As temperatures soared on a sweltering July day in New York City, shoppers at Queens’s largest mall said they were feeling the heat – of rising prices.

“T-shirts, basic t-shirts, underwear, the basic necessities – the prices are going up,” said Clarence Johnson, 48, who was visiting the Macy’s at the Queen Center mall to pick up shirts he ordered online.

As Donald Trump presses on with his trade wars, retailers have been passing price increases onto customers. Department stores – which rely on a variety of imported goods and materials, from shoes to t-shirts – have particularly been scrambling to deal with the flux in prices.

  • Wytch@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    I will never forget, how shortly after the election, I spoke to someone gleefully checking out their groceries. “I can’t wait for prices to start coming down,” she remarked, as if the mere presence of this addlebrained buffoon could have an almost instant and positive impact on our economy. As if a man who bankrupted a casino could possibly have the skills to drive down grocery prices single-handed.

    I could only shake my head, “yeah that’s not how tariffs work, unfortunately everything is about to go up.” She made a face like she’d smelled Trump’s diaper and walked away.

    I’ve watched these imbeciles for decades, praising their Republican leaders for economies that Democrats spent 8 years rebuilding, only for those Republicans to tear it down again. Decades. This isn’t a generational thing. Conservatives are rock stupid as a collective, and by definition cannot grow and change, only reveal more of their depravity and misanthropy.

    They will never kick these sociopathic manipulators to the curb. Just like their deportee counterparts we’ve heard from recently, they’ll praise him all the way to the grave. “I lost the house, but I still think Trump is the best person to lead the country.”

    He thanks you for your support, now please die quietly so he can shit on your lawn.

    • liverbe@lemmy.world
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      When you elect a party that doesn’t believe that the government works, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

      • Wytch@lemmy.zip
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        It’s true. And I’ve listened to them make that complaint all my life. But what’s now abundantly clear is, that when they said “government” doesn’t work, what they meant was “democracy.”

    • Capt. Wolf@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      My strongly republican coworker was gloating about prices coming down back in February and was actively looking for houses to retire to in Florida and Texas. Now she insists on doing company shopping at Aldi because “Shoprite has just gotten too ridiculously expensive.” A couple weeks ago she admits to me, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop working now.”

      Aww… No shit… Welcome to the club… We can’t afford matching t-shirts.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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        If she wants to retire someday, maybe she should vote for people who agree with her, instead of people who call her a parasite for wanting to retire on her own retirement savings, even though they are obscenely wealthy, and take breaks from their leisure time to check on the work that they pay others to do.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I often wonder what goes through the heads of such types - do they honestly think all the people in their lives that might have told them that Republicans are not the ones to help them in this regard, do they just think they are lying to them? Do they just not want to understand this?

    • Kühlschrank@lemmy.world
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      Decades indeed - this coalition of the ignorant and racist and hateful and afraid doesn’t happen overnight. They’ve been pulling these people together for a long time - I mean Willie Horton was like in the 80’s and even that wasn’t the beginning.

    • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 months ago:

      Literally in a car with an immigrant right now who voted Trump because things were cheaper before covid. FFS.

      I’m curious what that guy thinks today. Or if he’s still in the US.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        Literally in a car with an immigrant right now who voted Trump because things were cheaper before covid.

        Good grief.

        • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          Yup, was getting an uber (I can’t drive for very long or the pain starts), he was chatty and excited about Trump.

          Asked what he thought about the anti-immigrant talk (oh obviously thats the bad ones!), and the fact that there was a pandemic and prices skyrocketed (Biden’s fault even though that all started before he was in office), etc. Paraphrased obviously.

          I don’t know what can possibly be said to these folks to have them understand, but as a result, we have… Well all this current nonsense.

          • ToadOfHypnosis@lemmy.world
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            Yes, somehow Biden caused inflation in the US and the entire world. These people think a businessman is good for macro economies because they don’t understand macro economics at all.

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            I don’t know what can possibly be said to these folks to have them understand

            Nothing, typically. I have encountered a few of his people from time to time who get angry when you explain how tariffs work. “Wait… what? Really?” But too many of them can’t or won’t comprehend the level of danger they are in. That we’re all in.

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              At work, a CTO for a firm we were designing a solution for got upset because hardware was in customs, and tariffs needed to be paid.

              He didn’t understand why the manufacturer wasn’t paying, and it had to be pointed out (by someone from the other company bringing this hardware) that tariffs are a tax on importing, not exporting, and for every single contract they have ever had, tariffs are paid by the client.

              This was not a small company, either. We’re talking about a fairly large firm in finance. And the CTO didn’t understand how tariffs work.

              We’re fucked.

    • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
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      As if a man who bankrupted a casino

      Oh, not just a casino, multiple!

      Dug up from a previous post and updated:

      Mango Mussolini’s failed businesses:

      • At least four failed building ventures
      • Had a failed “university”
      • Failed vodka business (how hard is that, right?)
      • Failed steak business
      • Failed airline
      • Failed board game
      • Failed casinos in Atlantic City (how do you fail at running multiple businesses that only exist to hoover up money?)
      • Failed magazine
      • Failed luxury travel organization
      • Failed mortgage company
      • Failed presidency that took Pres. Biden’s administration most of their entire term to fix. We’re talking documents that are gone, departments that are deleted, abject chaos that had to be rebuilt from scratch in some cases.
      • And soon, a failed wireless “carrier” on T-Mobile with an “American-made” phone made in “Chyyna”.

      Successes:

      • Had mommy’s money to get him going
      • Had 5 successful buildings built, mostly in the 1980s
        • At least three of them had fraudulent financial statements, inflated valuations, and inflated tax losses
    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      I’ve watched these imbeciles for decades, praising their Republican leaders for economies that Democrats spent 8 years rebuilding, only for those Republicans to tear it down again. Decades.

      Doesn’t help when we have lots of bothsiderists and WELLACKTUALLY types that do things like say “well, the market is only for rich people” etc., and acting like Biden really did have a bad economy just like Taco and his cult claim. These are tenuous claims, to be charitable about it. But I keep seeing the claim, over and over.

    • ToadOfHypnosis@lemmy.world
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      Never underestimate people’s ability to rationalize away anything to avoid cognitive dissonance. The dumber someone is the more they need the world to be black and white because nuance is harder to process.