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Comment by gosub100 | Hacker News Reader

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Not all tax is the same. The left prefers progressive taxation (if you make more income you pay more tax), the right prefers regressive (if you buy or use goods or services you pay tax on them). Sales taxes and tariffs are in the latter category.

It’s disingenuous to consider one’s total income when weighing the fairness of a tax like sales tax. The thought that a sales tax is somehow benefiting one group over the other is ridiculous far left extreme thinking.

You pay for a service and that service has a rate. To think that the only good kind of taxation are those that are progressive is the dumbest thing I ever heard.

The taxes will have to come from somewhere. Tariffs are a regressive tax because money spent on goods will increase sublinearly with income. The % of total income spent on tariffs passed onto the consumer is therefore higher the lower your income is. It's not "ridiculous far left extreme thinking", it's basic math.

It’s very, very basic economics - the marginal utility of money decreases, so progressive taxation is better than regressive taxation.

It's basic economics in the sense that it's an oversimplified toy model. In the real world, every country I'm aware of gets a substantial amount of its tax revenue from consumption taxes, and indeed the US's lack of VAT means it's currently much more dependent on progressive income taxes than peer countries. (https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/topics/policy-sub-i...)

I responded to a comment that called progressive taxation a crazy “far left” idea - I’m not sure the second and third order details of taxation policy are really relevant here…

But ok - yes, sure, in real life it’s a mix and the mix is worth debating. Note also that consumption taxes often have exemptions/reductions to offset the most severe regressive effects.

With great power comes great responsibility. Is as simple as that.

Is true when you are a strong man, is true when you are a family father and is true when you are a rich person.

What "far left" is it that you think you are hearing here?

One impact I’ve seen is small businesses who can no longer afford the tools/supplies they need, which aren’t manufactured in the states, so they are forced to increase their prices on good they sell or go out of business.

There hasn't been a far left leader elected in US, even on a state level.

Secondly,the point of a tariff in a normal political climate is to bring manufacturing back home. This won't happen in the current administration.

And don't confuse liberals with far left.

> And don't confuse liberals with far left

That's the whole point of using that phrase. It's meant to alienate and disconnect. The phrase originated by the left to make any conservative point of view seem alien and "far" away from reality. I'm glad that it can be spread around more evenly. After all, we don't want any one thing disproportionately affecting any one group, do we?

This fails to understand both the "far left" attitude towards taxes (many forms of taxation are accepted and even eagerly pursued; frankly, very few people actually have politics that treat "tax" as a single coherent idea) and the opposition to Trump (roughly, half the country, just as with every other president in a two-party system).

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