Do you have any arguments to make in response to the very specific points I raised, or are you merely blowing off steam again... making 'hit and run' attacks, without ever doing any heavy lifting yourself?
My original arguments and replies to GZ's questions about the Bush tariff tax increase are below... should you actually care to debate:
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Re: "Presuming such a tax exists,"
>>> GZ, tariffs on steel, lumber, etc., are quite real I assure you.
Re: "if it doesn't adversely affect anyone, then how can it affect more than most? That sounds like a contradiction, could you clarify?"
>>> No tax adversely affects EVERYONE directly. High marginal income tax rates don't directly impact people in lower tax brackets... or people in high brackets who can avail themselves of loopholes to avoid the direct tax.
>>> Sales taxes don't directly affect someone who doesn't buy anything. Luxury taxes don't directly affect people not consuming luxuries. Social Security taxes (the largest tax 'take' out of the average worker's pay) are not much of a factor for someone with millions of dollars in annual income... because the FICA tax is capped.
>>> (For example, Richard Sims, policy director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, took the recently published example of a top CEO who earned $122.5 million in 2000 and calculated that his FICA tax rate was 0.00043 percent.)
>>> The same is true for ANY tax - they don't directly affect everyone, and they don't impact everyone the same (even indirectly).
>>> :) Unless the Beatles' refrain from 'Taxman' is put into play ("if you try to run they'll tax your feet") where, even there I suppose amputees would not be affected the same....
>>> The Bush tariffs on steel and lumber however, because they raise the consumer prices for SO MANY products from autos and appliances, to homes and furniture, are one of the *broadest* tax increases which could be envisioned.
>>> Other direct costs from these 'tariff taxes' are the loss of thousands of jobs in port cities (and in auto manufacturing for example, as they must lose sales to competitors who can produce cheaper cars because their raw material costs are lower. This loss of productivity and jobs ripples through the economy to dealerships, retail outlets, etc.)
>>> The lowering of the rate of economic growth in the economy also lowers prosperity and tax receipts more than is recouped by the actual tariff receipts.
>>> As an example of the economic harm and costs of these broad-based tariff taxes, many economists calculated when the steel tariffs were imposed that it would have been VASTLY cheaper for the U.S. to just have guaranteed to pay an annual $100,000 in pension costs to any steel worker who needed to be fired so that our steel industry could lower it's break-even point and regain competitiveness with lower cost foreign producers (over the last decade, many foreign countries closed unproductive steel manufacturers, invested in new more productive facilities, and allowed their industry to consolidate... these overdue actions have not happened in the U.S. industry because bloated unpaid pension liabilities prevent the industry from consolidating.)
>>> Our industry needs to downsize and re-tool, and that can't happen with these massive unfunded pension liabilities.
>>> A broad-based tariff tax that raises the costs of American consumers all through our economy was EXACTLY the wrong thing to do. Picking up the tab for 100 Grand retirements would have been VASTLY cheaper... and would have helped our industry to recover by consolidation.
>>> That, of course, isn't happening with these tariff taxes. |
