Taxes really suck, but tariffs suck a little less than income tax or property tax.
Discussion
Would you say they are a "lesser evil"?
It’s funny watching the left freak out over tariffs not realizing it’s a negotiating tactic to get what the US wants. Do what the US asks, no tariffs. Mexico already caved to President Trumps demands and Canada is in the final stages of caving too. Brilliant leverage in action!
Do you have the same opinion on threats of violence as you do on threats of tariffs?
They would both be leverage in action.
It’s not the case for example that they are only idle threats, tariffs were levied by Trump, and they were kept in place by Biden.
Tariffs reduce trade.
I’m concerned about the tit for tat growing beyond what individual actors wanted. I’m concerned about the costs of untangling economies. I’m concerned about the costs of permanently not taking advantage of the trade surpluses both countries get when they trade voluntarily, taking advantage of the differences in skills, labor, and capital to allow specialization. I’m concerned that tariffs will make everything more expensive fundamentally because it’s going to be made in places with higher costs to produce the same thing without an increase in quality. This isn’t inflation in the sense of the money supply, it’s restructuring the fundamental way things are produced and where they are produced. I’m concerned if you don’t trade with your enemies you take one stop out of the road to war with your enemies. I’m concerned if you don’t trade with your allies, they will seek trade agreements with your enemies. I’m not a member of the left.
It's a purist theory in an impure world, things are more complicated than the simple theory posits.
And unfortunately destroying your own ability to create something is far far quicker than rebuilding the ability to create something.
Tariffs are used for bargaining and leverage. You’re assuming like a good libtard that the other party involved (Canada and Mexico) won’t fold to the US demands, which I believe they will. Before the 16th amendment, the founding fathers relied on tariffs to fund the government. It’s a good idea to go back to that way of thinking.
Look at all the countries that have tariffs on the US, why is it ok when they do it but not ok when the US does it back?
Threats of violence are used for bargaining and leverage. You are assuming like a good libtard that the other party involved, (Russia) won’t fold to US demands.
I think the above argument is dumb. I think it remains dumb when you replace violence with tarrifs and replace Russia with Russia or China or Mexico or Canada.
It’s dumb because if you are unwilling to do the thing you are threatening then you don’t have a credible threat. So if they don’t capitulate then you are locked into proceeding with your threat or else loose credibility. And it’s easy to find yourself threatening what you never intended to carry out and get yourself trapped into harming yourself with tarrifs that you never wanted.
I would be fine with tarrifs in so far as they would be aligned to a consumption tax regime. But as you said tarrifs are being used as leverage here and if we miscalculate and the other party doesn’t budge, or reciprocates, it starts a trade war of increasing tarrifs in a tit for tat manner just like military action does. And ultimately they move in the same direction, you don’t go to war with a trade partner, you end trade first and when there is no more trade to eliminate then you go to war. I would rather leave mutually beneficial trade on the table rather than walk in the direction of war (For China, Russia, or any other Nation) without a real threat to ourselves.
“Look at all the countries that have tarrifs on the US, why is it ok when they do it but not ok when the US does it back?”
There are already reciprocal tariffs inplace between us and those countries. This is a threat to increase. And just like in war an escalation can lead to either capitulation from the other side or reciprocal escalation.
Reciprocal escalation leaves the populations of both countries poorer for each round of tariffs as the prices rise.
The caution against tariffs isn’t because I don’t think there isn’t a chance they will work, it’s that there is a chance they won’t and then we are locked into the absurd threat by politicians in either country unwilling to backdown and look weak.
I can’t tell if I’m talking to a retarded bot or a complete dipshit. What are the tariffs for example of German cars sold in the US? What are the tariffs on US vehicles sold in Germany?
I’m not your personal assistant. You can dig that up yourself if you want to discuss it. But when a country imposes a tariff on a product of ours like cars, we don’t impose an identical magnitude tariff on an identical product from them. We retaliate with a tariff on a product that will do similar damage or protection. Since the countries specialize in different things an identical tariff won’t have the intended effect you want to have if you are trying to retaliate. Instead we have to retaliate with a tariff on that countries steel or agriculture or chip manufacturing.
You didn’t answer my question. The example I gave implies the US and Germany both make a similar product; vehicles. Why is it ok to tariff US cars imported in to Germany but not the other way around? It’s a simple question, answer it. The reason you can’t is because it completely destroys your own argument. Too funny! 🤣
My friend… I looked it up for you. I was hoping you would as I thought it would help you see my point. Germany has a 10% Tariff on US cars. We have a 2.5% Tariff on German cars and 25% Tariff on German trucks. Germany has a 5% Tariff on US Steel, We have a 20% Tariff on German Steel. I’m sure there are other product categories with differential tarrifs. Reflect on this and our discussion. You may yet be able to escape the cognitive dissonance. Good day sir.
For the rich yes, for the poor no
I need to think more about this but initial thoughts are, tarrifs will be better if there was no income tax. I want to ALL my money, there will still be deals out there on the things I need or want
All taxes should be corporate taxes based on revenue, not profit, so NO deductions or loopholes. It should be progressive, so that as the company brings in more revenue, they are taxed at a higher percent.
No level of the supply chain is exempt. If it takes four middle-men to get me my item, each middleman should be likewise taxed.
This will keep business from getting too big, help prevent monopolies, and help support producers who work with their customers directly.
Business will need to balance owning a larger portion of the supply chain with getting too big. The precise percentages can be adjusted as needed to have the best effect.
The higher the percentage of a market the company controls, the higher the tax rate for transactions in that market.
Big companies would just file paperwork that says they're "splitting up" without actually putting a table saw through the CEO
Wholly-owned subsidiaries can be considered the same company for this thought exercise.
Bribing politicians to consider the subsidiary "separate" rather than "wholly owned" would always be cheaper than losing a company like Google or Microsoft to newer fairer tax laws
Sure. We definitely need to abolish Citizens United. That goes without saying.
Not that that would completely eliminate bribery, but at least it would make bribery illegal again.
Disagree. Citizens United is just the so-called "supreme court" admitting they can't control what people do with the money they give them after printing it. They'd have even less control under a Bitcoin standard so that would be insane to reverse. Tariffs are a method of taxation that you can actually do pretty consistent enforcement of.
I kinda switched trains of thought without enough explanation there. Difficulty of enforcing taxes is related to difficulty of controlling what people do with money, but not the same topic, of course.
Citizens United determined that corporations are people. That’s dangerous. Corporations should not be able to “contribute to” (bribe) political campaigns.
I don't get why people say that or why the court-brained people involved framed it that way. What makes it ultimately about corporate personhood moreso than the simple pragmatic fact of whether the court's gunmen are or aren't capable of enforcing dollar-by-dollar micromanagement?
It was the mental (or legal) gymnastics they had to use to force it into a 1st Amendment issue.
Corporations don’t (or at least shouldn’t) have 1st amendment rights. Only the people do.
But corporations are just people who call themselves corporations. You can't invalidate your rights by calling yourself a special name
Not invalidating the person’s rights. But corporations don’t have the same rights.
Example:
Corporation refuses to hire black people and blasts racist remarks across their web site. Illegal. Fines. Shut it down.
The CEO of that company refuses to shop at a black-owned store and blasts racist remarks across a personal blog web site that has nothing to do with his corp. Asshole. Might get his ass beat. Might make people not want to buy his company’s products. But not illegal.
Brilliant. I thought you were going to give me an example of some other right, but you had a great free speech example.
I still don't see an economic reason to overturn citizens united - like, if the legalisms about personhood don't add up, I'd still say courts and their gunmen aren't an effective mechanism for dealing with that kind of bribery.
No, corporations are contracts. They are pieces of paper. They have no natural rights under the law.
In the context of a bribe, a corporation is a person calling themselves a corporation. I don't see how the court can separate the brand name the person uses from the person committing the act of bribery.
In another context, like a bankruptcy trial, the corporation might be a piece of paper calling itself a person, having only the rights and accounntability of "corporate personhood" separate from the humans involved.
*accountability
They do separate, though. "Lifting the corporate veil" used to be limited to very rare circumstances, though the privileges are eroding.
That's how flunkies go to prison while managers, directors and shareholders are (mostly) free to do it again, barring unusual orders.
That's just it. Corporations are not people, because there are circumstances in the law that they beg to use in their defense that say that they are not. People can't pick and choose when to be considered a person and when not to be. So neither can corporations.
In the context of a bribe, it's not a corporation making the decision to sign the check, it's a person in some position of authority within that corporate structure. That person should be held accountable for that decision. Brand Names, Trademarks, those are all just contracts, information.
If people want to set up a DAO on some blockchain where "the code is the contract", then "shame on he who thinks ill". That's the pure form of "the corporation is just people with rules".
Corporations, ancient and modern, depended on the State to construct (and subsidise the defence of) the asymmetrical rights of shareholders against the Board, the Board against the managers, and the managers against the employees. Think of the thousands of pages of regulations, the dozens of state and federal agencies auditing and enforcing, and the court time required to enforce the status quo.
Without that structure and subsidies, the "Principal-Agent" problem would make corporations uncompetitive except in very niche situations. As they once were.
Citizens United was Treason. The 5 members of the US Supreme Court that voted for that decision should have been impeached and removed from office the next day.
How about 90% owned subsidiaries?
90% owned, but indirectly through a web of cross-shareholding and board members in common?
0% owned, but with Options to buy at a fixed price at some future date?
0% just with a long-term "off balance sheet" asymmetrical supply contract?
There are various legal precedents we could refer to, but all are gamable, sadly.
In general, I think a sole-proprietorship with no employees would be exempt. Think: freelance developer. Presumably, that freelancer is hired by another company that IS paying the tax.
There’s also the situation of S-corps, LLCs, or married-couple-owned businesses. If a sole-proprietorship hires one employee, are they now subject to all the taxes?
Obviously this is a sliding scale that requires far more macro- and micro-economic study than I’m willing to put into it at this time.
I like the direction, though, and to ponder the edge cases.
Corporations don't pay taxes. They pass their taxes on to the customers in the form of higher prices so their customers pay the taxes without realizing it.
Of course they do. And if corporate employees don’t have to pay income tax, their salary will be lower. It all evens out in the end.
The primary purpose of government is to protect its people from powerful entities who do not have the best interest of the people at heart. By definition, corporations do not have the best interest of the people at heart.
And of course you can argue that current governments do not have the people’s best interest at heart. But they’re supposed to.
Corporations are NOT supposed to have the people’s best interest at heart. They exist solely to make money, and they have a fiduciary duty to do so. Often, I dare say nearly always, they do so by taking advantage of the people, either via monopoly price gauging, or wage theft, or pollution, or any number of other things. This isn’t necessarily going to change, but taxes are a tool to curb behavior that damages the people.
I want a world where I don’t have to fill out my tax return every year, because my company has already paid all the taxes necessary. I also want to walk into a store and pay the exact listed price for an item so I don’t have to do 8% math on it in my head to decide whether I want it.
Right, i think it's simply a matter of perspective. Taxes would be an operational expense, it has to be balanced by some form of income, selling the product. IE: Passing the cost to the customer.
Taxation is theft btw.
this is why a lot of big L libertarians advocate a flat sales tax, because you see it
Bad idea. Sales tax is a REGRESSIVE tax. It harms the poor more than it harms the rich. Abolish sales tax. 100% corporate revenue tax.
taxation is theft
theft is a crime
abolish crime
Taxation can only (and it’s still a stretch) be considered theft if you are held against your will, including simply that you were born there and have no means to flee. As this is difficult to distinguish, I’m in favor of abolishing all personal income and sales tax.
Businesses CHOOSE (and go to great lengths) to be incorporated within a legal entity (or layers of legal entities: USA, California, San Francisco, etc) and therefore agree to be charged a cost of doing business in that jurisdiction. That tax is NOT theft.
taxation is theft
Corporations pay all kinds of taxes. It’s a cost of doing business in the USA. As it should be.
Fun fact: customers don’t pay sales tax, businesses do. It’s a massive scam that sales tax is added onto the purchase price to hide the cost from their customers. It makes customers side with businesses against raising BUSINESS taxes.
This would force inefficient supply chains. The most profitable businesses would be those who can stay small and source their own raw materials. This is great for a small rancher but makes producing complex electronics and more advanced goods incredibly difficult.
Maybe. Maybe supply chains would become more efficient because the excess multiple levels aren’t cost-effective.
There would just be no corporations after a little while so everyone avoids all taxes by doing business under their own name. Revenue should really probably come from tariffs
I think that argument is as spurious as “if the worldwide currency is deflationary, then nobody will ever spend any of their money.”
There are too many benefits of incorporation (risk mitigation being a big one). And of course the tax rate is flexible and can be adjusted so that is continues to be worthwhile to incorporate.
Not sure if spurious is the right word, I hadn't considered the benefit of incorporation.
Maybe corporate taxes could make a big dent in or even replace tariffs, if the legal system can make incorporation beneficial enough in a fair way.
We still need a way to “tax” or “tariff”(or whatever word you want to use) foreign companies. Not sure the best way to do that. They will be able to get around the multi-level-supply-chain revenue tax, so maybe tariffs on those goods as long as the US has a competitive industry.
Tariffs are useless unless the US can compete. Otherwise it’s just another tax on the people of the US.
When bringing goods into the country, you pay the border guards a certain percentage of what they say your shipment is worth in currency, or they take that percentage of your goods.
This.
Partnerships would also be popular. I'm calling that a win, since I regard long-lived corporations as merely the State writ small.
Tariffs have the virtue of requiring no more govt than is required to secure a border anyway.
Tariffs only suck if you are shopping for foreign crap?
I import raw materials. Believe me. It’s all foreign crap even if it’s assembled here.
Yeah once we fix the global economy we ruined with overseas production supply lines
Things are gonna suck for a while because we used all the crude oil to ruin the global economy instead of improve it, and we saved almost no crude oil for fixing it
Tariffs are hidden taxation via inflation.