[SiliconSplash]

> Upper income people will be fine with a 10-25% increase in cost of things they purchase. Regular income taxes are progressive.

This is assuming you are buying goods that are outside of the country. Most consumption weekly is things like food, drink, disposable items and not things like computer hardware which is refreshed every few years normally.

> There is a reason why rich prefer tariffs over a progressive income tax.

I am not rich and would prefer Tariffs over income taxes (I am in the UK). I would rather save the that gets taken every month from the taxman and I could afford to buy myself a nicer property. I could also make the conscious decision to make sure I purchase items produced in the UK which presumably for food, drink (at least) I would wager is produced in the UK and thus would be cheaper than things produced outside of the country.

As for progressive taxes they actually make it more difficult to earn more money even at a near minimum wage. When I worked at a super store (Tesco) many years ago, If I worked a few hours overtime, I would go over income band for that month and it effectively made working that shift a waste of time. I am including my time to commute which was a 30 minute cycle and not wanting to have to stack onions. So I didn't bother working overtime as a result. Neither did many of my colleges. Granted I normally would get a check back at the end of the year from HMRC as I would have over-payed for the year, but when you are living month to month, I would always prefer the cash in my pocket as the end of the tax year is an eternity away in comparison.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> This is assuming you are buying goods that are outside of the country. Most consumption weekly is things like food, drink, disposable items and not things like computer hardware which is refreshed every few years normally.

Trying really hard to refrain from a snarky response, because this analysis is 100% incorrect. First, where do you think a substantial portion of food, drink and disposable items in the US comes from?

More importantly, though, the entire economic rationale of import tariffs is to allow domestic producers to charge more. It doesn't matter if you just "buy American", because if the competition that American producers face is now 10% more expensive, these producers will raise prices. Or, if more charitably, foreign goods were making American-made products uncompetitive, American producers can now come in and make those goods, but only at the higher prices.

Again, the entire point of tariffs (at least from the perspective of "we want to bring production back to this country") is to raise the price of goods across the board so American producers can be competitive.

Also, you misunderstand how progressive taxes work. When you make more and go into "the higher income band", you're not taxed more on ALL your income, just the portion that is in the new band (at least in the US). Yes, there have been cases in the US e.g. with welfare where if people made above a certain amount their welfare was cut off, but those have all been highlighted as examples of poor tax policy that have largely been fixed.

[amarcheschi]

I was curious about this so i searched a bit. about 15% of food in us is imported, although the % is higher for groceries,seafood,fresh products https://www.fda.gov/food/importing-food-products-united-stat...

it's interesting also this document about total consumption that excludes from the count foreign sourced items (scroll to the last pragraph for a summary) https://www.commerce.gov/sites/default/files/migrated/report...

[dijksterhuis]

> When you make more and go into "the higher income band", you're not taxed more on ALL your income, just the portion that is in the new band (at least in the US).

applies in the UK too where GP is (source: my own repeat self assessments).

[SiliconSplash]

Yes I know. But often it is not worth going into the upper band at all unless you towards the top of that band. I am equating my own time, stress etc into this calculation and not just monetary amount.

[SiliconSplash]

> Trying really hard to refrain from a snarky response, because this analysis is 100% incorrect. First, where do you think a substantial portion of food, drink and disposable items in the US comes from?

I was talking about how a similar policy would affect me in the UK where far more food is domestically produced.

> More importantly, though, the entire economic rationale of import tariffs is to allow domestic producers to charge more. It doesn't matter if you just "buy American", because if the competition that American producers face is now 10% more expensive, these producers will raise prices. Or, if more charitably, foreign goods were making American-made products uncompetitive, American producers can now come in and make those goods, but only at the higher prices.

You can adjust your consumption much more easily than you can adjust your income tax. If you want to be in the lower band of progressive income tax.

> Also, you misunderstand how progressive taxes work. When you make more and go into "the higher income band", you're not taxed more on ALL your income, just the portion that is in the new band (at least in the US). Yes, there have been cases in the US e.g. with welfare where if people made above a certain amount their welfare was cut off, but those have all been highlighted as examples of poor tax policy that have largely been fixed.

I do already understand this. You don't understand what I was telling about how it affected my wages that month. Once I went over the band, the increase in tax was enough to make working the overtime not worth it, as I would maybe get a few hours of OT. It would only be worth it, if I was working lots of OT ... which I couldn't do because I was studying.

It also stops me from bothering to get a higher salaried job. I am at the highest pay before you go into the 50% band. So if go from £55,000 to 65,000, that £5000 of the extra £10000 will be taken by the taxman. A £65,000 job has a lot more expectations than a £45-55k job. The extra stress and hours that will be expected isn't worth the extra £5000 which over the year is an extra £415 month.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Dude, none of your economic analysis makes any sense. I mean, you say "A £65,000 job has a lot more expectations than a £45-55k job." Welcome to reality. Yes, the amount only above the band cutoff will be taxed at a higher rate. For you, it may not be worth it. And that's fine, lots of people are cool with lower stress for less money. But obviously for a lot of people it is worth it.

All you've done is describe the tradeoffs in whether working harder is worth the extra money to you.

[SiliconSplash]

Yes it does if you understand the context. We are comparing having similar tariffs with 0% income tax to the current situation which is income tax and some Tariffs.

If the income tax didn't exist at all, I would keep all of the £65,000 and it would be totally worth working those hours. The extra £13-16k a year would allow me to pay off my current apartment in 3-5 years, not 10-15 and then I could get a lower paying job anyway and work less sooner. So the trade off IMO would be totally worth it.

[3vidence]

Here's the fun part if you are not wealthy. You would pay both anyways.

It's a rigged game, if anything they would use tariffs to cut the progressive rate not the base tax rate anyways.

[mplanchard]

~98% of the United States' natural gas imports come from Canada, as well as ~60% of our crude oil, which makes up ~10% of our natural gas demand and ~25% of our crude oil demand. In addition ~25% of our uranium imports come from Canada.

This isn't even getting into stuff like steel and aluminum, and other core manufacturing goods.

Good luck opting out of all that to avoid the tariffs.

[SiliconSplash]

The US can be energy independent and was IIRC under Trump's first term. The point of the tariff is to increase domestic production, which is entirely possible.

[mplanchard]

That doesn't account for steel, aluminum, vehicles, etc. We import $12B of aluminum alone, $51B of vehicles, etc. etc. etc.[0] The large majority of stuff we import is raw goods that you can't just avoid as a consumer.

Re: energy independence, US was not "energy independent" in that we didn't import any energy. We were (and still are) energy independent in that we produce more than we consume, much of which is exported (which makes money for US corporations). Tariffs threaten those export relationships, and it's not trivial to just ship electricity wherever it's needed. It's far easier for us in the North to get electricity from Canada than to ship it in from the desert or something.

[0]: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports/canada

[SiliconSplash]

> That doesn't account for steel, aluminum, vehicles, etc. We import $12B of aluminum alone, $51B of vehicles, etc. etc. etc.[0] The large majority of stuff we import is raw goods that you can't just avoid as a consumer.

The biggest issue I have when having these discussions is that people assume that the situation currently is what will always be. Part of rationale behind the Tariff is that you increase domestic production. Obviously it isn't going to happen over night, but the cure for high prices, is high prices as this will create the incentive for people to domestically produce.

> Re: energy independence, US was not "energy independent" in that we didn't import any energy. We were (and still are) energy independent in that we produce more than we consume

Right so you could meet the energy needs right?

> Tariffs threaten those export relationships, and it's not trivial to just ship electricity wherever it's needed. It's far easier for us in the North to get electricity from Canada than to ship it in from the desert or something.

It may not be. However the entire point is to create a incentive to solve these problems domestically.

[mplanchard]

> Right so you could meet the energy needs right?

Did you miss the part where I talked about how you can’t just magically ship electricity wherever it’s needed?

[SiliconSplash]

No I did not. It will be something that can be solved. It isn't going to be solved tomorrow, sure. But the world isn't static. If the right incentives exists, a solution will be found. The whole point of tariffs is to create the incentive in the first place.

I literally started off my previous reply by prefacing my frustrating around discussions of this type where people assume the current situation is going to stay in place as is. Sure in the short term things maybe negatively affected however in the long term there are benefits, one which is often over looked is a more robust domestic supply chain, which was a real problem back in 2020.