Political Memes

Tariffs!!!
...and a Monorail!!!

Presumably Mexico, Canada, and China, through tariffs.

Oh wait no, Americans pay those too. And since tariffs/sales taxes are regressive, they will disproportionately be paid by everyone earning less than 150k.

The order of business is to first remove taxes for people earning more than 1 million, before in a second step attempting to balance the budget. If (and only if) that second step succeeds will people under 150,000 see a tax cut. In other words that will never happen.

“Balancing the budget” means “fuck your health”.

It will be. Right after infrastructure week fixes all the roads and bridges.

That was a good read, thanks!

Import tariffs cannot possibly replace income tax. It's not even vaguely possible. A 25% import tariff on literally everything would mean that Americans would have to import (AFTER the reduction in demand for imported products caused by tariffs) 4 times the amount the US government takes in income taxes. The US government gets on the order of 4 Trillion dollars in income tax. So Americans would have to import 16T total DESPITE the tariffs to make this up.

There is simply no world in which this works.

Plus the goal of using tariffs to eliminate the income tax is directly counter to the goal of reducing trade deficits and bringing back manufacturing, since to keep the income tax eliminated you need US consumers to continue importing and paying the fucking tariffs.

So not only does the math not math, if the tariffs succeeded at one of their stated goals they would necessarily fail at the other.

I read that in his voice and it made me believe.

It's never, but also that

Well yeah, that's the order of strategies..

Step 1: Tax cuts for the rich.

Step 2: Declare and win wars with... Canada, Greenland, Mexico, Panema, China, Palestine, Ukrane.

step 3: Attempt to completely eliminate the national debt. by cutting all services and regulations.

I'm sure another dozen steps... but trust me, those of us making under 150k are on the list.

Setting aside the fact that he's lying --

You'd have to make up the lost tax revenue from somewhere. Either by increasing or creating some other tax, or by cutting spending.

The programs that would be likely to be cut are ones that poor people need. And he's likely to try and throw down a federal sales tax, which loads a higher tax burden on poor people.

Without those details, "eliminating federal income tax for people making under $X" cannot be qualified as good or bad. You must define the other parts of the equation.

we ofc already have graduated tax brackets but it needs to be shifted upwards so that people making below a certain amount should pay zero Income taxes (I'm not talking about a wealth tax or carbon tax or VAT tax).

also, top marginal rates NEED TO BE INCREASED AGAIN. during WWII the wealthiest paid between 80-95%. from the New Deal until Reagan destroyed the country in the 80s, top rates were well above 50 percent.

Taxing the ultra rich is how America funded higher education, built the highway system, funded social welfare, uplifted 2 generations, built a global manufacturing and technology economy, and created a prosperous middle class. we did it by keeping oligarchs in check. in a strictly enforced progressively tiered system, top marginal tax prevents the obscene accumulation of wealth

making enough leeway in the budget to actually eliminate taxes for that many people would mean eliminating, at a guess, almost every program the government pays for as well as a significant amount of military spending. There would definitely be no more medicare, social security, or infrastructure investment, just "rich people" paying interest on existing debt.

Depends on how the income is replaced for the federal government.

If you look at income taxes as a way for the federal government to keep things running for all citizens to enjoy, you could argue that every citizen should pay a fixed even amount, roughly $15k a year. (based on 2024 IRS Income tax collection and estimated population)

Federal minimum wage makes ~15k a year so minimum wage jobs turn into basically slavery for the feds where the slaves are homeless. The average family of 5 in the US, who have a mean income somewhere around 70k now owe 75k in taxes putting them and any poorer families into debt with the government, before being able to feed, cloth, and house themselves and all other taxes are off the table.

As it stands right now, single filers making 90k AGI owe about 15k so people making less than that are basically being subsidized by anyone making more.

If you keep the IRS income tax revenue the same, but apply it to only earners of 150k+ AGI you have ~20% of the population shouldering the full $5.1T income tax. Spread that evenly and now they would owe 70k per person (currently they owe ~29k) You can play the tax bracket game again to slowly ease people into paying that amount, you're only increasing the amount of taxes being paid by the higher earners. If that's what would actually happen, then sure this is can be a good thing to help bolster the economy in terms of more money flowing between citizens, but there's no way in hell this administration will raise taxes on the higher earners in the US.

If Trump did this, what would be more likely is the income revenue gets replaced by sales taxes and tariffs which is closer to the first scenario I described where the federal income is more evenly distributed among all citizens, working or otherwise.

And the revenue will have to get replaced, the federal government subsidizes the fuck out of almost everything and even the 1%ers do not want a reality where the DoD isn't issuing multi billion dollar contracts. You can't make a living scraping off the top of contracts when there are no more contracts. Trump and co. celebrating millions of dollars saved by the federal government aren't even making scratches against current revenue from income taxes, it's political theater just like this tweet

The Democrats accomplished a balanced budget in the 90's under Clinton. Can you guess what the next 8 years of Republican control did to that?

Trump did not have this idea, he is repeating noises he once heard someone make. Once you assume Republicans operate like the fae in old stories, everything starts to make sense: Everything they do is designed to trick you so they can take advantage of you. Absolutely none of what a conservative does is unselfish; by definition they are driven to prevent any and all change, except what they seem acceptable. Agreeing with anything they propose, no matter how good it sounds, is a self-deprecating move.