Time to stock up on popcorn.

[richard1rst]

With the upcoming tariff induced price hikes coming along with the inevitable USPS price increase I suspect these boards are going to explode.

I do like a good train wreck.

[chevymontecarlo88]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

Hey - that's FOX Entertainment - they declared this themselves. It's a cute channel.

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Fox is horrible as well. There are some pundits on all channels that may be ok but the majority of the media is biased and just opinion, not news. This has been going on well before Trump. Some may say that the government still is actively asserting narratives to these channels as they did and were exposed back in the 70's. There is hope with independent journalism and maybe the cream with rise. There is going to be a reckoning within the legacy media and you can already see it with changes being made by the editors. Journalism has suffered over the years, with no accountability and many times rewarded for their efforts/mistakes. I really do hope we all can trust the news again. 

[chevymontecarlo88]

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

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@chariot_badges wrote:

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@richard1rst wrote:

With the upcoming tariff induced price hikes coming along with the inevitable USPS price increase I suspect these boards are going to explode.

I do like a good train wreck.

---

Well good ... because you (and all Americans) are about to get a rude awakening.

It's going to be a rough next couple of years.

We have a lot of austerity to work through here.
There will be hunger, mass exodus, civil unrest.

Not quite "Mad Max" level .... but, bad.

Hope you can find popcorn, and when you do can find enough money to buy it.

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The Mad Max scenerio is not that hard to imagine. Look at what is already in place. People cannot afford rent, people cannot afford to buy a home. Millions of Americans are ready to retire with NO SIGNIFICANT SAVINGS and relying on SS to get by. I get it.

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Of course there is pain. That is why many have voted for change from the traditional candidates. People want a disrupter to shake things up and we will see what happens.  If we as a country can treat the reason why people get sick instead of treating their sickness with meds, that is a win for all of us. Read about Dr Casey Means and her breakdown of why people are sick and how to change the direction.

Time will tell

[fbusoni]

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@powell-collectibles wrote:

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@fbusoni wrote:

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@powell-collectibles wrote:

I’m trying to figure out how this relates to eBay, other than making a few eBay sellers feel important.  Didn’t they get rid of the soapbox for a reason?

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eBay, like any other endeavor, is merely a microcosm of life -- working with people, comporting oneself appropriately, managing responsibilities, planning and thinking ahead, meeting deadlines, digesting information from multiple sources, interpreting facts, hearing other views, learning, etc..

I thought everyone knew that.

The good news is that most here can think multidimensionally... and most appear to enjoy conversations and discussions that extend beyond the best sort of packaging materials, UPS surcharges, and eBay algorithms.   Seems to me that that's what makes online forums such as this an interesting place.   Hearing and reflecting on other's experiences, whether directly related to eBay or not, is why I participate here.

Meantime, no one is stopping you from "feeling important," whatever that means.  

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I wasn’t disagreeing with your post – just wondering what it has to do with eBay. This is getting into a very soapbox like post. Much of it fine, some of it ugly. Most of it out of place.

And, I’m not worried about feeling important.  Online debates don’t provide the street cred that so many think that they do 🙂

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@powell-collectibles 

I do tend to digress... it's a bad habit.  I was a writer professionally and we have a hard time staying focused.

But as I suggested earlier, even when one is answering a question about eBay, a certain value can be added with seemingly unrelated anecdotes.   I recall you making a few such contributions (people taking responsibility for their lives, etc.).   

Nothing at all wrong with that... this place would be a graveyard if people did not add a little color to spice things up.  I've learned a great deal from other sellers here about all sorts of things having nothing at all to do with eBay.

I do not share my thoughts about anything substantive elsewhere on social media because the atmosphere is too polarizing.

The way I see it, one has to have above average intelligence to sell on eBay and be successful, and the regulars here are indeed successful. 

Thus, the discourse here on these seller forums about non-eBay matters tends to be civil and often well informed, even if there is a lot of bloviating (to which I plead guilty!)  😅

[roccotacodad54]

   THANKYOU!!!!!

[roccotacodad54]

THANKYOU!!!!!

[roccotacodad54]

   Toxic. Wow.....

[roccotacodad54]

   Agreed. I let myself fall for the bait and it has all the hallmarks of a cult.

[roccotacodad54]

   Thankyou. I am old enough to remember 30 year refrigerators and not buying a new TV unless one came on the market with a feature that I wanted, not because the first one quit working.

[roccotacodad54]

   CNN has gone to the right? LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!

[roccotacodad54]

   Yes where is the Walter Cronkite of this generation? He was a liberal but one never knew it because he reported the news not his opinion.

[fbusoni]

@tarotfindsandmore 

And of course the ultimate irony is that giving China Most Favored Nation trading status and inviting them into the WTO did NOTHING to modify or otherwise ameliorate Beijing's hostility to the USA.

Indeed, by virtue of its new status, China merely acquired the intellectual property and technology to intensify and accelerate economic espionage and all manner of malevolence against the USA.

But if the US is indeed prepared to ban Chinese imports and effectively disengage from / sever the trade relationship we have with Beijing, are we also prepared to disengage geopolitically and let China exercise dominion over its "sphere of influence" in the Taiwan Straits and South China sea?  

Because the two tracks -- economic and political / military -- have to varying degrees worked in concert for many years to maintain / sustain the bilateral relationship.

China is watching very closely what is happening in Ukraine, which is in Russia's so called "sphere of influence."

The way Cuba is in our "sphere of influence" -- thinking here of 1962 as the most dramatic manifestation.

I reckon Marco Rubio will have to tell Mr. Trump that the overall picture is a little more complex than meets the eye.  

If nothing else, should be fascinating to watch.

[roccotacodad54]

   You touched on something there..."Most people just want to be left alone and don't care how others live theirs. Live your life the way you want as long as it does not carry over on to your neighbor's lawn."

   I forget which founding fathers had the opinion that one of the most important freedoms is for the government to leave us alone and live our lives without their interferance. That I think has been lost to history.

[fbusoni]

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@chevymontecarlo88 wrote:

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Change is coming fast 

You can say that again. 

Did you see that Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski recently visited Mar a Lago and have made up with Donald Trump?

NYT has a fascinating story today.   

[roccotacodad54]

   CNN credible? Wow!

[tarotfindsandmore]

I agree with pretty much all of your observations.  That said, tariffs are not bans.  Tariffs are intended to level the playing field so that we stop facilitating our own precipitous demise. 

China takes and takes and takes, and just buries us in garbage that we ignorantly lap up.  They steal our technology, they're buying up the land around our military installations, they've attempted to circumvent both the current and proposed tariffs by building factories in other nations, and they send us chemically poisoned goods while exploiting their own citizens for cheap labor.

I will grant you that the relationships are incredibly complex and intertwined in ways that we have no clue about, but we have to start somewhere.  Tariffs are a wake up call.  It's a warning that lets those nations that would exploit us that we're no longer interested in making it easy for them.

I'm sick of the wars.  I'm over the chaos.  I'm tired of being the world's toilet.  We need to clean up our own backyard and stop worrying so much about the rest of the world.  Yes, I realize that sounds overly simplistic, and maybe even naive, but like you, I was alive when we still had a country and we made our own goods.   I know it is possible to bring jobs home, especially manufacturing, because I lived in home with an immigrant who came here legally and served his (this) country before going on to employ hundreds of people for half a century in his factory.