this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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[–] 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.

[–] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Man for a second I thought you were serious and was getting my pitchfork ready. Bravo.

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

I mean... don't put it away. You should still take the opportunity to make sure it's nicely rusty and dull. We do need everyone to have them ready. That sarcastic message of mine is still describing what the government and corporations actually did to us. And they're not raping and killing their own kids. Well... they probably are raping their own kids too. But not killing or possibly eating them.

Since they're now all in charge of investigating and arresting themselves and their buddies and passing laws to stop their own blatant corruption it seems that us stepping in with pitchforks might be necessary very soon.

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