[atwrk]

Thanks to the chicken tax we already know how this will develop: The US floodlight company will sell those US-made lights these lights for ~400k (so at the margin of market price plus tariffs), and no one outside the US will want to buy them. This is literally what already happened with the US car industry.

[glimshe]

There are many companies all over the world focused on local markets. The car industry is strategic, but I wouldn't mind buying a floodlight from a company that doesn't export anything.

[ahstilde]

So you want a worse floodlight at a higher price because of government protection?

[glimshe]

If it employs an American and helps recreate our middle class... Yes I do.

First they came for the floodlight maker's job. Next they will come for yours.

[1659447091]

> Next they will come for yours.

Like "they" came for middle-class Americans in stable US government jobs?

If they cared about re-creating a middle class with jobs, they wouldn't have started with wantonly eliminating so many of them using a method similar to checking if the packaged spaghetti is cooked. Toss it randomly at the wall and see what sticks.

[glimshe]

Is that your vision for middle class jobs? Government? And who will pay for these... The "rich"?

[1659447091]

What are you talking about? Who said anything about vision for jobs?

You and I both want an employed middle class. Why are you okay with "them" coming for the middle class as long as it Government jobs? These magic employment factories are not going to spring up overnight. So in the mean time why not care about the families and lives being rocked for having the audacity to get what was a stable job that could provide security for their middle class family with the added benefit for those that value their work in civil service over joining the Ferengi?

> And who will pay for these... The "rich"?

Me for one (Im not rich), I recognize what this county provides and the opportunities available. Why be against helping that which helped you? If some people dont want to that, okay, renounce citizenship, leave the country. They can be free of a government taxing the people who benefited the most from the previous generations taxes that paid for the collective government effort providing the conditions the newly wealthy, and the much wealthier now benefited from. Musk immigrated to this country because he wasn't going to have the same opportunity to turn the money he had into the fortune it is by staying in South Africa. Yet instead of using the opportunity his American created money bought him and carefully pruning the weary looking government tree so it could grow back stronger and healthier, he took a chainsaw to it. There's more money to be made at his stage of wealth with an even weaker government; that path has greater profit and simultaneously, the chance to pull up the ladder he climbed on the backs of the middle class. So should the "rich" pay their dues? Yes, just as I do and for the same reason. Otherwise, it's the "rich" who are the freeloaders.

Is that your vision for middle class jobs? Wait til the "rich" buys whats left of the country's economy at discount, then graciously allow the masses to work in their floodlight factory for scraps 6 days a week in a new private owned unregulated job economy with no oversight for worker protections?

[lossolo]

There is no unemployment problem. Producing floodlight is not high paying job. If things become more expensive, more people will fall out of the middle class because they will no longer be able to afford what they previously could.

[glimshe]

There is an enormous problem with sub-employment. Scores of Americans "employed" in activities such as Uber/Lyft driving, food delivery and quasi-prostitution (OnlyFans and adjacent).

Floodlight making would be a huge step up for Americans leaving small towns for terrible jobs in big cities.

Check the problem with drug addiction in small and medium cities.

[phatskat]

> helps recreate our middle class

These tariffs are probably the worst way to try to do that. America had its best “middle class” when companies and CEOs were heavily taxed and when unions were thriving. The politicians ranting about “bringing jobs back to America” are the same ones that dismantled the things that actually _made America great_, and if they actually cared about the quality of living for most Americans they would do actual work to get there instead of alienating our economy to benefit themselves and their rich friends.