Well said. And I mostly agree.
The exception concerns the belief that consumers alone bare the brunt of taxation. It’s never that simple. The effect of taxation is organic in the sense the entire corporate body suffers — investments, reinvestments, inventory, payroll, purchasing power, earnings, market value, dividends, competitive flexibility, product availability/quality, and the remaining FUD.
Quite true. I suppose I was oversimplifying because that “the consumer pays the freight” aspect ends up being so dominant as companies roll taxation’s impact all the way down to the bottom line, and seek a substantive portion of economic recovery through price increases.
All the rest you enumerate — it’s really analogous to friction in a machine, and money is the lubricant; starve the machine for lubricant, and it affects every part, causes increased heat, stress, wear, breakdown — anything that reduces the flow of money through the machine increases friction in the entire system, and taxation does that. So companies do undertake internal cost reduction measures that mediate the ultimate consumer effect. They know they’re going to get pilloried for raising prices, so there’s pressure to be able to say “we did everything to avoid it.”
As a corporate employee through the bleak days of the Dot Com Bust, I was exposed to an eye-popping roster of internal cost-cutting measures, so I’m rather painfully familiar with the arsenal of options that companies have before turning to customers to pony up. Granted, those economics were worse, and not tax-induced, but every conceivable “least harm” cost-saving idea got the green light in descending order, and then the “some harm,” “more harm,” and “9-1-1” options followed in turn.
To call it “educational” would be an understatement. OY!