Trump's Path to Victory

"Donald Trump on Thursday brought up the idea of imposing an “all tariff policy” that would ultimately enable the U.S. to get rid of the income tax, sources in a private meeting with the Republican presidential candidate told CNBC."

And the result

 

If Trump or anyone around him has the slightest contact with reality, they will know that this single position is the key to a landslide victory for him in November.


There are two parts to this idiotic proposal: to do away with the income tax, and replacing lost Federal revenue with a massive increase on tariffs on all imported goods and materials.


For a moment, let's deal with the second.  A quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation by Robert Reich indicates that a tariff increase necessary to raise that much revenue would increase the prices of all goods sold in the United States by 60%- an almost immediate 60% raise in inflation.  Anyone who is familiar with the result of the Smoot- Hawley act will be well aware that a far smaller tariff-induced inflationary surge vastly increased the depth of the Great Depression.  A sudden 60% increase in prices today would not exacerbate, but absolutely cause a worldwide depression worse than the one of the 1930's.


Well, Trump is clearly incapable of understanding the consequences of this proposal, and neither are the tens of millions of "independents" and uneducated voters that exist in this country.  However, every single one of these ignorant people can fully embrace the delight they would feel if income taxes were eliminated.  They will just ignore the part about the 60% increase in prices, or they will have the mainstream press conveniently evade mentioning that consequence of Trump's plan. And I think that if Trump just promised over and over again between now and November to do away with income taxes, he could easily get 10,000,000 stupid, ignorant jerks to vote for him just on that issue alone, and he could win in a landslide.  That's all it might take to drive this country off a cliff into a disaster worse than the Great Depression.

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