re: #259 lostlakehiker

If I pay a tax of $1000, and receive a rebate of $1000 at the end of the year, is that really a tax? Hardly. I’m in pretty much the same position I would have been if there had not been any such law.

Which is absolutely nothing like Social Security. Not sure why you’d pretend it was.

Apart from the practical difficulties of putting toll booths at every intersection, what’s the difference between paying for the wear and tear I myself inflict on the roads toll booth by toll booth, or gallon by gallon? Either way, I’m buying something of value, getting it, and paying for it.

Because a toll gate would be a tax on mileage and use, and a gasoline tax is a tax on gasoline. Not sure why this escapes you, either.

The highest tariffs are on luxuries. Diamonds, prestige watches and Italian leather hand-made shoes, that sort of thing. You don’t mean to say the poor buy mostly luxuries?

You really call that proof? Yes, there are high tariffs on luxury stuff. However, what you said was:

Tariffs are quite low on most of what they’d by

Of course, this is subjective, but do you consider 20% tariffs to be low? What about 350% tariffs?

businessinsider.com

Food? The U.S. hardly imports staples from abroad. Perhaps with regard to sugar you have a point

The US imports tons of food from abroad. What on earth are you talking about?

ers.usda.gov

We export a lot more than we import. However, we import 8.7 billion dollars worth of grain alone per year. How is that ‘hardly’?

Tobacco? We grow our own.

30% of tobacco used in US cigarettes is imported.

findarticles.com

This doesn’t count cigarettes and cigars imported whole.

Clothing? Cheap but quite functional goods made in Bangladesh, China, and other poor or newly not-quite poor places flood in and are available at Walmarts etc. at low prices. That’s not the hallmark of high tariffs.

Tarrifs on clothing range from 20-40%.

e/she has, to some extent, free health insurance. Whether one has claims in any given year is a matter of chance. The insurance is there either way.

He is receiving no benefit if he doesn’t use it. For fuck’s sake.

Can you acknowledge that much of what you said was benefits for the working poor are not, and are benefits for the children of the poor?

I don’t hate them for having more.

Why are you babbling about hating them for having more? Nobody here is talking about hatred.