No. This would not hurt poor people
actually it would. you see, poor people have
less money. this means that they are more vulnerable to things like
price increases. What do we import from China? quite a bit - basically we import Wal-Mart. Of course, poor people
shop at Wal-Mart, because that's where they can buy things cheaper, which increases their standard of living. Raise the price of Wal-Mart = lower their standard of living.
And
that's just the immediate effect.
Instantly increased prices will reduce the available capital stock of
everyone, which means that capital which is available for investment and growth will instantly
shrink, and businesses (which have spent the last 3 years belt-tightening to the bone) will begin to have to engage in
massive layoffs. and that's just our general businesses - businesses which depend upon imports from China will have to do this
immediately. As more people (and we are talking millions - again, starting with the poor people, as they are generally the ones with the least critical job skills and which businesses can therefore most easily afford to let go) are tossed from the employment rolls onto the social security net, government spending will
reexplode, necessitating
another massive expansion of borrowing or tax hikes which will
further reduce the available stock of capital which will necessitate
further firings, which will necessitate
further spending on the social safety net which will necessitate
further borrowing or taxing....
...and the whole thing becomes a death spiral until we finally reach that brutal cut-off point where we just have to start throwing millions of Americans, who are already poor, off the system, into a world in which the cost of living has dramatically spiked and they have no resources, and hope they don't starve to death.
and we're not to the worst part yet
you see, China is the largest foreign holder of our dollars and our debt. This means that whenever they want to, they can destroy the American ability to borrow and the American ability to buy. It will cost them heavily, which is why they don't. BUT, thanks to our brilliant "tax them at 50%" scheme, we have initiated a trade war - which means that they are
already staring those losses in the face
and they have nothing to lose and quite a bit to gain by destroying the US Economy.
SO, they dump their bonds and their dollars, which means the cost of borrowing for the US shoots prohibitively high
overnight even as our dollar
collapses. Social Security? Medicare? Government Functioning? Defense? Welfare? we depend on
Borrowing to keep these things running at their current pace. now, in the long term, we obviously have to bring those costs down to manageable levels, and there are many plans on how to go about doing that over
decades.... but
now - thanks to our genius tariff idea - we have to do it
immediately. Say goodbye to the federal government, because much of it is going away. Social Security and Medicare will immediately be cut roughly by one-third to one-half, Welfare will be gone, Agriculture gone, Education gone, 80% of the military gone, NASA gone, foodstamps gone, WIC gone.... you get the idea.
most people will probably survive without the programs; but many of our elderly poor will probably die.
but hey!
at least we got to give the middle ****ing finger to china, eh?!?
YEAH! stickittoem! wooh! :thumbs:
it would make big biz in this country keep it here and they would have no choice of making things people can afford. Sorry if you find my idea not good. I admit I am no expert.
sorry if i sounded like a sarcastic a-hole above, I don't mean to attack you here, just the idea that we can help ourselves by destroying large sectors of our own economy.
What do you think China is doing to us?
I think that they are sitting on our debt, shifting to short-term paper so that they can dump us with minimized pain if they need to, and taking advantage of US fiscal irresponsibility in order to set themselves up to expand their relative power in the region.
do you
really want to screw over China? Balance the budget. An America which can no longer be threatened by their ability to dump debt and dollars is an America with a much freer international hand.
