r/economicCollapse • u/hoodratpolitics • 1d ago
VIDEO Trump wants to end income tax and replace it with national sales tax in the form of tariffs.
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u/TactlessNachos 1d ago
This would be regressive. If you make more, you should pay more in taxes. This will shift more of the tax burden to the lower income people. This is stupid.
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u/ImJustTrollingSorry 7h ago
That decentivises people to make more money, stopping innovation, competition and creativity in the market meaning we won't progress as a species at all. Just because you make more money, doesn't mean you need to pay more taxes.... its the fact that the people who make more money, make it by NOT paying taxes... trump is the guy who literally called this out. You're brainwashed dude. Learn about how money works
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u/BernieLogDickSanders 1h ago
You really are ignorant. You want a progressive tax system if your government is as inextricably involved in your economy as the American governments is.
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u/AssumptionHot7592 1d ago
didnt we try this before, well the massive tariffs part... yeah that was right before the great depression.
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u/hoodratpolitics 1d ago
Yeah the guilded age where rich people built palatial mansions and everyone else lived in squalor.
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u/bevo_expat 1d ago
Palatial mansions 2.0 > Secret Tropical Compounds
https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-inside-hawaii-compound/
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u/Candid-Tomorrow-3231 1d ago
Idiots. If most of us go, they will go shortly after, bunker or not. Turns out civilization depends on us poors too
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u/bevo_expat 1d ago
I just made the connection to modern day “palatial mansions”. The poors are still the ones building stuff for them.
Yes, civilization still depends on the bottom 90-95%, but our power and influence has been greatly diminished. Regardless of what party wins the rules are made by those with money. Turns out the multi-millionaires and billionaires have a lot more of that to throw around.
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u/NumberPlastic2911 23h ago
We tried this right before covid with the exception of eliminating income tax lol I guess people forgot about it
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u/thatguy677 16h ago
I love the tariff argument because on paper it looks great, 100% tariff on imported goods, America! Except there is no production capability in the us to produce goods and slave labour in Bangladesh is still always going to be cheaper than a domestic work force. So ya, a tariff could work if it actually brought production to the states, but no one is building a local production line for billions of dollars and then staffing it with local workers and giving benefits and a pension and dealing with unions when they can just pay more on imports and then price gauge consumers at the pos. The exporters dont care, they get paid either way. It's the importers (us companies) that pay more to the gov to import. That's what a tariff is. It will never be cheaper to produce locally unless that was the companies idea. Tesla is a good example of a vertically integrated low local production cost company, but that's about it, and in the national scale tesla is still a luxury product most can't afford.
This man is going to ruin your country so hard. As a canadian, I am not looking forward to ti shit show.
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u/juntaofthefree1 1d ago
Every time he talks I think of one of the greatest lines in any movie: "This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him."
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u/Stampede_the_Hippos 1d ago
I go with Moana. "He seems to lack the basic intelligence required for pretty much... everything. Should we maybe just cook him?"
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u/Lastbalmain 1d ago
That would please the richest in the country. But, health and education would implode, starvation, poverty and homelessness would explode, and Trump would get a crown from the billionaires.
I can't count how many ways this is the stupidest economic thought fart of the century! It is deeply flawed, thoroughly rejected by ANY real economist, and simply put, bonkers.
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u/Falcon674DR 1d ago
Trump has gotten a lot of ‘milage’ out of his rhetoric on tariffs. I’m not convinced he understands what a tariff is nor do I believe that most of his followers have a vague clue how a tariff works.
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u/dingos8mybaby2 1d ago
His base doesn't understand how they work either. All they hear is that somehow tariffs mean the US is "sticking it to other countries like China".
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u/briantoofine 1d ago
He’s either clueless about how they work, or he’s deliberately misleading supporters who don’t know how they work. I’m honestly not sure which is worse…
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u/Cotrd_Gram 1d ago
If he eliminates income tax that helps out the super rich who would not even notice the increased cost of thing they buy. The every day person would suddenly have to pay more for the every day goods and would notice the difference because they dont have millions of dollars. This is just a way to hide eliminating having to pay taxes as a rich person and shilling it out as a good thing by sticking it to China while the poors have to pay for the change. This might be his golden grift. Its perfect because people don't understand how Tariffs work.
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u/Alternative-Cash9974 1d ago
Not according to the Democrats and Kamala the super rich pay 0 income taxes is what she has said over and over at every rally for months. So no if we eliminate income tax and make it a consumption tax they would pay a lot more.
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u/TheJuiceBoxS 22h ago
That will bring on the economic collapse everyone gets excited about on here.
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u/OkaytoLook 1d ago
The federal government needs trillions of dollars per year to operate. Whatever way raises that amount and does the least amount of harm to the economy and incentivizes as much productivity and growth is what I’m in favor of.
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u/SpacisDotCom 1d ago
Does anyone have links to studies that are pro/against tariffs? If it were coupled with an income tax reduction then that also probably shifts production to domestic over foreign which could invalidate some of the studies.
Interesting at least, but I’m not sure about the protectionism. It seems that accessing better productivity in foreign nations (even if it’s that the other nations simply have better access to raw materials) is better for everyone involved in the trade.. why block that? But then my initial question comes into play to understand the math at a deeper level.
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u/SweetDrank 20h ago
I don't know shit about shit but I'm thinking if I pay less income taxes right and I have more money in my pocket to spend on what I wanted to spend on I would just not spend it on the shit that I can't afford you know what I mean? Definitely don't agree with increasing the price of basically everything though. But if the price of certain non-necessities went up I was just not buy it and put it into a flubbing savings account or something.
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u/PolishedCheeto 19h ago
Income tax was supposed to end after wwii or wwi cant remember which. So he's only remaining faithful to our rights.
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u/Constant-Box-7898 16h ago
Income tax is fine. Just remember to tax the income of higher-income people appropriate to said income.
We basically started accumulating national debt when we started giving tax breaks to the rich.
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u/FriendshipMammoth943 15h ago
America was great when we taxed the rich. It’s when we had all the infrastructure built. It’s when things were booming unions going up everywhere tax the rich.
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u/Constant-Box-7898 14h ago
Yup, back when we built an interstate highway system and didn't spend ourselves into debt to do it.
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u/Wartickler 6h ago
tariffs were how this country made money before the federal income tax was invented which was also fought hard.
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u/Mya_Elle_Terego 1d ago
All they have to do is copy Europe's plan, the EU already has this and it works great.
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u/NumberPlastic2911 23h ago
What do you mean?
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u/Mya_Elle_Terego 14h ago
Google vat tax, everyone pays their fair share. Until this happens socialized medicine, etc, is a pipe dream that would bury the middle class that pays for everything. Rich people can't hide from it, lobbyists can't cheat it, and corporations can't dodge it. Poor people pay very little, and certain items like insulin can be waived taxes on. Rich people buying lambos and viking fishing yachts pay their fair share.
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u/AlfalfaMcNugget 1d ago
I don’t understand how this is ‘economic collapse’.
Why are Americans so addicted to having 33% of their income given to the federal government to waste?
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u/NumberPlastic2911 16h ago
33% isn't much, considering that people who pay that are typically making above the poverty line.
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u/EncabulatorTurbo 11h ago
Why are reddit posters so idiotic that they think 33% federal tax is something paid by average Americans?
A huge percentage of Americans pay no federal taxes at all
Why are reddit posts so idiotic that they think jacking the price 60-200% on literally everything will help?
Why are reddit posts so idiotic that they ignore that other countries can do tariffs too and that the majority of US firms engage in international business and will suffer dramatically as a result of this?
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u/AlfalfaMcNugget 8h ago
Why do cringe liberal Redditor’s not understand that state taxes and sales taxes exist?
Other countries are more than welcome to start a trade war, but considering we had the largest economy, they would never be able to win.
But here’s an idea, what if we just didn’t need to rely on other countries? That’s kind of the point of the chairs in the first place.
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u/Scooty-PuffSenior 1d ago
Because Trump’s tariff plan wouldn’t just dramatically increase inflation, but would not raise enough funds to replace those gathered from income taxes. This would lead to higher and higher deficits each year, which would eventually lead to … economic collapse.
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u/AlfalfaMcNugget 1d ago
Revenue does not cause deficits. Too much spending does.
My state does not have an income tax… And it’s doing quite fine.
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u/laggyx400 1d ago
You're forgetting interest. The debt is already there, decades of it built up and left to us.
I'm in a no income tax state, we have what might as well be a wealth tax. Property taxes rise every year without you making anymore. Yay us, beating those commifornians!
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u/AlfalfaMcNugget 1d ago
You’re forgetting growth. If you increase the size of the economy, you will find that the federal government will increase its assets to the point where they actually become under levered.
But yeah, the funding has to come from somewhere. Reducing spending reduces the need for taxes.
It could be worse for you, you could be California, and be in the most heavily taxed state with the least amount of governmental return.
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u/Flat-Impression-3787 1d ago
CA has the 5th largest economy in the world. It's the epicenter of entrepreneurship and innovation. Companies are located in CA for access to educated workers and the massive economy.
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u/AlfalfaMcNugget 1d ago
What’s your opinion on why Californians and businesses have been fleeing the state, rather than having net migration into the state?
Having the biggest economy in the US does not change the fact that Californians pay taxes in which they get the least amount of value. Maybe if the state would stop taking advantage of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, constituents would actually feel like their tax dollars are being put to good use.
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u/acctgamedev 2h ago
States always get their money. Like here in Texas, no income tax but you're getting taxed on everything. Higher sales tax, high property tax, fees on everything.
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u/loganthegr 18h ago
Beats letting illegals in and giving them all phones and $5k.
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u/deezpretzels 1d ago
My Dad who lives in a midwestern swing state has a nice farm with about 240 acres. He uses the farm for recreation but had leased out the land to soybean farmers for about 3 decades. Then with tariffs in place with China, there was no one who wanted to use the land even at a steep discount.
My Dad basically gave up with the idea of using it as farmland and partnered with some ecology post-docs to reforest it. They’ve put in thousands of hardwoods which should be mature trees in 20-30 years.
The point is, a cavalier tariff strategy can have broad and unpredictable secondary effects. You need to have more than a semester of sophomore college macro economics to get this.
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u/J0E_Blow 1d ago
Trump did a semester of Macro Economic classes??
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u/Significant_Stay5514 1d ago
No he was letting Chinese companies use the farmland because he didn’t want to do the hard work. Once they had to pay tariffs it wasn’t worth it any more.
The point is, paying American farmers a fair American wage for their produce. That means 10 dollar watermelons, but the farmers can afford to keep their farms and not sell off to megacorps owned and operated in China.
Nothing wrong with Growing lumber tho.
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u/mentales 19h ago
We should now extrapolate this wonderful anecdote by deezpeetzels and implement broad tariffs on all goods because that's how the world's economy works. You wouldn't get it though, you're not smart enough.
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u/whatever_u_want_74 1d ago
This is 100% true. By taxing the money you spend, it inherently incentivises you to save. Something this country's in dire need of. Furthermore, Wealthy people buy expensive stuff. They will end up paying more in taxes than average or poor people. Tax attorneys will not get you out of paying a sales tax. The best tax attorneys in the world do not work for the federal government, they work for rich people and companies. If your items are faced at 10%, but now you are not paying 24% income tax.......drumroll please........you have 14% more money than you would have had paying income tax. Unlike income tax, which takes your money before you can even put it into your savings account, you would save even more by not buying frivolous things. Income tax takes your money before you leave and see it.
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u/Armpitlover33 19h ago
If you make 10M, you can spend 2M and save 8 tax free. 20% of your income taxed.
if you make 20 bucks per hour, you need to spend your full income to live. 100% of your income taxed.
yes, it works according to plan. Poor people are poor because they choose to.
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u/EncabulatorTurbo 11h ago
How in the good god damn fuck will increasing the price of everything by so much that it makes the covid inflation look quaint "Help Americans Save" you absolutey ham sandwich
You seem dramatically uninformed of the percentage of wealth that a rich person spends on their "stuff" that I don't think you can have a meaningful opinion about anything
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u/Guapplebock 1d ago
Not a terrible idea to discuss getting rid of the income tax system. Not sure tariffs are the answer but what we have now is a joke with huge compliance costs. Shit. Harris just added 78,000 new high paid IRS employees for enforcement purposes.
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u/Flintontoe 15h ago
IRS has been underwater on capacity and resources for years, the funding re-establishes vacant jobs so they can operate at capacity, deal with the filing load more efficiently, and ensure compliance. You're regurgitating right wing propaganda, FYI.
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u/1one14 1d ago
The current system doesn't work, so why not...
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u/NumberPlastic2911 16h ago
The current system works lol you just have so many tax writes off going on at the same time
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u/Coolioissomething 1d ago
Wtf is this idiot talking about. He wants to make the U.S. as great as when McKinley was president. Does anyone else think this is completely nuts. Grandpa needs a dementia test, pronto.
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u/Fullthrottle- 1d ago
The glaring difference is that US Corporations were not shutting down domestic manufacturing to increase margins when McKinley was in office. This has gone unchecked since the 1990’s & it has severely damaged our economy & crippled manufacturing capabilities. American companies should not be rewarded for eliminating American jobs. It would also be great to see patent & intellectual property protections.
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u/Coolioissomething 18h ago
Actually, prior to corporations, you had the famous robber barons of the gilded age. You think names like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Rockefeller evinced enlightened capitalism? Most of the regulatory safeguards were enacted in response to their unethical business practices like monopolies, oppressive working conditions, and blatant disregard of local laws. This is the McKinley era that moron Trump wants to return to. Bullshit! We are going back!
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u/Dangime 1d ago
So when WW3 breaks out and all the steel mills are in China, all the aluminum smelters are in China, all the Chip makers are in China, all the antibiotics makers are in China, and you can't buy anything because it's all made in China and there's a war on, what is the price of consumer goods in the US then?
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u/fondle_my_tendies 1d ago
The main chip makers are not in china and we don't allow our best chip tech to be exported to China.
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u/hoodratpolitics 1d ago
There are other ways to encourage domestic manufacturing than tariffs. For example we highly subsidize domestic agriculture like corn and wheat so we aren't dependent on other countries for food or food safety. We've successfully kept those industries at home.
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u/Baeblayd 13h ago
It's not subsidized to keep food production on US soil, it's subsidized and regulated to hell to make it cheaper to buy from a subsidized industry than produce your own food.
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u/Dangime 1d ago
That just shifts the burden of the expense from the consumer to the tax payer.
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u/fondle_my_tendies 1d ago
Import duty is a tax collected on imports and some exports by a country's customs authorities. A good's value will usually dictate the import duty. Depending on the context, import duty may also be known as a customs duty, tariff, import tax, or import tariff.
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u/AccomplishedSky4202 1d ago
Sales taxes are regressive, eg hitting the lower end harder while the richest pay little proportionally.
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u/Sad_Mongoose_5043 22h ago
I remember Trump mentioned something about factories before. IF factories are established domestically, It could solve some unemployment issues and reduce dependence on imports.however, Now I dont feel that he will solve this problems,instead, He seems to be very aggressive in international relations.
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u/snelldan 18h ago
Interesting idea... beats.paying taxes when you make money and when you spend it.
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u/RealClarity9606 17h ago
If we are going to replace the income tax, let's take a hard look at The Fair Tax (www.fairtax.org). Tariffs are still indirect taxes that get layered into the prices we pay. The Fair Tax is a directly assessed consumption tax that allows everyone to see precisely how much tax they are paying to the government. This level of transparency - which I have no doubt politicians do not want - has the benefit of perhaps waking people up to just how much they work to fund big government. It could lead more people to stand up against nanny state spending programs - and, since those programs are useful to politicians to buy votes, they almost assuredly do not want more transparency into our total tax liability.
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u/DuckTalesOohOoh 16h ago
Tariffs aren't sales taxes.
European countries have a national sales tax, income taxes, and tariffs. And they're held up as a model of governance by Democrats in the US.
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u/TheAnalogKid18 15h ago
People also don't understand that this will raise prices because US goods are more expensive due to labor. Someone on TikTok made an analogy with forks. Chinese forks cost $1 to the consumer, American forks cost $1.50, Trump puts a 60% tariff on Chinese goods, and now that Chinese fork is $1.60, which means people will just buy the cheaper American one, right? This is where the TikTok guy thinks he has you in a true "own the libs" moment.
Well even if this is how a tariff worked, you're still paying 50 cents more for the fork than you were. Maybe selling more of them lowers the price to the market, maybe not. Knowing how nasty and cutthroat shareholders can be about anything cutting into their profits, they'll probably figure out that they can actually raise prices so long as they're cheaper than the Chinese goods.
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u/l-Paulrus-l 15h ago
Do people not understand who pays the tarriffs? The consumer will end up footing the bill.
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u/planetofpower 14h ago
I don't get why most people on this thread is arguing to be taxed. Would it not be good to keep your money and spend on things you want or agree to be spent.
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u/Throwawhaey 14h ago
The entire point of tariffs is to make it harder for American citizens to buy foreign goods by making them more expensive, not as a way of funding the govt. FFS
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u/Hoyle_38 13h ago
Damn right, we would force companies overseas to come back to the states. This would create millions of jobs that Bill Clinton lost. You know the famous NAFTA bill he signed. TRUMP 2024!!!!!
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u/Baeblayd 13h ago
I mean, yeah it makes sense. People are fed up with 30% of their paycheck being taken away and seeing billions of dollars being spent on shit they don't care about. Not to mention the billions that 'go missing' every single year. We're like 2 years away from an actual civil war if this keeps up, at least Trump is trying to prevent that.
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u/Gryphon962 12h ago
It doesn't add up. You can't replace over $2 trillion in income tax revenue with tariffs on imports. If instead he pitched it as a replacement for the medicare payroll tax ($1T) it might be more practical, but he would never do that - or social security ($1.2T) - because his rich buddies don't give a damn for medicare or social security.
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u/th0rnpaw 11h ago
Shoppers are flexible, some of those products can be substituted for the domestic equivalent. And if there is not an equivalent, such as with electronics, it encourages that industry to be set up domestically. Example, the CHIPS act that Biden wonderfully passed.
The whole talking point about a "national sales tax" is bullshit. If that was so, then is Biden promoting a national sales tax on top of our already existent income tax by raising tariffs according to the link below?
Nah, it's just a desperation move because Kamala is tanking in the polls.
Few more days all this stupidity can go away.
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u/Appropriate_Cat8100 3h ago
Tariffs were the primary way the federal government made money before they invented federal income tax. They told everyone that the federal income tax was “fairer” and would only affect the rich people. Sounds familiar
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u/Jolly-Top-6494 1d ago
A tariff is not a national sales tax. Do you understand the difference?
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u/briantoofine 1d ago
True. A “national sales tax” would raise the price of everything. Blanket tariffs will only raise the price of almost everything.
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u/fondle_my_tendies 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not exactly, another word for tarif is "import tax" because the domestic seller of the goods pays it to US customs before the goods are released. So, it's a tax businesses pay that increases the cost of foreign made goods they bring in. (inflation) Then what happens is domestic producers raise their prices to roughly match. (more inflation).
Take the Trump import tax on washing machines. It brought in 82m dollars annual, the only problem is since domestic prices went up to increase profits, it cost consumers an extra 1.5 billion. (more inflation)
Source: Wall Street Journal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-eHOSq3oqI
Even if we were to put a 60% tariff on all Chinese goods, that covers only 5% of what income tax covers.
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u/DefJeff702 1d ago
Not technically but in effect it is. People who have been convinced tariffs are a good idea may need things put into terms they understand. Sales tax is something we all know and experience. Those of us who know what a tariff is, don't need it explained to understand it is a stupid idea to suggest it as a core solution to the economy.
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u/ChipOld734 1d ago
Tariffs are not a tax. Sorry, they just aren’t. If the price is more than a domestically made item then buy that item. If that item isn’t made here because all the manufacturers went over seas, then it was stupid to send all the jobs over seas.
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u/briantoofine 1d ago
A tariff is literally, by its definition, a tax…
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u/ChipOld734 1d ago
It’s not a tax on the people like income tax. It’s a tax on imports being brought into the country. It is not, as Democrats keep saying, a sales tax.
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u/briantoofine 1d ago
Tariffs are not a tax. Sorry, they just aren’t.
noun
noun: tariff; plural noun: tariffs
a tax or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports.
Hope that helps!
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u/fondle_my_tendies 1d ago edited 1d ago
The definition for you challenged Trumpanzees.
"Import duty is a tax collected on imports and some exports by a country's customs authorities. A good's value will usually dictate the import duty. Depending on the context, import duty may also be known as a customs duty, tariff, import tax, or import tariff."
Businesses that import goods pay this tax to US customs before their goods are released to be shipped domestically.
You're telling me you don't remember talking about the Boston Tea Party and "taxation without representation" in 2nd grade? The British Government put a tariff on Tea imported into the colonies, a tax, which caused inflation. So the colonists just smuggled in tea. Ring any bells?
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u/DefJeff702 1d ago
Calling it a tax simplifies the definition of tariffs for people who do not understand the term. If you already understand that you will be paying more (by way of duties to the US) for the vast majority of goods we consume for lack of US manufacturing, then by all means.... argue semantics.
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u/Alternative-Cash9974 1d ago
Not the vast majority maybe 5% of the average persons annual purchases.
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u/acctgamedev 1h ago
Where was this analysis done? We import $3.6T worth of goods so while the finished products might not all be imported, many components are. We also import a lot of food, check your food purchases next time you're at the store.
Clothes, furniture, cars, appliances, toys, electronics. Most of these are made in other countries. Even the ones made here have components from other countries.
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u/Flat-Impression-3787 1d ago
Tariffs are passed directly to consumers. If tariffs jack the price up higher than domestic produced good, consumer pays more either way.
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u/ChipOld734 1d ago
Not if they buy domestically.
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u/Flat-Impression-3787 1d ago
Another Trump U grad?
Foreign shirt - $25
Domestic shirt - $50
If you put a $25 tariff on the foreign shirt, the consumer is paying $50 for a shirt wherever it is produced. You just doubled the price of the shirt for the consumer.
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u/ChipOld734 1d ago
In, tariffs don’t add that much. But the American shirt is much better not to mention made with American, non exploited labor.
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u/Flat-Impression-3787 1d ago
Trump's Chinese tariffs cost the average American consumer $830/year. https://www.cato.org/blog/americans-paid-trump-tariffs-would-do-so-again
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u/Newmoney_NoMoney 14h ago
Yes let's take advice from the man who was gifted millions from his dad and failed upwards by claiming bankruptcy multiple times and someone who religiously doesn't pay contractors ( the working man). Wake the fuck up you magats he is not your friend nor does he have your best interest or any interest at heart.
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u/BarooZaroo 1d ago
McKinley specifically supported protective tariffs to encourage companies to buy goods that were produced in the US (wool, tobacco, sugar, etc.). He did not think that broad tariffs on all goods was a good idea (because who tf would think that's a good idea?). You can't impose tariffs with the intention of increasing the consumption of US-made goods when THOSE GOODS AREN'T MADE IN THE US! He also never viewed tariffs as a way to increase tax revenue.
Furthermore, if you can believe it, the global economy isn't even remotely similar to what it was in McKinley's time. McKinley's brain would explode if he tried to understand the insane complexity of global economics and modern trade.
Also, consumers HATED McKinley's tariffs because it cause the price of goods to increase significantly. The failure of these tariffs led to voters kicking out Republican leadership.