News Link • Tariffs
The substitution of a tariff for the income tax would re-create free Americans
• https://paulcraigroberts.org, Paul Craig RobertsActually, there is an equally important element in his address, perhaps more important, and that is President Trump's statement that tariffs would eventually replace the system of income taxation. This is perhaps the most important sentence ever stated in a state of the union address. As far as I can tell, the only attention it received was that the Supreme Court had recently invalidated Trump's tariffs.
As I have pointed out for decades to no avail–not even libertarians have noticed–the income tax enacted in 1913 converted free Americans into serfs or slaves. The reason I can say this is that the historical definition of a free person is a person who owns his own labor. Serfs and slaves do not own their own labor. Serfs owed a portion of their labor to their feudal lord. Normally it did not exceed 30% of their labor. Slaves owed 50% of their labor to their owners, the other half of their labor going to their own maintenance as an effective and loyal workforce.
There is no way around the fact that the historical definition of a free person is a person who owns his own labor. The land enclosures freed serfs from their obligation to feudal Lords, and created a labor market in which untaxed wages were paid to laborers for their labor. Free men appeared once they owned their own labor and sold it at market wages.
The income tax that passed in 1913 did not materially enserf or enslave Americans, because the tax rate was so low and applied to such a tiny percentage of incomes that it had no material effect. That is how they got it in place. But once in place, the income tax grew quickly, both up in the tax rate and broadly in the percentage of the population subject to income taxation. By the time of the John F Kennedy administration the tax rate on middle income Americans exceeded the tax rate on the labor of medieval serfs, and the tax rate on upper incomes exceeded the tax rate on 19th century slaves on American cotton and tobacco plantations. As the Kennedy tax rate reductions were not indexed, by the time of the Reagan administration the tax rates again exceeded those on medieval serfs and 19th century slaves. The Reagan administration indexed the new tax rates, and this has held the appropriation of the labor of the middle class to that appropriated by feudal lords. For the upper income class, the official tax rate is higher than that on medieval serfs, but there are methods depending on the economic activities of the upper income class that keep the tax rates for some of them below that of medieval serfs. Regardless, the upper class does not own all of its own labor and is no more free than the lower class.
A tariff is a tax on your purchases, not on your labor. If you purchase domestic products made from domestic resources, you do not have to pay the tariff. If you purchase imported goods or domestic goods made partially from imported products, you pay a tariff based on the content of foreign input in to the product. The purpose of tariffs is to protect domestic production from foreign competition, not as Trump uses them to bludgeon foreign countries to obey his orders.





1 Comments in Response to The substitution of a tariff for the income tax would re-create free Americans
Ages ago IRS taxes were voluntary. The IRS stated this in many of their documents. It's still voluntary, even though they don't say it much any longer. The way they get you is to make it look like you volunteered through some kind of paperwork. If you sign paperwork with the IRS, you will think it means something, and the IRS will 'think' it means something else. Then they get you for contradicting yourself in the things you stated on the paperwork. So, say it in such a way that they understand. | The Contract Clause in the Constitution has been adjudicated to mean that if you sign in, you can also sign out. So, revoke your signature off all former IRS paperwork. Then stop giving them your private info regarding money. Fill our their forms with "n-a" on any lines, and sign the forms "non-assumpsit, (your sig). This means that you didn't volunteer in. Learn > https://www.youtube.com/c/CraigLynch/videos