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You can if you restore the original arrangement as it was from the beginning of USA. The magic word is tariffs - sales tax on imports.

That amendment was made when people hardly knew any economics.

Our understanding of tariffs has improved then. The best economic outcome is efficient allocation of resources, and tariffs, taxes --- any intererence -- creates distortions and makes outcomes suboptimal. Most importantly, there has never existed any government that could deduce the true cost of tariffs.

That amendment was made when people hardly knew any economics. Our understanding of tariffs has improved then.

Sure. That is why Founding Fathers and Constitution made USA one of the poorest countries in the world. But now since the all-wise economists from Harvard and Chicago Univ. took the lead, America will get as rich as Russia and Argentina got after following their advice.

BTW, my uncle from Nigeria has some excellent free trade deals for you.

That amendment was made when people hardly knew any economics. Our understanding of tariffs has improved then.

BTW, my uncle from Nigeria has some excellent free trade deals for you.

That amendment was made when people hardly knew any economics. Our understanding of tariffs has improved then.

Sigh.

Tariffs were not an "amendment". The power was contained in Article 8 of the U.S. Constitution:

Section 8 - Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

These taxeswere the bedrock of the financing of the republic. And frankly, there is not a single economist alive today who is any smarter or more informed than the Founders, such as Alexander Hamilton was in his day. I have no doubt that his early advocacy for promoting manufactures with a general tariff policy would only be reinforced today by the manifest and undeniable success that China is realizing with its protectionist policies predatorily targetting the U.S. industrial base.

And if you are worried about "distortions" what do you think your precious Income Tax, Capital Gain tax and Inheritance Tax do????? THOSE are what need to be junked with a simple, clean, and relatively distortion-free tariff and national sales tax substituting for the current mess, and rescinding the 16th Amendment.

Your anti-tariff monomania is pathological.

The distortions that such a policy shift, abondoning the marxist-inspired tax code that we have now...returning instead to the Founder's approach... would be salutory. Less consumption, less importing, more U.S. production, more savings, more investments. No more federal stick to beat people with for domestic social engineering. Let freedom ring.

And let the Constitution prevail, not your nation-destroying distopia: "We the People, of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,.."

"... The best economic outcome is efficient allocation of resources, and tariffs, taxes --- any intererence -- creates distortions and makes outcomes suboptimal..."

I wonder why it is folly for a family to live beyond their means, e.g. the big screen TV's flying off the shelves, but virtue for a nation to do so, e.g. 700 billion dollar trade deficit?

You have decried lack of savings by Americans, but many people are following the signal given by their government. The big screen TV is taxed very little by the federal government, and many exports to America are exempted from taxes by their own governments. And if they finance the TV with an equity mortgage they get a tax deduction on the interest they pay for the TV.

In contrast, were a family to forgo consumption by sticking with their older TV in favor of savings what happens. The interest they earn, already low, is taxed at the highest rate they pay.

Tax policy is a telling our population not to save, but instead to consume, and they do. So we get a massive trade deficit and a low savings rate. I do not see how it is better to put a tariff on the labor I export to my employer than it is to put a tax on goods imported from nations that do not provide reciprocal access to their own markets for the USA.