get in general, but Thailand is still one of the easiest and is one of the friendliest and most affordable countries around.

if you’re a US citizen, you have visa-free travel in Thailand for 60 days.

if you need a visa, go to the evisa website, thaievisa.go.th, fill out the form, pay the fee, they’ll email you the visa in a couple days.

I usually recommend Thailand or somewhere in Southeast Asia as a first destination. good food, great healthcare, cheap living, great people, beautiful environment, and they’re very used to travelers so there are local and expat support systems nationwide.

another nice thing about Southeast asia is that there are tons of other friendly places close by.

it’s about as easy to live there as anywhere else, but the support systems and the country being very used to travelers might make first time travelers more comfortable.

oh PS thailand has a lot a lot of really good all you can eat buffets for 3 to 10 dollars per person.

I’ve read in some unsubstantiated comments that the state of the authorities of Hungary is so fucked up, they barely check if you can bribe a family tree researcher to make up some BS that your grandparents were Hungarian.

Pretend they were 1956 refugees that never had papers in the US, find some people who actually got lost in 1956 that have birth certs in Hungary - like maybe killed by the Soviets - learn some elementary Hungarian, be white, and boom, EU citizenship.

I take no responsibility for this harebrained idea and reiterate that this is just some ridiculous thing I read back on Reddit way back when.

I’m a white American that’s been living in tijuana, Mexico for the last 9.5 years. I drive north to the US to go to work every day and drive south again to go home. The Mexican border police only check maybe 5% of cars that drive from US to Mexico, and when they check me they’ve only ever checked my car registration and/or passport. It’s an extremely open border crossing when going south.

If you wanted to actually be legal, a temporary tourist visa to visit Mexico can be purchased for about 25 usd and allows you to stay for up to 6 months inside Mexico 🤷‍♂️ and when it expires you can buy a new one.

Cyprus sells passports, so if you have the money you can instantly become an EU citizen

Three big ones are:

1. There are lots of international families, so they’ll have company, support networks and infrastructure.

2. There are tons of safe, affordable countries with easy access to good education.

3. Native English speakers are all but guaranteed jobs as ESL teachers, so the parents will have access to available, steady income abroad.

A lot of people don’t know about international schools, which is where most international families send their kids.

Other than the first two points, there are not many differences between my individual and family advice. For many families, moving from the US to a country like Thailand means safer, more affordable lives with a better quality of life.

people usually ship their belongings by sea or air(ocean freight is cheaper and slower, but I’m not sure by how much with Costa Rica being so near) with a company like DHL, I’ve used them and found them to be a reliable international shipping company, FedEx and UPS are also options.

I wouldn’t worry about customs taking your stuff, especially if you have insurance or tracking or anything like that on the ticket, and especially with a wealthier country like Costa Rica where paper trails are more important.

I’ve actually never heard of customs taking anything legal in real life from anyone who’s shipped belongings overseas(my friend’s yak jerky got confiscated because it’s illegal to import a lot of international meat products into the US) so I personally don’t believe customs pocketing things is very common.

Legos aren’t apparently valuable on their face and with the paper trail of receipts/documents I wouldn’t think you have to worry about anything getting lifted by customs. plus, if you add some fragile notices and insurance on there the agents responsible for transporting the packages will be a lot more careful, for sure.

Yup, a fire sale for oligarchs.

I’m pretty sure it’s the money. If minority groups were lobbying just as hard to both parties, the populist leaders would switch.

300 years of the US not giving a shit about the native population or about appearing hypocritical towards them would argue with your theory.

There’s not a single US leader who worries what Native Americans would say if they turned against Israel. They would just ignore them like they always have.

Yes, that! Also for me U.S seems to think that somehow everyone from Middle-East is a terrorist, even though that they are the worst terrorists themselves alongside Russia and Israel.

From Smoot-Hawley to Bueller-Trumpy.

You’re right, we should send Bernie to CPAC. Bet he’ll win over lots of hearts and minds.

Yeah that’s bullshit rationalization. You don’t pay nazis to advertise anti-nazi sentiment.

It appears the extent of their participation is spewing vitriol and clicking downvote buttons. lol

Meanwhile, I’m going to a capital protest tomorrow. Those of you doing things, KEEP RESISTING THESE FUCKS.

It’s cause you’re over at lemmy.world

It’s the largest, and therefore has the most mainstream people, who tend to be some flavor of liberal

In theory, joining any server gets you the whole federation experience… In practice, your home server will greatly affect discovery and shape what kind of people you encounter most

Lemmings people in general

The tariffs didn’t cause a crisis though.

But is it also twenty-nine feet deep?

If they cause a depression then the next regime change will be away from the United States. The USA got into its dominant position because it was the only major power left standing after World War II and has kept it since then through inertia. If that inertia is disrupted it’s not coming back.