Among the "all things all at once" fantasies about Trump's tariffs is the notion that they could replace income taxes as the primary funder of the government.
I think our time would be better spent, for now, attacking the spending side of the ledger. There may be a day when we can revisit how the government is fed, but we need to suppress the appetite first. I watched a brief Mike Rowe video this morning where he claims there are 7 million able-bodied men of working age who don't participate in the workforce. How is this even possible without our government enabling it?
Agreed. The non-working thing among men goes beyond government, though. The last couple generations of men have been repeatedly told they are worthless, useless, unneeded, toxic, etc, so no surprise they're dropping out of society. Same thing's going on in the dating world.
This can partly be attributed to college at all costs? I mean working in skilled trades is largely looked down on by many people, of course unless they need a new water heater or breaker replaced. Or a cabinet built or installed.
I've been seeing for years how women expect to "date up" and since women now have the majority of college degrees, they reflexively exclude men who don't from their consideration.
I JUST (yesterday) had a large rewiring project done at my house. The initial culprit revealed more urgent work that resulted in a $16,000 total electrical project that took two full days to complete. While these guys worked, they had to turn down multiple other calls for less urgent jobs. They left the site knowing they had fixed the initial problem (resulting from lightning), mitigated multiple other safety issues and installed surge protection that would protect appliances if it ever occurs again. How satisfying that must be! White collar work (like what I do) simply cannot offer that same sense of satisfaction.
Almost all careers have pros and cons. Glad you’re back up and protected. It would be a great topic for Peter to discuss. I’ll have to admit it’s pretty nice being able to fix so many things on my own. Saves a lot of time waiting on other trades.
Little do the college grads know. Most of these type jobs pay very well. Better than most graduates could achieve in many years at the career choice for which they educated themselves. A good number of college degrees today get you a job in retail sales at the local mall.
I believe though the aversion to trades is the manual labor involved.
Ideally, replace all taxes with a Land Value Tax. Simple to define and enforce, it would be “progressive”, falling heaviest on wealthy landowners, but pro growth in that the marginal tax on both income and consumption would be zero - a win-win for both free market types and progressives. Sends the message that you make money by being productive (which passive landownership is not.
Why would anyone buy land if it were taxed - and taxed to the point of supporting the government? Land value would plummet, no one would buy, and many existing owners would go bankrupt in order to get out from under it.
Besides, if taxation is to pay for essential government services, everyone should participate
The value of land will always be a function of “location, location, location”. To crudely summarize the ideas of Henry George in a few words, your earnings from your labor or your business belong to you 100%, but your ocean front view - you didn’t build that!
Note that the Land Value Tax is not a “property tax”. Buildings, equipment and other “improvements” are not taxed, only the location value.
If you are renting an apartment, part of your rent goes to the value of your location, as opposed to the value of the building. Your landlord would essentially use the “location” part of your rent to pay the LVT.
But all taxes are market distortions, and funding the government purely from that source would be tremendously distorting. As it is, people can own the improvements but not the land itself, and the market value of land would crater. That would require the government to assess land based on its own metrics - and needs - rather than on what the free market would declare its value to be.
A playground for mischief. And, again, you'd end up with the vast majority of citizens freeloading on a minority.
To reiterate a previous discussion we had on consumption tax recently, for those who were not privy, a consumption tax would require EVERYONE who buys goods and services to pay that tax, as opposed to the income tax, where only about 47% of working Americans pay into that system for various reasons we don’t need to get into here. That said, due to issues mentioned earlier, such as tax prep and IRS essentially being no longer needed, the political interest is far from top of mind. I am a huge proponent of abolishing income tax for consumption tax for the fact that EVERYONE would pay and not just some of us suckers…
So, in summary, you admit that, economically speaking at least, consumption tax is far superior to income tax, but you don't want to deal with the political headache of educating the public and pushing for something better because you may not see it in your lifetime. This is why the Libertarian movement (and efforts like Steve Forbes or Herman Cain for a flatter simpler tax) are doomed from the start. Too many are intimidated by the political hurdles. The founding fathers didn't see many of the fruits of their work in their lifetimes either. It didn't stop them from pushing for what they considered the thing to do.
"Political headache" is a MASSIVE minimization of the difficulties in converting from income to consumption tax. Change is always incremental, and political capital is finite, and good ideas often to almost-always get corrupted by compromise.
My concern is that chasing a consumption tax, which would require a Constitutional Amendment to ensure we don't end up with BOTH income and consumption tax, is not only nigh-impossible in the current political landscape, it would soften people up to the idea of a national sales tax or VAT, and then we'd get that without repealing the income tax.
Do you jump out of a plane knowing that the odds of your chute opening are extremely low? Do you bet the mortgage money on a 10,000-1 long shot? Or do you devote your energies to convincing people to support less spending and less government power?
Jeff M noted, here or elsewhere, that the latter is far more apt to producing positive results, and I agree. I'll say it again, change is incremental and difficult. Look at DOGE - we can't even get Republicans to support minor cuts in spending. What chance is there for a Constitutional Amendment that would take the power to "soak millionaires" away from the politicians?
I love the idea of a flat tax, and I think that the consumption tax efforts would be far better used in pursuit of that, if you want to "shoot the moon."
As for the Libertarian movement... I long ago gave up on the party in favor of trying to get non-libertarians to think more about liberty in their own parties. Democrat or Republican, it doesn't matter to me. Our nation will always have a two party system, and the way to make things better is to get people in both parties thinking more about individual freedom and property rights.
But you have to start somewhere. You seem to want to be pragmatic, while stripping away the ideological motivations that can propel real change in the hearts and minds of people. Pragmatism with compromise is always where this ends up, but you've already thrown in the towel and sabotaged your own case by admitting none of your ideals are ever going to happen. That's not inspirational. That's death by committee.
You can devote your energies to a 10,000-1 long shot of a consumption-based tax system while still pushing for smaller government and less spending. In fact, that is a necessary element required to justify such a system. Government can be funded by a consumption tax, but it's going to have to be a lot more responsive and less bloated than it currently is. How do you push for such a system without laying out the ideological underpinnings for it in the popular imagination?
DOGE was always going to fall short, but that does not mean they were useless. Musk knew that nothing will happen with another blue-ribbon bipartisan commission. He needed a chainsaw, because just a scalpel will lose the public's imagination every time, and the whole thing gets buried in boilerplate review. He exposed something very valuable about congress and who and what are the true impediments to reform. He exposed the hypocrisy and doublespeak of much of the GOP has been using for decades now. Pretending to want one thing, but they've never truly had any intention to even try to implement any of it. This is a simple lack of moral clarity or even a coherent strategy of any kind. This is go-along-to-get-along mentality.
I argue core principles on this page in virtually every post I share. Those core principles are what steer us in the right direction. That I choose to argue for manageable steps instead of attempting to leap the Grand Canyon in a single bound does not mean I don't offer guidance in the direction of those steps.
I've defended and extolled DOGE many times here, and argued with those who derided it, so your last para has nothing to do with me.
This post was about the misuse of efforts and the misplacement of focus, and if you want to get into libertarian principles, a consumption tax is still immoral if any of it is used for redistributive purposes. All government should be funded by forms of user fees, and most of what government does nowadays doesn't fit the user fee model, making it illegitimate from a libertarian perspective. I've argued this point many times, as well.
So, rather than argue for a different form of coercive taking to replace the current form of coercive taking, I argued that it's a Quixotic endeavor that is more apt to produce a worse outcome than a better one. This is part of the "A-to-B" problem that too many people pay too little attention to. We can craft a better situation in our minds all day, but is it realistically achievable, and if not, aren't we better off devoting efforts to positive change that we have a chance of attaining?
well, you do argue principles on this page all the time. I didn't mean to imply you didn't. Nor do I expect you to confront it by yourself, least of all in a single blog post. But let's be real, a change in tax structure is never going to be sweeping as we'd like. That means, however immoral it will be, some of it will be devoted to redistribution. Nevertheless, a move to consumption-based would be a net-gain, would it not?
My concern, to reiterate, is that the stage will be set for *both* a consumption and an income tax, as they have in Europe. That would do incredible economic and cultural damage to America. To avoid that, a Constitutional Amendment would be required, and getting 2/3 of each house of Congress, plus 38 states, is pure fantasy IMO.
I think our time would be better spent, for now, attacking the spending side of the ledger. There may be a day when we can revisit how the government is fed, but we need to suppress the appetite first. I watched a brief Mike Rowe video this morning where he claims there are 7 million able-bodied men of working age who don't participate in the workforce. How is this even possible without our government enabling it?
Agreed. The non-working thing among men goes beyond government, though. The last couple generations of men have been repeatedly told they are worthless, useless, unneeded, toxic, etc, so no surprise they're dropping out of society. Same thing's going on in the dating world.
This can partly be attributed to college at all costs? I mean working in skilled trades is largely looked down on by many people, of course unless they need a new water heater or breaker replaced. Or a cabinet built or installed.
I've been seeing for years how women expect to "date up" and since women now have the majority of college degrees, they reflexively exclude men who don't from their consideration.
I JUST (yesterday) had a large rewiring project done at my house. The initial culprit revealed more urgent work that resulted in a $16,000 total electrical project that took two full days to complete. While these guys worked, they had to turn down multiple other calls for less urgent jobs. They left the site knowing they had fixed the initial problem (resulting from lightning), mitigated multiple other safety issues and installed surge protection that would protect appliances if it ever occurs again. How satisfying that must be! White collar work (like what I do) simply cannot offer that same sense of satisfaction.
Almost all careers have pros and cons. Glad you’re back up and protected. It would be a great topic for Peter to discuss. I’ll have to admit it’s pretty nice being able to fix so many things on my own. Saves a lot of time waiting on other trades.
I've written about the satisfaction that comes with doing and making.
https://therootsofliberty.substack.com/p/the-joy-of-making
Little do the college grads know. Most of these type jobs pay very well. Better than most graduates could achieve in many years at the career choice for which they educated themselves. A good number of college degrees today get you a job in retail sales at the local mall.
I believe though the aversion to trades is the manual labor involved.
I think I read that on a repost you did while you might have been on vacation or something. I’ll check it out. Thanks
Ideally, replace all taxes with a Land Value Tax. Simple to define and enforce, it would be “progressive”, falling heaviest on wealthy landowners, but pro growth in that the marginal tax on both income and consumption would be zero - a win-win for both free market types and progressives. Sends the message that you make money by being productive (which passive landownership is not.
Why would anyone buy land if it were taxed - and taxed to the point of supporting the government? Land value would plummet, no one would buy, and many existing owners would go bankrupt in order to get out from under it.
Besides, if taxation is to pay for essential government services, everyone should participate
.
The value of land will always be a function of “location, location, location”. To crudely summarize the ideas of Henry George in a few words, your earnings from your labor or your business belong to you 100%, but your ocean front view - you didn’t build that!
Note that the Land Value Tax is not a “property tax”. Buildings, equipment and other “improvements” are not taxed, only the location value.
If you are renting an apartment, part of your rent goes to the value of your location, as opposed to the value of the building. Your landlord would essentially use the “location” part of your rent to pay the LVT.
But all taxes are market distortions, and funding the government purely from that source would be tremendously distorting. As it is, people can own the improvements but not the land itself, and the market value of land would crater. That would require the government to assess land based on its own metrics - and needs - rather than on what the free market would declare its value to be.
A playground for mischief. And, again, you'd end up with the vast majority of citizens freeloading on a minority.
To reiterate a previous discussion we had on consumption tax recently, for those who were not privy, a consumption tax would require EVERYONE who buys goods and services to pay that tax, as opposed to the income tax, where only about 47% of working Americans pay into that system for various reasons we don’t need to get into here. That said, due to issues mentioned earlier, such as tax prep and IRS essentially being no longer needed, the political interest is far from top of mind. I am a huge proponent of abolishing income tax for consumption tax for the fact that EVERYONE would pay and not just some of us suckers…
So, in summary, you admit that, economically speaking at least, consumption tax is far superior to income tax, but you don't want to deal with the political headache of educating the public and pushing for something better because you may not see it in your lifetime. This is why the Libertarian movement (and efforts like Steve Forbes or Herman Cain for a flatter simpler tax) are doomed from the start. Too many are intimidated by the political hurdles. The founding fathers didn't see many of the fruits of their work in their lifetimes either. It didn't stop them from pushing for what they considered the thing to do.
"Political headache" is a MASSIVE minimization of the difficulties in converting from income to consumption tax. Change is always incremental, and political capital is finite, and good ideas often to almost-always get corrupted by compromise.
My concern is that chasing a consumption tax, which would require a Constitutional Amendment to ensure we don't end up with BOTH income and consumption tax, is not only nigh-impossible in the current political landscape, it would soften people up to the idea of a national sales tax or VAT, and then we'd get that without repealing the income tax.
Do you jump out of a plane knowing that the odds of your chute opening are extremely low? Do you bet the mortgage money on a 10,000-1 long shot? Or do you devote your energies to convincing people to support less spending and less government power?
Jeff M noted, here or elsewhere, that the latter is far more apt to producing positive results, and I agree. I'll say it again, change is incremental and difficult. Look at DOGE - we can't even get Republicans to support minor cuts in spending. What chance is there for a Constitutional Amendment that would take the power to "soak millionaires" away from the politicians?
I love the idea of a flat tax, and I think that the consumption tax efforts would be far better used in pursuit of that, if you want to "shoot the moon."
As for the Libertarian movement... I long ago gave up on the party in favor of trying to get non-libertarians to think more about liberty in their own parties. Democrat or Republican, it doesn't matter to me. Our nation will always have a two party system, and the way to make things better is to get people in both parties thinking more about individual freedom and property rights.
But you have to start somewhere. You seem to want to be pragmatic, while stripping away the ideological motivations that can propel real change in the hearts and minds of people. Pragmatism with compromise is always where this ends up, but you've already thrown in the towel and sabotaged your own case by admitting none of your ideals are ever going to happen. That's not inspirational. That's death by committee.
You can devote your energies to a 10,000-1 long shot of a consumption-based tax system while still pushing for smaller government and less spending. In fact, that is a necessary element required to justify such a system. Government can be funded by a consumption tax, but it's going to have to be a lot more responsive and less bloated than it currently is. How do you push for such a system without laying out the ideological underpinnings for it in the popular imagination?
DOGE was always going to fall short, but that does not mean they were useless. Musk knew that nothing will happen with another blue-ribbon bipartisan commission. He needed a chainsaw, because just a scalpel will lose the public's imagination every time, and the whole thing gets buried in boilerplate review. He exposed something very valuable about congress and who and what are the true impediments to reform. He exposed the hypocrisy and doublespeak of much of the GOP has been using for decades now. Pretending to want one thing, but they've never truly had any intention to even try to implement any of it. This is a simple lack of moral clarity or even a coherent strategy of any kind. This is go-along-to-get-along mentality.
I argue core principles on this page in virtually every post I share. Those core principles are what steer us in the right direction. That I choose to argue for manageable steps instead of attempting to leap the Grand Canyon in a single bound does not mean I don't offer guidance in the direction of those steps.
I've defended and extolled DOGE many times here, and argued with those who derided it, so your last para has nothing to do with me.
This post was about the misuse of efforts and the misplacement of focus, and if you want to get into libertarian principles, a consumption tax is still immoral if any of it is used for redistributive purposes. All government should be funded by forms of user fees, and most of what government does nowadays doesn't fit the user fee model, making it illegitimate from a libertarian perspective. I've argued this point many times, as well.
So, rather than argue for a different form of coercive taking to replace the current form of coercive taking, I argued that it's a Quixotic endeavor that is more apt to produce a worse outcome than a better one. This is part of the "A-to-B" problem that too many people pay too little attention to. We can craft a better situation in our minds all day, but is it realistically achievable, and if not, aren't we better off devoting efforts to positive change that we have a chance of attaining?
well, you do argue principles on this page all the time. I didn't mean to imply you didn't. Nor do I expect you to confront it by yourself, least of all in a single blog post. But let's be real, a change in tax structure is never going to be sweeping as we'd like. That means, however immoral it will be, some of it will be devoted to redistribution. Nevertheless, a move to consumption-based would be a net-gain, would it not?
My concern, to reiterate, is that the stage will be set for *both* a consumption and an income tax, as they have in Europe. That would do incredible economic and cultural damage to America. To avoid that, a Constitutional Amendment would be required, and getting 2/3 of each house of Congress, plus 38 states, is pure fantasy IMO.
Thanks for laying that out Peter. I've read many comments calling for the consumption tax but no one has ever spelled it out like this