21

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: February 13, 2025, 03:27:41 AM »

for some reason i thought this was limited to cancer research, but it's a funding cap for all NIH grants. that's absolute fucking insanity.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.280590/gov.uscourts.mad.280590.1.0.pdf

lol yeah let's (illegally) cut billions of dollars of spending on medical research and clinical trials and community health funding all because captain k-hole doesn't have a fucking clue how grants work.

22

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: February 12, 2025, 02:29:05 PM »

so again i will ask -- even if these demonstrably false claims about fraud and waste were accurate, why is it better to have no cancer research and no fraud than to have cancer research + some fraud? why is it better for people to die from cancer just to save a couple of bucks?

why should society lose access to alice's cancer research just because bob wasted some money going to a conference or whatever?

23

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: February 12, 2025, 03:49:47 AM »

I'm not sure why you think that everyone should unquestioningly agree with all medical research. Big Pharma is not interested in treating or even investigating the root of the issue, only treating the symptoms, meaning that you pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for an extra few years of suffering instead of doing something that actually fixes the root issue.

even if that were true, that doesn't have anything to do with NIH research grants.

But aside from that major concern, I don't see a problem with cancer organizations being shuttered if they are defrauding the public. See this one, for instance.

i am begging you to please stop just immediately believing the first thing you read on nypost. please.

also president elon isn't auditing the books and shuttering specific organizations that are wasting money. he's simply illegally shuttering a bunch of cancer research across the board because he doesn't understand how NIH funding works.

but for the sake of argument, let's pretend for the moment that this headline is 100% true and there is some org out there just stealing cancer research money or whatever. and let's also suppose that for some weird reason, we can't just shut down the offending org. we can either have cancer research + waste, or we can have no waste but also no cancer research.

why is the latter better? like, wouldn't it be better for a child with cancer to have access to cancer treatments, even if the cost is that there is some wasted money? does every system have to be completely efficient or it just shouldn't exist at all?

24

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: February 11, 2025, 11:11:46 PM »

A weekend interaction between Vanity Fair’s Molly Jong-Fast and Elon Musk unexpectedly showcased just how little the world’s richest man understands about the effects of his slashing spree at the top of the federal government.

    “I don’t think the richest guy in the world should be cutting funding for cancer research,” Jong-Fast posted to X on Sunday.

    “I’m not,” Musk responded. “Wtf are you talking about?”

    But despite Musk’s empty protestation, that is what’s happening. On Friday, the Trump administration—under the Department of Government Efficiency’s direction—announced it would cut billions of dollars in biomedical research funding, scheduled to take effect by Monday. The slashed spending was intended to affect $4 billion in “indirect funding” for research, a category that encompasses administrative overhead, facilities, and operations. But researchers that spoke with The Washington Post decried the move as a “surefire” way to “cripple lifesaving research and innovation,” and one that will contribute to “higher degrees of disease and death in the country.”

lol so we're basically going to slash funding for cancer research because some idiot nazi cosplayer saw the word "indirect" and unilaterally decided that was synonymous with "unimportant."

thankfully timmy and action69 will be along shortly to explain that this is actually good because one time a trans person got cancer meds or something.

hey btw when do my grocery prices come down, i was promised that one day 1, thanks

25

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: January 31, 2025, 09:53:31 PM »

you're such a piece of shit

26

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: January 22, 2025, 03:29:56 PM »

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-medicare-executive-order-explained-2018138

cruelty is the point

27

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden

« on: January 17, 2025, 03:17:27 PM »

no idea what this argument is about but fwiw "con" means "confidence" in the context of a scam. i.e., confidence man, or confidence trick.

28

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: January 06, 2025, 06:42:10 PM »

for anyone interested in the actual history of modern ukraine and why this war is happening instead of merely swallowing kremlin agitprop, this series is fantastic:

29

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: December 12, 2024, 03:35:03 PM »

china is our ally.

Ah yes, the turbofascist dictatorship with literal concentration camps for undesirable ethnicity groups and a military build-up with the intent of invading one of our actual allies is somehow our ally. Truly, you are a wizard of geopolitics.

it was a joke, captain serious.

for one thing, it absolutely does. they recommend increasing tariffs only on materials deemed critical to the economy while negotiating the others away.

Where?

• The U.S. government should maintain higher tariffs on imports of goods from China
(1) of which China is the dominant supplier and that the Departments of Defense and
Commerce consider key technologies and (2) that could undermine U.S. industries con-
sidered critical to U.S. economic or national security.
• To maintain the overall competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing and to benefit U.S. con-
sumers, the U.S. Trade Representative should offer to negotiate reductions of U.S. tariffs
on nonsensitive imports of consumer goods and manufacturing inputs from China in
exchange for reductions in Chinese tariffs on U.S. goods.

previously you said they didn't make any recommendations

no i didn't.

idk my bff jill, I never argued Trump's plan was a good idea.

i'm in a trump thread commenting on a proposal trump made. "there are other people recommending different things that are possibly more rational than this thing" is largely irrelevant to me.

My problem was your "tariffs are bad dumb because muh economy" argument that I think you've already accepted was obviously wrong.

not really, it's just hard to be anything more than halfhearted when i reply to posts that don't actually read the things i write and are 90% "don't you agree you're obviously wrong?" and "here's 10 things i'm not saying. can you guess what i am saying?"

Imagine telling Ukraine that they shouldn't fight Russia because it makes their quarterly GDP outlook worse. Imagine telling Germany it should keep buying Russian gas because buying it elsewhere hurts their economy. That's you. That's how dumb you sound.

i think it sounds way dumber to make an argument by analogy that relies on russia : ukraine :: china : united states. i do not agree that chinese steel exports are literally an existential threat to the united states. or anything close. and i think inflation and unemployment are worse than just "muh economy."

from my point of view, the analogy is that trump proposes simply carpet-bombing the entirety of ukraine. when i say that this is fucking stupid, you pop in to be like "okay but the dept of defense actually recommends increasing targeted strikes of russian supply bases in eastern ukraine while lowering strikes elsewhere because they themselves demonstrate that all strikes come at a significant cost. i bet you feel so dumb now." i don't, though.

30

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: December 11, 2024, 02:01:28 PM »

That is why when they commit felonies we can't keep them imprisoned here and have to send them back to their country and hope that their country accepts the evidence and punishes them according to their laws.

lol this is hilariously false

31

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: December 08, 2024, 05:23:17 PM »

Yes. I did say those things. If you want to claim what I've said so far is counter to them, you're going to need to elaborate quite a bit more.

lol pass. it's way funnier watching you completely change your argument mid-discussion.

Diversifying the supply chain keeps us from relying on an adversary.

china is our ally.

but sure, partially. it somewhat mitigates our reliance, but it does not alleviate it (we're always gonna buy assloads of steel from china). but it certainly doesn't "keep our miners and manufacturers from going bankrupt competing with subsidized Chinese firms" or whatever.

the paper doesn't recommend that the US lift its tariffs. Why is that?

for one thing, it absolutely does. they recommend increasing tariffs only on materials deemed critical to the economy while negotiating the others away.

for another thing, their analysis does not calculate or estimate the net effect of the tariffs. they quantify the overall cost to the us economy (e.g. it's a tax on poor people), and they assert some of the benefits (e.g. decreased trade deficit). but since they don't compare the two, i can't tell you why they recommend their proposals other than "they believe the benefits outweigh the costs."

for another another thing, none of this matters since this isn't trump's tariff plan. like, you can tell me all day long that we have to stop relying on chinese steel since china is an adversary. okay, cool. what's that got to do with 25% tariffs on literally all products from canada and mexico? or raising all tariffs on all chinese goods by 10%? sorry, but that's an absolutely horrifically fucking stupid economic policy, and you should feel super silly for defending it.

In short, the increases in U.S. tariffs in 2018 resulted in reductions in U.S. manufacturing exports, output, and employment; accelerated producer and consumer price inflation; and diminished household welfare, especially for lower-income households.

i think that's bad. i think vastly expanding the scope of things that are bad is even more bad.

32

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: December 03, 2024, 08:20:44 PM »

in other words -- tariffs reduce domestic production and manufacturing (among many other things).

I never argued otherwise.

if you say so.

"Yeah lol we should just keep letting our miners and manufacturers go bankrupt competing with subsidized Chinese firms lmao, who even needs steel or aluminum amirite?"

"Their purpose is to keep a foreign adversary from killing vital industries in your nation."

they conclude that the benefit of tariffs for access to steel is by diversifying the supply chain globally

lol they're not saying anywhere that tariffs are "keep a foreign adversary from killing vital industries in your nation" or anything of the sort.

yes. flattening the distribution of nations we import steel from (i.e., diversifying the supply chain) doesn't keep domestic steel/mining/whatever from dying.

Yes, so it's you, some various economic papers you googled in your spare time, versus the economic policy decisions of world governments. Surely you can think for a moment and identify that you're missing something and barking up the wrong trees with respect to tariff criticism.

>"you don't know anything. read this paper and learn something, idiot."
>"this paper agrees with me."
>"oh so you just get your opinions from nerds and their nerd papers? trying listening to the GOVERNMENT sometime, idiot."

okay.

33

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: December 03, 2024, 06:34:54 PM »

This is an uncharacteristically pro-capitalist take from you, gary.

i'm simply describing a cause-and-effect relationship measured by economists, but okay.

The purpose of tariffs is not to "spur growth".

i said spur growth and protect jobs, and i obviously mean with respect to the protected industries. and the 2018 tariffs absolutely were mapped to specific domestic production/employment growth goals.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3055-1.html

hey, thanks! i didn't expect you to do any research for me, but this is a great source for me to add.

We found that U.S. economic policies achieved limited progress in promoting fair trade but a higher degree of success in defending U.S. economic-related interests. Increases in U.S. tariffs have succeeded in reducing imports from and curbing the bilateral trade deficit with China, developments that both the Trump and Biden administrations view as resulting in fairer trade. However, U.S. policies have made little progress in ensuring fair treatment for U.S. firms in China and even less in persuading the Chinese government to reduce its subsi- dies and other uncompetitive state assistance to its own manufacturers, especially exporters. The United States has experienced a higher degree of success in diversifying some supply chains away from China and constraining Chinese efforts to secure sensitive technologies that could be used for commercial or military purposes. Some of these economic policies, most notably tariff increases, have come at a price, such as reduced U.S. economic growth and losses in U.S. manufacturing jobs, output, and exports.

they go on to characterize the costs:

Several studies have attempted to quantify the economic costs of the tariffs to the U.S. econ- omy. According to the IMF estimates discussed previously, the estimated cost of the direct effects of the tariffs on the U.S. economy in 2019 was estimated at 0.18 percent of GDP; the cost in 2023 was projected to be 0.1 percent of GDP on an ongoing basis. Dollar costs would have been $39 billion and $27 billion for 2019 and 2023, respectively. 21 Bekkers and Schroeter estimated the direct cost to the U.S. economy at 0.16 percent of GDP in 2019 and projected that this loss would continue. Using this estimate, the costs to the United States would have been $34 billion in 2019 and $44 billion in 2023. 22

Mary Amiti and her coauthors found that the increases in tariffs reduced U.S. aggregate welfare by $1.4 billion per month by December 2018—$8.2 billion in total in 2018 as tar- iffs were repeatedly raised. They estimated the ongoing loss in U.S. welfare at $16.8 billion per year, 23 which translates to 0.08 percent of 2019 GDP, because of the deadweight losses from the tariffs on the U.S. economy. 24 The Congressional Budget Office concluded that the increases in tariffs would reduce U.S. GDP by 0.5 percent in 2020 ($107 billion) and reduce average real household income by $1,277 (in 2019 dollars) in 2020. 25

Consistent with international trade theory and numerous studies on the economic effects of tariffs, Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce found that the increases in U.S. tariffs resulted in a reduction in U.S. manufacturing output, exports, and employment. 26 They estimated that U.S. manufacturers that were highly exposed to the tariffs experienced a 1.4 percent reduc- tion in employment because of the higher costs of imported inputs and the effects of retalia- tory tariffs on their exports. These losses were only partially offset by a 0.3 percent increase in manufacturing employment in the industries that the tariffs were designed to protect. 27 To illustrate the consequences of the tariffs: U.S. firms that use an input imported from China must pay the additional costs of the tariffs. This puts them at a cost disadvantage against Canadian firms that use the same input to manufacture the same product. Both sell into the North American free trade area, but the U.S. firm has to absorb the cost of the tariff on the input imported from China, while the Canadian firm does not. The declines in exports, output, and employment found by Flaaen and Pierce reflect these outcomes.

Amiti and her coauthors found that the tariffs resulted in a 1 percentage point increase in U.S. producer prices. The average rate of producer price inflation between 1990 and 2018 was just over two percentage points, so the tariffs increased the rate of producer price inflation by almost 50 percent. 28 Companies that experienced a sharp increase in tariffs on imports of inputs increased factory-gate prices by 4.1 percent. 29

The economic literature on the 2018–2019 tariff increases finds that the entire cost of the tariffs has been passed through to U.S. consumers and businesses. 30 A complete pass-through of tariffs to an importing nation that is a major consumer of the products, such as the United States, is unusual. In this case, the complete pass-through is even more unusual, as Chinese exporters benefited from the depreciation of the renminbi in 2019, 2020, and 2023 compared with its rate in 2017. Studies generally find that when important import markets face abrupt increases in prices because of higher tariffs or shifts in exchange rates, exporters to the coun- try must reduce prices to keep market share. In these instances, the cost of the tariff is shared between the importing country and the exporting country. However, there was no notice- able decrease in the price of exports from China following the tariff increases in 2018 and 2019. Lower-income groups disproportionately bore these price increases because they spend a larger share of their income on goods imported from China, such as clothing and shoes, compared with middle- and upper-income groups. 31

In short, the increases in U.S. tariffs in 2018 resulted in reductions in U.S. manufacturing exports, output, and employment; accelerated producer and consumer price inflation; and diminished household welfare, especially for lower-income households.

in other words -- tariffs reduce domestic production and manufacturing (among many other things).

and yes, they do say that tariffs have achieved some successes. just not for any of the reasons you've been arguing. they explicitly say that tariffs have failed to change china's trade practices, and they conclude that the benefit of tariffs for access to steel is by diversifying the supply chain globally, and they see the declining trade deficit with china as a positive indication of that. lol they're not saying anywhere that tariffs are "keep a foreign adversary from killing vital industries in your nation" or anything of the sort.

Biden and Trump's administration, as well as the EU, don't really differ much in terms of economic decision making with respect to China.

yes, that's what i said.

34

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 28, 2024, 02:17:32 PM »

Most of the sources are filled with "warnings."

you found one sentence in one paper that uses the word "warn." in the introduction. in a descriptive way (i.e., other papers that are not this paper have said x/y/z).

setting aside your hilarious lack of honesty, i don't see what that has anything to do with the empirical conclusions these papers draw from real data.

35

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 27, 2024, 08:05:46 PM »

i can't find the word "warning" in any of those links, so you'll have to be more specific

36

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 27, 2024, 02:31:41 PM »

Could you at least post the "empirical evidence"?

sure thing.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w32082

The trade-war has not to date provided economic help to the US heartland: import tariffs on foreign goods neither raised nor lowered US employment in newly-protected sectors; retaliatory tariffs had clear negative employment impacts, primarily in agriculture

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1478409224000037

We analyze the impacts of the tariffs imposed by the United States in 2018, on the industries they were intended to protect (steel, semiconductors, agricultural equipment, and chemicals industries) as well as on their suppliers and customers[...]The results demonstrate that the implementation of the 2018 tariffs had an overall negative impact on firm value, leading to a decrease in the value of domestic producers within the protected industries and mixed financial effects on firms in their supplier and customer industries.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26610/w26610.pdf

Using data from 2018, a number of studies have found that recent U.S tariffs have been passed on
entirely to U.S. importers and consumers. These results are surprising given that trade theory has
long stressed that tariffs applied by a large country should drive down foreign prices. Using
another year of data including significant escalations in the trade war, we find that U.S. tariffs
continue to be almost entirely borne by U.S. firms and consumers.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w26611

We examine the impacts of the 2018-2019 U.S. import tariff increases on U.S. export growth through the lens of supply chain linkages. Using 2016 confidential firm-trade linked data, we identify firms that eventually faced tariff increases. They accounted for 84% of all exports and represented 65% of manufacturing employment[...]The decline in export growth in 2019Q3, for example, is equivalent to an ad valorem tariff on U.S. exports of 2% for the typical product and up to 4% for products with higher than average exposure.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2019086pap.pdf

We find that U.S. manufacturing industries more exposed to tariff
increases experience relative reductions in employment as a positive effect from import
protection is offset by larger negative effects from rising input costs and retaliatory
tariffs.

i could keep going. i have yet to find any economic research that suggests the tariffs have even really benefited the steel industry, let alone the entire economy.

America does have the infrastructure in place to handle more production here within the country.

then why aren't steel tariffs working? we've had steel tariffs on china since 2018. biden did not remove them. the initial capability utilization rate target was 80%. it still has not been reached. "In the week ending on November 23, 2024, domestic raw steel production was 1,655,000 net tons while the capability utilization rate was 74.5 percent."

tariffs are a fucking stupid way to spur growth and protect jobs. they do not work.

37

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 26, 2024, 08:53:12 PM »

Isn't the argument that it makes foreign goods more expensive which increases demand for goods made in the good ole US of A?

that can be true, but it still just means those goods are now more expensive for everybody. if there's cheap chinese steel and expensive american steel, and if you artificially make chinese steel more expensive, then steel is now just...more expensive.

the idea is that you will increase local production and that will somehow automagically make up for the fact that ubiquitously vital goods like steel and aluminum are now more expensive for everybody. but the empirical evidence is overwhelming that this doesn't happen, and the effects are net-negative.

38

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden

« on: November 26, 2024, 04:10:17 PM »

why the fuck would russia nuke ukraine, that doesn't make an ounce of sense

39

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: November 26, 2024, 12:48:07 PM »

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-promises-25-tariff-products-mexico-canada-2024-11-25/

the best way to make things cheaper is to make everything more expensive. lol imagine being such an idiot that you actually cast a ballot for this.

40

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden

« on: November 17, 2024, 07:46:33 PM »

lol you say that like i'm supposed to be mad instead of aroused