WhiteMountain
Jedi
I agree with the policy of tariffs in general because they are much more efficient ways of collecting taxes (i.e. less actual damage done to the economy vs say income taxes). But you do not implement them in a half ass way like Trump just did. You phase them in over time so domestic production can meet domestic demand and you actually target them intelligently. Investments in jobs domestically requires time AND knowledge the tariffs are long term (i.e. not an illegal executive order like Trump's that SHOULD NOT survive any court challenge). What he is doing now is literally going to cause unnecessary pain and suffering short term for the American people. And maybe that actually is the goal for the elites that are advising / puppeting him depending on what one believes about the situation.I feel like Jefferson's second inaugural has some influence in this administration. In Jefferson's inaugural address he had commended the practice of funding the government solely through tariffs and no taxes: The Avalon Project : Jefferson's Second Inaugural Address
"The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign articles, is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts, being collected on our seaboards and frontiers only, and incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and pride of an American to ask, what farmer, what mechanic, what laborer, ever sees a tax-gatherer of the United States? These contributions enable us to support the current expenses of the government, to fulfil contracts with foreign nations, to extinguish the native right of soil within our limits, to extend those limits, and to apply such a surplus to our public debts, as places at a short day their final redemption, and that redemption once effected, the revenue thereby liberated may, by a just repartition among the states, and a corresponding amendment of the constitution, be applied, _in time of peace_, to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects within each state."
And
"The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes."
These are different times given the US dollar's hegemony, so if other countries retaliate the US could see inflation. But other countries, as I understand it, are only seeing reciprocal tariffs, and the effect of inflation would be mitigated by internal projects or investment in the US, which should create jobs. Unless the rich conspire to not invest in the US.
Automation was always an issue. If machines replace workers 100%, then we will either regress into a 2D reality or live in a dreadful utopia.
These in fact were not "reciprocal tariffs." As Jeffrey Sachs mentions in this interview
The other thing to note on tariffs, is that while the US before 1900 could be funded largely from tariffs, when the US went socialist and also put more money in the military industrial complex in the 20th century there is almost no way the general government could be funded solely through tariffs. You could not fund Medicare with tariffs (they cannot even fund it with premiums and payroll taxes as there are HUGE unfunded liabilities associated with it that ultimately have to be paid out of the general fund). You need to have some other mechanisms of taxation like income taxes, a national sales/VAT tax or an enterprise value tax on public corporations and have massive spending cuts in entitlements that no one wants to touch for the nation to become solvent. The Q people who say Trump will get rid of the income tax just by making government efficient through DOGE or levying all these tariffs are not dealing with reality.
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