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When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

(oldvcr.blogspot.com)
320 points goldenskye | 3 comments | 15 Nov 25 23:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.886s | source
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JSR_FDED ◴[16 Nov 25 00:41 UTC] No.45941785[source]▶
Tariffs are great. They protect the struggling domestic IT industry and gives it time to ramp up its production of vintage computer parts.
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varispeed ◴[16 Nov 25 00:53 UTC] No.45941825[source]▶
I know one US business that used to make niche electronic product. Most components they used were from China. Got hit by the tariffs that wiped all the operating profit. Guy also had to sell his home and is now couchsurfing. Business is unlikely going to recover.

Of course he considered making chips and other components in the US, but he was few billions short to start the fab.

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Gibbon1 ◴[16 Nov 25 01:10 UTC] No.45941888[source]▶
Reminds me of a comment I think by Nancy Teeters the first female Federal Reserve board member. She said the other board members thought they could savage the US manufacturing industry to kill wage inflation and break the unions and it would come right back once they stopped. And it didn't.
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inopinatus ◴[16 Nov 25 03:30 UTC] No.45942520[source]▶
From the other side of the Atlantic this sounds like straight Thatcherism, in which Chicago-school monetarism was an ideological anti-union weapon, and the Thatcher cabinet was not coy about it. However I think the US went that way first even if Reaganomics came later.
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scrps ◴[16 Nov 25 04:49 UTC] No.45942848[source]▶
I think a lot of that in the US got spun up with Nixon, Reagan brought a lot of it to the mainstream though. Both of them hated unions with a passion that is for sure.
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johnebgd ◴[16 Nov 25 07:01 UTC] No.45943319[source]▶
Unions are the best of all the bad solutions we’ve come up with so far for labor to compete with capital. The worst of course is collectivism through government, though that’s being tried again…
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1. thepryz ◴[16 Nov 25 12:55 UTC] No.45944772[source]▶
Where is collectivism being tried again?

Sure there are a number of Democratic Socialists and other progressives winning elections and driving changes but everything I’ve seen policy-wise has been directly targeted areas where unchecked capitalism has clearly failed their constituents. Even in those cases, there’s no dramatic shift towards government ownership.

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2. frankharv ◴[16 Nov 25 14:55 UTC] No.45945556[source]▶
Unchecked capitalism?

The new NY city mayor wants to convert parks into low income housing.

https://abc7ny.com/post/mayor-adams-makes-elizabeth-street-g...

3. rootusrootus ◴[16 Nov 25 17:42 UTC] No.45946880[source]▶
> there’s no dramatic shift towards government ownership

Interesting that you mention this. It's not exactly the same thing, but someone in another thread here on HN pointed out that the feds have been acquiring non-trivial stakes in a number of companies. More than just the one or two that I had seen in headlines.

It's funny, because it's a bigger overt push in the direction of actual socialism than the dems have ever tried, by the group of people who most love to use socialism as a boogeyman.

But the argument in favor of it seemed compelling on it's face, at least worthy of debate.