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Re: Before Fed Income Tax 

By: Fiz in GRITZ | Recommend this post (1)
Fri, 04 Apr 25 5:29 AM | 15 view(s)
Boardmark this board | Grits Breakfast of Champeens! 		Msg. 06275 of 06320
(This msg. is a reply to 06272 by Fiz)
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Fiz said "But a tariff is even more interesting..."

But, I ought to have followed that with: Because a tariff is not exactly a sales tax, either; it is a fascinating hybrid. It discourages consumption, yes, and it provides government revenue, yes. But it also allows purchase for the local well-heeled. Yet, in the longer term, it encourages local production -- if possible and there is sufficient local demand.

And, if that happens, it increases local jobs, local families, local infrastructure, local education, local culture, local everything good. So it is really a win-win-win: locals win. governments win. foreign manufacturers even win, as they get marginal income for their overproduction.

Maybe there is something bad, locally, it produces, but I can't think of it.

Which makes me wonder what exactly motivated the creators of the local income tax, and the promoters of "free trade" (aka, no foreign tarrifs)?

Were they all haters of America ... or did they just not have a bone of humanity in them -- at least on a local, Christian, level?

Yes, I stuck that nasty "Christian" word in there for a reason. How long does anyone seriously think American culture can survive divorced from its underlying bedrock?

Are we so clever that we slit our own cultural throat? Or did someone else do that? Or what reason? This kind of stuff isn't that hard to think through.


"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome" --Charlie Munger

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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Before Fed Income Tax
By: Fiz in GRITZ
Fri, 04 Apr 25 3:31 AM 		Msg. 06272 of 06320

Rbit: "..tariffs are a way of taxing people same as Income tax."

No. They are extraordinarily different!
First of all, recognize that a tax -- any tax -- is a PUNISHMENT. It discourages people from doing something. That is all it is (well, not quite all ... it does generate government revenue and, in the natural course of things, encourages government obesity and corruption).

But an income tax punishes work and productivity.
While a sales tax punishes CONSUMPTION (waste)...which just so happens to be extraordinarily VOLUNTARY.

How should a tax be structured by a wise government if it wants to make a people proud and wealthy? Tax the $h\* our of consumption, but leave earned income untouched.

I'm surprised you would say such a obviously wrong thing. Not a good sign for the country if people can't discern up from down.

But a tariff is even more interesting: it only punishes people who are not part of the society and are only there trying to squeeze out extra profits. Provided the country imposing the tariff is largely capable of prouducing equivalent (roughly competitive) goods itself, it stongly encourages even more productivity in its own middle-class population -- while leaving the relatively uber-rich population to spend more of their accumulated savings (and give them thrills and obesity, I am sure, which they generally deserve if they came by their wealth through earlier hard, productive work).


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