Amazing turn of events

For a long while I believed that liberals support liberal policies because they are either unfamiliar with conservative arguments or unable to comprehend them. For example when NPR interviews the liberal economic experts, it’s very rare that they are challenged with the questions which are obvious to a person who a rather mundane knowledge of economics.

For example, a liberal economist who argues that the cuts to corporate taxes are a handout to the rich, is never confronted with an obvious fact that corporate taxes are taxes on consumers.

I always imagined that this is due to the fact that most of NPR journalists are wholly ignorant of the economic science. Imagine my surprise when I recently turned on the the radio, and was informed by a number of economic experts on the very same NPR that president Trump’s tariffs on the steel imports are nothing more than taxes on American consumers. Similar arguments were made on yahoo against the proposed tariffs on the Chinese imports. It was as if a gang of libertarian economists took control of these liberal institutions.

But in reality, these were the same people being interviewed by the same journalists, same left-wing experts writing articles bashing president Trump and conservatives.

In other words, the general liberal position on taxes can be be summarized as follows:

• American taxes on the US corporations are taxes on the wealthy. Any attempt to cut US corporate taxes is a handout to the richest 1 percent, a giveaway that neither the rich, nor the corporations need or even want to have. The positive effects to the economy of a cut to corporate taxation will be minimal, and the growth of the budget deficits will have a profound negative effect on the country.
• American taxes on Chinese corporations which import goods into the United States are taxes on the American consumers. Any attempt to raise the taxes on the Chinese corporations will make the goods more expensive to the American people and will cause highly detrimental effects the American economy and may lead to recession and larger budget deficits.

In summary: 

High taxes on US corporations: Good.

High taxes on Chinese corporations: Bad.

And yet some people are upset when it is said that liberals are anti-American.

In many cases it’s fair to say that liberals do not understand economic science. But in other cases their claims can be more easily explained by their general dislike of America. it’s not that they don’t understand conservative arguments - the issue is that they want to promote policies which have  negative effects on this country.