You expected this to make sense. The goal is to destroy the US economy. Full stop. There aren’t many lenses that make sense anymore but this one? This one has made sense for quite some time now. Reexamining the behavior of the people in power using this lens should assist you in understanding the world we find ourselves in.
I don’t need to justify it. The other explanations are only partly correct if they ignore this giant red flag. The number of people who willfully ignore this is massive. Its a shock to process — no one wants to be even WILLING to believe it.
We’ve been had and the number of people covering for this grows daily, and will continue to do so until one day we all wake the fuck up.
I don't think it's at odds with other explanations. If you wanted a working tariff regime you'd make the tariffs graduated and reasonable - big enough to sway customer choices and ithus investment decisions, but not arbitrary seeming. More importantly, you'd work hard to ensure it rolled out smoothly and minimized commercial disruption so as to allow your price signals to function clearly.
If you wanted a working tariff regime, you'd also couple tariffs with investments and tax incentives for domestic businesses. Just hoping that the market will (somehow!) sort it out is a recipe for failure, quite possibly of disastrous levels.
I think that’s a little extreme, but here is a balance sheet based explanation where it works.
The US just sort of randomly decided to tariff everything from people they don’t like anymore. Because of the randomness of these tariffs, they impact not only consumer goods but production equipment.
The justification for these tariffs is something along the lines of “let’s bring production back to the United States.” That’s likely a good idea (says the Canadian), but when they use that justification while simultaneously tariffing production equipment the same as consumer goods you have to wonder what’s actually going on.
With production equipment, you amortize the cost of that tool over the years of usage. These tariffs are not amortized, meaning they must be paid at import. That takes cash off the balance sheet, puts it into equipment and hits liquidity.
If I was wickedly powerful and really hated Americans, going after SMB liquidity would be the most convenient (and profitable) way to cause generational harm.
The purpose of this political system is to put people like Trump in power. We can infer this because it keeps putting people like Trump in power and yet nobody has changed it yet.
Look up the history of the phrase "the purpose of a system is what it does". It was adopted as a principle because it made more sense than every other possible alternative. It makes no sense to claim that the purpose of a system is to do something that it never has done and consistently fails to do, because the system would have been replaced in that case.
No, I don't think the lens of them trying to destroy the economy of the country they live in and rule over makes any sense at all. One small example is Trump rolling back or easing tariffs when the market reacts. There's no secret intent behind it - they state their intent and reasoning quite clearly. They want a strong and insular US that prioritizes white citizens with minimal reliance on foreign imports or allies. They view the US as a superpower that can strongarm everyone else to get what they want.
Greed. You’re describing greed. The folks at the top of the pile in the US seemingly all have hoarding disorder. Very little of what they do appears rational… unless you concede their actions are meant to harm the general wellbeing of the US. population, while themselves being nicely insulated from all that.
Worth distinguishing between actively engaging in harmful behavior, and "failing to help". The Europeans have taken the US for granted for so long that when the US is only Ukraine's #1 donor country in absolute terms by far, their main response is to complain that even more help should be offered, and pretend the US is somehow hurting them.
Keep in mind that Ukraine is literally on the opposite side of the world from us. What's Brazil doing for Ukraine? What's Australia doing?
As an American, I consistently argue that the US should not ally with Europe here on HN. But even I don't argue in favor of actively working to harm Europe. I just think we should cut Europe loose, because nothing we do for Europe will ever be enough, and Europe is a wealthy region that's plenty capable of providing for itself.
Around $1.5B (AUD) so far, Bushmasters, 50 M1A1s, M113s, training, etc.
We didn't sign the Budapest Memorandum, neither are we part of NATO, but we do our part, as we did in Afghanistan, Iraq (after the lies about WMD), in the Red Sea and other international events.
Oh and on the articles you quoted, some of the biggest fines were from the UK, which is not part of the EU.
As for tariffs, the US upended 80 years of work on international trade, with Trump applying tariffs without any underlying criteria except his complete misunderstanding of the difference between a trade deficit and bad trade.
The US has maintained its currency's dominance for all of the post WW2 era, which has allowed you to borrow and spend in a currency that everyone else has to support to be able to buy things like oil.
As an American, you should realize that in the last 6 months, the US has decided to abdicate its leadership, and as oil becomes less important to world trade, the USD will start to lose its dominance over trade, which means that your debts will have to be paid back in other currencies while the tariffs do nothing but damage the US consumers and economy in general.
All the US promised in the Memorandum was to seek UN Security Council assistance if Ukraine was victimized. We went far beyond that.
Think about it: why would Ukraine be so desperate for NATO membership, if the "defense promise" in the Memorandum was already broken? Because there was no meaningful defense promise in the Memorandum! That is simply a malicious lie about the US that's very widespread online. Again, this is why I'm an isolationist. I give up. Our "allies" will hate us no matter what we do. I've figured it out. I want to be Switzerland. We'll worry about our continent, and you worry about yours.
>I love "US so big arguments", no one else cares!!
The US is being targeted specifically because we've given so much. No one is bothering Japan, or Argentina, or Saudi Arabia. It's because the US has been generous (in absolute terms) that we get so much flak.
Imagine if we sent thoughts and prayers the way Kazakhstan does. That way we would get less hate. When's the last time you heard Kazakhstan criticized for lack of Ukraine support?
>And then looking at per capita the US sits at number 16.
>You do know that the per capita number is from your own link? Japan sits at number 19 per capita.
ctrl-f "per capita", nothing comes up.
I do notice that Japan is #19 in terms of % of GDP however...
I actually think your confusion here explains a lot. You don't know the difference between "per capita" and "GDP". That shows you don't speak English well. That's probably why you don't know much about the US.
The fundamental issue is that you think you know a lot, but you actually know little. You're mostly just reading what is written about the US in your native language. Probably there is lots of misinformation.
>Was the US doing about as much as Japan the argument you wanted to make?
Why is the US being harassed and not Japan?
>Or are just here to be a contrarian?
The absurdity of Europeans who complain endlessly about the US, while we've historically pursued a relatively generous foreign policy towards you, gets under my skin.
>Maybe the US have an incentive in seeing the American built world order continue?
I've very consistently stated in this thread, and on Hacker News more generally, that the US should abandon the so-called "American-built world order". It causes us no end of grief, as you are illustrating at this very moment with your comments.
>But hey, turn inward and let China and India win.
The US economy was doing amazing back when we were more isolationist. Switzerland does amazing despite rejecting memberships in multinational organizations like the EU and NATO. India is very explicit in its policy of "multi-alignment", i.e. avoiding big firm coalitions like EU/NATO.
You Europeans are so invested in the idea that America needs to protect Europe for America to succeed. As far as I can tell, this idea is total nonsense. Barely a shred of evidence is offered in favor of it.
China and India aren't exactly looking to form alternatives to NATO either. Why would a big country agree to defend a small country? It doesn't usually make sense from a national interest perspective.
>But don’t get mad when tariff situation with Europe etc. Is equalized over time and the American big tech is targeted to lessen the dependency.
You guys have been raiding big tech bank accounts for years now. You shouldn't be surprised by US retaliation. What goes around comes around. We can tell you're not actually our friends.
Oh my god. This is so funny. You truly have to stoop down to insults because you are so fragile? Who hurt you?
Sorry, the massive difference of "per capita" and "% of GDP". Which would be aligned assuming equal GDP.
Given GDP differences between the donor countries the differences aren't meaningful. But sorry, I should have specified as "% of GDP" where the US is a joke comparatively.
What is even more funny is that I have lived a year in the US, I have traveled all over the US. I have college credits in American history. You know the tiny High School course "AP US History"? Have you heard of it?
Which is also why I was not surprised when Trump won in 2016. I had seen the culture. I had seen the close mindedness.
> The US economy was doing amazing back when we were more isolationist.
You mean the roaring 20s right before the great depression? Because that is the last time the US was isolationist.
Seems like you are dreaming about something you don't have the slightest clue about.
Your response is very typical for the absolute craziness that has infected the US psyche. Donald Trump is not a one off, he is what Americans want.
It's pretty wild that you think AP US History - an introductory course aimed at school-aged children - gives you some great insight into "the US psyche". An insight you gleamed as... what, a high school exchange student?
>Oh my god. This is so funny. You truly have to stoop down to insults because you are so fragile? Who hurt you?
You were the one who started with dickish behavior. Don't dish it out if you can't take it.
>Given GDP differences between the donor countries the differences aren't meaningful. But sorry, I should have specified as "% of GDP" where the US is a joke comparatively.
Actually it does make a difference here. See the link I provided: https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1hd7aud/military_ai... Considering per capita, 8 months ago the US was more generous than almost all of Europe. Per capita is arguably the correct metric, since part of why US GDP is greater is because Americans work longer hours and take less vacation.
In any case, even if we consider the metric less favorable to the US (% of GDP), the US gives more as a fraction of GDP than almost every country outside Europe. If the US is a joke, than Spain, Ireland, France, and Italy are even funnier. We're very generous in every sense considering this isn't our war.
But since you call US aid a joke, I hope you won't miss it when it's gone. And I appreciate you confirming the points I've made, with your remark: Helping Ukraine gets us nothing but grief.
>You mean the roaring 20s right before the great depression? Because that is the last time the US was isolationist.
"Frustrated by French meddling in U.S. politics, Washington warned the nation to avoid permanent alliances with foreign nations and to rely instead on temporary alliances for emergencies... Washington’s remarks have served as an inspiration for American isolationism, and his advice against joining a permanent alliance was heeded for more than a century and a half."
The US economy mostly did great during that century and a half. Furthermore, the Great Depression was not simply caused by "isolationism". This is more intellectual sloppiness on your part.
I advocate a Swiss approach to foreign policy. That doesn't mean disengaging from other nations. It means not promising to help them with their problems.
Your continent, your problem. This is the approach that most of the world adopts towards Ukraine. The US was foolish to get involved. And we've been punished severely for it, by people like you. No more.
It would ask a root nameserver for an ip address for the .com nameserver, and then ask the .com nameserver for the ip address of the example.com nameserver, then ask the example.com nameserver for further records (and may continue to recurse).
Unbound is a recursive, caching, validating name server. Personally, I run it on a container right on my Mikrotik router. I service DNS myself, and honestly it feels better. If you’re unaware of what this software can do, I do suggest looking into it a bit.
I’m in Chicagoland and can report the same. The cops aren’t doing anything. Interestingly, it seems crime is going down while they do nothing. This leads me to believe we don’t actually need huge police forces.
I'm in Chicagoland too, and they're doing basically what they've always done: issue tickets --- automatically, now, as well as manually. What difference are you seeing?
Anecdotally, I have not seen a car pulled over on LSD south of the loop in _years_. That used to be common (my first year in Chicago I got 2 tickets there and don’t think of myself as particularly speedy).
I’ve not seen a single person pulled over in my neighborhood in the same time, another activity that was common.
Meanwhile traffic behavior has reached staggeringly wild levels.
My impression, which is certainly not backed with data, is that CPD no longer polices traffic violations. My cynical view is that it’s a work slow down in protest over all the trouble they’ve gotten in for pretextual stops.
I've been pulled over in Chicago within the last couple months, for whatever that's worth. In Oak Park, this is a hotbutton issue, the belief that since COVID traffic enforcement is sharply down, and, apparently, by the numbers, it isn't.
When I looked into the stats for cpd it was a mess. They got in trouble for monkeying with the stats, so they are already suspicious.
But by their numbers stop rates went way up for the 10 years between 2014-2024. But that was during the period when traffic stops were a primary strategy for crime prevention, that is the pretextual stops they got in trouble for.
Sadly, there was no checkbox for the officer to mark if it was a pretextual stop or not for study purposes.
I could probably isolate by stop location to some degree if I really wanted to do some digging. Maybe I can nerdsnipe ‘chaps into doing it for me.
Essentially the same as kasey_junk -- they're missing from the roads entirely. I frequently am in the areas of Lombard & Aurora for work, and I haven't seen a cop on the side of the road with someone pulled over in what feels like years.
I do see the insane driving. People going fast and weaving is the tip of the iceberg. Regularly now I see people using left turn lanes in intersections to pass people on the left and cut them off mid-intersection. Regularly I see people utterly spaced out on their phones, nearly stopped in the middle of the road -- these folks present a unique danger if you're doing the speed limit and not paying really close attention. But just generally, I think "good driving" went out of style during COVID, when a huge swath of people stopped driving.
These sorts of things I feel used to be addressed by the police in a very public way: you'd see that car that was weaving doing dangerous things pulled over a mile up the road as you continued on. THAT is what's changed, for me.
