To expand on this, it's laughably stupid because it disproportionately affects the poor. When everybody pays the same tax, poor people have to be taxed significantly more. Same rate of taxation on 35k and 200k, the person earning 200k can easily afford things like food and housing and a luxury car whereas the person making 35k would be pressed just to afford the increased prices on things like groceries and other necessities that tariffs bring. Not to mention that a 10% tariff would not support our budget, and that tariffs are intended to boost domestic manufacturing. When that does occur, the budget starts getting less and less because the US is no longer raking in the tariff cash.

Basically, 20 seconds of thought could tell anybody that this is a terrible idea.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Basically, 20 seconds of thought could tell anybody that this is a terrible idea.

IF the thinker is looking for a good overall policy and not just trying to stick more money in their pockets in the short term.

You expect them to cry about the working class affording food when they only have a house for three out of the four seasons of the year?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I want to expand on your expansion of my glib comment. While taxing the poor and working class at a higher proportional rate is obviously immoral, it's also bad economic policy. The working class are essentially the "engine" of the economy. Their income circles back into the greater economy at a much higher rate than a rich person's. The harder you tax them, more more you slow down the economy. While is technically true for any tax bracket, you can tax the rich much more aggressively with very little impact on the overall economy, because so much of their money is for toys.

We're actually seeing a big problem right now, with so many billionaires they are running out of decent places to put their money that's worth their time. We have way too many billionaires and not enough millionaires and small business owners. A billionaire will never invest in your taco truck, but the local "fairly rich" guy might. The billionaires are betting big on AI, in part, because they have no other bets they can make. We need to tax their asses way more aggressively and pump that money into micro businesses to make our economies robust.

(While I'm speaking about the US in particular, this is somewhat of a global trend.)