He's one economist from a very conservative line of thinking.

As a counter example, Thomas Piketty argues at length that taxation and wealth redistribution remain an effective way to bolster a societies resilience and lessen wealth inequality - which is still a very real issue in the world, and arguably one that the US shows can have very real negative consequences for letting it go unaddressed.

As for demand and inflating prices, yeah, domestic products may be more attractive, but the economy is huge, and much of it does not have a domestic allegory. The other issue here is the tax is on all imports, not only manufactured goods, which means raw materials - which often have to be sourced elsewhere - make manufacturing more expensive even domestically

>It doesn’t raise prices of domestic goods and actually increases demand for domestic goods.

Have you ever tried to purchase electronics in Brazil? I don't know if that increased demand for domestic goods is necessarily a good thing...

> It doesn’t raise prices of domestic goods and actually increases demand for domestic goods.

But domestic producers will surely increase their prices to match their foreign competitors’ tariffed prices.

> And so taxing the rich more doesnt actually solve that problem — it just makes politicians and their friends richer

How are those things related? Are poor people bribing politicians to increase taxes?

It’s hard to see tariffs on steel (say) not raising wider domestic prices. Any domestic industry using steel (car making, house building etc) presumably now has to pay more for its steel which feeds through to consumer prices. You might increase the number of steel worker jobs but at a hidden wider cost to the wider US economy.

And? Ask Sowell if he prefers progressive taxation and welfare or rapid spikes in tariffs sparking a global trade war.

(He actually was interviewed yesterday and he was very much not a fan of the tariffs.)

Sowell would be against tariffs, he’s a free market fundamentalist.

As usual, libertarianism is used as a justification for corporate fascism, mercantilism, taxes on the poor… basically the Republican agenda. Funny how that works.

> Thomas Sowell makes a good argument that the government does a terrible job at redistributing wealth to lift the poor, based on their track record. And so taxing the rich more doesnt actually solve that problem — it just makes politicians and their friends richer.

That is the most harebrained argument I've ever heard. If politicians are "bad at taxing rich people", maybe the solution could be electing people that actually share the average citizens perspective and attempt to do this more effectively (like Sanders or Tim Walz), instead of billionaire nepo babies that spend half their career on a golf course?

I mean if I was a billionaire, making policy for billionairs, got paid by other billionairs and had working class people still elect me, I most certainly would not try to tax rich people harder, either...

> I think it’s important to note that’s partly true. It doesn’t raise prices of domestic goods and actually increases demand for domestic goods.

Increased demand for domestic goods means increased price for those. And actually increasing domestic supply affects other sectors, too, driving up costs all over the board (=> see baumol effect)-- there is no large unemployed workforce to throw at manufacturing without driving up costs in the places that worked in, before.