Foolz said:

There is a much stronger correlation between tax law changes resulting in rich people getting a lot richer and our current political impasse than there is with the standard of living rising in China. It's kinda funny to me that there is a good argument to made, that all of this simply boils down to tax reform. It kinda makes sense, too, given tax has always been the basis on which agricultural socities are organised.

I think you're mixing 2 seperate topics.  I stated that current politics in the USA's main goal is to create legislation that enables big companies to become even richer and to take away as much friction as possible.  And with the blatant example that is Elon Musk I don't see how you can deny the USA to be a plutocracy

The argument about the rising standard of living in the rest of the world is a seperate thing.  A lot of voters in the USA are unhappy with current government as they saw their relative income decrease, so they voted Republican since their lives were better back then.  But no politicians can change that much as it is happening above the level of individual states.

Rising standards and international preferences have a daily impact on our lives.  I work in construction.  A year or 2 ago it was impossible to get specific types of wood, as China was buying it all for their own projects.  You could order it at highly inflated prices and no one could tell you when it would be delivered.  And while there was steel available on the market, prices of that nearly doubled as well.  Prices have decreased again now, but only because the Chinese building sector isn't doing so well at the moment.

Another example is the price of piano's.  There was a trend for a decade or so for chinese kids to learn to play piano.  There's lots of competition in China, even for kids, to be the best they can be to secure a good upbringing and a good job afterwards.  So if a few kids started playing piano, the rest had to follow.  A year or 2 ago that fad blew over, and all of a sudden piano prices globally wer plummiting because there was a lot of surplus supply.

You can alter taxes as much as you want,to protect your internal market, but that too will only increase prices.  Sure, it'll create jobs but people will moan that life became more expensive as a result.  And what good are taxes when you can't buy what you want because prices have ballooned or the product is downright  unavailable because someone else, somewhere else is buying it all?

I don't think any household earning under $100,000 colelctively shoudl be paying payroll tax.

Vote for me.

aspro said:

I don't think any household earning under $100,000 colelctively shoudl be paying payroll tax.

Vote for me.

aspro said:

I don't think any household earning under $100,000 colelctively shoudl be paying payroll tax.

Vote for me.

Ah the fatal flaw of thinking policy matters.

SupremeAC said:

I agree that taxes serve a clear purpose, of which redistribution of wealth is one.  It's just that taxes themselves have a bad rep.  Nobody likes paying them and people will always be swayed to vote on those who claim that they will reduce them.


As for taxes causing inflation, I was specifically talking about import taxes.  Which will either directly influence the price of imported goods, or will prevent goods from being imported, as they can no longer compete with the domestic goods, which couldn't compete themselves before import taxes were put in place.  Either way you slice it, the price for the consumer will rise.  Yet the installation of import taxes will be applauded as 'it creates jobs'.  The other option is to subsidize domestic goods, which is beneficial both to the job market and consumers, but costs tax money.  Or the third option: to just embrace globalisation and keep prices down.

There's a big revolution on our hands with the rise of AI.  It'll cost a lot of jobs, but it'll create many 'new' jobs as well.  How absurd would it be if corporations that embraced the use of AI would be taxed to keep AI averse companies competitive so jobs could be 'saved'.

Agreed that import taxes will cause the price of the imported goods that are targeted to rise, but it won't cause inflation.

SupremeAC said:

As for taxes causing inflation, I was specifically talking about import taxes.  

Which can be interpeted as you stating that import taxes would cause inflation. So I covered all bases.

SupremeAC said:

I didn't mention inflation.  

But on the other hand, what is inflation other than an indicator of the average rising price of a number of monitored goods?  If soy prices rise due to import taxes, that will influence the price of dairy products and meats.  If the price of steel rises, that will influence things like the automobile industry to washing machines.

All those examples are limited to specific industries, so without a further qualifier aren't inflation, even if they indicate inflation within that specific industry. Inflation versus inflation in tech, for example; and we were discussing the former.

SupremeAC said:

Sure, I mentionned it 5 or so posts deep after you brought it up.

If inflation in a number of fields isn't inflation, than what is the definition of inflation according to you?






I gave a few examples of inflation we've seen that found their origin in either import taxes being enforced, or where high demand in certain regions forced worldwide price rizes.  If the USA starts trade wars with everyone else, prices over a wide variety of sectors will increase.  I don't see how that could be called anything else than inflation.

To be on the safe side I googled around a bit and the IMF seems to agree with me on the definition of inflation and what might cause it.

If the IMF agrees with you, that's how you know you are wrong.

In any case, if the IMF refers to "inflation", it is most likely referring to inflation based on consumer price index, which is a broad measure, designed to reflect "overall" prices. If it isn't referring to CPI, then it will make a more specific statement as, for example, in its article on inflation, the "food and fuel" inflation of 2008. Hence, in practice, inflation refers to overall prices (as measured through the CPI); inflation of other sectors are specifically defined as such. Your examples were limited to specific sectors. So, as stated earlier, what you're referring to is indeed inflation, but it's not...inflation.