Comment by nurettin
7 days ago
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.
If companies could hike up their prices and still get consumers to pay them they'd already have done it. In fact, companies are constantly increasing prices as high as they possibly can up to the point where sales suffer.
They've taken advantage of recent events to prevent customers from feeling too ripped off though. When covid happened there were legit supply chain issues but even once they let up, and there were warehouse shortages because companies had so much unsold inventory, the companies continued to artificially restrict supply and blame the pandemic for higher prices.
Egg producers were busted colluding to inflate prices far higher than normal using the excuse of "bird flu" even as the largest supplier of eggs in the nation wasn't impacted at all by it (that's less of an excuse this time around though) and "inflation" is the new boogeyman companies are using to set expectations with consumers so that they can deflect blame for overcharging them, but even that only works for so long.
Nobody is going to pay $30 for a happymeal while their wages stagnate and their real earnings decline year after year.
Taxing the rich works just fine. We know it does because we used to actually do it. They'll spend billions trying to convince you that taking taxes from them is impossible and not worth trying tho. Why wouldn't they? That tactic has worked for them for a long time. Don't fall for it.
So tariffs are fine because it's a tax on big importers?
Some tariffs are fine. These tariffs are a disaster. There are some companies that could eat the increased costs (or at least a large percentage of them) and still make a healthy amount of profit overall, but they won't. They'd rather import less and/or jack up prices until people are priced out of things they'd normally buy. Some companies are fine with turning what used to be common purchases into luxury items available only to a small number of people.
If these tariffs continue for long, it'll mean many more people needing to put up with having a lot less.
> If companies could hike up their prices and still get consumers to pay them they'd already have done it. In fact, companies are constantly increasing prices as high as they possibly can up to the point where sales suffer.
Yes they do hike prices and yes maybe it reduces demand, but you can increase prices and blame the tariffs or the taxes. There is no ill will or conspiracy here. It is justified and lawful. I'd suggest the solution is to prevent price hikes due to tax increases. But is there a way of doing that?
> the companies continued to artificially restrict supply and blame the pandemic for higher prices.
> They'll spend billions trying to convince you that taking taxes from them is impossible and not worth trying tho.
Bunch of citations needed, I'm tired of copying and pasting.