How does the effective tax raise revenue for the government if imports drop? Sure, theoretically it may cause more tax revenue due to more production locally, but that's still not Mexico paying for the wall since tariffs like that decrease competitiveness of the products concerned. Those producers are going to look to other markets, i.e. it may be more cost efficient to sell the product locally and to other trade partners. You set a new equilibrium with tariffs.

An effective tax like you're describing, if I'm understanding it correctly, would just hurt mexican producers but not necessarily put more money in our pockets. Tariffs are taxes on the destination country, not the country of origin.

My econ is super rusty though.

You're welcome. Remember my cut... :likecat:

Is this question in reply to my post?

All the talk of Mexico paying for a wall is nothing more than bullshit to satisfy the ego of a child with small hands who happens to be president of the USA. At the end of the day, 4 years from now, he'll pull out some BS that shows how he "won" and they "lost" so some of those who voted for him will say "see, we told you so...".

/sarcasm

I couldn't tell if Joe was being sarcastic or not lol

taxes are always paid by the consumer. since we are the consumer, the american consumer will be paying for the wall.

they should invest all the war on drugs money into the wall. that would be the best use of those wasted funds.


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6-FqdEA8PQ...rugs+money.jpg

http://www.heritage.org/static/repor...76670B0850.gif


yet in the last ten years, seems like americans still spend about the same $ on illegal drugs:

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/.../v1/800x-1.png

sarcasm is the best route for this thread.

So, why not propose a legalization of all drugs? Why not?

$12B returned on law enforcement (judging from the graph)
$24B in tax revenue assuming 20% (hey why not use that magic number)

So net gain = $36B annual gains

What could go wrong???

if you legalized weed, taxed it, then moved a lot of these federal funds into building a wall, instead of waste, it would solve two birds in one wall stone.

So, $30B = $6-9B in tax revenue (to the feds) @ 50% efficiency = $3 - 4.5B/yr?

Our Congress sees that as small potatoes. Rounding errors in a spreadsheet cell.

But I agree with you. In principal.

BTY, anyone know what the actual efficiency is of our governments I.E. take in $1M > pass out $$?

Because the far-right of this country doesn't believe in rehabilitation and treating it like the health issue it is vs a criminal issue. They have to be "tough on crime," and then turn down donations from all the powerful lobbies and unions surrounding drug law enforcement. Police unions and such are going to do that because it would devastate their budgets and they'd need to bother with real crime. Murder, rape, child trafficking/abuse, etc.

Portugal's results have been very impressive.

At least we can get onto another topic... Got to head out but for reference on the subject you speak of;
https://mic.com/articles/110344/14-y...ing#.Ux6JgoC07

Or you know... spend that money on healthcare and infrastructure instead of putting it into a useless wall.

That too.

Maybe you know. Any statistics on what % of opiod use is health driven vs "shitty life" driven?

Don't know how else to put it.

Also, somewhere i bookmarked an article where a large % of OxyContin prescriptions were written by a small pharmacy in a 300-400 person town in West Virginia. So if we know 1 where it's used and 2 who's writing the prescriptions, why is it so hard to cut off the supply?

easy appeal:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...roject_hat.jpg




https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...71de824f48.png

a wall is infrastructure, and giving money to healthcare (unless it's increasing medicare) is just corporatism.

That's a good question.
If it weren't prime beer drinking time, I would give a long answer.
John Oliver actually has a pretty good segment on opioid use.
Prime offenders are regularly prosecuted, but there has been a very big push for all doctors to push pain meds because of America's "pain epidemic".
At the hospital I worked at for several years, part of the post care patient rating for the hospital is regarding how well the staff managed the patients pain.
No pain meds = poor rating in most cases.
Unfortunately, what often occurs is that, when a doctor is arrested and pain pills dry up, heroin use scyrockets.

politicians inciting riots:

Didn't know peaceful protests were called riots these days.

Re: pain pills. Florida had so many pills out at one point of time that there was a bus from Maine to go there for pills. I think the statistic our professor gave us was that there were enough pain pills going around that every man, woman, and child would have a few days worth of them!
Guardian article on it: https://www.theguardian.com/science/...roin-addiction

I think west virginia was pretty bad as well.

As Monk said, one of the reasons for this is the use of pain as a vital sign. It just doesn't make any sense. There's a difference between having your pain taken care of and being a zombie because of drugs. Tying it to physician/hospital rankings was a fucking stupid mistake.

Highways and roads are infrastructure. The wall is a waste of money. And the VA would beg to differ.

True this.

I grew up in a small town on the Gulf coast of Florida. Lots of old people, lots of crack. Well, there used to be lots of crack. Now there's lots of meth, but basically the same number of old people. Sixshooter lives about 90 minutes north of there, and can confirm that I speak the truth.

My father was a doctor, and my mother is a nurse. (Well, now she's some high-falutin' Director of Being the Corporate Overlord with a managed care company, but she *was* a nurse when I was a kid.)

There was a Pain Management clinic in town, run by a local physician by the name of Dr. Harold Hollinger. He was known within the local medical community as Happy Harry. (No idea if whoever coined this term was a fan of Firesign Theater.)

https://media.nationalpriorities.org..._pie_large.png

Or you could pull 1% of funding from the military and that'd pay for the useless wall too!


What's everyone's take on the "EPA abolishing" hype going through the media now?

The other $3 trillion is all entitlement spending. Social security, medicare, medicaid, federal pensions, etc.

"Entitlement."

This, of course, is a problem that no republican nor no democrat would dare to address.