Congress has ceded more and more authority to the executive and Trump is taking advantage of that. This law (1974) grants the president the ability to levy tariffs up to 15% for 150 days. That Congress sucks is against the spirit of the constitution but not the letter of it
I think it's kind of Legal? Smoot -Hawley from 1934-ish was never taken off the books. I cant remember if that's the one he's using for this, but it's like that. There's a never-used vestigial law that lets him do up to 15% for 150 days.
As much of a known-destroyer of America he is, this is Congress failing to do it's bare minimum job of holding the purse strings. They could stop him tomorrow and we would be better off if everyone realized thst
Edit: this one isn't smoot-hawley (1930), sorry. Trade act of 1974. 15%, 150 days and a lot of exemptions under section 122. Congress should still do it job
That's somewhat true, there has been mixed local/state resistance - I was focusing on nationally. I wonder if there's some pressure being applied behind the scenes to local Dems, fear of retribution, or if it's mere fecklessness.
My conspiracy hat suspicions are that Dem leadership is willingly sacrificing our rights/lives and letting things get worse in the hopes of boosting their midterm election chances. Althe answer to that is progressive sweep in the primaries
There's a somewhat valid excuse that the Dems are minority powers in house, Senate, and supreme court (which is now partisan) and the American system doesn't grant any political power at all to a minority party against a lock-step majority.
That said, remember during COVID peaks, when Trump had his BS press conference updates? Andrew Cuomo, himself no saint, also had daily (?) live streams to give important information and quarantine/medical advice. Dem politicians could absolutely be using their voices right now to make a lot of noise - even without mechanical political power.
Some clouds don't have silver linings after all. What an asshole. It's always such a challenge to identify the worst cabinet member, but Jr is a top contender
I agree, and that's a great way of putting it. We're kneecapping ourselves collectively because enough individual companies are deprecating the junior dev experience. We'll see if it holds up when senior devs are in such short supply that companies have to pay them 4x the margin they saved on junior devs. I think they're hoping that the machine learning gets good enough to do senior dev work before the humans retire. Or else they're just line-go-up types
You're right, of course - I just meant in the context of why it's competing with video games for user attention. Gambling, porn, crypto, video games : one of these things is not like the other (he says with several 1000+ hour games in his steam library)
Gambling/crypto is all risk, porn is risk-free reward
If people have more alluring alternatives for cheap dopamine, maybe video games can prioritize satisfying gameplay and narratives. Play has value, that'd be ok
I agree but the scale is different. When 10% of new grads are useless drones, society can bear the burden and shuffle them around. When it's 70%, we have a real problem (or opportunity for fascists).
Also, some cheaters were really creative. One dude wrote a cheat sheet on the inside of a plastic soda bottle label so that he could tilt the bottle and read the notes, untilt it and the soda would hide them. That kind of cheating is real problem solving!
There's a weirdly vacant amorality about modern issues. I think the MIC shuffle goes something like
-CEO is obligated to enhance shareholder value, so supplies weapons (stand-in for lossy shit that doesn't help QoL of most people), Company spreads manufacturing around a bunch of regions in a country
-Government permits arm sales because otherwise weapons mfgs would cut jobs (and couldn't develop as many new weapons for the Gov's use)
arms proliferate, get used
repeat
Truly breaking out of this will probably require courage and PPE that our electeds don't have
I guess worry depends too on how good an empire is at coming into being. You can argue that the Russian special operation is pretty damn ineffective (relative to expectation) And less dangerous than if Putin was marching toward the Atlantic
My point is that I think authoritarianism is worse than liberal democracy, even when flawed. The trade of individual autonomy and democracy in exchange for promises of stability, progress, and equitable distribution of wealth is compelling for some that believe all the promises - but I don't believe in the intrinsic good of the State.
Liberal Democracy's hands aren't clean by any stretch, but there are mechanisms for recourse by citizens. Governments always think they know best, but authoritarian states have too much concentrated power.
That the trains run on time, or the DOW is over 50000, or quality of life for Hong Kong is better than Guangdong does not excuse state brutality and once power is concentrated, brutality by force and mental/social control efforts are inevitable.
Congress has ceded more and more authority to the executive and Trump is taking advantage of that. This law (1974) grants the president the ability to levy tariffs up to 15% for 150 days. That Congress sucks is against the spirit of the constitution but not the letter of it