Tariffs are the key to happy taxpayers

 No one loves to pay their taxes, but the right wing is particularly responsive to the lure of tax cuts. For the rich, this gratifies their lust to be richer and richer and richer. The majority of tax cuts go to them. In return, they fund the election campaigns that recruit the small fry who will get a token markdown from time to time.

For the small fry, hatred of income taxes stems largely from their dislike of doing math. Underfunding education serves a key function in this. Not only does it appease the cheapskates to cut a major cost like schools, it also creates generation after generation of voters who will leap at a promise of tax cuts because they never learned how the system works.

No one likes sales taxes, either. You see a price, you go to check out, and blammo: you have to pay more. This is where tariffs are the ingenious solution to all of that.

Do away with income and sales taxes. People get to take home all of their pay. Maybe retain the deduction for Social Security and Medicare for a while... but for the most part, what you see is what you get, and the ticketed price on any item is what you pay. However, the price of any item has been jacked up by the tariff amount. It's an invisible tax. A loaf of bread might be $25. A car might cost a hundred grand. But the price is the price, and you never have to do extra math. Everything will cost a lot more. People won't really be better off financially. Probably worse, in fact, especially because tariffs and sales taxes always hit lower income people harder than they hit the rich. But it won't matter, because "other countries are paying."

Republican mouthpieces are already crowing on social media about the billions that the current regime has raked in from tariffs. As long as they can keep a significant percentage of people believing that tariffs bring in money from outside the country, and that the resulting inflation is somehow the fault of the opposing political party, they can rule over a happy populace in their "tax free" paradise.