But reducing goobermint back to within it's Constitutional limits and end career politicians would. The endless wars to enrich the career politicians and billions upon billions in foreign aid kickback schemes to line their pockets should also cease.
Posted on 06/20/2024 4:07:34 PM PDT by karpov
Donald Trump rocked Washington last week with his proposal to fund the federal government solely from tariffs. Until roughly a century ago, tariffs composed the vast majority of national revenue, but today income and business taxes make up the lion’s share. Can Uncle Sam go back?
Taxing imports to pay Washington’s bills has a certain political appeal. Domestic taxes, often progressive in nature, are unpopular. Better to tax foreigners if we can.
The problem with this thinking, however, is that non-Americans largely don’t pay for tariffs in the end; U.S. households and businesses do, in the form of higher prices and reduced trade. The former president is relying on one of the oldest fallacies of “folk economics.” Supply and demand, not statutes or executive orders, determine who really pays a tax.
Yet, there’s an even bigger flaw in Trump’s plan. Government spending as a share of GDP is approximately 22 percent. Import spending as a share of GDP is 14 percent. To fully cover federal outlays, we would need to find a way to generate tariff revenue in excess of 150 percent of what we spend on all imports. Even if we wanted to cover current receipts only—remember, we run perpetual deficits—we would still have to squeeze an additional 100 percent of revenue out of current imports. There’s no way to make the numbers work.
The figures look even starker in dollar terms. In fiscal year 2024, the national government has taken in $3.29 trillion. Tariffs account for 1.5 percent of that, at $49 billion, meaning that we would need to scale up customs duties by a factor of nearly 70.
The commentariat has already recognized several of these difficulties. Even so, they understate the problem.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
Tariffs worked pretty good up until Woodrow Wilson got in.
But our present tax structure “pencils out” to your satisfaction????
As long as there is no will to control spending it doesn’t matter what’s penciled in or out!
I really wish someone of some repute would demand drug screenings of both President Biden and President Trump immediately before and after the debate. Trump can quickly say, sure, no problem. Biden...
Outside the military maybe, hundreds of thousands of fedgov employees, armies of bureaucrats are not needed. They’re choking off the American people and it only grows. Send them into the private sector to actually learn a skill so they can be productive.
That’s another thing if Xiden steals 2024: Taxes will skyrocket to further finance illegals and terrorism
Trump’s Tariff Trap. Replacing income taxes with tariffs doesn’t pencil out.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
BUahahahahahahahaha.
Under Trump America would more than double its GDP.
THe author stupidly assumes that is not the case even when faced with the historical evidence of the effect of Trump’s economic policies.This i s utter propaganda.
Social Security will be “saved” because of that fact of a doubled GDP. And whats more, the figures on substituting tarrifs for taxes are much more viable.
Let Chbina and others pay for our givernment funding....we have paid for theirs for over 40 years.
It was an idea. It was not a policy provision. It’s like the idea, can we ship metal to earth from asteroids?
Personally, I’d like to end the income tax. To me it’s a violation of privacy protected in the constitution, it’s easily manipulated and burdensome, and it requires enormous time and effort. Get rid of it.
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“The whole article is a lie. America went from a fringe settlement on the edge of a continental wilderness to a world manufacturing power thanks to tariffs. “
THAT - what you said is a lie. It was the industriosness of the American people and American companies, not tarriffs.
Tarrifs that work when you are not yet very industrialized or just on your way to being very industrialized, will not work them same when you and most your trade partners are very industrialized. Your economic intercourse with your trade partners have become a working part of your own domestic industries. You try to put the genie back in the bottle - take conditions far back in time - and the economy will get very sick for a long time before it recovers.
That's not a flaw. Government spending needs to be tun in half. Several agencies I could name need to be defunded and dismantled.
What could possibly go wrong?
The proof is in the pudding. America, by using tariffs to protect itself from predatory English mercantilist practices became a manufacturing superpower. Tariffs were one of the pillars of the American System that allowed the rapid development and industrialization of the United States. The U.S. pursued a protectionist policy from the beginning of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century. Between 1861 and 1933, they had one of the highest average tariff rates on manufactured imports in the world. However American agricultural and industrial goods were cheaper than rival products and the tariff had an impact primarily on wool products. After 1942 the U.S. began to promote worldwide free trade and now China, which is very protective of its industries, has an economy larger that the U.S.
But reducing goobermint back to within it's Constitutional limits and end career politicians would. The endless wars to enrich the career politicians and billions upon billions in foreign aid kickback schemes to line their pockets should also cease.
The proof is in the pudding. America, by using tariffs to protect itself from predatory English mercantilist practices”
Today is not 1789, nor the 1800s nor the early 1900s. The situation in the world and in the U.S. is vastly different.
What really catipulted us to an industrial superpower was two world wars we indutrially geared up for and during which many of the other major powers (other than Japan in WWI) suffered massive losses, while, other than deaths of soldiers (and Pearl Harbor in WWII) the U.S. homeland was unscathed, LEAVING it, as a result, the reigning industrial power. Wars that hit other industrial powers greatly compared to the U.S. - not tarriffs.
As the result of those two wars faded, and other industrialized nations rebuilt their war torn economies, they began to catch up.
Actually the Civil War is what made America a superpower.
The American Civil War, fought from 1861 to 1865, was a pivotal event that profoundly shaped the trajectory of the United States towards becoming a global superpower. The conflict not only settled the issue of secession but also ushered in significant economic, social, and political changes. Economically, the war spurred industrialization and innovation, particularly in weaponry and infrastructure, laying the foundation for America’s future industrial might. Socially, it marked a transformative period with the abolition of slavery, albeit with ongoing struggles for civil rights. Politically, the Union victory reinforced the supremacy of the federal government and strengthened national unity. These developments set the stage for America’s rapid expansion and influence on the world stage in the decades that followed, as the nation transitioned into a burgeoning industrial power with a unifying identity and expanding global ambitions.
What you said - that, before the civil war, the war with Mexico, and the whole westward expansion and the making of a continent wide nation, made what industrialization there was easier to expand, coast to coast, than was Europe able to do because of all the political divisions there, and the strong rivalries and disagreements among them. After that it was the war with Spain and the U.S. acquisition of a real colony, the Philippines, that made the U.S. a global power with global reach.
The Civil War was the first modern, industrialized war. Railroads, steamship ironclads, telegraphs, and mass manufacturing. Your premise was that World Wars 1 and 2 brought around American industrialization but that is false.
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