Say I’m from country X and I make widgets for $10 each. The US decides to put a 25% tariff on goods from country X. That means that each time I want to sell a widget in the US, I need to pay 25% of its value as a tax. If I was only making a 25% profit on each widget, that means I’m now breaking even on each widget and not making any money. That won’t work for me, so I raise my widget prices to, say, $14. Now I have to pay 25% of that, or $3.50, as a tariff, which leaves me pocketing $10.50, which is about what I was making before. Widget manufacturers in the US don’t have to do that, so their prices stay much lower than mine, so presumably they get more sales and the US economy is strengthened.

The problem is, the US is not a manufacturing superpower anymore, and even for the things that are manufactured here, most of the raw materials come from overseas. So the only thing these tariffs are going to do is drive up the price of everything. And once those prices are up, they’re not going to come back down, even if the tariffs are removed; in my scenario above, it’s likely that when I raised my widget prices to $14, all the US widget manufacturers would just raise their prices to $13 and make a bunch of extra money.

Long story short: more money getting siphoned out of the pockets of the working class.

I was on System 76 for two laptops. The most recent one, a Lemur, started to fall apart: the plastic hinge just started coming off in chunks, and the clamshell began to split. Customer service was terrible: they tried to get me to agree to charges without explaining what they were going to charge me for. When I pressed them (which took repeated emails) they finally admitted they wanted to send me a part for me to do a replacement without any instructions, and which they advised people not to do. Very scammy vibes. I picked up a Framework instead and have been really enjoying it, though I can’t really speak to the gaming portion I’m afraid. I’d just say avoid System 76.

Anyone who starts off telling you that they’re the most popular and trusted should probably not, in fact, be trusted. Especially if they’re calling for not using password managers. Passkeys are interesting in theory, but my understanding is that most of the implementations are just another way for big tech to track you.

Refreshingly, that includes multinational firms: https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/04/asia/deepfake-cfo-scam-hong-kong-intl-hnk/index.html

Going to the Labor board, at least here in Oregon, is pretty painless and may be doable while still working there. My only experience with them was after an employer just locked us all out of the building and closed one day, so continuing to work wasn’t an option for me. They treated me well and got me money quickly, then took the guy to court to get it back themselves.

Also, I don’t “keep talking” about much here; the comment you replied to was the first one I made :).

If you get fired for that, you should take them to your state’s Labor board and/or to court.