All prices in any country are inflated by the income tax burden, too.
Income tax burdens are far, far higher than that of tariffs.
>> Income tax burdens are far, far higher than that of tariffs <<
Today? For sure.
Still, your statement is true not as a general proposition for all time, but rather because gov’t has grown far too large. If we tried to support today’s level of gov’t expenditure with tariffs, the economy could go into a severe depression, possibly much worse than anything of the sort that’s ever been experienced since the founding of our Republic.
So unless you can come up with a magic elixir to shrink gov’t to approximately the percentage of GNP that it was prior to World War One, we’re stuck with the income tax.
In other words, let’s get real and cut the utopian day-dreaming about financing gov’t via tariffs.
Last but least, the comments above are made without regard to the distributional and efficiency effects of excise taxes (like tariffs) versus income taxes. There’s a huge technical literature on the very problem, and this literature by no means supports your proposition that tariffs are in some way superior to income taxes. I’d love to give you instruction on the matter, which could be virtually a PhD-level curriculum in public finance, but I don’t really have the time.
Enjoy the weekend!