this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
1053 points (97.9% liked)

memes

22489 readers
2756 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/Ads/AI SlopNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.

A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment

Sister communities

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world 40 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (13 children)

Let's be honest. The highest estimates I find are around $160 billion in illegal tariffs. If we split that evenly it would work out to around $640 for every person over 18 in the country.

What good would giving 250 million people each $640 do? For 99% of them it would be gone as soon as they got it. They'd waste it on things like rent, bills, food, gas money. Temporary things. Within a month almost no one would have anything to show for it.

But giving a relative handful of large companies hundreds of millions to several billion dollars each? For them it's pure profit. Their bills are already paid. They've already used the profits from that year for stock buybacks to get their wealthy shareholders more money and divided the rest giving their executives huge bonuses. And now suddenly they all have huge amounts more profit almost out of thin air.

It's money to invest in AI to replace human labor so the coming years can be even better, to do even more stock buybacks so that the people who own the most stock in each company see huge increases in their net worth, or do give CEOS a second round of yearly bonus. Months and years from now there will still be amazing homes, yachts, private islands, and new faces that we'll all be able to point to as the lasting good that came from this.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

What good would giving 250 million people each $640 do?

You say that, but something a lot like that already happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Stimulus_Act_of_2008

Most taxpayers below the income limit received a rebate of at least $300 per person ($600 for married couples filing jointly). Eligible taxpayers received, along with their individual payment, $300 per dependent child under the age of 17. The payment was equal to the payer's net income tax liability, but could not exceed $600 (for a single person) or $1200 (married couple filing jointly)

Most everyone I knew spent it on HDTVs. Economic stimulus indeed.

[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago

You think I don't rem... oh Christ, it was 18 years ago? There really are people here who wouldn't remember it.

Yes. I know. I'm sort of surprised anyone could read my post and not see all the sarcasm. I do not really believe that spending money on food or rent is wasting it. It's needing to use that money in order to keep living. Companies getting it all to make the rich richer and buy yachts and new faces is not something I actually consider to be better.

[–] mangobanana@discuss.online 3 points 3 weeks ago

No matter what they spent it on, it was still stimulating the economy.

load more comments (10 replies)