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Comment by macinjosh | Hacker News Reader

Politics aside. American big box stores are full of so much junk no one actually needs. It is good for there to be a tax on it. Reducing consumption is great for the environment and our sanity.

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This seems to imply that the only thing we import from China is junk. That hasn't been the case for decades. Beyond the junk we have pretty much the entire consumer electronic market, and beyond that the equipment running the infrastructure required for many of those electronics to operate. Beyond that, we have equipment for communication and navigation networks for government and first responders, and the countless components required for their vehicles or an effective response to crisis. Then we have the vast variety of equipment required for modern farming, each piece containing countless Chinese components, even if it's an American made tractor.

There is no possible way for anyone to foresee the totality of effects from a serious trade war with China, but I can assure you, it will be far worse than a lack of junk on store shelves.

>American big box stores are full of so much junk no one actually needs. It is good for there to be a tax on it.

Seems pretty paternalistic to me. Why not let people decide for themselves whether they "actually need" the $5 plastic trinket from china? Do you not trust adults to make informed decisions on what they're buying?

The argument is that $5 retail price comes nowhere close to capturing the true cost of the item. If the items were priced to have all their negative externalities included, such as loss of American jobs, fair labor, slave labor, environmental damage, shipping subsidies, etc, the bill would be much more than $5 and far fewer people would rationally buy them.

The free rational market has no way to price these in.

We've been using "sin taxes" for a very long time, especially on tobacco and alcohol. Nothing new there, really.

This is a bad comparison.

Tobacco and alcohol, both of which have objective, measurable negative health outcomes supported by decades of research, versus some vague notion of "junk products" as defined by... who? And this is without even getting into the fact that the tariffs will raise the price of everything, not just these supposed "junk products."

And they have been a regressive tax on the poor since day one and not helped anybody.

No I don't. The only thing consumers care about is price. They don't consider pollution, waste, labor conditions.

So if the only lever you have to affect consumers is price, then you must factor in the negative factors with higher prices.

Why not tax the negative factors then, rather than the country of origin?

i.e. If the price is supposed to be a lever for labor conditions, why just tax China heavily and not Bangladesh?

Why tax more fuel-efficient European cars instead of American-Built Jeep Grand Cherokees?

And if reducing plastic waste is the priority, why would Trump's day include unbanning plastic straws?

Answer: It's not actually about reducing negative externalities, it's about geopolitics, otherwise it wouldn't be so negatively weighted towards a single actor.

Do you think people should be allowed to buy a new car that gets like 5 mpg or should we restrict environmentally unfriendly products?

In theory we already penalize 5mpg cars with gas guzzler taxes, CAFE penalties and gas taxes. I think CAFE should be reworked to not penalize smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles i.e. no more light-duty truck bs.

Yes, but the person I was responding to was against taxes?

I'm reminded of all those pictures of Soviet leaders who were used to empty stores wandering into an ordinary US supermarket and having their minds blown by the abundance. Every now and again an American tries to suggest that actually the empty supermarkets are better.

We don't produce products on someone needing it, but someone buying it. If there are these products then people buy them and seemingly want them.

The US does not tax trash, it taxes the origin of products. That applies regardless of if it's good or bad.

Nothing says free-market small-government conservatism quite like telling people what they do and don't need!

Consumption can have bad effects on health and the environment. But those effects are from particular kinds of consumption.

For example, buying solar panels is probably good for the environment and public health. On the other hand, buying sugary sodas is probably not so good for your health and maybe has some minor negative environmental impact. Most things are more complicated; running shoes might be good for your health and bad for the environment.

The tarrifs are just a blanket tax on all consumption, so I imagine the effects will be a wash. We’re getting rid of the good and bad.

thank you for stating what - based on the comments that have not been killed in this thread - very few here want to hear.

In defense of those who may sincerely disagree, they may frequent higher quality retail than the bulk of U.S. shoppers.

You do you think ordered the junk? Do you think all the junk is Chinese, because that's all they know how to make, or because the US business who ordered it wanted it to be as cheap as possible?

I don't as such disagree with you that the junk needs to go, but there's also a big difference between a $2000 Lenovo laptop, made in China, and a $0.50 gadget, sold for $10, also made in China. You'd need to disincentivize companies from sell these products to consumers, then the flow of Chinese junk will stop.

This is plain bad economic policy disguised as a moral crusade against hyper consumption.

If this administration cared at all about the environment, they wouldn't be opening up public land for oil drilling or firing hundreds of scientists working on climate reports as mandated by Congress [1].

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-climate-assessment-rep...

Is everything in the store junk? This is ultimately a non-sequitur -- the tariffs are not targeting junk, and not everything made in China is junk. Prices across the board will go up, a tax on everything.

It's funny that the same party that likes to warn of "you will own nothing and be happy" is now defending economic policy that will decrease material wealth, but it's ok because it is "good for you" to practice having less.

Why then is this only applied to "junk" from overseas?

I somewhat agree with you. But let's consider a normal supermarket (in almost any country in the world) 80% of the aisles are full of junk and literal poison: Sugared cereal, soda, low quality beer, hyper-processed snacks and cookies, frozen slop food, etc.

Then furthest in the back you have the fresh produce: Eggs, vegetables, meat and chicken, fish sometimes, dairy and bread. The good stuff.

Now look down the shopping carts of your fellow shoppers: Filled to the brim with big boxes of the most unhealthy sewage on offer. They are subsidizing your shopping for quality ingredients from near and far.

I think it's the same with other stores. The low quality junk that appeals to the average shopper is subsidizing the quality niche item that you need to buy.

> Eggs, vegetables, meat and chicken, fish sometimes, dairy and bread.

Thank you. I didn't realize until now that some cultures/regions distinguish between meat and chicken. Had to turn 41 for learning this.

There’s meat, game, and chicken.

> Politics aside. American big box stores are full of so much junk no one actually needs

How dare you question the free hand of the market!

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