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346 points Kye | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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cheema33 ◴[] No.45016963[source]
This needs to be repeated. Tariffs are a tax on ordinary citizens. Unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not progressive and therefore benefit the wealthy.

These are the sort of things the poor and middle class voted for. To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.

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arghwhat ◴[] No.45017339[source]
Tariffs like this is a market regulation that the people pays for.

It doesn't "benefit the wealthy" because it's not progressive, it benefits the wealthy that have investments in the tariffed industry by distorting the market to their advantage instead of having to be competitive on a level playing field.

The rest of the wealthy are equally annoyed by the tariffs as everyone else, possibly more so as they see their investments tank.

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Gud ◴[] No.45017394[source]
There is no "level playing field" when you are competing with literal sweatshops though.

Frankly tariffs get a bad rep because of from who and how they are implemented but can absolutely serve a purpose.

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Retric ◴[] No.45017415[source]
Automation consistently outcompetes sweatshops.

What’s missing from these discussions is the idea of competitive advantage. It is inherently more efficient to grow crops in climates where they thrive, tacking a tariff to protect domestic production means intentionally lowering the standard of living of everyone both domestically and abroad to favor some tiny group doing something wasteful.

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cuuupid ◴[] No.45017514[source]
Automation is not replacing sweatshops, they've just made the sweatshop workers more productive (economically) while requiring them to be less productive (in activity).

So all that's happened is an exponential increase in the output volume of sweatshops :/

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1. Retric ◴[] No.45018035[source]
There’s many industries that have moved beyond sweatshops due to automation.

Pepsi can’t get glass bottles from 3rd world sweatshops at anything competitive with a highly automated factory. In the vast majority of industries it’s just a question of levels of automation and climate control inherently makes automation easier by reducing variability in temperature and humidity. Of course the original distinction around climate control that created the term sweatshops is dying as such operations are largely dying out, but that only reinforces the notion of automation killing off the inherent advantages of unskilled cheap labor.