Caesar Disgustus, demonstrating once again that 78 years upon this earth has proven powerless to instruct, has taken to touting tariffs as a means of raising revenue. He tells his equally ignorant audiences that foreign governments will pay the taxes and, therefore, they will be the entitled beneficiaries of the largesse of others. By this means we can abolish the IRS and liberate the nation from responsibility of funding the government. It is the 'boomers' last wet dream, following on the heels of 'peace and love', the merits of dropping acid, Reaganomics, smoking pot, the 'flat tax' and a host of other schemes, lotus dreams of a generation that were convinced by Eric Von Daniken in The Chariots of the Gods that aliens built the pyramids. The Generation of Swine have always been susceptible to such hogwash and this is only its latest iteration.
So here we have the Great Prevaricator claiming with a straight face that tariffs, yet another form of an upper class tax cut, will solve everything. But this isn't how it works.
It has been pointed out, ad nauseam it seems, that tariffs are levied upon goods coming into the United States at point of entry, meaning simply that an additional cost is simply added upon whatever it is that is being shipped into the United States. That cost is paid by the consumer, not the foreign government nor any one of its constituent companies. It is, simply put, a sales tax on the American consumer. ;
Yes, this country has imposed tariffs in its history; sometimes stiff tariffs. But it has done so, by and large, for very legitimate reasons.
In the beginning the American colonies, all of them, were creatures of European governments who were engaged in empire building. Now empires are more than mere expressions of military prowess; they are political and economic behemoths, held together by what was then called mercantile economic systems. The mercantile system was characterized as a 'closed' system in which the colonies supplied the raw materials, like lumber, cotton, iron, copper, etc, to the 'mother' country in this case England. The 'mother' country would manufacture goods like furniture, lamps, shoes etc, and ship them back to the colony in exchange for more raw materials and money. In this way materials and money would flow into the 'mother' country be it Spain, England, The Netherlands, France, and, with the help of the slave and drug trades make the emerging Capitalist class rich and powerful as they funded the armies necessary to impose their rule. It was in this context that the first international monopolies were established by various governments, such as the East India Tea Company that led, by degrees to the Boston Tea Party. The American Revolution began the demise of this order; the undoing of which played out well into the mid twentieth century; replacing by degrees the Mercantile with the Free Market paradigm.
But the concept of protectionism stubbornly remained, useful to our ancestors as a tool to establish their own domestic industries here in the United States and foster their survival by protecting the nascent enterprises from competition propped up by foreign empires. Therefore, our ancestors used tariffs to protect our emerging textile, machine tool, farm and other industries until they became large and powerful enough to compete in open markets.
That is the purpose of tariffs, to protect emerging domestic industry.
It follows that if we have no corresponding domestic industry to protect then the imposition of such import duties only add to the cost of the goods in question; in effect a mere sales tax. The tariff is not protecting a domestic enterprise, nor any in their employ. And, since The Generation of Swine have not only stood idly by, but indeed have actually encouraged (Reaganomics) the gutting of our manufacturing base, there are few domestic industries left to protect. Go to Walmart and look for any item made in the United States, it will be a long and fruitless search indeed. It has never occurred to the aging, rotting, turd, that at minimum the imposition of duties upon imports will reduce the quantity of imported goods thereby further increasing their price and, perhaps, causing widespread shortages as well. The shift of the tax burden from the income tax to tariffs simply compounds the error, raising prices by imposing an import duty and then further raising prices by creating shortages as foreign suppliers seek other markets. This is what happened when Disgustus imposed tariffs on steel and agricultural trade, acts which he was forced to reverse as the consequences became painfully apparent. This is what happens when one imposes ignorance upon the system.
Public policy is sometimes and unwieldy proposition. Public policies are crude instruments, changes to which are often fraught with unforeseen consequence. This is not the work of amateurs, less so of the decidedly and proudly ignorant.
Caesar Disgustus, the aging 78 year old relic of a bygone error is, undoubtedly, the last of the Generation of Swine to stand for election. He is singing the swan song of a hopelessly delusional generation that has made a pig's breakfast of everything it has touched; and which experience has proven powerless to instruct. And this, perhaps, is the last example; the last gasp.
Flush This Turd
Imprison the Bastard.
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