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>American big box stores are full of so much junk no one actually needs. It is good for there to be a tax on it. Seems pretty paternalistic to me. Why not let
by gruez 2y ago
>American big box stores are full of so much junk no one actually needs. It is good for there to be a tax on it.
Seems pretty paternalistic to me. Why not let people decide for themselves whether they "actually need" the $5 plastic trinket from china? Do you not trust adults to make informed decisions on what they're buying?
- colingauvin 2y agoThe argument is that $5 retail price comes nowhere close to capturing the true cost of the item. If the items were priced to have all their negative externalities included, such as loss of American jobs, fair labor, slave labor, environmental damage, shipping subsidies, etc, the bill would be much more than $5 and far fewer people would rationally buy them. The free rational market has no way to price these in.
- zdragnar 2y agoWe've been using "sin taxes" for a very long time, especially on tobacco and alcohol. Nothing new there, really.
- Zamaamiro 2y agoThis is a bad comparison. Tobacco and alcohol, both of which have objective, measurable negative health outcomes supported by decades of research, versus some vague notion of "junk products" as defined by... who? And this is without even getting into the fact that the tariffs will raise the price of everything, not just these supposed "junk products."
- AngryData 2y agoAnd they have been a regressive tax on the poor since day one and not helped anybody.
- charlie90 2y agoNo I don't. The only thing consumers care about is price. They don't consider pollution, waste, labor conditions. So if the only lever you have to affect consumers is price, then you must factor in the negative factors with higher prices.
- Closi 2y agoWhy not tax the negative factors then, rather than the country of origin? i.e. If the price is supposed to be a lever for labor conditions, why just tax China heavily and not Bangladesh? Why tax more fuel-efficient European cars instead of American-Built Jeep Grand Cherokees? And if reducing plastic waste is the priority, why would Trump's day include unbanning plastic straws? Answer: It's not actually about reducing negative externalities, it's about geopolitics, otherwise it wouldn't be so negatively weighted towards a single actor.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ImJamal 2y agoDo you think people should be allowed to buy a new car that gets like 5 mpg or should we restrict environmentally unfriendly products?