| ▲ | blibble 4 days ago |
| > This is why the US dropped tea into Boston to have it's own Freedom. the 3% tariff on Chinese tea was seen as oppressive don't look at what has been imposed this year (without congressional approval) |
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| ▲ | zdragnar 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| The tariff was oppressive in large part because the colonies didn't have representation in Parliament and were allowed limited (and decreasing) local governance. The Stamp, Townshend and Intolerable Acts were a whole lot more than just "we don't wanna pay taxes". |
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| ▲ | _heimdall 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | A similar argument can be made against the tariffs though. US consumers will be paying the bulk of the tariffs through price increases. We do have representatives in Congress, they just weren't the ones imposing tariffs. edit: as fun as silent down votes are, it would be interesting to hear where you might disagree | | |
| ▲ | lenerdenator 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Unfortunately the representatives in Congress gave the tariff power to the Presidency. Now, did they do that with the approval of the voters? Ostensibly, yes, but in reality, it's not that clear-cut. This would be more like if the Thirteen Colonies had MPs and those MPs still voted in favor of the Stamp Act, or they voted to delegate the power to tariff to someone with a severe personality disorder. | | |
| ▲ | skybrian 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | There are lawsuits arguing that Congress didn’t give the executive branch this power. They seem pretty persuasive to me and they’re successful so far, but we’ll see how the appeals process turns out. | | |
| ▲ | lenerdenator 3 days ago | parent [-] | | sigh There are a lot of lawsuits about the executive branch doing things it supposedly doesn't have the power to do. Generally the mood seems to be that only a SCOTUS ruling will potentially be taken seriously. |
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| ▲ | bigstrat2003 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It infuriates me just how much members of Congress have abdicated their jobs and given power to the president to make unilateral decisions. I wonder if we need a constitutional amendment (not that we could get such a thing to pass in this day and age), because it is a complete perversion of how our government is supposed to work. For a long time now I've been banging the drum of "don't put power in the president's hands", because the downside has always been very clear to me: even if you trust the guy in office today, doesn't mean you will want the next guy to have that power. But people just don't care. They are quite happy to have unilateral power exercised by one man, because they don't bother to think through the consequences of such things. | | |
| ▲ | HankStallone 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Congressmen have to get reelected, so over the years they've been glad to abdicate power to the executive, the judiciary, and the unelected bureaucracy. Anyone but themselves, so they didn't have to sign their names to the unpopular policies they wanted. They still got what the ruling class wanted, but indirectly, so it rarely threatened their incumbency. Whatever happened, they could tell the votes back home, "Sorry, we tried to pass/stop such-and-such, but we don't have any control over the president/courts/bureaucrats. Can't blame me." It worked pretty well as long as the ruling class were all pretty much on the same page about most things, with some "social issues" differences between the parties that they used for campaigning but never quite acted on. It works less well if different factions start competing and going against the status quo for real. | | |
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| ▲ | aaomidi 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I mean yes the American people should probably consider giving our current government the same taste. But they’re not going to do that because we’ve been trained to be complacent. | |
| ▲ | Ajedi32 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I fully agree tariffs should be the purview of Congress, but that's not a "similar argument". Trump was elected just as Congress was. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Trump was elected to be the president, a role itself meant to be the chief executive and public figurehead of the government. Trump was not elected to legislate and no single person should be given the power to do so. edit: typo |
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| ▲ | cma 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | These tariffs may have representation, but constitutionally not from the right representative. Congress has the authority and only delegated it to the president in limited circumstances that don't apply. Trump says the ones on China are imposed for fentanyl being shipped in by mail and other means, and within days of saying that pardoned the largest opiates by mail operator in US history, Ross Ulbricht. | |
| ▲ | Elextric 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Technically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_representation | |
| ▲ | 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | doka_smoka 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't feel represented on the national or international stage AT ALL. Maybe I'll stop paying mine. | | |
| ▲ | aleph_minus_one 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > I don't feel represented on the national or international stage AT ALL. Maybe I'll stop paying mine. Now gather a huge group of friends who are willing to fight for this cause (and for whose this cause is so important that they can accept ending in jail or even worse). | | |
| ▲ | DeusExMachina 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Be careful what you ask for. History has proven that such a group will exist at some point. | | |
| ▲ | mindslight 4 days ago | parent [-] | | System's got that on lock by setting it up so the people most predisposed to fight the government are actually cheering on the new taxes. Information/policy/consent flowing the opposite way from how is commonly understood has been my critique of democracy for a long time, but the effect just keeps growing. Social media is a hell of a drug. | | |
| ▲ | GuinansEyebrows 4 days ago | parent [-] | | > System's got that on lock by setting it up so the people most predisposed to fight the government are actually cheering on the new taxes more likely, proving that this group of people never actually believed in anything. | | |
| ▲ | mindslight 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I don't see how that is a more useful model than what I said. Maybe for rallying people to oppose the current problems. But it feels like such preaching to the choir mainly serves to exacerbate the "culture war" that helps shut off people's thinking to begin with. So pushing that way might help win the immediate battle, but it also helps lose the overall war. | | |
| ▲ | GuinansEyebrows 3 days ago | parent [-] | | i don't think it contributes to the culture war to recognize that most people are not truly engaged in a collective sense, and that we are trapped within a self-reproducing system that relies on that: "...the autocratic reign of the market economy which had acceded to an irresponsible sovereignty, and the totality of new techniques of government which accompanied this reign." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectacle_(critical_theory) | | |
| ▲ | mindslight 3 days ago | parent [-] | | That may be where you are coming from, but your original comment didn't contain anything beyond a simple smack down that is too-easily interpreted in a partisan manner. |
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| ▲ | Gud 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | What you "feel" is irrelevant though? You have the option of voting. |
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| ▲ | anywhichway 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That's absurd. That doesn't pass the sniff test at all for being remotely true that people would react like that to only a 3 percent tax. I looked it up, and it was a 3 pence tax per pound. When tea was selling for 2 to 3 pence per pound. So yeah, a 100-150% tax combined with the fact that the East India Company was allowed to sell without paying the tax. That is very unjust and threatens their business a lot more than the tax alone. |
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| ▲ | Amezarak 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The precipitating event behind the Boston Tea Party was actually a reduction in taxation that made it possible for the East India Company to undercut both official colonial tea importers and also American tea smugglers. |
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| ▲ | lesuorac 4 days ago | parent [-] | | And many of those tea importers/smugglers happened to be prominent figures in the future US government. A coup was just good business. | | |
| ▲ | potato3732842 3 days ago | parent [-] | | It was terrible business. They'd have all been way better off working with the dominant global and economic power than starting a new country. And that's before you average in all the ones who lost everything and/or died. | | |
| ▲ | dijit 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It was good business, and those men are immortalised in history. We should probably not forget that France gave nearly everything they had to the US to fund its revolution, what was a global power ended up in such an impoverished situation that it led to the French Revolution and ended the monarchy. Not a small amount of support, if you are at the receiving end - certainly smells like good business. | |
| ▲ | tomjakubowski 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "We had a good thing, you stupid son of a bitch! We had the King. We had a tea port. We had everything we needed, and it all ran like clockwork. You could've shut your mouth, smuggled tea and made as much money as you ever needed. It was perfect. But, no, you just had to blow it up. You and your pride and your ego! You just had to be the man. If you'd done your job, known your place, we'd all be fine right now." | |
| ▲ | lesuorac 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I dunno. Look at Musk who tried to work with the US President vs Trump who is the US president. Which one of them is gaining more? |
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| ▲ | FergusArgyll 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The target of the Boston Tea Party was the British implementation of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea from China in the colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party |
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| ▲ | anikom15 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Thank you for your pointless strawman argument. |
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| ▲ | 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| [deleted] |
