[kpw94]

"water is wet" kind of study, as tariffs are precisely supposed to increase price for consumers for imported goods... But the last 3 paragraphs are interesting:

- Importers raised the price more than needed (i.e. blame tarifs to increase their profit margin)

- Price increases took one year to fully reflect to the customers, and persisted nearly one year after the tariffs expired.

- chicken-tax-like loopholes implemented wherever possible (for wine apparently it's raising the ABV to more than 14%)

[vladms]

You remind me of the fact that humans do not in fact have sensors in the skin to detect specifically wetness.

I think given the amount of ideas floating around, it is occasionally good to revisit things that are "known", just in case some underlying assumption changed, especially for economics which is harder to get right as it deals a lot with what human want and do.

[cimi_]

I can't see how anyone can think "the exporters pay the tariff" makes any sense. TBH, we'll never know how many people thought it made sense because it didn't matter.

[vladms]

In the end money move around. If - for example - the government would just give the citizens the money from the tariffs in equal share (I mean not that I suggest they would, but technically possible), it would be like taking from the citizens that consume more and give it to the citizens that consume less.

So, yes, it is correct in a practical immediate sense that "the exporters pay the tariff" but that excludes many relevant issues like how prices evolve (which are paid by the consumers), what the government does with the money (it could share or not) and what others decide to produce (to avoid tariffs). But definitely many people didn't thought of all that ...

[butILoveLife]

Your first 2 points make me extra bitter about COVID.

Less store hours. Higher prices. Inflation. People in school got a terrible education and it affected my workforce. (But hey 1% of people died, as predicted if we did nothing at all... )

It only reinforces the importance of competition over protectionism.

I used to be a walmart fan, but my local store is cheaper now. I didn't bother to look at prices until things were getting silly.

[ceejayoz]

> (But hey 1% of people died, as predicted if we did nothing at all... )

You're at a football stadium with 100k people. A thousand of them die suddenly. Do you feel safe?

> Less store hours. Higher prices. Inflation.

At this point, that's just greed. They figured out what the market would bear.

[sofixa]

> But hey 1% of people died, as predicted if we did nothing at all

Nope. Compare the death rates of Sweden vs its neighbours in the Nordics (the closest comparisons we have with similar weather/culture/etc.). Or if you don't care about minimising variables, in the US between states that did lockdowns and mask mandates and those that didn't. In every comparable (e.g. excluding rural vs urban) case, there were more deaths in "doing nothing" than implementing the same basic public health axioms that have held true for centuries.

> Inflation

That was also helped by Russia invading Ukraine, which increased global prices of multiple important raw materials. But yes, inflation after a period of deflation/economic contraction/restricted travel and consumption was to be expected.

> People in school got a terrible education and it affected my workforce

It's definitely a bigger issue for them than it is for you. And yeah, it sucks for them. Would have been pretty terrible to tell teachers (who overwhelmingly skew older) they should risk their lives just to keep kids occupied too.

> It only reinforces the importance of competition over protectionism.

What has that got to do with COVID?

[izendejas]

The thing too many forget is that if we didn't flatten the curve our entire medical system was going to collapse. It's insane that people don't yet understand this concept and can't even empathize with medical professionals. Yes, we all struggled, but try talking to medical professionals to see how they did.

When something doesn't happen because enough measures were taken, then it wasn't worth it because it didn't happen?

[sofixa]

> The thing too many forget is that if we didn't flatten the curve our entire medical system was going to collapse

Yep, if things were going well there wouldn't have been makeshift morgues with refrigerated trucks, sick people having to be moved around to different countries, the military deploying field hospitals, corpses piling in the streets. Those examples are from a variety of countries, which shows how bad the situation was globally.

[lostlogin]

> Compare the death rates of Sweden

As a New Zealander, I like to chuck out our achievement of a negative death rate. Covid lockdowns resulted in less New Zealanders dying than usual.

But, like elsewhere, economic and social harm were both high.

[pocksuppet]

You had 6 weeks of staying at home, and then quarantines for international travellers after that. In return, you had no COVID-19 at all for several years. Seems a fair trade.

[ninalanyon]

> negative death rate.

Norway had that too; without lockdown. Curfews would require a change in the constitution and the last time they happened was during WWII which makes them doubly unpopular.

[braincat31415]

Sweden all-cause mortality was indeed higher if an immediate pre-pandemic year is taken as a base. However, pre-pandemic years in Sweden show a substantial dip in all-cause mortality, something that neighboring countries did not see. It is not that simple.

[dhosek]

I mean sure more people died than were necessary, but think of the shareholder value that was created!