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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On August 23 2025 00:11 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2025 00:03 oBlade wrote:On August 22 2025 23:41 Sadist wrote:On August 22 2025 23:25 oBlade wrote:On August 22 2025 21:00 LightSpectra wrote:On August 22 2025 14:17 oBlade wrote:On August 21 2025 20:54 LightSpectra wrote:On August 21 2025 06:27 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:The White House just bragged about taxing Americans nearly 100 billion dollars more than Biden taxed them (in comparable 6-month periods: Biden was $55B for Jan-July 2024; Trump was $150B for Jan-July 2025). https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1958271507521524072 One of the many ways I know conservatism is bullshit is that they spent 30 years talking about how raising taxes is un-American, unfree, communist, etc. and overnight, now taxes are a good thing America fuck yeah! characterizing tariff revenue as "taxing Americans" is functionally identical to saying taxing, say, Amazon, more, which I think is widely supported, is "taxing Americans." The reason Americans who support taxing Amazon do so is not because they want to tax themselves. Bullshit, Republicans took Grover Norquist's oath in 1994 to "Require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase" because taxes are fundamentally anti-freedom and growth, and that included corporation taxes. Now they're cheering for the POTUS unilaterally raising taxes using powers supposed to be for national emergencies. You can blatantly lie about a million things but you're never going to gaslight people into thinking most conservatives supported raising taxes before Trump. Such completely shameless bullshit. The Republican Party of today is different than 30 and 40 years ago, the officials are different, the voters are different. Similarly, the country and the economy are different, the government and its fiscal position are different. That's all pretty obvious. Most "conservatives" were tricked by trickle down economics since the 80s so I'm not going to sit here yelling into the void calling Republicans hypocrites for moving beyond that meme approach to policy. Tariffs aren't mere taxes, they overlap with foreign policy, which is clearly the executive's purview. And Congress couldn't be trusted to vote to call 911 if their own chambers were on fire. Nonetheless there is broad populist support in the US for taxing corporations. See #8 in this Gallup poll from last year. It's across the board. I personally think most of the sentiment is directed towards like the Amazons/Walmarts and insurance sector. Like people hate home insurance whether Florida or California. Trump has railed against health insurance companies getting rich before. Raising taxes on corporations (net profit) is different than tariffs on imported goods which is more like revenue or a fixed cost. If corporations get taxed on profits its not a one to one impact. Tariffs are a direct increase on the price of an imported good. These are not the same things. Im probably explaining it poorly but there is a significant difference. Also people dont necessarily have a problem with selective tariffs to protect industry or discourage imports. People have a problem with blanket tariffs and using tariffs as a planned revenue stream. Thats just a tax that ironically you cant really plan your budget around as the purpose of the tariff is to encourage production of the item locally which will dry up the tariff revenue. You're explaining it fine except tariffs do not have a 100% passthrough either. It's not just tariffs on dropshipped finished goods that goes directly into the price the consumer pays. It may be a tariff on a raw material ex. when you buy a car it's different than when the company paid customs to import a chunk of steel to make it. In both cases there is a partial passthrough to the consumer which is hard to measure and depends on fifty different things. That's the point. If you raise the corporate tax rate causing Walmart to raise prices in general, we describe what's happening as taxing Walmart. Especially if the passthrough is less than 50% which it almost always is. I have no idea how anyone would call that case "taxing Americans" so I suddenly realize it's not realistic to use that framing for tariffs with that excuse. Please go ahead and explain how the treasury can receive a dollar paid in tariffs and yet Americans only pay $0.80 or whatever. You may have discovered an infinite money glitch.
Most people do try to analyze/measure passthrough. For example, a company is dropshipping widgets they import at $1, and have operating costs of $0.50 per widget, and selling them for $3. Blumpf announces a 100% widget tariff. This raises their costs from $1.50 to $2.50. They cut $0.20 out of their operating costs per widget by firing their social media manager and raise prices to $3.80 instead of tacking the entire buck on and making it $4. Only 80% has been passed through to the consumer.
"But the company is Americans too." Yeah. Then passthrough is 100% by definition all the time and there's no point to the field of economics. It's solved.
Nonetheless, if Gavin Newsom announces a 99% tax on shiny top hats, or if Sanders announces a 99% tax on Wall Street, as part of a 2028 platform, I don't think anyone would characterize that as them bragging about "taxing Americans."
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United States42817 Posts
On August 23 2025 00:32 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2025 00:11 KwarK wrote:On August 23 2025 00:03 oBlade wrote:On August 22 2025 23:41 Sadist wrote:On August 22 2025 23:25 oBlade wrote:On August 22 2025 21:00 LightSpectra wrote:On August 22 2025 14:17 oBlade wrote:On August 21 2025 20:54 LightSpectra wrote:On August 21 2025 06:27 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:The White House just bragged about taxing Americans nearly 100 billion dollars more than Biden taxed them (in comparable 6-month periods: Biden was $55B for Jan-July 2024; Trump was $150B for Jan-July 2025). https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1958271507521524072 One of the many ways I know conservatism is bullshit is that they spent 30 years talking about how raising taxes is un-American, unfree, communist, etc. and overnight, now taxes are a good thing America fuck yeah! characterizing tariff revenue as "taxing Americans" is functionally identical to saying taxing, say, Amazon, more, which I think is widely supported, is "taxing Americans." The reason Americans who support taxing Amazon do so is not because they want to tax themselves. Bullshit, Republicans took Grover Norquist's oath in 1994 to "Require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase" because taxes are fundamentally anti-freedom and growth, and that included corporation taxes. Now they're cheering for the POTUS unilaterally raising taxes using powers supposed to be for national emergencies. You can blatantly lie about a million things but you're never going to gaslight people into thinking most conservatives supported raising taxes before Trump. Such completely shameless bullshit. The Republican Party of today is different than 30 and 40 years ago, the officials are different, the voters are different. Similarly, the country and the economy are different, the government and its fiscal position are different. That's all pretty obvious. Most "conservatives" were tricked by trickle down economics since the 80s so I'm not going to sit here yelling into the void calling Republicans hypocrites for moving beyond that meme approach to policy. Tariffs aren't mere taxes, they overlap with foreign policy, which is clearly the executive's purview. And Congress couldn't be trusted to vote to call 911 if their own chambers were on fire. Nonetheless there is broad populist support in the US for taxing corporations. See #8 in this Gallup poll from last year. It's across the board. I personally think most of the sentiment is directed towards like the Amazons/Walmarts and insurance sector. Like people hate home insurance whether Florida or California. Trump has railed against health insurance companies getting rich before. Raising taxes on corporations (net profit) is different than tariffs on imported goods which is more like revenue or a fixed cost. If corporations get taxed on profits its not a one to one impact. Tariffs are a direct increase on the price of an imported good. These are not the same things. Im probably explaining it poorly but there is a significant difference. Also people dont necessarily have a problem with selective tariffs to protect industry or discourage imports. People have a problem with blanket tariffs and using tariffs as a planned revenue stream. Thats just a tax that ironically you cant really plan your budget around as the purpose of the tariff is to encourage production of the item locally which will dry up the tariff revenue. You're explaining it fine except tariffs do not have a 100% passthrough either. It's not just tariffs on dropshipped finished goods that goes directly into the price the consumer pays. It may be a tariff on a raw material ex. when you buy a car it's different than when the company paid customs to import a chunk of steel to make it. In both cases there is a partial passthrough to the consumer which is hard to measure and depends on fifty different things. That's the point. If you raise the corporate tax rate causing Walmart to raise prices in general, we describe what's happening as taxing Walmart. Especially if the passthrough is less than 50% which it almost always is. I have no idea how anyone would call that case "taxing Americans" so I suddenly realize it's not realistic to use that framing for tariffs with that excuse. Please go ahead and explain how the treasury can receive a dollar paid in tariffs and yet Americans only pay $0.80 or whatever. You may have discovered an infinite money glitch. Most people do try to analyze/measure passthrough. For example, a company is dropshipping widgets they import at $1, and have operating costs of $0.50 per widget, and selling them for $3. Blumpf announces a 100% widget tariff. This raises their costs from $1.50 to $2.50. They cut $0.20 out of their operating costs per widget by firing their social media manager and raise prices to $3.80 instead of tacking the entire buck on and making it $4. Only 80% has been passed through to the consumer. "But the company is Americans too." Yeah. Then passthrough is 100% by definition all the time and there's no point to the field of economics. It's solved. Nonetheless, if Gavin Newsom announces a 99% tax on shiny top hats, or if Sanders announces a 99% tax on Wall Street, as part of a 2028 platform, I don't think anyone would characterize that as them bragging about "taxing Americans."
So of the one dollar 80 cents comes from Americans and 20 cents comes from the social media manager. Presumably you can guess my next question.
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On August 23 2025 00:42 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2025 00:32 oBlade wrote:On August 23 2025 00:11 KwarK wrote:On August 23 2025 00:03 oBlade wrote:On August 22 2025 23:41 Sadist wrote:On August 22 2025 23:25 oBlade wrote:On August 22 2025 21:00 LightSpectra wrote:On August 22 2025 14:17 oBlade wrote:On August 21 2025 20:54 LightSpectra wrote:On August 21 2025 06:27 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:The White House just bragged about taxing Americans nearly 100 billion dollars more than Biden taxed them (in comparable 6-month periods: Biden was $55B for Jan-July 2024; Trump was $150B for Jan-July 2025). https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1958271507521524072 One of the many ways I know conservatism is bullshit is that they spent 30 years talking about how raising taxes is un-American, unfree, communist, etc. and overnight, now taxes are a good thing America fuck yeah! characterizing tariff revenue as "taxing Americans" is functionally identical to saying taxing, say, Amazon, more, which I think is widely supported, is "taxing Americans." The reason Americans who support taxing Amazon do so is not because they want to tax themselves. Bullshit, Republicans took Grover Norquist's oath in 1994 to "Require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase" because taxes are fundamentally anti-freedom and growth, and that included corporation taxes. Now they're cheering for the POTUS unilaterally raising taxes using powers supposed to be for national emergencies. You can blatantly lie about a million things but you're never going to gaslight people into thinking most conservatives supported raising taxes before Trump. Such completely shameless bullshit. The Republican Party of today is different than 30 and 40 years ago, the officials are different, the voters are different. Similarly, the country and the economy are different, the government and its fiscal position are different. That's all pretty obvious. Most "conservatives" were tricked by trickle down economics since the 80s so I'm not going to sit here yelling into the void calling Republicans hypocrites for moving beyond that meme approach to policy. Tariffs aren't mere taxes, they overlap with foreign policy, which is clearly the executive's purview. And Congress couldn't be trusted to vote to call 911 if their own chambers were on fire. Nonetheless there is broad populist support in the US for taxing corporations. See #8 in this Gallup poll from last year. It's across the board. I personally think most of the sentiment is directed towards like the Amazons/Walmarts and insurance sector. Like people hate home insurance whether Florida or California. Trump has railed against health insurance companies getting rich before. Raising taxes on corporations (net profit) is different than tariffs on imported goods which is more like revenue or a fixed cost. If corporations get taxed on profits its not a one to one impact. Tariffs are a direct increase on the price of an imported good. These are not the same things. Im probably explaining it poorly but there is a significant difference. Also people dont necessarily have a problem with selective tariffs to protect industry or discourage imports. People have a problem with blanket tariffs and using tariffs as a planned revenue stream. Thats just a tax that ironically you cant really plan your budget around as the purpose of the tariff is to encourage production of the item locally which will dry up the tariff revenue. You're explaining it fine except tariffs do not have a 100% passthrough either. It's not just tariffs on dropshipped finished goods that goes directly into the price the consumer pays. It may be a tariff on a raw material ex. when you buy a car it's different than when the company paid customs to import a chunk of steel to make it. In both cases there is a partial passthrough to the consumer which is hard to measure and depends on fifty different things. That's the point. If you raise the corporate tax rate causing Walmart to raise prices in general, we describe what's happening as taxing Walmart. Especially if the passthrough is less than 50% which it almost always is. I have no idea how anyone would call that case "taxing Americans" so I suddenly realize it's not realistic to use that framing for tariffs with that excuse. Please go ahead and explain how the treasury can receive a dollar paid in tariffs and yet Americans only pay $0.80 or whatever. You may have discovered an infinite money glitch. Most people do try to analyze/measure passthrough. For example, a company is dropshipping widgets they import at $1, and have operating costs of $0.50 per widget, and selling them for $3. Blumpf announces a 100% widget tariff. This raises their costs from $1.50 to $2.50. They cut $0.20 out of their operating costs per widget by firing their social media manager and raise prices to $3.80 instead of tacking the entire buck on and making it $4. Only 80% has been passed through to the consumer. "But the company is Americans too." Yeah. Then passthrough is 100% by definition all the time and there's no point to the field of economics. It's solved. Nonetheless, if Gavin Newsom announces a 99% tax on shiny top hats, or if Sanders announces a 99% tax on Wall Street, as part of a 2028 platform, I don't think anyone would characterize that as them bragging about "taxing Americans." So of the one dollar 80 cents comes from Americans and 20 cents comes from the social media manager. Presumably you can guess my next question.
Of course I can and I'll be happy to take a stab at it, thank you for the opportunity.
The answer is that no, all taxes are not inherently unethical just because someone has to pay them. In fact, someone paying them is fundamental to the concept of their existence.
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United States42817 Posts
This is also a really funny example of conservative maths. It's basically a meme. They declare that any deficit will just be made up from cutting "waste". When asked to define which wasteful programs they plan to spend they can't actually find them (still waiting on Musk's two trillion to be found but good on him for actually trying I guess) but despite not being able to see them, feel them, find them, and cut them, they always, always believe in them.
"These numbers can't possibly work, you simply cannot spend more than you're taking in" cry the liberals to which the bold conservative replies "waste".
You're genuinely trying to convince us that companies had all this extra money lying around which they could have just kept or reinvested or paid out to shareholders but until now they've been burning it by paying some soy they/them social media manager who doesn't even really count and so when Trump demands money then it won't hurt real Americans, it'll just hurt that guy. You could have said that they would cut QA or capital expenditures or a million other real things that people who have actually worked in manufacturing know get cut when times are hard. But no, it's the imaginary social media manager.
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United States42817 Posts
Honestly the mistake is not making the social media manager pay the entire $100b Trump raised from tariffs. Couldn't we just do that, then Americans wouldn't have to pay any of it.
If you were a smarter man with the courage of your convictions you'd have made theythem pay all of it. But you lack conviction. You were willing to handwave an imaginary 20% into existence but not 100%. If you're ideologically compelled to fail maths then fail it properly.
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If raising taxes results in waste cutting then conservatives should've been tripping over themselves praising the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 for the 15% corporate minimum tax rate for companies with higher than $1 billion of income and 1% excise tax on stock buybacks.
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On August 23 2025 00:51 KwarK wrote:
You're genuinely trying to convince us that companies had all this extra money lying around which they could have just kept or reinvested or paid out to shareholders but until now they've been burning it by paying some soy they/them social media manager who doesn't even really count and so when Trump demands money then it won't hurt real Americans, it'll just hurt that guy. You could have said that they would cut QA or capital expenditures or a million other real things that people who have actually worked in manufacturing know get cut when times are hard. But no, it's the imaginary social media manager.
Your characterization of the social media manager in the example is completely your own addition, for the record. He is imaginary because the widgets and company are imaginary just like the QA and capital expenditures would be imaginary because it was a hypothetical.
Have you really not seen the concept of consumer passthrough before? You seem like you should have encountered it at some point. Because what you say is exactly correct. When companies are doing well and have profits and squeakly clean QA and are sitting on cash and reinvesting, they can afford to absorb more of any tax and so don't pass on the full cost to their consumers. They have margins that can absorb more. This is why people want to tax companies that are killing it more than ones that aren't, and annihilating their competition, like Costco or Walmart or Amazon, instead of companies that are going bankrupt. Because they are the ones who can afford it.
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United States42817 Posts
On August 23 2025 01:08 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2025 00:51 KwarK wrote:
You're genuinely trying to convince us that companies had all this extra money lying around which they could have just kept or reinvested or paid out to shareholders but until now they've been burning it by paying some soy they/them social media manager who doesn't even really count and so when Trump demands money then it won't hurt real Americans, it'll just hurt that guy. You could have said that they would cut QA or capital expenditures or a million other real things that people who have actually worked in manufacturing know get cut when times are hard. But no, it's the imaginary social media manager. Your characterization of the social media manager in the example is completely your own addition, for the record. He is imaginary because the widgets and company are imaginary just like the QA and capital expenditures would be imaginary because it was a hypothetical. Have you really not seen the concept of consumer passthrough before? You seem like you should have encountered it at some point. Because what you say is exactly correct. When companies are doing well and have profits and squeakly clean QA and are sitting on cash and reinvesting, they can afford to absorb more of any tax and so don't pass on the full cost to their consumers. They have margins that can absorb more. This is why people want to tax companies that are killing it more than ones that aren't, and annihilating their competition, like Costco or Walmart or Amazon, instead of companies that are going bankrupt. Because they are the ones who can afford it.
You're now arguing for the opposite of a sales tax/tariff.
But in any case, the imaginary Brad the libcuck social media manager who pays the difference so that Trump doesn't hurt real Americans is also an American.
Also my characterization is yours. You could have picked a real thing that real manufacturers cut in hard times. For example current NFIB Research Foundation show that planned capex is down 7% from 29% to 22%. This is spend that was going to be reinvested in the American economy and generate returns for the businesses doing it over time.
You instead opted for what is essentially the dogwhistle of jobs.
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By that logic, every tax rate should be 0% because it's stealing money that would be reinvested in the economy and generate returns for businesses over time. This is until you realize the US is a country, not just a group of corporations, and not even just an economy.
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So the FBI raided John Bolton's home and office for classified materials
The FBI searched former national security adviser John Bolton's home in Maryland on Friday as part of a “national security investigation in search of classified records,” a source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.
An FBI official said in a statement that the agency was "conducting court authorized activity in the area. There is no threat to public safety.”
The agency declined to comment further on the search. Bolton, who lives in Bethesda, did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment.
In a post on X early Friday, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote, "NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission."
Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino also appeared to refer to the search in posts on X.
"America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always," Bondi wrote early Friday.
“Public corruption will not be tolerated,” Bongino wrote.
www.nbcnews.com
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LMAO for retaining classified records. Might as well start arresting people for wearing bronzer too.
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United States42817 Posts
On August 23 2025 01:32 oBlade wrote:
By that logic, every tax rate should be 0% because it's stealing money that would be reinvested in the economy and generate returns for businesses over time. This is until you realize the US is a country, not just a group of corporations, and not even just an economy.
You seem to have forgotten your position and instead of defending it you're attacking a strawman.
Your position was that when Trump raises money through tariffs the money doesn't all come from Americans.
I challenged this because for every dollar received a dollar must be sent. That's accounting 101. It has to come from somewhere.
You then clarified that what you meant was that a dollar in taxes is paid but it's not all paid by Americans, some of it is paid for by imaginary Brad the social media manager whose job provides zero value and can be cut without harming any real Americans. For context, Brad is not considered a real American and so doesn't count.
I explained that Brad was made up but even within the fantasy he's still an American and therefore the taxes are still paid by Americans.
You abandoned your side of the argument entirely, whether the taxes are paid by Americans, and now arguing that taxes exist I think? I don't dispute that taxes exist, they definitely do. No argument there.
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On August 23 2025 01:35 GreenHorizons wrote:So the FBI raided John Bolton's home and office for classified materials Show nested quote +The FBI searched former national security adviser John Bolton's home in Maryland on Friday as part of a “national security investigation in search of classified records,” a source familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News.
An FBI official said in a statement that the agency was "conducting court authorized activity in the area. There is no threat to public safety.”
The agency declined to comment further on the search. Bolton, who lives in Bethesda, did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment.
In a post on X early Friday, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote, "NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission."
Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino also appeared to refer to the search in posts on X.
"America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always," Bondi wrote early Friday.
“Public corruption will not be tolerated,” Bongino wrote. www.nbcnews.com funny enough, it happened after he criticized Trump. I'm sure the 2 are completely unrelated...
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On August 23 2025 01:44 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2025 01:32 oBlade wrote:
By that logic, every tax rate should be 0% because it's stealing money that would be reinvested in the economy and generate returns for businesses over time. This is until you realize the US is a country, not just a group of corporations, and not even just an economy. You seem to have forgotten your position and instead of defending it you're attacking a strawman. Your position was that when Trump raises money through tariffs the money doesn't all come from Americans. I challenged this because for every dollar received a dollar must be sent. That's accounting 101. It has to come from somewhere. You then clarified that what you meant was that a dollar in taxes is paid but it's not all paid by Americans, some of it is paid for by imaginary Brad the social media manager whose job provides zero value and can be cut without harming any real Americans. For context, Brad is not considered a real American and so doesn't count. I explained that Brad was made up but even within the fantasy he's still an American and therefore the taxes are still paid by Americans. You abandoned your side of the argument entirely, whether the taxes are paid by Americans, and now arguing that taxes exist I think? I don't dispute that taxes exist, they definitely do. No argument there.
Let me break this down some because I must have overestimated somewhere. I'll start with our common axiom that taxes exist and governments levy them.
1) In the US, they are largely paid by Americans, but not entirely, because foreigners and foreign companies operating in America are subject to American law, but for the sake of brevity that can be smoothed over.
2) Therefore the fact that "Americans" pay a tax is a trivial criticism of it. Trivial as in to nowhere. There are Americans we want to tax more, and Americans we want to tax less. If the IRS collects $1 from Elon Musk, then Elon Musk paid it. This isn't bad, because it's our goal, we want him to pay it. If you put a $1000 tax on trillion dollar car companies, and the IRS collects $1000 from Tesla, Tesla customers may not have paid the entire $1000. Therefore the fact that Tesla, or its customers, pay indeed any share of the $1000, cannot be an argument against it per se otherwise it invalidates taxes entirely. This is why we're allowed to and do tax companies.
+ Show Spoiler +This is also why in basic conversation, if you have a debt to Tom, and you sell your computer to Jason, and give the proceeds to settle your debt with Tom, we do not tend to say Jason paid Tom.
3) One such tax on companies is tariffs. For this, I will just say you simply need to familiarize yourself with the concept of passthrough to consumer. In Trump's first term, all estimates point to less than 50% of the costs of tariffs being passed to the consumer in most cases. https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/2019/tariff-passthrough-at-the-border-and-at-the-store-evidence-from-us-trade-policy.aspx
That means more than 50% is absorbed by people other than consumers, in this case, people who are engaging in a disproportionate importing of things into the US instead of exporting from it, which we may want to discourage, putting them in the "Elon Musk" category of people we have a reason for wanting to tax more.
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United States42817 Posts
If you wish to argue that the tariffs are being used as an intentional demand shaping policy in which domestic production is being stimulated then you're going to run into a problem. That problem is that the argument is absurdly wrong for all the reasons that are abundantly obvious, even to you.
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Another thing that is missed is we are not only talking about finished goods but also parts. When we receive a price increase on our supplies we don't pass that increase to the customer dollar for dollar. We have a standard markup on everything. If it is part that goes through multiple different manufactures then a retailer you could have it be 1.3 x 1.3 x 1.3 pretty darn quickly. Now that does not mean the entire cost of the final good is up that much. But the final price the consumer pays on that tariff can and often will be more than just the increase.
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Trump is running america like a theme park version of a mafia business.
Everybody needs to play pretend that he is THE LAW.
Tariff threats bring him grifter money from fearful CEOs, and for every trillion in damages to the economy he gets a million Dollars in some bribery sheme (like setteling a bogus lawsuit).
His "use the military at home" stunts are purely for removing "Epstein Files" from news cycles.. as well as his totally botched Ukraine talks with his Friend Putin and all the European Randos that showed up to praise him last week.
It's also good that Captain Brainworm is in charge of the MS Healthcare, because otherwise the Real Genius in Chief would have ordered to allow horse deworming and tranqs, as well es bleach to be administered to .. poor people.. as replacement for costly real medicine.
I hope your cancer goes away by drinking this leaded water. It's only logical. Radiation causes cance, lead hinders radiaton, leaded clean tap water does hinder radiation and thus cancer!
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On August 23 2025 04:14 LightSpectra wrote:Kilmar Abrego Garcia is free. Turns out MS Painting the words "MS-13" on a picture of someone isn't enough evidence to detain them indefinitely.
What's wild is that now he can be deported again without trial. Constitutionally. What a joke country.
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On August 23 2025 02:11 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2025 01:44 KwarK wrote:On August 23 2025 01:32 oBlade wrote:
By that logic, every tax rate should be 0% because it's stealing money that would be reinvested in the economy and generate returns for businesses over time. This is until you realize the US is a country, not just a group of corporations, and not even just an economy. You seem to have forgotten your position and instead of defending it you're attacking a strawman. Your position was that when Trump raises money through tariffs the money doesn't all come from Americans. I challenged this because for every dollar received a dollar must be sent. That's accounting 101. It has to come from somewhere. You then clarified that what you meant was that a dollar in taxes is paid but it's not all paid by Americans, some of it is paid for by imaginary Brad the social media manager whose job provides zero value and can be cut without harming any real Americans. For context, Brad is not considered a real American and so doesn't count. I explained that Brad was made up but even within the fantasy he's still an American and therefore the taxes are still paid by Americans. You abandoned your side of the argument entirely, whether the taxes are paid by Americans, and now arguing that taxes exist I think? I don't dispute that taxes exist, they definitely do. No argument there. Let me break this down some because I must have overestimated somewhere. I'll start with our common axiom that taxes exist and governments levy them. 1) In the US, they are largely paid by Americans, but not entirely, because foreigners and foreign companies operating in America are subject to American law, but for the sake of brevity that can be smoothed over. 2) Therefore the fact that "Americans" pay a tax is a trivial criticism of it. Trivial as in to nowhere. There are Americans we want to tax more, and Americans we want to tax less. If the IRS collects $1 from Elon Musk, then Elon Musk paid it. This isn't bad, because it's our goal, we want him to pay it. If you put a $1000 tax on trillion dollar car companies, and the IRS collects $1000 from Tesla, Tesla customers may not have paid the entire $1000. Therefore the fact that Tesla, or its customers, pay indeed any share of the $1000, cannot be an argument against it per se otherwise it invalidates taxes entirely. This is why we're allowed to and do tax companies. + Show Spoiler +This is also why in basic conversation, if you have a debt to Tom, and you sell your computer to Jason, and give the proceeds to settle your debt with Tom, we do not tend to say Jason paid Tom. 3) One such tax on companies is tariffs. For this, I will just say you simply need to familiarize yourself with the concept of passthrough to consumer. In Trump's first term, all estimates point to less than 50% of the costs of tariffs being passed to the consumer in most cases. https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/2019/tariff-passthrough-at-the-border-and-at-the-store-evidence-from-us-trade-policy.aspxThat means more than 50% is absorbed by people other than consumers, in this case, people who are engaging in a disproportionate importing of things into the US instead of exporting from it, which we may want to discourage, putting them in the "Elon Musk" category of people we have a reason for wanting to tax more.
I'm not wading into this argument, but I am happy to see absolutely everyone on this forum now agrees that the stereotype of someone who definitely needs to pay more taxes is Elon Musk. And not some imaginary person buying lobsters with food stamps. #progress 
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