Bezos right, Biden wrong on taxes
With gas prices in California up well over $6 a gallon again, inflation is even more on everyone's mind than ever.
That's shown in a Twitter duel between President Biden and Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and currently thirdrichest person in the world, at $136 billion.
“You want to bring down inflation?” the president tweeted last Friday. “Let's make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.”
Bezos retorted in a tweet, “Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection.”
On Sunday, Bezos added that the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan of last year, Biden's signature issue, had increased inflationary pressures.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates replied Monday to the Washington Post, “It doesn't require a huge leap to figure out why one of the wealthiest individuals on Earth opposes an economic agenda for the middle class that cuts some of the biggest costs families face.”
The fact is, though: Corporations don't really pay taxes; they just pass them on to consumers as higher prices, or employees as lower wages.
Hiking corporate tax rates means Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, Exxon and every other corporation would charge more for the goods sold to everyone.
Especially at a time when families are struggling with a shortage of baby formula, it's absurd to suggest making it cost more.
Biden instead should look for ways to cut costs. A good one would be to eliminate President Trump's counterproductive tariffs. Last week, the president said he's reviewing the Trump tariffs and might drop them.
That's the right choice. Tariffs are, after all, just a tax on imports with the higher costs ultimately passed along to the consumer.
Scrapping the tariffs would reduce prices paid by U.S. manufacturers for steel and aluminum, allowing them to cut prices to consumers.
Free trade would give Americans a price break we sorely need.
Biden's agenda, for the most part, however, is fundamentally inflationary rather than deflationary because the president doesn't seem to grasp how things work in the real world.