The founders taxed tariffs because the country and people were so poor there was nothing else to tax
Do you always just make things up?
At the Founding, the states generally taxed land. Indeed, they tended to tie the vote with land ownership (and hence tied the vote with paying taxes).
As for the federal government, it had three sources of revenue: (1) the tariff, (2) excise taxes (e.g., on alcohol), and (3) land sales.
As for poverty, by current standards, just about everybody in our country and all throughout the world was in extreme poverty by current standards back in those days.
Standards of living of working class people rose with the industrial revolution. A couple hundred years of growth, albeit interspersed by recessions, brought about the standard of living we now enjoy.
To illustrate this tremendous change, back in the early to mid 19th Century, Karl Marx and others criticized capitalism because of the low standards of living of the working class. They argued that continuing low standards of living, combined with deteriorating social conditions, would bring about their coveted communist revolution.
Well, guess what, it became clearer and clearer that capitalism was raising the standards of living of the working class. So much so, that by the mid 20th Century, Herbert Marcuse and the so-called New Left, criticized capitalism on other grounds. Racism, sexism, and other forms of alienation replaced economic division.
Today, the neo-Marxists criticize capitalism because it is too successful. They say we’re living at an unsustainable level of income.
This is like somebody crossing the street who is so afraid of being run over by a passing vehicle, that he throws himself in front of a truck. These people say they’d be happier in Cuba or Venezuela, than in the U.S.
But, I don’t notice any of them moving.
Some Hollyweirdos tell us they’re going to leave if Donald Trump is re-elected this fall. If anybody is wavering, just tell them about the Hollyweirdos leaving. I know they lied about leaving back in 2016, and probably are lying again this time. Still, one can always hope.