Trump will scrap federal income tax and abolish IRS, ally suggests

[Ol Janx Spirit]

49. I for one say this is a brilliant strategy...

...to make every American either too stupid or not paying enough attention to get really exited over the prospect of not paying any income taxes. We are a country that the overriding message of eliminating the income tax will get a ton of support--never mind the fact that the average American just gives the government their money to invest and gets it back come tax time; and will benefit more from Social Security than they put in for basically the same reason. Which raises a question: if income tax is eliminated, how exactly will Social Security be calculated? I'm going to guess that the answer is: it won't--not for anyone that hasn't paid into it after the date of the enactment. Putting that aside: tariffs are normally used as an incentive to either protect or to bring production of a certain good back to a country. But this tariff-as-a-replacement-for-income-tax idea depends on that not happening. The incentive would be to actually increase imports to pay the tariffs. The more domestic jobs produced, the less income the government gets to pay for the services all Americans demand. This perverse incentive is extremely regressive: the lower income brackets do not benefit from the job creation aspect of tariffs, but they pay more for everything--as pointed out before: effectively a national sales tax. But as I said: many--if not most--Americans will only hear, "no more income tax," and see anyone pushing back as an obstacle to their tax freedom. Sure, reality will hit back, but at what cost? I fear this is just another well-crafted message to drive a wedge between the fantasy and the reality of the American democratic experiment. And clearly the America we live in currently loves a fantasy.