Some Economic Ranting Regarding Trump

I try not to delve too much into politics here, but I heard this and thought it matters.

Here’s what she says in this tweet yesterday: “Trump brought up the idea” to that GOP meeting of “‘an all tariff policy’ that would lead to getting rid of the income tax, per sources in the room.” So, this. This frustrates me so deeply. Number one, because it’s just idiotic and economically illiterate, which I’ll explain in a moment. But number two, it is an example of the, I don’t want to say chasing our tails, but the knocking down of idiocy that the economic and financial media is going to have to do if the former president wins because facts matter. So, super quickly. I looked up these numbers. We generate $2.2 trillion in revenue from the income tax every single year. We import about $3.8 trillion worth of stuff into this economy every single year. So, in order to get $2.2 trillion to replace the income tax from a tariff on $3.8 trillion worth of income, you’d have to have a tariff of nearly 60% across the board, just to start, right? But what happens when you tax things? That is to say when you put tariffs on them, because tariffs aren’t taxed on imported goods that consumers pay so. When you tax things, people buy less of them, so our imports will go down, but we’ll have to still make that $2.2 trillion nut. So, our tariff rates are going to have to increase. As the tariff rates increase, the amount of stuff we’re going to buy is going to go down because when you tax stuff more, the amount of stuff you buy that is taxed goes down. And so on and so forth, until you get to a tariff rate of infinity. It’s just stupid. I can’t tell you how annoying this is to me, that we’re going to have to chase our tails on idiotic stuff like this because it’s being bandied about by a guy who, this isn’t me, this is Janet Yellen, does not understand the economy. It just. I can’t tell you how absolutely fried my brain gets when I think about this. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.

I can’t add any more to Kai Ryssdal’s rant here. In the lead up to the election this November, do your best to stay informed.