I just googled "How do tariffs work?" I got hit with several college level vocabulary words describing tariffs in both the AI summary and my first result. It might be less of a problem, if we had adequately funded schools.
>Tariffs are taxes imposed by a government on imported goods, making them more expensive to encourage consumers to buy domestic products instead. The costs of these tariffs are typically passed on to consumers, resulting in higher prices for imported items.
I don't see any "college level vocabulary words" and it directly says that it makes goods more expensive and the costs are passed on to consumers. Maybe Google's complicated answer is part of the "media environment" being criticized.
Edit for the sarcastically challenged among us.
In simple terms, think of a tariff like a special tax a country puts on goods it buys from another country. Here's how it works: When a country wants to import something, like cars from Japan or clothes from China, it has to pay an extra fee (the tariff) to its own government before those goods can come into the country. This extra fee makes the imported goods more expensive than products made in the country itself. Why do governments do this? To protect local businesses: By making foreign products pricier, the government hopes people will choose to buy things made in their own country, helping local businesses grow and create jobs. To make money: Tariffs can also be a way for the government to collect some extra cash. To get other countries to change their ways: Sometimes, countries use tariffs as a way to pressure other nations to follow certain rules or to stop unfair trade practices. Example Imagine a bicycle store in the US wants to import a bicycle from another country that costs $1,000. If the US has an 11% tariff on bicycles, the store would have to pay an extra $110 (11% of $1,000) to the US government, making the total cost to bring the bike in $1,110. This makes bicycles made in the US seem more affordable by comparison.
For crying out loud, information is so accessible. The inability to find and discern at least some level of truth (or at least gather multiple contrasting perspectives) is laziness, AND stupidity.
I'm all for better schools, a better information ecosystem, and more tolerance, but why are we bending over backwards to tell malignantly underinformed people it's not their fault? It is! It is their fault.
People have much better things to do than look up words, look for dissenting opinions one something the face on their TV tells them. There's taking the kids to _______ practice. There's TV shows to keep up with. There's an infinite feed of content to scroll through. There's plenty of other things that they would prefer to do themselves than whatever it is you would prefer them to do. That does not qualify as stupid. To me, what is stupid, is everyone here calling others that have differing view points than their own stupid. You are willingly using that term in the same way you say they are willfully not looking things up.
I sure as hell can tell people not to have an opinion. That is my constitutional right. If someone has strong beliefs about something and votes accordingly, and they don’t put in the effort needed to find out the basic facts about the matter, then they are stupid and that’s bad.
I asked Google to "explain tariffs in simple terms" and it sure did. A sixth grader would easily get it. Here's the response (and now I'm wondering whether a GenAI system could create a short animated video or slide deck that could become a TikTok):
Tariffs in simple terms
A tariff is like a special tax that a country places on goods it buys from other countries.
Imagine this You're buying a toy made in another country.
The government of your country might add a tariff to that toy's price when it enters the country.
This makes the imported toy more expensive than a similar toy made in your own country.
The company importing the toy pays this tax to the government.
However, they might then pass some or all of that cost onto you, the customer, by raising the price of the toy.
Just want to point out that giving more money to an underperforming school only makes it worse.
Is there no circumstance where more funding would help an underperforming school? It certainly “can” make it worse in instances, but there are many reasons that a school might be underperforming. To imply that more resources would fail to help any of those problems is quite a leap.
What if the student-teacher ration is 40-1 and more funds allows for another teacher, might that make the school better?
What if the school is only open for 4 days due to low funding, might an additional day of school make it perform better?
What if a school has multiple disabled students slowing down the curriculum, but no funds to give them personal support, might more funds help it perform better?