@carnold03 I am not sure what usury is in this context. In this case, I took it to be "unfair as opposed to fair trade in currency" If they wanted the official money, they had to pay for a incorrectly weighed measure of silver (not the true shekel weight) with a fair measure (which in those days the denarius was, it was only later that we got rampant Roman seignurage).

To take more than a fair share is greedy, is that the connection you mean?

I have often thought that unfairness is not a deadly sin and why not? To me the problem with the money changers was their unfairness to other men as opposed to their desire for money itself.

I think the answer lies in the 7 deadly sins being really about doing illicit and inappropriate things -things beyond the covenants of Yahweh- with the good things that Yahweh has provided for men. To greatly "lust" after sex with your new wife is not the sin of lust at all (unless at certain points in the church's history it was during a fast) its actually god's will that you want to mate with her and procreate. However to desire sex with the hot girl next door is illicit and no matter how much she would like it too and even if you use no birth control, its a sin. To relax on the sabbath is good. To relax when you should be working is sloth. To enjoy the fruit of your labour at the table is a good thing, to eat far more than you need in wasteful way is gluttony. To be angry at the burning of a church by infidels is virtue, to rage at your neighbour's bonfire is wrath and so on.

The 7 deadly sins are really all the same thing -the incorrect or excessive application of desire that can be good in the right place and time. This is not so much about fairness. Unfairness instead goes against the concept of treating your neighbour as yourself, which is half of the law.

@First-light

I thought the problem with the money changers was that they had a closed market. The temple only accepted the temple shekel, which was of no use anywhere else because it was actually underweight for the price sold.

Jesus at the Temple

12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’[a] but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’[b]”

14 The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.

16 “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him.

“Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read,

“‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’[c]?”

17 And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.

― The Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV), Matthew 21:12–17

I prefer John 2:13–16 myself simply because there's something hardcore about a priest taking off his belt and proceeding to whip Jewish degenerates. However, this leaves me curious to ask a serious question. Do you understand what usury is and the significance of its connection to the third of the seven deadly sins?

@Stigma pre-coffee and a bit sleep-drunk, so I might be all over the place here.

So yeah, chip production is increasing in the US, but not exactly because of the tariffs.

This is fair, because I do recall their having announced this before all this tariff business started.

Anyway, I've been having trouble finding what I had before on this, so I'm just going to wing it.

1) none of these tariffs will be out of nowhere. They will be reciprocal tariffs on goods from nations who have been charging tariffs on US-made goods, some for decades. If they drop theirs, we'll drop ours.

2) we've been allowing these other countries to fuck us over for decades now. Both American political parties sold out the working class. When a country such as China taxes American-made goods, and also undercuts prices by using slave labor, we can't compete and our plants shut down. There's a semiconductor plant near my house that never operated due to this; built in 2009 or 2011 or so, the facility has since been converted to other uses by other companies. If the US had had tariffs on Chinese-made semiconductors back then which had made prices more competitive, the American company would have had a chance. This is just one example, and one I'm well aware of because it's so close to my house and I've met people laid off by the semiconductor company, some of whom moved their families across the country to work at this plant once it opened.

3) back to how these tariffs are only affecting imports from countries who charge tariffs on imports from us: if these tariffs are going to be so harmful to us, why haven't their tariffs harmed them over the decades? If anything, protectionism seemed to help a lot of these countries. We've been importing Japanese, Korean, German, Italian, etc. cars since before I was born, but I don't recall seeing any American-made cars when I've been overseas. I'll admit that Toyota is a better car (I've driven nothing but Toyotas every time I had a choice), but Chrysler, Ford, and GM make some decent vehicles too. They'd be competitive on the world market if there actually were free trade.

4) I've watched the collapse of the working class in America. Most jobs areb low paid service-related now, rather than highly paid skilled labor. This is the beginning of bringing those jobs back.

5) the people who are screeching loudest about this: a) foreigners who have been fucking us over, b) people who hate Trump and will oppose him at every turn like in the memes in this thread, and c) disingenuous democrats who advocated for similar protectionist policies when Trump wasn't in office yet.

6) it might take years before the desired effects take place. I for one, am willing to do this. I just hope it doesn't get undone by Congress and/or his successor.

@Stigma @Typo-MAGAshiv

I'm genuinely trying to drill into the aim and repercussions of this thing, divorced from ideological positions.

Same. I've honestly tried to look at Trump's actions to try to find even a kernel of good faith effort to bring back American jobs and help America's working classes as Trump is selling them and MAGA fans are buying them. However, it always seems to come down to,

They're fucking stupid, whichever way you slice it...

I also have the same pattern failure difficulty getting MAGA fans to engage questions in good faith. They always revert to You just hate that Trump is trying to bring efficiency to government and jobs back to USA, Leftists this, Biden that, Trump Derangement Syndrome the other, You just hate America... This goes back to trying to engage Republicans over the first Gulf War. SO many people are supporting it all uncritically on emotion and partisanized fantasy, and fly off the handle with emotive ad hominem if you come at them with anything other than Unconditional Positive Regard for the President's actions and policies.