From a fairness point of view, for non essential goods, if you paid higher prices with the tariffs you would also have paid it without the tariffs, so you weren’t really harmed by it.
Essential and non-essential are almost meaningless distinctions for most goods people use on a daily basis. I could LIVE on beans and water. Do I NEED toothpaste? Aspirin? How much am I allowed to enjoy something before it’s a non-essential good?
People paid more for something because they were forced to, and it wasn’t for any economically necessary reason, and the cause was illegal, making it tantamount to theft, and refunds to companies equivalent to receiving stolen goods.
Nitpicking the necessity of the good is a cheap excuse to do nothing, not a gotcha.
Take the total tariff income, divide it by the number of people in the country, and send out the checks.
It’s the ONLY legitimate way to handle it.
From a fairness point of view, for non essential goods, if you paid higher prices with the tariffs you would also have paid it without the tariffs, so you weren’t really harmed by it.
Essential and non-essential are almost meaningless distinctions for most goods people use on a daily basis. I could LIVE on beans and water. Do I NEED toothpaste? Aspirin? How much am I allowed to enjoy something before it’s a non-essential good?
People paid more for something because they were forced to, and it wasn’t for any economically necessary reason, and the cause was illegal, making it tantamount to theft, and refunds to companies equivalent to receiving stolen goods.
Nitpicking the necessity of the good is a cheap excuse to do nothing, not a gotcha.
That sounds fair in theory, but would not hold up as soon as the first person felt slighted and challenged those terms in court.
Let them. It’s better than “nobody will let it be fair so we won’t even try.”