alt Hacker News> but many on this very site would need to give up a little bit of their privilege to reduce the pain felt by many of their fellow citizens.
Agreed. However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged who are going to be affected the most. The pain is felt most by the low-skill workers you mentioned earlier.
If the solution was instead along the lines of changing tax-brackets to tax the 'privileged' more, that might have better addressed the problem you mention in the beginning.
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Yeah, isn't this just regressive taxation?
How much all the imports are realistically going to be made in the US?
By low-skilled workers do you mean the working class in general? If so it is my understanding that the overall goal is to help them at the same time as the privileged by shifting taxes at the same time as tariffs start to come down to create a re-balance of sorts in theory. Here [1] is a quick interview of Treasury Secretary Bessent by CNN Kaitlan Collins that I think covers this idea at least a little bit. I am curious to see how this plays out in practice. It's explained a little more in depth here [2] including how this was done in the past. I know videos are an unpopular medium on HN but I believe they are both worth the time to watch.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8WWvBEiFvE [video][10 mins][cnn interview]
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ts5wJ6OfzA [video][24 mins]
How can a lack of tariffs AND the presence of tariffs both hurt low skill workers. Secondly why do all of these countries have tariffs if they are so bad for the economy.
Taxing the rich is wishful thinking. They don't just give up wealth. They will simply look at it as an additional cost and hike the prices of their products up causing more inflation and that means even more trade deficit.
Nobody has faith in the governments ability to put that money to good use. The US gov uses significant amounts of its budget to fund weapon development, promote weapon sales, change unfriendly foreign governments, support friendly foreign governments, and genocide troublesome foreign populations. Who will support raising more taxes to maintain and expand such efforts?
> Agreed. However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged who are going to be affected the most.
I thought the idea was that the billionaires would buy up all the crashed stocks then suddenly the tariffs would be lifted so that they can sell them off as soon as they recover. If so, the privileged will be affected the most but only in terms of how much money they'll make while everyone else suffers in the meantime.
> However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged who are going to be affected the most. The pain is felt most by the low-skill workers you mentioned earlier.
I don't think this is necessarily true. 1 day into tariffs and things are probably the same for the low-skill workers. So far, the stockholders are the ones taking a beating. Sure, that includes some low income retirees, but for the working poor, I would bet that proportionally they consume fewer foreign made goods. They're not drinking imported booze.
Not only are the poor going to bear the brunt of these tariffs, but this has been tried multiple times before, and failed. As in, catastrophic failure.
"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it"
People should check out all the tariff insanity before and during the period of The Great Depression. That includes the justifications given.