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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: February 23rd, 2025

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  • Brotip: The Depot isn’t even cheap, it’s just bad. At least in my region, framing lumber from small-time lumber yards is like 2-4% cheaper than the same stuff at a Home Depot or Lowe’s, while simultaneously being considerably better stock. I get custom orders like doors and windows faster and cheaper too. I saved a couple hundred bucks on a flooring project by skipping the Depot a few weeks back.

    Fuck the box stores. Slow, expensive, and bad. They have nothing left but brand recognition.









  • There are ways that tariffs can be used to protect domestic industries. But when they’re done that way, it’s normally specific products, implemented carefully and with some warning. I’m pretty sure there are some tariffs to protect American automakers, off the top of my head.

    What the president did is just economic suicide. Sudden, huge, fairly indiscriminate, and fluctuating. I think his goal, in his mind, may have been to replace the income tax, but he really fumbled. And that’s a bad idea anyway, because tariffs and sales taxes hit the middle class hardest, which slows down the economy.

    There may also be an explanation that he really doesn’t understand cooperation and believes every deal has a winner and a loser. And then very mistakenly concluded that we were the losers in international trade because of our trade deficit. That’s incorrect. We get large amounts of goods and resources for small amounts of fiat currency, which we always seem to have more of. Our trade deficit considerably improves our quality of life in ways that cannot be replicated by an insular economy.