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RE: USA: Tariffs = TAXES. Don't be fooled by spin. You are being TAXED
Tariffs are taxes but I'm not necessarily against them. I do feel that the American worker amd products is being cheated by our xurrent systems. Can we fix it? I don't think so but the trade war may actually be beneficial in making a lot of countries reconsider what they're doing. China has been gaining on the USA and they have been doing it at the expense of their people. As consumers we tend to forget but maybe the trade war will expose some of the injustices faced in other countries.
Thank you for your comment. I appreciate that you took the time to read my blog and comment on it. I'm not sure of your context, but I'm a self-employed person who (this year alone) has paid about $100K in taxes to the IRS. These are legitimate estimated earnings on capital gains, payroll taxes, income taxes (from 2017), sales taxes and this doesn't include the built in duties that are included in every drop of gas I put into my car, etc. You could say that I'm paying my "fair share", but here's the thing - in order to avoid paying 2x this amount, I have had to max out 401K investments, IRAs, HSAs, etc. just to try and reduce down the obligation. I employ a couple of people, but I can't grow my business because of the overhead of servicing this tax obligation.
What do I get for these taxes? Well the majority go to social security & medicare that I will never use. Then there is defense spending, which no one ever asked me if I wanted to spend $1 trillion a year on, when the country has a $21 trillion dollar debt. I'd vote no to interventionist policies that mandate this level of insane spending, but what do I know, right?
I mean I'm just a battery that generates energy that fuels a government I don't necessarily agree with, nor see the point to having. But that's the anarcho-capitalist in me I guess. You can get the point of how jaded I feel. I'm a "job creator" that generates the jobs for the American worker that you speak about. But I don't see that in the next 5-10 years I will need workers because they are all being replaced with automation. Sure, we will still need customer service people, etc. but do you know how little those jobs pay? We are clearly moving away from a human work force to a robot army, and I guess that just means we'll pay more and more taxes.
Tariffs are a great way to tax people without having to "tax" them. I allows raw consumption to be taxed without a sales tax being levied. It allows a move towards an automated society to be taxed based on what goods & services that society require to consume. I think its a perfect setup for the government to line their pockets and pay more for tanks & destroyers that we don't need. And to service the looming debt burden of those that are not working because either they chose not to, or they were displaced by globalism or by automation.
Yes, there will be more of this going on. And for that reason I don't see that tariffs will go away, regardless of the "great deals" the administration promise can be made. We will need to ween ourselves off the addiction to cheap Chinese products, and ween ourselves towards the addition of cheap "robot made" US products. Oh, meanwhile all the banksters have to be kept happy, so we'll keep up the addiction to credit card, student loan and mortgage debt to the point where we all have to borrow from 3rd parties to fund the addiction.
Fun times ahead I guess.
I think we would agree on a lot of things if we had the time to talk more. I agree with you on our credit card, student loan, and mortgage debt addiction. We xould also be more isolationist in some regards, we need to bite the bullet on social security and finally replace it with something that works. There's plenty we can agree on but I also understand that some fundamental differences can keep us from agreeing on what action to take. I have one friend who I always talk politics to and we can never agree in the end. We want the same things but we can never agree on how to get there.
Like you said maybe it sounds jaded, but with how different every individual thinks its not possible to have a perfect system. I just hope we improve little by little.
It is refreshing to have a conversation with someone on the Internet that doesn't devolve into a mud slinging process. I would love to talk about these issues. If we all did that, we'd find a solution - I'm sure of it.