I thought ProGlibs loved higher taxes.

A little thing I heard, decades ago "don't tax you, don't tax me, let's tax the man behind the tree", ie, everyone wants to tax someone else, for their own benefit.

Tariffs can be viewed as a form of consumption tax like a VAT.

I don't have a problem with tariffs, as a means to remove the incentive for production to be offshored, to exploit dramatically cheaper labor. High tariffs have been imposed on some goods that there is little or no domestic industry to "protect", so are only a means to take more money away from people. Trump has recently backed off of some of those tariffs.

From time to time, I have proposed a VAT, to fund a national health program. That way, people aren't dependent on a "job" to provide insurance they can afford. I have also suggested a mechanism like a VAT to fund an old age pension, to, again, separate old age pensions from the "good will" of an employer. If Social Security was funded by a means linked to GDP, which generally grows, instead of a shrinking number of working people, relative to retirees, we might not have so much hysteria about SS and Medicare going broke.

The US real GDP grew by approximately 134.5% from 1990 to 2023, increasing from about $9.37 trillion to $22 trillion in 2012 chained dollars. The nominal GDP in 2023 was around $27.36 trillion

The U.S. retiree population (age 65 and over) grew by approximately 84%% from 1990 to 2023, from about 32-33 million to 59 million. This growth was driven largely by the aging of the Baby Boomer generation

Steve...old phart