Just a post to actively notice that ... in the last month or so ... Mounds mini bars have gone from $1.25 for 5, to $1.25 for 4, at Dollar General. A 25% increase.

At Lowe's and Home Depot, buckets of drywall mud have gone from $14-ish to $21 per bucket, a 50% increase. 8x4 drywall panels (sheetrock) from about $9 per sheet to almost $14 per sheet, a 55% increase.

And so forth. I feel liberated already!!

I'm a simpleton at heart, so I guess I'm still befuddled by the snake oil logic that a promise to eliminate some income taxes in the future, somehow is better than all these added sales taxes and product shortages that we are about to see grow exponentially ... we'll see, I suppose...

A few years ago in this forum during some of these policy debates I suggested that eliminating the income tax and instituting a flat 10% sales tax on everything would be a more fair approach, as both rich and poor folk must spend money, and the amount each spends is in proportion to their wealth. But it would be a tax. So everyone here seemed to universally go nuts on me and basically argued against that idea for a variety of reasons, and from all sides of the spectrum, it seemed to me at the time.

Well, um, in my simpleton way of thinking, this new sales tax (excuse me, tariffs?) are just added fees when you buy stuff. Not before. So it has the same effect as a sales tax, except it's obscured and rolled into the cost of the product now, and not as an add-on fee you can see at the point of purchase. But the net effect is the same, pretty much pulling money out of my pocket at the point I spend money, not before.

So ... trade some future promise of income tax relief for a new taxation added right now, you know, so that the other guy who is sooo bad and mean to us gets punished. It's not a tax on people, no oh no, it's punishment for those bad actors over there, you see.

I exist below federal poverty level so I pay no income tax anyway so the net effect to me will be pretty hard felt no matter what. That'll learn 'em.

And I guess I'll have to do with 28 less dollies than, you know, than the usual 30 or so I must have or else feel unloved. Sure, I'll eat crumbs ... take one (or two) for the team ...  but wait, what is this $400 million g[r]ift I hear? Oh yeah, cake. I forgot.

But then, I'm a simpleton. I don't understand all this complicated 4-D . I don't view this as political at all and I hope you don't either. Good, because we're all in this fishbowl together, now.

Edited by - banjoy on 05/17/2025 06:07:30