Tariffs. How are you affected?

I wonder why you seem to prefer tariffs instead of free trade because it's not companies selling into the US that pays them. They're paid from the pockets of US citizens.

It's easy to warn about something and then, later, to claim some sort of credit for that if/when it happens. The current administration has done more than anyone or anything to inflict social decay on the country.

I think that, for as long as the country remains culturally tribal such that some people look at others through a lens of lefties, liberals, wackos or other such derogatory labelling, it won't ever become cohesive.

I also think it's more indicative of personal insecurity and/or limited thinking that people do that.

 

Meh. We’re tribal apes with delusions of grandeur. As such, we will always suffer from us vs them thinking. The thing is, folks who don’t suffer from such thinking, will suffer at the hands of, and be replaced by, those who do. Lofty ideals and moral superiority are no match for bombs, bullets, or breeding.

As to tariffs; they’re just another form of taxes. I’m not fond of taxes btw. I do like taxes to be as explicit as possible. They also remind the public (via the increased costs) that by buying stuff from elsewhere, they are taking some of those potential earnings from their fellow countrymen. Please don’t use that, as others here have done, to launch into a diatribe from macro 101. I majored in Econ. I understand the theory AND the limitations of theory. Human life does not exist within the pages of an economics textbook and, even less so, within those of a macroeconomics textbook.

 

For most of the 80's and 90's I was living in Japan, and I saw the ignorance from afar---like the people who would smash Japanese cars to push the idea of Buy American (instead of the sensible smart thing they should've been doing----Fix American made products). And as I have said, America changed politically in ways I did not see, so that when I returned to America, I was confused over what was happening. But the trade wars were definitely populist arguments. It seems to me that it didn't matter who was in power, democrat or republican, the trade wars remained. That is what I was working to change with the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, because the Japanese market was not closed to Americans as all the people believed, it was that Americans were trying to shove American stuff down the throats of Japanese that simply did not meet their needs or fit them, and American products were pretty shoddy at the time.

The whole fundamental reason for the trade wars was to prop up the inefficiencies and the elderly factories and methods of American industry. Simply stated, the wealthy Americans did not want to change their ways, nor update their factories, nor bother with quality, because they just wanted to make money, and they expected everybody to shut up and buy their stuff. Now, that doesn't sound like something liberals would support. In fact, they were busy fighting the laissez faire arguments of the conservatives with such things as consumer protection. Conservatives always tended to side with the very wealthy, and the industrialists. Academia had made it very clear that trade wars and tariffs were bad--plain and simple, and liberals always tended to be more educated, and aligned their values with academia. So my initial response would be, I don't think that was the case. Free trade is not necessarily equivalent to laissez faire economics.

I still laugh at the religious wackos and their slippery slope arguments, except that they have pretty much taken over the Republican Party and are trying to force the Nation into Christo-Fascist Nationalism and so the situation is PRETTY DAMN SCARY!

But their arguments which never really came into fruition were are based on their interpretation of a book that was written roughly 2000 - 2400 years ago.

What I have said, and others too, is based on sound economic theory. It would be great to look back 20 - 30 years hence and laugh at this time, though I doubt very much that will happen. If we are lucky, I sincerely hope we can look back and say, "Damn! That was close!" I think it is too late that we will be able to say that, but I would love for history to prove me wrong. But if we stick to the path we are on, there won't be any laughing.

You can't just destroy everything, upset the system, replace it with an inferior system that blatantly feeds greed and expect that any good will come out of it. It took 81 years (since the end of World War II) to create the amazingly integrated global trade system that we have today, and to maintain our position in the center of it. And this was after the amazing injection of infrastructure, economics, strength, wealth, control, and power that World War II and the victory we led, gave us. That is not something that will happen again naturally, and the chances of it happening again for us, are practically nil. Trump is destroying this. And the rest of the world is smart enough that they know they can continue without us!

In 1988, I predicted the credit crisis of Japan that would begin with a stock market crash at the beginning of 1990. My prediction was published in the Toyo Keizai magazine (an economics magazine) in the spring of 1989. In 2026, no one is laughing at that. The Japanese are still feeling the effects of the 2 decades of recession that created. In 2007 I again predicted a credit crisis, this time in the US, and again preached to get out of the stock market when it breaks through the uptrend lines, which it did in the first few days of 2008, close to the all time high at that time. No one is laughing at that, and yet very few people understand how close we came to collapsing into a depression. When the credit markets almost collapsed over the Lehman Brothers collapse (which Bush presidency could have prevented) Americans were completely oblivious to what happened, and most still are.

Again, if we stick to the path we are on---a path directed by a complete moron who has a history of failed businesses, and designed by a bunch of Christian fanatics who have too much sway in the GOP (the Heritage Foundation), and an obsessively greedy elite---it would be foolish to think that we are ever going to be great again...

 

Are you saying that humans are by nature, tribal apes? Because I wholeheartedly disagree. I have spent time with several indigenous cultures, and I have followed indigenous spirituality since the mid 90's, and have learned much from the wisdom of numerous elders in Native communities. What people refer to when they claim that our society is tribal is a dynamic and world view that began in the planter cultures in my opinion. It is dependent on dualism, an in-group out-group, and opposition.

While I believe this world view began when the planter cultures began creating villages and the roots of civilization was formed, many tribal planter cultures themselves have a world view that tends towards the older hunter gatherers in my experience. Their older world view is not one of dualism, but rather multiplicity, and community. Rather than seeking opposition and dominance, they sought balance. I believe that mankind is evolving away from this dualism and towards a multiplistic cosmology, and that our very survival as a species depends on this. Perhaps this is why the polarization and Nihilism is so strong in our world today---it is the final push before such dynamics are deconstructed----if we don't destroy ourselves in the process.

Why do conservatives always have to revert back to muscle over brains until eventually they circle back to eugenics. I've had this argument so many times over the past few years. The Nazis, by the way, had bombs bullets and breeding. They considered modern science to be a Jewish abomination, and they literally tried to create a cosmological science that was about as stupid as the crazy fringe science ideas pushed by MAGA adherents today. The Nazis and the Italian Fascists (like MAGA today) rejected the lofty ideals and moral superiority of enlightenment liberalism, but they had bombs, bullets, and breeding, in fact, they had what they thought was the absolute best breeding----white skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed! But in the end, they were no match for brains, lofty ideals, and moral superiority (i.e. the West with their technology, and morals and ideals of freedom, liberty, justice and democracy----i.e. the very things that enlightenment liberalism gave us).

So buying foreign goods takes away potential earnings of fellow countrymen? The world does not really work that way any more. This is not the 19th century. In today's world do you know what tariffs do? They destroy the businesses of your fellow countrymen. Trump's tariffs have seriously impacted small businesses----the very fellow countrymen that you think are getting hurt by foreign trade. There are so many parts that are not manufactured in the US, and cannot be manufactured here, and therefore these small businesses are getting killed whether they are manufacturing here, or just selling, or whatever business they are in!

Meanwhile, big companies take advantage of the tariff-induced higher prices by raising their prices, and this hurts all consumers. And it is all for nothing, because the trade deficit did not change-----we are still at the same trade deficit as we were a year ago. The only thing that has changed is that imports and exports have both dropped. So are you all in for making the American consumer and the small business person suffer for nothing other than the deterioration of American trade? Because that is what is happening!

I don't understand----didn't you say in the end that you just took some economics classes? I still don't understand how you could major in economics and understand it and yet come to the conclusions that you do. When I tried to get you to explain this before you were very vague about it, but it seemed to me, and still does, that perhaps your knowledge of economics has been tainted by the so-called libertarian economists, and the gold bugs, and all of their ilk.

Throw that crap away, and read some real economics---please! Their arguments are based on conspiracy theories that are 150 - 200 years old! Talk about predictions that we can later look back on and laugh about! They have been predicting the crash of the US Dollar and other currences they consider to be fiat currencies for almost that entire 150 years!!!

 

Yep, it always has to go to the nazis doesn’t it? That’s the first and last page in the liberal the playbook, right? Ok. Since everyone a liberal doesn’t like is a nazi, then it must be cool to firebomb any civilian population belonging to a people who disagree with liberals then, right?

 

Let’s see:
I made no mention of eugenics. Mind you, the fact that there are now warning labels on hair dryers to tell people to not submerge them in water while they are turned on would suggest that we may need to let Darwin thin the herd a bit. My reference to breeding was meant to mean quantities. We have adopted policies and beliefs in western societies that discourage our own populations from having children and then our governments claim that they need to bring in new blood from the third world usually to… ensure economic growth it seems.

As to all of your expositions about economics and your wish for me to explain mine; as I said, human lives are nowhere to be found within the pages of any economics textbooks. You can’t feed your family your country’s gdp. A working man’s job prospects are not enhanced by the amount of disposable plastic-crap he can buy at Walmart.
Economics has become little more than a narrative tool to enhance and perpetuate the power of the financial and political class. The “numbers” say whatever those who paid for them want them to say. The dismal science has sold out whatever little credibility it may have once held.

 

And you just implied yesterday or so that all liberals were against free trade...

I used to always follow the unwritten and generally accepted rule that the first one in a political argument to mention Hitler or the Nazis lost the argument. That rule made sense until the GOP started reviving Nazi things. There are so many parallels of MAGA to Nazis it is ridiculous. In fact, there are a surprising number of parallels between Hitler and Trump. I was shocked when I started listing them. I could list a bunch if you want me to.

But here are just a few things that scream Nazi. Trump is a Nationalist, he clearly stated this during his first term. Project 2025 is a road map to Fascism (I know this because I have read it). He is deeply connected to Far Right Nationalist groups, and has their support. He is using religion as Hitler did to trick the people into submitting to authoritarian rule, even to the point of producing his own Trump Bible. He believes that, and acts as if he is, above the law. He is demonizing ethnic groups and directing national hate upon them. He has his own gestapo, or secret police running around demanding to see people's papers, detaining people without due process, stepping over everyone's civil rights and getting away with extrajudicial, and even straight out murder. Except that his secret police is so secret that they won't even show their damn faces. The people that are detained are subject to horrific inhumane conditions, and are freely beaten and assaulted. He is building concentration camps all across the country, complete with incinerators capable of burning dead bodies. He also uses horrible concentration camps outside of the country. These are just a few of the more obvious examples of how we are living in a nation no different than 1933 Nazi Germany.

What kind of a clown would send an actual Nazi to Germany as the US Ambassador? Naziism is strictly illegal in Germany and everyone knows this. Yet Trump sent a literal Nazi to Germany who refused to allow him to hold his post and he had to be replaced. Then there is the issue of Nazi salutes. My whole life, in American politics, no one had to defend a person claiming that they did not give a Heil Hitler salute until now. The fact that we even have to question this, again and again, is a problem!

If you don't want to be compared to a Nazi-------its very simple, don't support and do Nazi things.

 

You know very well that the left was very much against free trade back in the 70s, 80s, and up until Clinton. So you may not have been. So what. Were you representing the afl-cio at that time or something? The uaw maybe? What massive liberal voting block were you leading into the brave new future of global free trade back then?

Compare me to a nazi all you want. It’s overused and lost its power. As soon as I see it, I laugh and then skip ahead to look for an any real discussion. I’ll embrace it if you need me to do so: you can prop up your sense of moral superiority. Teach me how to do the salute while you’re at it. Teach me how to goose-step and pin an iron cross on my chest.

I like trump’s policies with one notable exception. Otherwise, I’d like him to pursue most of his policies much harder. The man himself is extremely flawed and I have no illusions about, or devotion to, him. But the people who he upsets, offends, or causes to be outraged are the people who I want him to have such effects on. I like to hear them to wail and scream and bemoan the supposed injustice. I’d like for them to suffer the censorship and ideological purging they once so gleefully imposed upon others. I’d enjoy seeing them “deplatformed”, “de-banked”, blacklisted and made unemployable and ostracized simply for holding a differing view from those in positions of power - the same way they once did to others.

I don’t believe for a second that they will recognize the irony or realize that they once did this to others with joy. They’re too self absorbed to see outside their own viewpoints. I’d love for them to have that realization but I know they won’t. Like you, they know that everything they believe is right and that anyone who believes otherwise is wrong and (most likely) evil.

I’ve listened to a lifetime of liberals playing the victim, including the period of my own life when I was a pretty devout liberal myself. I’m tired of it. Now, I’d like to see them actually suffer all the evils they’ve done to others as well as those which they’ve claimed their opposition visits upon them.

 

The problem with stupidity in America has nothing to do with breeding. It has an awful lot to do with education. So what would be the obvious way of solving this----letting a bunch of people die to thin the herd?

NO! The problem is to fix education and improve it. Now let's see, how do the MAGA want to fix this-----oh yeah----by forcing education based on a 4,000 year old book, and attacking all forms of modern education and higher education. And then they are trying to force women to have babies. How can you defend such stupidity?! We are living in the movie, Idiocracy! The premise of the movie was literally that the stupid people were having lots of babies, while the smart people were deciding not to. And this is exactly the world MAGA wants to create!! I will say this, and I don't mean it lightly: JESUS CHRIST!!

The problem of a declining birth rate is not an American problem, or even a Western problem. It is a global problem. No one in our government is saying we need to bring in new blood. Likewise, there are no open borders. To say otherwise is just stupid. There are people in academia and so forth that are saying this. There are people in Silicon Valley and in research that are starting to realize that there is a lot of good talent out there, and well-----see my last paragraph about education in America... (Seriously, America was recognized as one of the best places in the world to get an education (except for cost) and we had a surplus in brains because of it, though now the world sees that Trump is destroying all of that).

There is no question that you need a growing population to have sustained economic growth. Most nations do not even realize the implications yet. America, as it embraces the amazingly stupid idiocy of Trump certainly does not realize this. Because of the falling birth rates-------the countries that will see real economic growth for the foreseeable future are the very ones that will promote immigration. Whether you like it or not, this is the reality. Why the hell would anyone want to come to this shithole of a nation after Trump started the holocaust 2.0.

But why is this even an issue? What is wrong with immigrants? Unless you are a Native American, your ancestors immigrated to this country within the past several hundred years. If you think immigrants are so bad, even if it is only certain immigrants, then your use of the word breeding is probably far more indicative of where you are coming from, than even you yourself may know.

I can understand why it may seem this way living in a country where trickle-down economics has controlled the flow of wealth and income for the past 40 years. But this is not because of the failure of economics, but rather the failure of trickle-down economics, and economics explains that. But economic realities cannot change the policies of those in power, especially when they benefit immensely from the system they have put in place.

A working man's prospects are improved by the opportunities he has before him, the income he can earn, what opportunities he has to invest and save, whether or not he is able to invest and save, and in turn whether or not he actually invests and saves. It is improved by keeping the costs of what he needs and what he wants down, and making sure that there is sufficient supply to provide for him as he desires or needs. And that there is stability and safety in these things---that these opportunities will be there tomorrow, and even more importantly, that they will improve. These are all functions and dynamics of economics.

Economics is not like a politician that can be bought and sold. Especially when you are running the nation which sets the global standard of risk free. If the US strats putting out economic data that is fudged or bought and paid for, in other words, that are not true, that will soon be discovered----because of a thing called----economics! The numbers won't add up to what is happening in the country. This is why we knew that Red China was putting out false numbers, and I think the Soviet Union was caught at that too. But if the US gets caught doing that----it will crash our economy.

So why does it seem that you can have a strong GDP and a vibrant economy and yet it makes no difference to the struggles and well being of many Americans? The answer is simple-----because Americans are really stupid when it comes to economics. There is no secret over who is benefiting from economic strength and who is getting screwed. It is very clear in the economic data----You can look at what trickle down economics has done to the average American every year since 1980, and yet all these idiots keep voting for it! I have never heard a single voter speak out to end trickle down economics---certainly not on the Right. And look at the last election---a very basic understanding of economics should have told anyone that Trump was not going to lower prices at all, and that drill baby drill would provide no economic benefit whatsoever, and that tariffs would ultimately be disastrous for the economy, and in the short term, it would raise prices and slow economic activity! This is not a question of left or right, but rather economic ignorance. And then there is Trump's Tax reform that he implemented in his first term and promised to extend in his second-----I can't see how anyone could read his tax bill and say, 'Wow! That's a great deal for the American people!' NO! IT WAS VERY CLEARLY A GREAT DEAL FOR THE ULTRA WEALTHY AND CORPORATIONS, AND NOTHING WILL BE TRICKLING DOWN TO YOU EXCEPT A HIGHER TAX BURDEN!

Economics is not rocket science! Its not brain surgery! If you can't see how it effects everyday people----especially over the last 10 years, then I seriously don't know how you can claim that you understand it.

 

I'll respond to this later, but I wanted to ask you----just something to reflect on------did the liberals or immigrants or gays really do something so terrible to you, that you have to get revenge----so much so that you are willing to give up the nation's Civil Rights and our freedoms just so you can get your revenge and put them in their place?

Or is it possible that you were manipulated to feel this anger and hate towards others that you would want to get that revenge?

 

I wish I didn’t know the magnitude of the concentration of wealth post 1980….but I do. It’s available to anyone who takes the time to look at readily accessible US statistics.

 

Kudos for refraining from defaulting back into the nazi bullshit in this post. It’s rare and refreshing in a forum such as this.

Back to the economics. I do understand it. I specialized in econometrics. I understand the limitations as well and I refuse to swallow the latest or the greatest narrative if it doesn’t reflect the reality on the ground. “The map is not the territory.” It is, at best, an approximation. Moreso, it is an aggregation. As an aggregation, it tells almost nothing about the state of individual data points (specifically people and families) with the economy.

I’ve not made a single argument in favor of or espousing “trickle down” so please drop it as a straw man.

I will argue that there is a feedback loop between a civilization’s culture/norms and its economy. In our case, there has been a sustained attack on both of these things in the western world since at least the end of ww2.

 

I like this post. It show empathy and potential insight. I have occasionally wondered these things myself and have not decided upon an answer. But this does not bother me because I’m aware of this potential issue. Being aware of one’s possible errors or ignorance is far more valuable than any sense of absolute self assuredness.

 

Since tariffs are just a gimmick to enrich the unworthy, We have decided to not buy anything that we do not need. Locally produced food is readily available, so we will wait until Heir Trumph is humiliated and the economy goes into recession. Americans will learn their lessons, and impeach the Lying SOB.

 

Mkay. While I can appreciate how fluidly it flows off the tongue and the verbal picture it paints, “a gimmick to enrich the unworthy,” is nonsense. Tariffs are the original constitutional way to fund our government. They are a valid means of raising revenue, guarding against dumping, protecting strategic national industries, competing against currency manipulations abroad, and preventing the easy offshoring of industry and employment. Tariffs are looked upon as bad because there has been at least 40 years of concerted propaganda by international financiers and those in their pay to convince us of it. Meanwhile they offshored lifelong jobs that could allow a man to support a wife and kids and instead gave us disposable imported crap.

As to impeachment; sure, let’s impeach EVERY lying SOB. Not sure who will be left in the legislatures to do the impeaching but I’m game to watch it play out if you are. Trumps a carnival barker. Calling him a liar is as pointless as calling him a womanizer. He doesn’t care and neither does anyone but pearl-clutchers.

 

Like I said, I was not living here for almost all of the 80's. Again, I think the anti-free trade stuff was populist politics. I got sidetracked talking about liberals. The point I really intended to make, but was not very clear about it, and then basically forgot, was that from my perspective overseas, the Right was certainly not about Free trade. The trade wars with Japan lasted through out the 80's, in other words both terms of Reagan and then Bush. The first free trade agreement was signed with Israel in 1985, and while that set the stage for modern FTA's, it was with Israel which has long been suckling at the breast of America---so much so, that its hard to see how we are really separated. The next one in 1988 was with Canada, and it's easy to argue that both this one, and the NAFTA in '92 and '94 were more of a response to the European Union as a percieved economic threat than the free trade that we have today. But American industry itself, in the late 80's was starting to come to terms with their own ignorance, their flaws and inefficiencies. This was the start of massive plant and other investment, downsizing, and so forth, and eventually this led to the realization of global trade as we know it today.

Where did populist politics end and liberal ideology begin? I don't know. But I would argue that the unions were certainly representative of populism at that time. Remember, my political views were fully formed in the 70's, and I am not real certain on what happened after I left, but when I returned to the US, liberals, especially young liberals, were considerably different from me.

One thing about me, being the old hippie that I am, I have always questioned everything, and that includes my own beliefs and assumptions and what not. I know that I do not know everything, and normally I am pretty accepting of other people's views and understand that there are multiple sides to any issue. I agree with the late American philosopher, Isiah Berlin, who said that America's greatness is due in large part to their being a push and pull between the two sides---the liberal and the conservative. And that one side offsets the excesses of the other. I believe that we need both sides to function properly. But we don't have that in America anymore. The whole country has shifted to the right. For example, it is widely understood that Reagan would fit right in with centralist democrats today. The Republican party has shifted far to the Right. Despite being a liberal, I still believe that it is vital that we have a healthy conservative party.

Nationalism is not a healthy conservative party. Nationalism is very dangerous, In fact this is something that I could have told you in High School. I, like I believe most Americans, would never have believed that Nationalism would ever take root in America. In hindsight, that was very naive, being that it has long been a feature of the Far Right---from John Birchers to the KKK, and various Nazi parties and other white supremacist groups.

I have always believed that when you are on the side of hate, you will always be on the wrong side of history. I have told the story on HipForums of how I took a German exchange student to an underground bookstore and he was disappointed that he could not find Mein Kampf, at which point I realized he was a Neo Nazi. (And he thought hippies would relate to his beliefs). I spent the rest of the time he was here trying to convince him that being on the side of hate will leave you on the wrong side of history. You can sugar coat MAGA all you want, but no matter how good you think it is, it still boils down to Nationalism. That is literally what America First means---it is a Nationalist slogan. Trump himself said that he is a Nationalist. What is happening to our civil rights, and to immigrants, and to our democracy and our government, is not a question of Left or Right, it is a question of Right or Wrong. Ignoring the constitution and trampling on the Bill of Rights is not a problem of Left or Right, it is a problem of right or wrong.

We can argue matters of opinion, and if you present a good argument, you may change my mind. But if we are going to talk about things that have actually happened, and continue to happen consistently, or if we are going to argue about definitions, then it becomes a point of one of us refusing to acknowledge what is actually happening, or refusing to see what is happening. Correct me if I'm wrong, but every argument or point I present, I provide examples. You speak in generalizations. You accuse me of thinking that I am always right and that to me the other side is always wrong and therfore evil, but you provide me with nothing to go on with your point. (But yes, I grew up in a world that defeated Nationalism in Europe and in the Far East, and in that world, Nationalism was evil. Hate, and racism are evil. Those who would gladly commit violence are evil. These are things of definition. If you disagree over a definition, then tell me, but then demonstrate how the definition is wrong.)

So what are these evils that the Left has done to others. What is it that you want to get revenge for? How have liberals always played the victim?

In my experience those on the Right love to project. After the Charlie Kirk assasination, there was this claim by many that the Left was violent and dangerous. Yet it was not the Left that attacked the capital on J6, or that has been attacking peaceful protestors (especially in recent weeks, High School kids). It is not hard to look at statistics to see that most politicial violence comes from the Right. In the same way I see a lot of people playing the victim on the right, rather than the other way around: the attack on Christmas, the transgender athletes in high school sports, the constant talk of all those people wronged by affirmative action, the list goes on and on. Perhaps you can give me examples of liberals playing the victim.

I write philosophy. So I am pretty good with definitions. If I seem pigheaded about a point, it is very likely that this point is based on a definition. If you want to change my mind, show me where that definition is wrong. MAGA fits the definition of Nationalism, and in turn Fascism. If this is not the case, show me.

Anyway, my edible is kicking in, so I guess I better quit for now.

 

Funny (strange) then that other major economies make money by not levying tariffs. Instead, their exports bring in more revenues through sales to a much wider market with higher total revenue for govt than tariffs ever did. Then, there's also the benefit that is enjoyed through there being mutual trade agreement rather than trade conflict.
Of course, such free trade also requires countries to be competitive. Imv, in that regard, the US is not. The automotive sector provides examples of that. In the EU, I can only recognise a couple of brands that could be considered US, though not necessarily US-made. Apple, Kraft are two. Wherever Apple stuff is made its components come from elsewhere. Kraft stuff in Europe is basically local companies making produce in EU but those companies were bought by Kraft. Though there may be some things made in US and sold in Europe, I can't think of any that amount to much trade. Corvette, Mustang, are rare. Kenwood, if its still American; a relatively small seller because other makes have become better in terms of performance and affordability, due to high sales.

Tariffs are looked upon as bad, not necessarily for the reason you give but because today, (the world's moved on from when 'originally' mattered), tariffs stifle trade which reduces business profitability and can be a real shot in the foot for countries which impose them because fewer sales brings lower revenues to govt.

 

I leave my posts as they are. I also leave others’ posts as they are and don’t try to “re-state” them to suit my own proposes and view. Maybe give it a try sometime.