It’s very weird to me that in all the (genuinely comical) hermeneutic reading of Trump’s decision to annihilate the global trade system, no one actually quotes one of the major reasons he himself cites for it:
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"Trump and Musk are pawns in Putin’s sadistic game of chess: he doesn’t care if they’re torn limb from limb; he will have succeeded in crippling the United States with a grievous, potentially fatal blow."
Some countries in Europe have been experimenting with this, doing all the math, even trying to implement it, and quickly found out that it's never going to work.
That assumes they plan to match current tax take. Any time someone comes out with this sort of regressive horse shit it's always mainly about cutting welfare and any other spending they don't like, with reorganising tax as a cover.
Maybe he wants to help his rich friends by getting the stock market so low that they can but the stock, then he will change to no tariffs so that stock goes back up in value
This. He's cratering the value of our currency, destroying our position as a global power financially, alienating our allies, destroying our soft power with humanitarian aid, taxing US citizens into oblivion, all on a gamble that other countries can't organize against him fast enough, and that US
citizens can be herded into company towns - free of federal and state laws, totally at the mercy of the business running everything. Just like the coal miner towns 100 years ago.
Who benefits the most, probably Putin , cause the war not going so well for him, but it’s just other people’s lives. But his shitty economy is now equal with other shitty Economies. America is being destroyed from within, the call came from inside the Kremlin.
but...I think the chaos of multiple theories swirling is of benefit to him and on-brand. I believe the "tax replacement" is the foundation; fair-er trade and onshoring is the bullshit backfill to justify...which he then starts to believe. Then again, maybe he's just lost it.
It's the plan for agriculture too. Small farms will be driven to bankruptcy, big agribusinesses will buy them up for a song, then tariffs will be lifted to allow the agribusinesses to take on new foreign contracts. Truth is, the foreign markets will have secured real reliable deals in the meantime.
Despite the possible repercussions, Trump did tariffs to raise the $6T he needs to give tax cuts to the uber-wealthy. He never looks for the downside of his kneejerk actions. And now that (he thinks) he's in total control of Congress, the military, and courts, he's forging ahead with impunity.
makes sense. i tend to agree. what do you think the barrier is to most people taking up that reading? is it bc of its strategic omission in news sources? is it a kind of personal disbelief factor? is it this wacky landscape of "if i feel something is for X reason, then thats probably the Truth"?
to me, your reading is valid bc it has real parsimony to it. just like, that plan is straightforward. with no real mind or regard for consequences. more of that dunning kreuger effect re. them not even knowing what they dont know. like, guys, YOUR income is tied to the economy 'as is' though... lol
Ok, can we step back? Look at your grammar and conversational text.. it is coherent, factual, and well relevant.. DT’s grammar is maybe a 12 yr angry child🤷🏻♀️.. and mush and DT want to be the ‘men’ in charge of of invitro. Two men I don’t want anywhere near my vagina.. thanx
So… Emily… what you are saying… it was my grammar that kept me from getting laid in puberty? 😱
-If only someone had told me back then! I wouldn’t have skipped all those classes in my pursuit to … get laid… 😁
I don’t think even he knows why he’s doing anything, it’s his ego ,it’s always his ego…he has no original ideas or thought and only functions based on what his ego needs as it’s next fix!
Honestly, I believe Trump is having the time of his life right now. He loves nothing more than messing with people, and now he's done it to the whole world. Add to that all the headlines and it's a perfect storm.
Remember: one of the bullet points of this whole strategy is to extract concessions from whoever bends the knee. The preferred method of concessions is cash in the canvas bag under the table.
"Hermeneutics" is a good word for the weird "here's what tariffs could do, I hope Trump isn't lapsing into dementia" pieces. Better than "kremlinology".
He also said no tax on tips and no tax on overtime. Congress needs to actually pass a bill to do all that. Unless we’re going to EO our way to no taxes? He thought he could survive the political fallout from tariffs without the tax cut/tax abolishment side.
No tax on tips and no tax on OT is very easy to do when no one is earning tips because the tourism, restaurant, and other tip industries have completely crashed (& ppl stop reporting any cash they DO earn) and no companies offer enough hours to have OT anymore 🤷🏻♀️
I'm appalled that a simple vocabulary word turned the responses to this post into something so pejorative and supercilious — this bougie, better-than-thou posture. Since when is growing one's vocabulary a reason to bring a knife to a gunfight?
So hope you provide all of your research to those suing Trump since there is no national emergency to justify imposing tariffs. It’s just his craziness.
I KNOW what "Hermeneutics" means but it always SOUNDS to me what the book L. Ron Hubbard would write would be called if he based his invented religion on THE MUNSTERS instead of Xenu & the Thetans.
It's the perfect word, describing those who are looking for some arcane meaning in what there're treating as the divinely inspired utterances of a prophet.
This is exactly what a country ran by Libertarians would looks like - as they disassembled gov't to get to whatever their fever brains imagine is the resting point
Everyone spent the first term saying “He’ll never do that. He can’t be serious.” and eventually it got walked back at some point because “haha he’s just a crazy old coot. He says zany things… cofefve is funny!” We’ve been so Pavlov’d to believe he’s just trolling, but the adults left him the room.
The Fed was created to control and print money at interest. Income tax was created to pay the principal and interest of the printed money. Tax loopholes were created to ensure only the poor were taxed on income.
Wait, so is it Import Tax for Revenues, or is it a Negotiating Stance for Fair Trade? For Trump it is Schrödinger’s Tariff, it exists as neither until it suits him.
trump is telling everyone it’s an Import Tax for Revenue. But we know it’s really an import tax for higher prices on us. As for “negotiating”, I doubt it. He thinks he can bully the world instead. It’s all about his power.
Wealth addiction leads to an insatiable desire for more wealth, regardless of their current financial status. It can also result in negative impacts on personal relationships and overall well-being, as the pursuit of wealth becomes an all-consuming force. Trump’s never had a happy day in his life
We've been arriving at this weird place for a while where the zeitgeist believes the rich are hurting to get by while the poor are getting by with too much. And on its face, it makes absolutely no sense, but Reagan planted that seed, and it's shaped the conservative debate ever since.
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He is making it possible to declare a "financial emergency", giving himself immense "emergency powers". Powers that will actually be wielded by the people pulling the levers behind the scenes while he plays golf.
The deal with the devil that made him rich again and kept him out of prison.
And then he’ll cite George Washington’s 1798 administration getting by solely on trade tariffs:
Back when we had fifteen states, no roads, no standing army, and the “White House staff” consisted of a butler and a clerk.
Or deliver nothing but repeatedly say you DID deliver everything and claim everything was a great success and no other President has had this much success and people are saying they are amazed
how successful I have been.
They don't care. So the budget collapses? They're fine. They have money and you can bet your ass it's not all in dollars. The rest of the world can just hurry up and die. They. Don't. Care.
Well if you are writing off things like yachts and private jets and shit then it's probably pretty easy to spend the money before it gets taxed... or for example your could sell a losing co. (X) to another entity and get a write off for that. So yeah its expensive but the $$$ go to themselves.
#HandsOff our healthcare!
Hands off our public education!
Hands off our jobs!
Hands off my 401k!
Hands off my neighbor who has committed NO crime!
Hands off those Congressional seats that we are coming for in 2026!
#FuckTrump #Resist
#MiamiDade #HandsOff
He lives in the early-1900s/robber baron age, sometimes in the 1950s & sometimes in the 1850s. The media have never been honest about DJT. He should have been in jail 50+ years ago
Also it’s about ELIMINATING REGS ….and labor laws so tech bros can have their sick network states (aka freedom cities) they run like Ceasers with no regs on AI and the peasants like slaves while tech bros populate it with THEIR genetically engineered white genes (the fertilization president)
Hey, why not tell your programmers at @msnbc.com to actually cover the massive protests happening across the country over tariffs and doge. That could help. Instead, msnbc is silent.
Did you know that GNC has over 80 stores located on military installations across the US. GNC Holdings LLC is the parent company of the retail chain GNC which is owned by Harbin Pharmaceutical, a Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical manufacturer. GNC has more than 4,000 locations in the US.
What baffles me is why the Republican Senate thinks this is OK. This is insanity! What they don’t realize is there is no place for them in Trump‘s world order. Whether they bend the knee or not.
They got paid. Just like Paul Ryan. You make your deals and take your pay outs from the lobbyists. They don't even know what a politician is supposed to be.
“Government of the peons by the sycophants for the oligarchs” - The Greedies-burg address - Trump 2025 (speech given behind closed doors to invited audience only).
The irony is the the EU is trying much of that with their VAT system - and Trump is considering that a trade barrier factored into his tariff calculations.
Everything that Trump says is nonsense. He is mentally ill and accordingly irrational. However, Maga and Republicans maintain a veneer of competence, so as to hold onto power as long as possible. Every republican congressman and Senator are complicit in destroying the USA on behalf of oligarchs
Unfortunately, Republicans have generally been swooned by Yarvin. An evil bastard for evil bastards if there ever were any!
Democrats are unfortunately all too ignorant about Heather Marsh...at their own peril.
We (whoever that may be) must leverage and contain the chaos with stigmergy.
Trump's power is that no one takes him seriously enough to actually listen to him. And yet because he isn't taken seriously, he is never held accountable for the things he ends up doing, which he talks about before. Almost like an insane person avoiding guilt in a murder. It never changes, ever.
Meanwhile the Washington Post tracked his more than 30,000 lies in his first four years yet somehow all those lies were mainstream media’s fake news. None of those lies were real but if some were inescapable then they were just jokes. He’s the world’s funniest being.
As others have stated here, more inflation. Our days of buying cheap … anything … will be gone. US companies won’t do as well either because they will only be able to sell within the USA. Big market but not like “the world”. We’re screwed either way.
Then prepare for a tidal wave of inflation - decades of inflation we exported - to come flooding back in. We will be dramatically poorer - lower standard of living - because we cannot produce many goods in our own factories as cheaply.
he wants to abolish the income tax and fund the government almost entirely through tariffs, thereby delivering the most regressive bonanza to the rich in the history of American taxation. He has said this many many times. He said it *at the announcement* and yet pieces like this just ignore it.
The oligarchs have been trying eliminate everything Roosevelt did during the Great Depression. Eliminate the income tax. Kill social security and any money from the government to help those less fortunate. These are the aims of trump & DOGE
Douthat drank the Trump Kool-Aid when his fellow convert to the fascist wing of Catholicism, J.D. Vance, got added to the ticket. I bet they text each other regularly with tips for disinfecting your cilice.
"I spotted this. Feb. 2:
Remember the Underwood Tariff act of 1913? When Trump insisted on renaming Mount Denali Mount McKinley, i thought about Underwood Act: it coupled tariff reductions and income tax, which was a class tax, then, not a mass tax/ Trump is Mark Hanna redidivus."
Everything Trump says about why high tariffs are great contradict each other. Are they a negotiation tool? Are they a source of revenue? Will they bring back manufacturing? Trump says all of these things and they cannot all be true.
Yup! And because the people who will suffer the most still believe in the dream that they can one day “make it”, they’ll support the fantasy—unless we’re out there, organizing them toward a real vision of prosperity
Agree that friends and foes alike bend over backward to analyze Trump's motives. He clearly thinks it unfair to tax rich people more than the poor and middle class. Which is why he insists that exporters pay tariffs. He can't admit it is a tax on US consumers that offsets lower taxes for the rich.
The rich do pay a slightly higher percentage of income tax. But, when you factor in sales tax and property tax, they pay a lower percentage. There has been an unprecedented concentration of wealth at the top. Progressive taxation should be more aggressive.
It's what they end up effectively paying that gets annoying. This article has the super rich paying around 23% as of 2018. The following article looks worse.
He wants to tax the rich much less than poor people as a percentage of any metric of income or wealth. Only, perhaps, in absolute terms (actual dollars paid per person) can you say he wants equivalent taxes for poor and rich
Yeah, someone gives him an idea that he believes will make him look strong / clever / important (delete as appropriate) and he goes all in without ever really understanding what he's doing or its impact. Everything is to boost his ego.
Some very wealthy and smart people have whispered this in his ear for awhile now. He is a tool. Whether it is a Russian tool or an oligarch tool or both. He is an ignorant narcissist with power and money and they know how to play him.
Does anyone really trust this media to craft a headline and first paragraph appropriately to describe the issue of replacing a progressive tax with a regressive tax in a way that the average American understand that is a terrible thing that will doom millions of Americans to poverty for decades?
@nytimes.com is the last place I’d go for an answer re what’s behind the tariffs.
Not to said they’d be assuredly wrong, just that others would be there long before the Times and far likelier to be correct.
They want to force an AMERICAN population so desperate, they’ll have to accept low paying jobs in order to provide for themselves and their dependents.
Meanwhile, they’ll be partying at the Palace in Palm Springs and on their yachts and private planes
The crazy thing about this is that Trump doesn’t have the power, under the Constitution, to do any of this. Congress and SCOTUS are just letting him take that power. It’s plain evil.
There's a Los Angeles area newspaper written for busy legal professionals that uses similar editorial dictation to bury important stories behind red herrings and ancap propaganda. They put Signalgate on the back page and didn't mention the stock market one SINGLE time on the front page this week.
Owned by something called Metropolitan News Company, which also owns a handful of newspapers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_News-Enterprise Owned in turn by "Grace Corporation", afaict a small private holding company controlled by Roger and Joann Grace, LA-area lawyers.
we are definitely not ignoring this at https://www.spotlightondoge.com . While creates DOGE a smokescreen of "savings" and tariff's seem like they would help as well, the reality is that the deficit gets worse since he is given 4.5 Trillion back to the rich. In Trump's world only the rich win.
Mr Douthat drove to where the road ends, got out of the car, saw a tree and exclaimed “Eureka!”
Meanwhile the forest, teaming with omniscient wildlife, is abuzz with the whispered clamor —
“They’re about to destroy the whole enchilada and you’re crafting effete intellectualisms. Fetch your Lucille!”
Yes they would have. They didn’t know enough about the brown gal. Had this chat with a neighbour yesterday - who could blame him for how he voted - he had “bad choices”. BTW, his investments are tanking and this is what brings him angst.
The rest of the idiots who voted for him would probably have voted for no one, since Kamala focused her campaign mainly on the cult because she's using the same incompetent senile idiot strategists that continue using the Charlie Brown strategy.
I disagree. I think they believed everything he said but thought it would all be worth it as long as trans, gay, immigrant, non-white and "woke" people suffered a lot more.
Well, tbh he kept, like most of the people who support fascism, throwing stuff at the wall & went with whatever stuck. Some of it was him being honest, some were lies. It was supposed to be up to the journalists to figure out which was which...
It's like thrift shopping for them. He says a ton of shit and they have to sort through it all and pick out the bits they like. Likely they never even heard about the tariff bits regardless of how many times he said them. The NYT did though and that's what's so frustrating
Precisely. MAGAs, like tRUmp, lie FIRST to THEMSELVES & 'tweak it' on the fly to suit. It's a hell of a way to go thru life, but the 'rolling lie' is the MO of sociopaths. They're very tribal yet mutually abusive, & they ALL know it. Still, they persist until hard stopped - psychopaths don't change.
The morals of MAGATS for the morals of pigs. They knew what Trump was in 2016 and they embraced his depravity because Trump is everything these Subhumans are and want to be… dishonest, immoral, perverted, greedy, tyrannical and sadistic.
This is one of the things that really blows my mind about Trump supporters, because I've had this exact conversation so many times. Like... THE SAME CONVERSATION. Repeatedly.
Trump: *says an outrageous thing*
Trump Defenders: oh he's joking
Trump: *does the outrageous thing*
Trump Defenders: that's not what he did - he did this other, non-outrageous thing
This is because Commerce collects tarriffs and Commerce answers to Trump. He wants to start a Sovereign Wealth Fund so that all of America's wealth is his personal wealth.
The goal of this Administration is to destroy the economy and sell off our assets piece by piece. Then he will force retirees into the streets and kill off the "Parasites"
And really optimistic guesses of Tariff revenue no more than $250B, right? Causing a doubling of the inflation rate and estimated 7% or more unemployment?
he's got the smoothest brain imaginable and for some reason many people on both the right and left are convinced he must be playing some kind of 4D chess they can't understand. No! He thinks rich people pay too much! That's it!
Well, it's regressive but—if it works (which it won't)—it will be wildly popular with almost all populations, understandably so. I mean, say the tariffs generate 100% of what federal income taxes do now, so that no services / payments are eliminated or reduced, but you pay 0% income tax from now on?
I doubt that “everything you buy will cost twice as much, but you’ll not pay 25% income tax!” would be wildly popular with most folks who, well, tend to need to buy stuff.
Probably true for those making the least amount of money, since they'd be getting tax rebates anyway. But once you move into more middle-class to upper-class territory (but we're talking about folks still far below being "rich"), I imagine eliminating the federal income tax would be popular. Idk.
“say the tariffs generate 100% of what federal income taxes do now”
Okay but that simply could never be feasible, to a degree that it’s not even a productive thought experiment. Tariffs could not replace the $2 trillion in federal individual income tax revenue.
If I were a cynic I'd be starting to wonder if some people at the New York Times have aligning interests, and if that may be influencing their coverage of Trumpism.
They also don’t out that this does not make sense if he also thinks tariffs are a pressure strategy that can be discarded once they make other countries back down.
This isn’t just about tariffs. He repeatedly says what he wants to do, critic chuckle and try to explain what he *really* meant, and then he does exactly what he said he was going to do while critics fan themselves in disbelief
He got a lot with his "no tax on tips" line. But what media and the Dems failed to explain to the average voter is what that might mean. Tariffs, a sales tax on most products, would be big to replace the Income tax.
Tariffs will not cover the cost of the abolition of the federal income tax. We the People, need to investment more in federal government bonds to cover the budget deficit and pay down the national debt regardless the revenue tax source/s tariffs and/or income.
Much like when he spoke of implementing the tariffs and they ignored him, then acted shocked when he did it.
I don’t know if it’s sane washing or just not believing him but it’s dangerous.
Yep - Trump thinks tariffs will replace income tax:
"Trump's said this 👇 in his 'Liberation Day' reveal. The reasons for creating the income tax in 1913 were not unknown. It was to replace a previously regressive taxation system that Trump wants to resurrect in 2025. 🤡"
Except other countries have a say in this too. If Trump decides to step back they may not immediately withdraw their retaliatory tariffs. Add in the depredation of the “American brand” abroad as governments and consumers turn away from our goods. The market could be in the gutter for awhile
The fact that it's an idiotic plan is what makes it seem even more likely to me that that's what it is. But I think when history sorts through this, the identities of who shorted and who bought through this period will be very clear and very close to the White House
I, a normal person who has heard of the concept of "buy low, sell high," have bought market dips with money I had to spare and made a few bucks. People whose job this is are salivating. The same people who benefited from the housing crash will benefit from this and in fact may be the architects
But he ALSO says he wants to drive down imports to bring manufacturing home, which would mean NOT collecting money from tariffs. His rationales are as inconsistent as they are stupid.
I don't think we can overlook the extent to which outlets and editorial choices they make are controlled by either the edict or need to please the oligarch that owns them. And we know every Bezos, Murdoch and Soong-Shiong would love for the peasantry to carry 100% of the tax burden.
We see opinions by people with the expertise to recognize what's going that deliberately mischaracterize, obscure and misdirect. Wall St analysts saying the way to mitigate the tariff impact is tax cuts deregulation. Mitigate for who? The oligarchy!
The media has little understanding of finance, tax policy, history, or government laws and functions. They repeat what they are told regardless of its truth, relative context, or practicality.
trump knows this and uses the flaccid moral character of the media to his advantage.
This is most certainly true. Would be the equivalent of funding our government through sales taxes. The wealth gap would only increase as the super rich would take every advantage of our politics.
Oh yes. If the $ becomes worthless or even just unreliable, alternative currencies will be sought.
But BRICS+ seems more likely than crypto, even if crypto-bros won’t hear that
Even though it clearly indicates how much you can pay, and how much you have benefitted from being part of society, MAGA don't "believe" income should be taxed, and this is a way of levying a "consumption" tax that affects poor people more because the cheaper goods are imported.
He also wants Corp taxes to be at 15%. We went from 35-21 with nominal/usual job growth. If you threaten to raise Corp Taxes every single Fortune 500 tells you "layoffs are coming". You raise their taxes you are a one President. Our debt payment > Defense spend - and we are going to cut Corp tax?
When asked during an economics forum during the campaign how he would make child care affordable he told the assembled economists that his tariffs would fund universal child care. No one batted an eye.
Making taxes more regressive, well we have been doing that for a very long time and things keep getting worse. Money pools at the top, and those at the bottom have even less.
This is not a recipe to save an empire. It is a recipe to end one, though most rich today won't care. They will be fine..
So tariffs are essentially a national sales tax?
But I don't see how that leads to funding the government.
It's more of a sales tax that directly transfers $$ from people who buy things to the companies who sell things. And from the companies to foreign companies, right?
Rich get richer....
When foreign companies sell goods here the US puts a big tax on them, and that money goes to the govt, paid by US companies or consumers. Then the companies raise their prices to cover the tax, paid by all consumers
The country started federal taxation to fund the Union to fight the Civil War, which put the Union at a huge advantage over the Confederacy. Now that the South is winning the war and we are turning back things to the 1850s, these moves make sense.
And if he’s ‘successful’ and eliminates imports, tariff income goes away and he’ll have to implement an income tax to fund whatever govt services remain (fossil fuel subsidies, sweetheart govt contracts, military funding, travel to golf courses)
You all should call it a national sales tax, which is what it is, just not a fixed amount and it’s on inputs as well as imported finished products.
That’ll get the MAGAts attention.
If you're not only broke but owe hundreds of millions while a half step away from prison, execution, and / or exile, how do you pay for a Russian Dacha overlooking Finland....
In the same Oblast as Pootie...
thank you
1 keep saying it
2 can you find the clip that should have been his romney moment where he was at the southern palace and told his billionaire buddies that "they all are going to get very very rich" almost like an aside... i would love to know who was in the room at the time; maybe big oil?
It will not work anyway, if they need similar levels of revenue, because the tariffs are self defeating in the encouragement they provide to avoid them. Reinvigorating domestic production is incompatible with replacing the income tax with tariffs.
Though he may have been lying about that too, in order to get business support. He doesn't really need them any more. An authoritarian state is quite happy to screw the rich as well as the poor.
Maybe the real story of this era is not the right wing media’s continual boosting of Trump; it’s their unbelievably successful demonization of democrats.
add to this... Trump says he wants to abolish any federal minimum wage, and undo workplace and housing regulations.
He says America was last "great" in the Gilded Age. It was great for a few wealthy families. For the rest of us: tenement housing, dangerous sweatshops, no school, child labor.
Everybody hates the income tax. So it's one of his campaign and talk lines. And people believe him. Unbelievable they never learn he spews BS and then does the opposite... c.f. lowering prices
He also wants to throw millions into poverty and despair. Then he'll use the police state to crack down on the homeless he's created and herd them into forced labor camps.
People largely ignore it because it's just more snake oil salesmanship. No one should take it seriously - of course it won't happen, but who wouldn't like the idea of paying no income taxes? Our taxes are paid by "foreign countries"! That's the con. It's always lies & snake oil salesmanship.
Neofeudalism is knocking on our door. Want food? Serve the rich. Housing? Serve the rich. Rich fighting each other? Go die for the rich. Want to go elsewhere? Too bad for you. Nobles and serfs.
This is why every Dem needs to stop paying lip service to any theory this is "to bring back jobs." The purpose is to extract more 💰 from the lower classes and redistribute it to the wealthy. This was NEVER about jobs it's about tax cuts for the wealthy.
At the current very high Tariff rate, it would collect about $700B. Assuming people will buy less, make that $600B (unless we have a recession). The US budget (outside of SSA and Medicare) is $6T per year, so at best this would fund 10%.
I think Trump is more transactional than feeling altruism for the wealthy. Tariff waivers used to be and may still be high value trade goods for whoever has the power to grant them. With Congress abdicating its tariff authority, I suspect we will see amazing demands for Trump trinkets.
He didn’t miss that part. He doesn’t give a fuck about America. None of em do. He’s about self enrichment for the wealthiest. That’s why Bezos and Elon and zuck support him
What happens when Trump gets America to the stage where they are manufacturing everything in the US? Where does the revenue come from at that point? What happens when they are 50% or 25% to that stage?
Have they thought this through? (Rhetorical question of course)
You know brain-teasers that ask you to find the mistakes, and on second read you realize they say things like "the the" but your brain just filtered out irrelevant words on the first read?
Trump rants are like that. He says things so dumb or crazy it's nearly impossible to pick up on.
And how did income taxes first come about? Due to the rampant income inequality between the robber barons and the rest of America. So what’s the answer to today’s rampant income inequality? Get rid of something that attempts to force the wealthy to pay their fair share ( which they don’t anyway).
I’m fully on board with this reading and still flabbergasted that he thought imposing the tariffs first and letting tax code adjustments come along at their own pace was going to be a viable approach
He also thought pushing the "make everything more expensive" button would magically make rural america crap out factories, so there's a real possibility he's just a moron.
He (or his "advisors") want to do both, but the presidency only has access to one, and that only tenuously. As he has always done, he overwhelms with vicious illegal acts to FORCE compliance with the rest of his desires.
It's the delusion of a man who paid someone else to take his Econ 101 test for him, then chose Navarro the self-appointed economic "expert" to chart his economic policy. 🙄
I think Trump genuinely believes that once the tariffs kick in he’ll be rolling in so much money that he can do everything. Abolish income tax! Free non-woke college! Ice cream that makes you skinny! He’ll be able to do it all with the tariff money.
The crazy thing, is the other justification is to bring industry back to the USA, eliminating those very tariffs. I'm sure he calculated revenues as though everything bought will continue to be bought at the same rate once tariffs are imposed, as if companies aren't going to find workarounds.
And what, a 20 year or more period to rebuild the manufacturing base? Not to mention negative impact on US sectors from retaliatory tariffs. What a mess!
Trump believes he can have all the things, Trump believes America elected him by a landslide because America wants him to have all the things, and Trump believes that if you say he can’t have all the things, it’s because you’re some kind of commie pedo who hates America
That's exactly what he did. Somehow, American consumers are supposed to purchase the same volume of foreign goods at inflated prices at the same time they increase their purchases of domestic goods from newly repatriated factories.
It's just a scam for bribes. I don't think they're stupid enough to believe any of the claims they're making, it's just leverage to enrich the people that control the levers. The chaos is the point.
Maybe… MAYBE the industry comes back, but then the tariffs have to stay on indefinitely for the economic model to work, at which point prices are WAY up and regular Americans are bearing the brunt of the increase. The regular folk are going to hate every second of this.
To be clear, tariffs are neither going to replace income tax OR bring back manufacturing, but in their minds they'll do both, even though they're mutually exclusive. Also, no company is going to lay out huge restructuring plans based on the ravings of a man who's reneged in every deal he's made.
To paraphrase David Dayen on the Majority Report yesterday, the republicans *believe* they can sell the tax cuts as a “stimulus” if the country sinks into a recession /depression.
He has spent a lifetime lying about literally everything, so it's not surprising that he believes (or "believes") his lies. Reality and objective truth are not conditions to which he has to reconcile himself. They're constraints on others from which he is exempt. Or so he "thinks."
Also, front loading with massive tariffs long before any manufacturing capability for many things are even here or invested in, or domestic sources for parts, machines and raw materials are sourced.
That’s the crazy thing - even if you give the most charitable interpretation of the goal here, it still doesn’t make any fucking sense. And it’s not like they’ve even bothered trying to play out what the end game is here, they flip flop on what the point of it all is.
Same but it’s always been in conflict with his other stated goal of giving exemptions to companies that “invest in America”. Can’t maximize revenues with it as use it to negotiate bribes.
History proves that during times of economic distress (e.g. 2008, 2020), the rich get richer fast — while middle and lower income people work years to get back where they started.
Trump’s tariffs are going to hit workers hard for the next decade.
I’m bewildered generally by trying a ‘crash the economy with this one weird trick’ play while still midway through your authoritarian consolidation of power. You do it after, you fool!
Trump genuinely believes he rules us as a King and engagement with any sort of legislation is beneath his attention because it will of course just happen.
If the Dems can’t get a handful of republicans to join together and get a bill passed removing this economic emergency declaration that dipshit used to do this and let him veto it and go everyone from here to the moon talking about nothing else then this country is a wrap and we should all leave.
I guess with all the millionaires in Congress, there’s no hope for anyone else as it doubtful they’ll ever step up to stop this chaos and crap. There’s a good title: CHAOS AND CRAP
Nah, he would never eliminate income tax because that would take more money away from the tax cuts they gave themselves. Taxes from anyone making less than 340k is going directly into their pockets. There’s no way they want to give that up.
Time to make it go! Impeach the cock sucker (no offense to the men and women who that is their thing. You make the world better but it is Trump and we need hard body karate at his phobias)
I agree. I am looking forward to the new world we want to live in when this over. We as a nation should never drink from the three poisons of greed, anger and stupidity again.
It looks really fucking bleak from where I sit (Canada) but I think you guys still have it in you to run this prick out of town on a rail. I hope this takes place soon.
I was screaming about this for 5 years. Now I am screaming about the patterns that happened before the World Wars, which are springing up again. It is our duty to stop him and WWIII. We will not fail.
Wild how Trump says the quiet part loud, over and over—
and people still act blindsided when he follows through.
This is why it has been so frustrating that the media (including MSNBC) sanewashed him in the name of “balance,” while the country tilted off the edge.
It is so amazingly stupid that no one believes it. We are supposed to take him seriously but not literally, remember. So pundits can come up with many theories about how he is playing 4d chess. The alternative, what he says, it is just too stupid to be plausible.
As a lawyer, sometimes the hardest briefs to oppose are pro se filings. Where do you even start? You have to morph the nonsense arguments it into something coherent, steelman them, and argue against that.
Too many people do this w Trump. Real life is not litigation! You can say “this is bullshit”
The logical conclusion is flawed. Tariffs to force companies to relocate manufacturing to US and also replaces income tax. But if manufacturing returns, we buy less imports, thus less tariffs being paid. So the end goal, no income tax and no tariffs being paid?
The same thing that always happens in high tariff environments and why we eventually got rid of tariffs. Increased protectionism, reduced international trade, higher prices, and lower tax revenues— often ending in a global recession/depression
Well for starters a lot of manufacturing won’t happen as parts are imported from elsewhere. That could theoretically be overcome after several years. But what about things that aren’t manufactured in US and comply can’t be (champagne for example)
And since we won't be tariffing the US products, as we gravitate toward them, there will be less money available for the government to spend, increasing the need for alternative taxes.
And as businesses in other countries decide selling to the Fourth Reich is too complicated and expensive, they'll stop exporting. So no imports in Murica, and even less tariff income.
I really hope that when this current nightmare ends, you guys get a real leftie like AOC and a Congress to back her up. You could be a huge Norway but the corrupt GOP fucktards prefer a small ruSSia.
But you cannot raise enough to fund the government through tariffs while also using those tariffs to successfully onshore businesses. More of one means less of the other.
Trump at his most relatable. Don’t we all have our own little pet theories about how the economy would operate best? I’m pretty committed to mine as well. If I could just implement mine by fiat, I’d be pretty gung ho about making it happen too.
I dunno. Maybe it's just me, but funding the government with sales taxes collected from consumers and manufacturers seems like a good way to get people to stop buying stuff. And wouldn't that make forecasting revenues a real shot in the dark?
I grew up in a county that kept having more education sales tax on the ballot so seniors wouldn't pay for schools through property tax and I've lived as an adult in a state that replaced income tax with sales tax. It always leads to finding ways not to pay it.
That's weird, because the MAGA people on X are dead certain that Trump will "abolish the IRS" and replace income tax entirely with tariffs. I got called every name in the book for opining that the US could not replace $3 T in tax revenues with tariffs.
Trump together with his crooks is willing to risk even a global recession only to get their tax cut for billionaires!!Disgusting and criminal at this point!
Fuck these billionaires with their tax cuts!!!
Fuck them!!
Greedy bastards!! Sick greedy bastards!!
I support whoever tax them to the ground!!
This is 100% correct. This is their plan plus maybe a sales tax or what they call a value added tax. It is a plan to help the rich pay less taxes and stick it to the poorest!
It is true that VAT **can** have regressive impacts on those from lower income households. But there are ways to mitigate those regressive impacts.
In any case, I think USA should be looking at introducing a VAT.
1/3
That would certainly be a much better proposal than the tariffs nonsense currently being inflicted on the US population (which is ofc partly *justified* by the ludicrous claim that the tariffs compensate for the VAT on US imports levied by other countries).
2/3
Currently sthg like 170 countries around the world have a VAT system.
It is one of the most efficient taxation systems ever devised. And it can raise a lot of tax – which should be a big part of the policy mix for a country whose govt has spent far more than it raises in taxes for decades.
3/3
If this happened I would liquidate all of my retirement accounts and move the funds to my individual accounts tax free. I have all my stuff already too so I don’t need to spend much. I would live nearly tax free. -btw I’m still against this idea.
Tariffs would have to 1. have no effect on import prices/volume and 2. be set at about 125% across the board to replace current tax revenue (and then cut $2 trillion/year in spending to balance the budget, which is something else the dude promised).
It is an end run around congress to force a consumption tax. Shocker, that the rich favor consumption tax verses income. They ignore the reality that a healthy middle class is what makes there wealth possible. Problem, they are so removed from reality they have forgotten how this works. 1789
I think he’s going to move to end income tax and probably replace Powell with someone who will lower interest rates, concentrating every bit of wealth at the top and leaving everyone else to try to figure out how to make bread out of the contents of their couch cushions.
Well my guy, every American city of every size has multitudes of people in the streets right now, and we’re only 75 days in. We launched an organized mass protest and boycott that cut the stock value of an oligarch’s business in half.
While it’s true that 30-40% of us are irredeemable in this, the rest of us are on fire. It may look on Bluesky that we’re whining and griping all day, but we’re trading ideas and fucking cooking. I don’t think any of the above would be happening to the degree it is right now without that.
Anyone who understands tariffs has to know that none of this money goes into the treasury. And, if Donald is counting on the income from dozens of new factories, he is whistling past the cemetery.
The best is listening to the "MAGA Lefty" Batya Ungar-Sargon's delsuional "analysis" about how Trump is delivering a historic win for the working class. Also: how the stock market crash is really just a plutocratic temper tantrum.
Like Britain in the eighteenth century. Excise the main tax and much smuggling. Excise officers hated. Income tax in Napoleonic War and then permanently from 1842.
I reacted so strongly when he said that "for some reason" they instituted an income tax. Dude is really trying to gut the government, destroy Medicaid, medicare and Social Security. And abolish income tax? It's a gift for Ds. If there's ever free and fair elections again.*
Keep up the great work Chris I missed that one! *California is like 14% of US GDP and now Newsome is working with other countries trying to carve out unofficial exemptions for tariffs. And hopefully we can take California and become its own country. Now that would be a beautiful thing!
Pawpaw's delusions ... most would be laughable Faux Nooz info-tainment if spewed from the face of a lesser sociopath. BUT, this dementing psychopath impulsively follows his nose like a chicken snake scouting an egg farm. 😠
For years now, Democratic campaigns have been reporting back that the biggest problem they’ve had about Republican policy plans has been getting voters to believe they’re real because they’re so extreme.
Dems have a window now to reset public opinion on basics like economics and crime.
It’s only “paranoia” if it was never going to happen in the first place. Unfortunately it can look also look paranoid if someone manages to stop it happening. If he can manufacture a “State of Emergency” with enough loyal Governors in office, all bets are off.
yes. trump is a US court-ruled rapist/US court-ruled cop-killing insurrectionist. he is a violent sociopath who has violent fantasies all day long. trump/gop/musk are lawless/white supremacist/authoritarians that openly work with authoritarian putin to make america into russia.
Right: tariffs are going to make foreign countries pay for our government…AND they're going to spark a revival of American manufacturing—to replace the imports that generate the tariffs!
Wait…What?
As long as he is in the 1% that controls the 51% of real estate/businesses (or as another stat has it, 2% controlled over a third of all wealth) he's happy.
Rutherford B. Hayes wrote in his diary in 1886. “It is a government by the corporations, of the corporations and for the corporations.”
Thanks for flagging this! I haven't had the gumption to watch his announcement & I hadn't seen any mention of this in the press, but I figured the whole point of this insane regressive scheme is to then cut income taxes to basically nothing. A total give-away to the 1%.
Trump’s massive tariffs will raise prices on virtually everything. That extra money goes straight to the government, which Republicans are now using to fund tax cuts for billionaires. You’re paying more so billionaires get richer. Wealth inequality will only get worse unless we tax the ultra rich.
Tariffs will bring in prob less than $800B per year and decline as “re-shoring” occurs. The annual fed budget is near $6T. So what is Trump proposing this super radically stripped down federal govt do going forward? Right now $800B is not quite enough to fund the DoD.
He and the Republican party have distorted people's sense of reality. They're so all over the place that it's easy to dismiss/ignore/miss a lot of things.
It's easy to figure out his policies.
Is it annoying to billionaires? Get rid of it.
Would it help billionaires? Get it.
Can I buy it and so I don't have to care if other people have access? It's not important.
I've read that Congress controls income from internal taxation only; it does not control income from tariffs. That income goes directly to executive, to spend as Donald sees fit.
But the ultra wealthy already don’t pay income tax. They pay capital gains tax and through harvesting capital losses etc. pay very little of those too.
Also, the Fed income tax system is a major vehicle of wealth transfer via tax credits. Things like the EITC disappear if there's no Federal income tax.
Shaking big businesses for more bribes. He screws small businesses cuz they can't kick upstairs. The rich can buy farmland now for pennies on the dollar.Cause he cut off their aid period USA I.D was supposed to resume payments.He hasn't authorized yet... was court ordered! #Maga you winning yet?
In fairness the Niva is still surprisingly capable by all accounts. The fuel consumption and emissions are awful but those are plus points for the redcaps, aren't they?
It's like listening to your insane, loud-mouthed, conspiracy-spewing uncle holding forth at the Thanksgiving dinner table and then trying to turn his rants into coherent policy statements.
Trump is ok Russia taking Ukrain because he will use that as an excuse for the US taking over Greenland and possibly parts of Canada. Meanwhile, him and Putin will be doing backroom deals.
He lied about his reasoning - go
figure? Additionally - as I know you are also aware - It's an authoritarian move w/oligarchy undertones..make things cheap so rich can buy, buy, buy https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariff-justifications-50f0b4416234e63c7136eaa5c5f96759 How Trump justifies his tariffs — from budget balancing to protecting 'the soul' of America
History proves that during times of economic distress (e.g. 2008, 2020), the rich get richer fast — while middle and lower income people work years to get back where they started.
Trump’s tariffs are going to hit workers hard for the next decade.
Yes. The US did it and markedly so with the New Deal following the Great Depression. But it also took the trauma of WW2 completely upending the world order to make it stick.
Not good at all. The issue is wealthy people generally have access to purchase stocks and bonds and other assets — even during tough times. Middle and lower income people see their access to resources depleted — and all they can do is struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table. Not good.
Somehow I think Putin should be in this conversation. T's statements might explain the tariffs but not the appointments of blatantly unqualified cabinet members and the dismantling of our military. It's a bloodless coup, like Khruschev boasted decades ago and Project 2025 threatened more recently.
Like he has any idea what he’s talking about.
I really think it’s as simple as slamming a ketchup bottle at the wall and interpreting the stains as they flow down the wall. Trying to figure out this psychotic narcissist is impossible.
Get him out of there and to a nice safe place.
Which is why when people say "He said he was going to do this or that on the campaign trail, why are you surprised?" I have to reply why would we believe anything he said then or now. 30,000 lies compiled by CNN fact checker. "They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs." For fucks sake!!
#MangoMussolini's resents the uber rich who didn't offer $$ help to him when he wanted it. He also resents them & world leaders for not respecting/praising him as much as he wanted. By manipulating the market, he can wipe them all out, acquire their holdings & force them to grovel for leftovers.
47 & his minions have sorely underestimated THE WILL OF, WE THE PEOPLE, & that's their biggest & fatal mistake. they're dangerous and reckless cuts. R Killing Americans karma is coming 4U ARREST THEM
I think he must have seen a children's illustrated book about the robber barons of the late 19th century who ran roughshod over society and thought, " That is what I want to be when I'm grown up."
He wants everyone to know that HE is in charge - that HE is the one in control of it all - that HE can and will do whatever he wants to at any moment. So there!!
It seems to me that the Mar-a-Lago Accord folks (Bissett, et al) that are Trump's current cadre of convenience are sincere in their particular project, but that Trump has signed on because he is 1) fundamentally a mercantilist and 2) loves to have bludgeons like tariffs to bully people with.
Also, there is never any proof of any of this stuff working and\or but proof failing. Handed a decent economy but, prefers to tear down and rebuild in his own fashion and with just exec orders. Congress ceded now would love to have the power back.
Or...you could ask the most obvious question (or ask Chat GPT if you can't figure it out - it definitely has the answer): Who stands to gain the most in global economic chaos? (hint: it's a "definistrate" person🤔)
Every time I say out loud something about this definistrate person, I qualify it with, "This is clearly a conspiracy delusion." I don't think I mean it. I just say it.
Comments
He likely thought Pee Wee Herman was reading up on his global trade war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka9mfZbTFbk
Considering imports remain the same, which they will not, of course. It is a pipe-dream. You also need VAT at 33-40% to replace income tax.
0: take massive short positions
1b: close those positions
Why profit only on the upturn? If you know the market is about to tank, bet against it so you can profit in both directions!!!
So he will do everything that other famous man did who lives forever as taboo.
(damn typos)
-If only someone had told me back then! I wouldn’t have skipped all those classes in my pursuit to … get laid… 😁
The thread of the CRIMINALS IN THE WHITE HOUSE
The Rockbridge Transition Project will create a ‘government-in-waiting’ with the people & plans to staff the next Republican Administration
https://bsky.app/profile/jennycohn.bsky.social/post/3llckrmu4mk27
Any minute now, they'll resort to gematria.
He/They wants America to Go Gault.
Sovereign Wealth Fund!"
First thought every morning, is there an obit.
Just a working theory.
@titusnation.bsky.social
The deal with the devil that made him rich again and kept him out of prison.
BUY! BUY! BUY!
Cancel tariffs on Monday.
And no one's mentioning it.
Back when we had fifteen states, no roads, no standing army, and the “White House staff” consisted of a butler and a clerk.
Hid Brain runs on 10 lines of code and these are three near the top of his personal algorithm.
how successful I have been.
Which obviously disproportionately taxes the poor more and the rich less.
And it won't work, as the world can just exist fine without America, and the budget will collapse in on itself
public unrest and calls for revolution
https://www.salon.com/2023/07/02/a-short-history-of-civilizational-collapse-are-we-next--and-how-can-we-prevent-it/
Hands off our public education!
Hands off our jobs!
Hands off my 401k!
Hands off my neighbor who has committed NO crime!
Hands off those Congressional seats that we are coming for in 2026!
#FuckTrump #Resist
#MiamiDade #HandsOff
it’s only one country
not the entire world.
🐧🐧🐧🗳️⚖️🗳️⚖️🐧🐧🐧
“Tariffs will be lifted on penguins who agree to be completely white.”
by Stephen Miller NYT
He's not done. The level of narcissistic wounding is immense.
You do realize he's a psychopath, don't you? That's in addition to the narcissism.
Pandemics travel rapidly globally by airplanes.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr4904a1.htm
and
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War
https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
Democrats are unfortunately all too ignorant about Heather Marsh...at their own peril.
We (whoever that may be) must leverage and contain the chaos with stigmergy.
Congress is not working out for us
Another
Gilded
Age
Because the US didn’t have enough income inequality before.
Remember the Underwood Tariff act of 1913? When Trump insisted on renaming Mount Denali Mount McKinley, i thought about Underwood Act: it coupled tariff reductions and income tax, which was a class tax, then, not a mass tax/ Trump is Mark Hanna redidivus."
https://archive.is/4rqA5
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/06/opinion/income-tax-rate-wealthy.html
Trump doesn’t think.
Not to said they’d be assuredly wrong, just that others would be there long before the Times and far likelier to be correct.
Meanwhile, they’ll be partying at the Palace in Palm Springs and on their yachts and private planes
Everyone on the planet can make the same stuff as Americans.
So, we will just not worry about buying or selling stuff to that despicable country in the middle of N.America. WE DON'T NEED AMERICA.
https://bsky.app/profile/sixtus.net/post/3lm2ce2m4j22p
It’s Douthat.
Veblen dichotomy of instrumental vs ceremonial uses of technology might be a good hermeneutical approach
Trump likes his ceremonial tech
And accusation/consolation prerogative power>
Meanwhile the forest, teaming with omniscient wildlife, is abuzz with the whispered clamor —
“They’re about to destroy the whole enchilada and you’re crafting effete intellectualisms. Fetch your Lucille!”
Greedy crooks support trump all the way!
Unscrupulous criminals support trump all the way!
Hate supports malevolent guys all the way!
maga followers can’t see beyond their racism and greed!
The rest of the idiots who voted for him would probably have voted for no one, since Kamala focused her campaign mainly on the cult because she's using the same incompetent senile idiot strategists that continue using the Charlie Brown strategy.
That they could be dumb, dishonest and racist and live lavishly without accountability.
Trump is the peak embodiment in of The Toxic Masculinity American Dream
crowd are about to find out
about when keepin’ it real goes
very wrong ….
Sadly, the rest of us will too.
Meanwhile the congress is
moving at light speed to get
His budget in place … and
soo-prize, soo-prize … the
numbers don’t work.
Versus our government creates our currency & banks create loans
Chris sometimes understands this.
Sometimes he too pushes the tax payer money myth
Most of our media & politicians do too
" What he is saying is"
" What he meant to say was"
Et, al.
Trump Defenders: oh he's joking
Trump: *does the outrageous thing*
Trump Defenders: that's not what he did - he did this other, non-outrageous thing
Maddening
#trumpcession
Okay but that simply could never be feasible, to a degree that it’s not even a productive thought experiment. Tariffs could not replace the $2 trillion in federal individual income tax revenue.
I don’t know if it’s sane washing or just not believing him but it’s dangerous.
"Trump's said this 👇 in his 'Liberation Day' reveal. The reasons for creating the income tax in 1913 were not unknown. It was to replace a previously regressive taxation system that Trump wants to resurrect in 2025. 🤡"
https://bsky.app/profile/ivanthek.bsky.social/post/3lm3f4u2ka32f
trump knows this and uses the flaccid moral character of the media to his advantage.
Of course, bend the knee (and send tribute) to get a waiver. Lose favor and you're out of business.
So much for capitalism.
But BRICS+ seems more likely than crypto, even if crypto-bros won’t hear that
This is not a recipe to save an empire. It is a recipe to end one, though most rich today won't care. They will be fine..
But I don't see how that leads to funding the government.
It's more of a sales tax that directly transfers $$ from people who buy things to the companies who sell things. And from the companies to foreign companies, right?
Rich get richer....
Money to foreign companies - no
When foreign companies sell goods here the US puts a big tax on them, and that money goes to the govt, paid by US companies or consumers. Then the companies raise their prices to cover the tax, paid by all consumers
That’ll get the MAGAts attention.
In the same Oblast as Pootie...
"The president walked right into my living room and slaughtered my entire family... But.. you know... It was probably for the best. MAGA!"
That’s why he stole the keyboard
1 keep saying it
2 can you find the clip that should have been his romney moment where he was at the southern palace and told his billionaire buddies that "they all are going to get very very rich" almost like an aside... i would love to know who was in the room at the time; maybe big oil?
He says America was last "great" in the Gilded Age. It was great for a few wealthy families. For the rest of us: tenement housing, dangerous sweatshops, no school, child labor.
https://bsky.app/profile/goofrider.bsky.social/post/3lm2rmlhz2k2l
Have they thought this through? (Rhetorical question of course)
Trump rants are like that. He says things so dumb or crazy it's nearly impossible to pick up on.
& House GOP keep trying to do it.⬇️
This is why MAGA Republicans haven't started impeachment proceedings against Trump for nuking the economy, THEY AGREE with him.
https://www.newsweek.com/republican-plan-abolish-federal-income-taxes-irs-reform-2023362
I assume the Same Vara kook that tried to get him to do this during his failed China trade war.
Lots of purchasing will also be delayed for months or years while everyone (Joe Citizen and American companies) wait and see.
Trump’s tariffs are going to hit workers hard for the next decade.
https://www.thestreet.com/retirement-daily/retirement-research/2008-financial-crisis-continues-to-impact-the-lower-middle-class
Educate me.
Trump sees tariffs as a means to national power and his personal power. But he’ll say anything
👍🥰
I’d hope that if people are presented with a simple question “Who should pay more taxes?” they’d realize income tax is more fair.
and people still act blindsided when he follows through.
This is why it has been so frustrating that the media (including MSNBC) sanewashed him in the name of “balance,” while the country tilted off the edge.
I mean - literally.
That’s what Republicans do. They announce their plans in advance because they do not fear anyone will stop them.
And hey look around. Is anyone stopping them?
Too many people do this w Trump. Real life is not litigation! You can say “this is bullshit”
He said what he's doing yesterday: " it's time to get rich." #DowDown
DING DING DING
Trump will gut the IRS anyway, so tax revenue drops every year too. Then tariff $$ goes down, and our deficit utterly trashes the dollar.
Abolishing income taxes plainly articulates the regressive NON-civilization he envisions.
It’s anarchy at best and probably more like stone age “civilization” of foraging, hunting, gathering.
Or maybe 899.
1) The government collects tariff taxes on imports.
2) Tariff revenue is used to justify reducing taxes for the rich.
3) The majority who have to spend their entire paycheck just to survive are stuck paying for the tariffs in the form of higher prices for basic needs.
His theory sucks shit but man, goals.
I grew up in a county that kept having more education sales tax on the ballot so seniors wouldn't pay for schools through property tax and I've lived as an adult in a state that replaced income tax with sales tax. It always leads to finding ways not to pay it.
Fuck these billionaires with their tax cuts!!!
Fuck them!!
Greedy bastards!! Sick greedy bastards!!
I support whoever tax them to the ground!!
In any case, I think USA should be looking at introducing a VAT.
1/3
2/3
It is one of the most efficient taxation systems ever devised. And it can raise a lot of tax – which should be a big part of the policy mix for a country whose govt has spent far more than it raises in taxes for decades.
3/3
And what's worse is he'll abolish income tax but still leave all the loopholes for the rich to deduct their yachts and jets.
He’s a real estate guy. Trade reduces the differential value of location. You can’t export a golf course.
Here’s the reality: he’s gonna pocket the gold card, the tariff money, selling of gov buildings etc by putting it into his fed slush fund.
Then cry about needing more rev & income taxes + will stay or go up.
If people are going to continually let one man destroy everything, well then that's on you.
Americans could end this tomorrow if they wanted to.
Pandemics travel rapidly globally by airplanes.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr4904a1.htm
and
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War
https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
How does a tax - paid to companies like Best Buy fo goods - fund the US govt???
?????
Dems have a window now to reset public opinion on basics like economics and crime.
https://medium.com/@aletheisthenes/on-april-20th-2025-the-united-states-will-cross-the-point-of-no-return-0aecac04cfc3
Wait…What?
Rutherford B. Hayes wrote in his diary in 1886. “It is a government by the corporations, of the corporations and for the corporations.”
Fuck the New York Times.
Trump knows tariffs will make everyday goods more expensive. He knows this makes the poorest in the country, poorer.
Trump wants to remove income income tax. He knows this makes the richest in the country, richer.
Money flows into the pockets of the richest in the country.
Only possible way this can work is trade extorted at barrel of a gun: buy our chlorinated chicken or a carrier group shows up in the harbor.
#StockMarket
This is important I think.
Is it annoying to billionaires? Get rid of it.
Would it help billionaires? Get it.
Can I buy it and so I don't have to care if other people have access? It's not important.
Get this through your fucking thick skulls.
Americans pay for all this bullshit. No-one else.
https://newrepublic.com/article/193457/trump-tariff-madness-income-tax
Putin already agreed to send Russian aluminum and steel, cutting of Canada and others...
With no Tarrifs on RUSSIA, Will USA put orders for Lada Cars
Do republics need political parties?
not with a bang, but a wtf?
Why are you limiting us to 300 characters?
Look at this …it took Chris three bluesky posts to make one single comment!
Maybe you should follow me.
February 10, 2025 & updates
https://www.epi.org/publication/tariffs-everything-you-need-to-know-but-were-afraid-to-ask/#epi-toc-5
BTW ... excellent article 😉
figure? Additionally - as I know you are also aware - It's an authoritarian move w/oligarchy undertones..make things cheap so rich can buy, buy, buy
https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariff-justifications-50f0b4416234e63c7136eaa5c5f96759 How Trump justifies his tariffs — from budget balancing to protecting 'the soul' of America
Trump’s tariffs are going to hit workers hard for the next decade.
https://www.thestreet.com/retirement-daily/retirement-research/2008-financial-crisis-continues-to-impact-the-lower-middle-class
Which is even a bigger problem.
Canadians need to pay attention to the words and actions of the CPC…and the Nazi connection.
I really think it’s as simple as slamming a ketchup bottle at the wall and interpreting the stains as they flow down the wall. Trying to figure out this psychotic narcissist is impossible.
Get him out of there and to a nice safe place.
I don’t understand these people who vote for him because he might not be lying to us or he might just be serious but not literal.
Absolutely and deliberately a tactic.