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The income tax makes all American products more expensive, while the price of foreign products is unaffected. Switching to across the board tariffs would raise the cost of foreign goods and aid the domestic economy.

Any for of tax is going to make products more expensive. But anything that doesn't give uncle sam his cut before I even see my paycheck is an improvement.

<1>The income tax makes all American products more expensive, while the price of foreign products is unaffected. Switching to across the board tariffs would raise the cost of foreign goods and aid the domestic economy.

I must admit not having had the time to read all of the comments, but let me go back to the beginning a bit. per loin, I am sorry, but I don't know where you learned economics, but where I went to school, they taught us that raising tariffs will actually increase the cost of goods in the US, and will it ultimately destroy jobs. Low tariffs mean that goods that you want to buy that are cheaper to produce somewhere else, will be imported. If they are cheaper to produce in the US, they will be made domestically. If you pay more to produce goods domestically than they would cost to be produced abroad you are being inefficient and using resources (capital) inefficiently. If you use capital inefficiently (socialism), you are damaging a capitalist economy, slowing the rate of economic growth and destroying jobs.

The reason the US leads the world in all things technological is because it is the cheapest place to bring together enough intelligent people to create an innovative basis and an appropriate incentive structure for a very complex task. The only other places that are competitive with us in these things have similar structures already in place (German, Japan. )To do this elsewhere would require building universities, research facilities, etc.

Tariffs save jobs (temporarily) for low-skilled workers. The US economy is transforming from a manufacturing base into a service-base, the so-called post-industrial economy. IMHO we should think about how we can retrain lower-skilled workers so they can take part in the higher wages rather than take the disaterous course of tariffs that led to a deepening of the Great Depression.

Of course, since economics is called the dismal science, I could be wrong.

A short note on the specifics of the article also from an economists point of view. The more money I make, the more I love this tax. I can only buy so many consumer goods, thus I can only pay a "voluntary" tax so often. If investments are not taxed and neither is my income, the small percentage I would spend from my $300,000 a year on income would pale in comparison to what I am investing. This is a very regressive tax idea based on what percentage of income earned would go to paying it.

If you guys think this is fair and appropriate, I have no objections.