You might be right. I can only report from my experience. I can't say I saw people being not nice to women because of their gender. But you don't see many things when you're a tourist.
US border is asking questions about your opinion of Trump. No other country does that, even if going out of your way to bad mouth their leadership won't be appreciated.
The answer "it's none of my business, you guys elected him." resulted in being turned away from the border.
My country is vast. My country is huge. My country is beautiful and welcoming too. My country won’t jail you because of your thoughts. My country is Canada 🇨🇦 and we have amazing vacationing spots.
And people should go there ASAP, as pretty soon they'll probably have to worry about some Belarus-style shenanigans happening as their flight transits US airspace.
I think you can actually get sent to jail in Canada for a telling a bad joke, but I could be wrong and that’s not at all the point.
You’re right, Canada’s vastness and diversity of the people and places is a true blessing.
Mike Ward, a Quebec comedian, was ordered to pay a fine of $42,000 for jokes about Jeremy Gabriel, a disabled singer, after a human rights tribunal ruling. Ward appealed and eventually won his case in the Supreme Court, which ruled that his jokes did not breach Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Despite the financial penalties, Ward was not imprisoned.
If it's only a joke possibly none. If it is slander quite a few, but listing the nuances of the decades of weighting freedom of speach (and press) against the freedom of privacy and human dignity is way too much for a comment
Don't know why but the last few years when someone says they have the best anything I get super sceptical and start disliking this person for no further reason. Nothing personal I guess.
I have seen most of it and i know you're not meaning to sound like Trump but I can't help to hear his voice in my head as soon as I see 'we have the best ...'
If I were the all-mighty orange dude, I would put a 146% tax on every single tourist that is refusing to come spend their money in the USA! They're nothing but traitors! They should pay! And maybe I would invade their country, to show the world who's the boss.
"People not coming to the US on vacation will be labelled as foreign terrorists. They're doing great harm to a tremendous American industry." - Trump, probably
Quite literally, as this is going on, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida is trying to convince everyone in the state that it would be a really good idea to just... massively reduce, if not entirely get rid of property taxes.... and base government revenue off of higher sales taxes... on tourists.
Florida is ... almost certainly the US state with the highest proportion of its economy/tax revenue ... tied to tourism.
I struggle to comprehend this level of stupidity, to the point that I am more inclined to believe DeSantis is just trying to make himself king of a rapidly economically declining and literally sinking fiefdom.
Agriculture and fishing? scared all the immigrants away.
Tourism? tanking.
Property values? also tanking.
Property insurance? fleeing the state, no more mortgages.
Uh uh what do what do?
Tax break!
If Dems get the epithet 'tax and spend', Reps get the epithet 'Slash and burn'.
Honestly, if Florida wants to economically strangle themselves, I’m not going to stand in the way of them having the day they voted for. They’re literally (traditional definition) putting children to work now, because they scared most of the migrant workforce away by being super racist.
They have enough selfish boomers to pull it off. Strike while the iron is hot! Don't let your dreams be dreams Florida! Can't insure the property anyway, why tax something temporary?
He might honestly be too stupid to believe it is a real problem.
He openly trolled Canadians not long ago by showing that Canadian travel numbers were up in 2024. “Nice boycott” he laughed.
Of course, the numbers in 2024 show what he has to lose, not what he is going to get. 2025 numbers are not going to look as good (and certainly do not already).
Except this time the strategy is so fucking bad that it may very well bankrupt the state and just destroy its whole economy, which will ultimately lead to massive losses for many of the rich folks as well.
I agree this is stupid but I haven't seen any figures on internal tourism, which would also be taxed. They have theme parks and nature, Miami and a lot of grandparents living there, so might still be a lot of tourism from other states going on now. Although as Americans get pooreer the percentage of people that can afford is getting smaller.
I didn't go into in the main post but yeah, US domestic air travel is down as well, which is a pretty good indicator domestic tourism is also down.
... Also, they want to just generally raise the sales tax, with the idea that this will mostly tax tourists.
But... theres no actual ... mechanism, to differentiate between a local resident sales tax and an out of state or international tourist sales tax.
... So what they want to do is bail out the already wealthier property owners, on the backs of the already poor non property owners, who pay much more of their income toward sales taxes than to property taxes.
It is literally rob the poor to prop up the idiot home and condo owners and corporations with mortgages they can't afford because they thought the housing bubble would never pop.
There are people who say that a high sales tax benefits the poor because rich people buy more stuff but there is also people who say that high sales tax benefit the rich because they have relatively more money 'left over' to buy more stuff. I don't know what would be more fair when it comes to sales tax, but lowering property tax is definitely only beneficial for the people who have enough money 'left over' to own property in the first place. But Florida is ruled by republicans and they say they are there for the working class but their legislation has proven otherwise many times before.
It's to do with the proportion of one's income that goes into purchases and the proportion of one's income that goes into savings (which generally ends up as investments):
Poor, working class and lower middle class people's income after paying rent or mortgage goes 100% into purchases, so a sales tax hits 100% of their income (after rent/mortgage). These people generally have no savings or just about enough to face a small unexpected event such as a fridge or washing machine breaking.
For the rest of the middle class, the proportion of their income that goes into purchases gets lower and lower the higher their income gets and, of course, what's left goes into savings, the last part not being taxed via sales tax (plus when it does end up getting spent, it often ends up in things like Property which is not taxed by sales tax).
The rich will easily save 90% or more of their income, plus they can make sure their purchases happen where the sales tax won't hit them (say, they'll buy their yachts in places with no sales tax), so only a small proportion of their income is hit by a sales tax.
Absolutely, the more income people have the more they spend, but spending doesn't grow at the same rate as income and beyond a certain point people just naturally end up earning so much that they don't spend it all or even most of it.
In percentage terms, the poor and working class are the worst hit by sales taxes because, after paying rent and mortgage 100% of their income ends spent purchasing essential goods hence hit by sales tax, whilst the rich are the least hit by sales tax because their income is so vast that they spend only a tiny amount of it on things covered by sales tax.
Whilst in absolute, dollar terms it's not the poor that pay the most in sales tax per person, they're hit the hardest because sales taxes hits all of their income (after rent/mortgage) hence hurts them more, plus that income was already not sufficient to live well enough the first place and sales tax just makes it worse.
Thanks, this makes it clear for me. I think the tax burden shouldn't be spread thinking about who pays the most in the absolute sense but according to how much the tax burden weighs them down. Not being able to save money for a rainy day is definitely a sign the tax burden is too high. I imagine there is plenty of research of what is fair and what is not, also on what is wise policy and what is foolish. But it's so easy to spin these theories to make them seem like something they're not. Paying less taxes is so attractive, people might vote for something that actually hurts them because they're (intentionally) confused about how a certain tax affects them.
What that means is a poor person loses way more of their own income to a sales tax then a rich person loses.
::: spoiler Example:
Poor person has 20k a year, spends 300 (before taxes) a month in groceries, thats 3600 a year.
Say the sales tax is 10%. Ok, that is 360/20000.
1.8% of a poor person's income goes to just tax on groceries a year.
Ok, now someone who makes 80k spends the same amount on groceries.
360/80000 = 0.45% of their income goes toward grocery sales taxes.
Thus the tax burden of a sales tax hits poorer people harder than richer people.
:::
A progressive tax, like most income taxes... well the taxed amount increases as your income increases, so this is basically reversed: a richer person is taxed more in absolute terms than a poor person.
...
A high sales tax does not stimulate rich people to buy more.
All it does is mean poor people buy much less, and rich people buy slightly less, thus shifting the demographic of people buying things.
Whoever told told you that a high sales tax... stimulates rich spending... is economically illiterate, as in, they'd flunk an AP Micro course or a first year of a 4 year degree... that is absolute nonsense.
All it does is filter out the poors, who now have a dramtically tighter budget than the rich, and make it seem like only rich people are coming into your store... because poor people stopped coming in.
::: spoiler Could a Sales Tax be Progressive?
Theoretically, you could have a progressive sales tax... but that would realistically require all POS sales sytems to also pull your income when you swipe a debit or credit card.
Its not totally impossible to do this, but it would be quite complicated to implement, you'd have privacy issues, data security issues, smaller business owners would have to foot a disproportionate cost as compared to large businesses to upgrade their systems... how do you handle cash transactions, id verification, etc.
To my knowledge, no such system has ever been implemented in the US... or possibly anywhere, at a large scale.
:::
::: spoiler Bonus! Property Taxes:
Property taxes vary much more locally and regionally, with many more possible complicating factors.
Basically, some government system or process estimates the value of your home as if you tried to sell it on the market, that year.
Then taxes are applied to that estimated value.
But... lots of governments do the value estimation part in ways that are both absurdly complicated and often quite out of step with actual the actual market, and there are often complex rules determining what triggers a new valuation or when it occurs.
Usually property taxes themselves, once your property value is assesed, are a flat rate based on the assesed value.
So... that too is a regressive tax, that effectively punishes less wealthy property owners more than wealthier property owners...
But there are so manh caveats and complications to any given city or county or state's local property tax laws that it can vary quite significantly.
“I want Canadian tourists and Brazilian tourists subsidizing the state and making it so Florida residents pay less taxes,” DeSantis said. “I don’t want to give Canadians a tax cut.”
He doesn't mention how. There is already a "foreigner premium" land transfer tax in FL. That has always been a non-starter for me to consider property there. Recent evil, would require free gold card as an incentive for me to go to US.
Also, municipal bonds are tanking even harder than US bonds. Cuts to federal education, and then now state tax cuts to education is going to download budgets to cities with high replication of functions. ie. education bureaucracy is getting bigger even if Fed cuts.
I don't blame any non-American for staying out of the insanity soup going on here.
Even as a middle age, "white privilege" guy, I'm concerned about traveling outside the U.S. and coming back through immigration. I'm liberal, protester, and strongly anti-Maga on the socials.
i’m currently in the US supporting a queer minority group with services to provide access to an event to a global audience… i’ve done it every year, and this year i’m here only because i’d promised and it seems awful to that group to walk away
next year is going to be really hard: my presence here adds value to the economy and in some small way takes away from the boycott, helps to reinforce american centrism and gives advantage to US citizens (they can attend far easier, etc), not to mention im literally taking a risk that i could be detained for weeks and then banned from coming back
… but on the other hand, if i don’t come am i abandoning the community? am i abandoning a vulnerable group that needs support, and to be shown they’re not alone now more than ever? that globally, queer is normal, fine, valued - that they’re wanted and what’s happening is not normal
i hate that im having to make these choices, and i hate that i feel bad even for feeling conflicted when im not even living through it
IMO: you are tremendously more vulnerable than I am.
If you can leave the U.S. into a stable "home base", you absolutely should.
From there you can try to use any open source Social groups to continue protesting against Trump.
Protect yourself above all else. Unless you've reached a point in your own "circle of life" that you're willing to die for the insanity of America's shit storm.
I'm at the age and experience I'm willing to die in defense of kind humanity vs. whatever the fuck is imploding in the U.S.
Those charts are soon going to look a lot worse. I know of many people who had already paid for their vacation before the tariffs were announced, so they went anyway. New bookings for flights from Canada to the U.S. are down over 70%.
Yeah I think so too.
People have always talked about a long weekend in New York or a cruise from Miami.
Now it's just dead. No mention of the US at all, other than the blithering baboon.
Would not want to be a trans atlantic airliner this sunmer
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if you are trans-atlantic, their DEI policy mistakes this for something LGBT-related and you face automatic detention.
For sure family summer holidays are the sort of thing most people would be planning round about now. The lines at Disney World are going to be shorter this year…
I heard something about you can go to EU and Australia for 180 days visa free with a us passport (might not be true, i don't know) so if you have enough money / a job you can do as a digital nomad you could technically move back and forth and you'd still live in a western country. Although I you could afford that I guess you can buy some kind of golden visa somewhere and just migrate there.
Yeah I haven't even seen enough amazing places in my own country let along mainland where there's actual history,good unprocessed food,sun,cycling adventures,cheese rolling down hills... Why would I need to go to Stroad Walmart
I wonder how low it will go. I was tentively planning a holiday trip to New York and another to a conference in Chicago. Both of which are totally off the cards having seen the horror stories of people having their phones searched, refused entry and even being detained for extended periods without justification.
Instead, I think I'm going to finally make a long wished trip to Canada.
I do feel sorry for those working in the US tourism and hospitality industry. It's hardly well paid work and often filled by new migrants and the young / students. It won't start recovering until the craziness of ICE abates but it's the sort of damage that is fast to take place and takes a long time to heal once it's reversed - and a reversal isn't even on the cards for the foreseeable future.
I don't blame anyone, there is no need to personally see the circus that is our country currently. Watch the circus from stands unless you want to be a part of it.
I'm an American who has traveled to Europe a few times since Trump. I talked with a few Europeans about our president and all but one were not shy about disliking Trump. The only exception was a polish man who honestly seemed like not the greatest guy. MRA type from my interactions with him. Trump is more unhinged than ever so I wouldn't travel here. I absolutely think about the politics of a place and how it could contribute to things going wrong when I travel abroad, so I get it
Thank you! As confusing and scary as it is for us in the rest of the world, it must be positively terrifying for someone who's not a hardcore MAGA to see this happening to your country.
And with the rise of the far right, following much of the same playbook in many of our countries, this is unfortunately less about Trump being personally unhinged and more about all of us trying to rediscover why our grandfather fought to defend our democracy, before it's too late.
I appreciate your empathy and recognition of what is happening. It definitely is not okay. It is very scary that people are still taking a look at an end goal and then allowing the means to be okay no matter what :'(
You're right about this:
more about all of us trying to rediscover why our grandfather fought to defend our democracy, before it’s too late.
My grandfather just died a couple of years ago at age 100. He fought the fucking Nazis -- lost teeth and most of his hearing in the war, and he was very lucky (as am I, to consequently exist). I never asked if or how many of them he killed, but I have to hope and imagine it was at least a few.
I wish we could all agree that power grabs and scapegoating minorities are never okay, and get back to yelling about what healthcare we should have. It was bad enough when one side was saying anything but the current US healthcare system is socialism and evil, but now we have people in Congress who routinely lie and spout bullshit conspiracy theories to push their agendas. The fact that in our presidential campaign, people let it fucking fly that Vance and Trump both lied their asses off, knowingly, about Haitians eating dogs and how that's a threat to everyone, is horrific news.
I was in a train lately and there was this really loud American tourist going on about why Trump was amazing. Everytime the train stopped the person he was talking to coincedently had to exit the train, he continued his 'conversation' with the next person near him like a drunk in a bar looking for some company I guess. Let me mention I know there are plenty of Americans who don't think or act this way, before people reply about this. What I want to point out people here would openly talk about politics to strangers, but much they're much less willing to get in to an argument with a stranger that has opposing political views whether that stranger is a tourist or not. Just saying because this because it's easier then ever to start believing the world agrees with you. There are a lot of people in Europe who liked trump before he started to make enemies with his allies.
Yeah, as you probably know that was a rare person. Firstly, trump support was just high enough to win elections in this fucked system. Then most trumpers would barely engage much even if you asked. Further still, they're not usually the travelling type. Sorry you had the misfortune of suffering through that dullard. Most people oppose him here. Voter suppression and the electoral college are the only reason those fucks can win
Thanks. We've been through worse, just not in my lifetime. I feel bad for the effects America has on the rest of the world. IMO the US should be a group of smaller countries. But then we've still got China and Russia, so I dunno. I just wish people all over didn't let so many assholes be in charge - but that's always been a problem.
Mexico has some of the most beautiful beaches on both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, but their cannabis is awful. Canada on the other hand....
Soon Trump will issue an executive order making it illegal not to visit the US. Everyone in the world not visiting the US because of boycott will be sent to a Salvadoran gulag.
Good, who would want to visit Nazi Germany. Trump's admin has basically labeled anyone, not a Trumper, an enemy of the state, or is trying to label them as such.
I wanted to visit before the collapse, but it didn't work out for multiple reasons.
Now I'm doubly sad that I didn't go. Because if I would indeed decide to go now, it would be a coin toss if a random typo in some papers would land me in a gulag
Canadian actress Jasmine Mooney tells CBC News about her 11-day ordeal in ICE detention after trying to enter the U.S. to renew her work visa. Mooney describes what she saw as ‘disgusting,’ saying of her detention cell: ‘That place breaks you.’
And yet she says in the video she still loves America!?!? How can you love a country that tortured you? Even when you did nothing wrong!
It boggles most of us too. Even the most conservative people in my circles are taking up anti American purchasing practices, uniting under the maple leaf. Even the most conservative people in my circles are looking to te liberal party as the only sane option (which is an entirely different conversation but the point is PP scares them)
If they do come they should go to a blue state and any companies taking advantage of cheap offices in places like texas and such should move them over to a blue state as well.
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If you enjoy the risk of getting suddenly jailed NK or Iran are way better.
Iran has better food anyway.
People are also extremely welcoming. It's almost too much :)
As long as you're male. And white. Iran is still a deeply racist society.
You might be right. I can only report from my experience. I can't say I saw people being not nice to women because of their gender. But you don't see many things when you're a tourist.
I can only the report the experience of iranian friends and my partner.
So, the similarities go on!
Yep
Yeah, I have a fair few female Iranian friends and their parents got them out of Iran ASAP.
You just made me realize there's less chance to get imprisioned as a tourist in NK than in USA right now xD
US border is asking questions about your opinion of Trump. No other country does that, even if going out of your way to bad mouth their leadership won't be appreciated.
The answer "it's none of my business, you guys elected him." resulted in being turned away from the border.
they will just expel foreigners for that,
This for real? Any sources on this?
Lemmy anecdote. few if any confirmations in https://www.reddit.com/r/uscanadaborder/comments/1jrmy12/have_you_been_asked_do_you_like_trump_by_a_us/
there is this anecdote: https://www.reddit.com/r/50501Canada/comments/1jptyt2/problems_crossing_into_the_us/
I don't know for sure, but media not reporting/picking up doesn't mean anything.
I won't set foot on US soil again as long as Trump or any other conservative is running this country.
It's not even just about how you get shafted at the border nowadays. I simply don't want to visit a country that is ruled by misanthropic fascists.
And I think that many people will probably feel the same way.
Yep. For the same reason I wouldn't visit Russia, Turkey, and the likes.
Even though I'd really like to aside from the regimes.
Russia is full of cool architecture and art.
But fuck the current (last 25 years) regime with a rusty crowbar. I’m not stepping a single foot in there.
My country is vast. My country is huge. My country is beautiful and welcoming too. My country won’t jail you because of your thoughts. My country is Canada 🇨🇦 and we have amazing vacationing spots.
Plus, mention you came instead of going to the US and get treated like royalty.
And people should go there ASAP, as pretty soon they'll probably have to worry about some Belarus-style shenanigans happening as their flight transits US airspace.
It is however extremely expensive.
Extremely expensive? Not a chance.
https://www.budgetyourtrip.com/countrylist.php
Canada is one of the cheapest developed countries to visit.
as long as you don't support Palestine lmao
Your country encourages people to kill themselves over minor treatable diseases they can't pay for.
Is the Guardian reputable enough? Because it is true that poverty is a terminal illness, but society is the cause of it!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/11/canada-cases-right-to-die-laws
I would qualify under this stupid shit
I think you can actually get sent to jail in Canada for a telling a bad joke, but I could be wrong and that’s not at all the point. You’re right, Canada’s vastness and diversity of the people and places is a true blessing.
Mike Ward, a Quebec comedian, was ordered to pay a fine of $42,000 for jokes about Jeremy Gabriel, a disabled singer, after a human rights tribunal ruling. Ward appealed and eventually won his case in the Supreme Court, which ruled that his jokes did not breach Quebec’s Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Despite the financial penalties, Ward was not imprisoned.
Ok, not jail.
Well one's freedom ends when it infringes on another's
What freedoms are infringed by joke telling?
If it's only a joke possibly none. If it is slander quite a few, but listing the nuances of the decades of weighting freedom of speach (and press) against the freedom of privacy and human dignity is way too much for a comment
We have the best jokes in Canada. Tell a bad joke? Straight to jail. Tell a joke that's too good? Believe it or not, also jail
Don't know why but the last few years when someone says they have the best anything I get super sceptical and start disliking this person for no further reason. Nothing personal I guess.
I take it you haven't seen Parks and Recreation
I have seen most of it and i know you're not meaning to sound like Trump but I can't help to hear his voice in my head as soon as I see 'we have the best ...'
The quote is someone from a dictatorship, so it kind of is meaning to sound like Trump, or rather like the general type of shitbag that Trump is.
Right away.
Europe is used to that, and it is same jokes. Zionism forever!
All those ungrateful tourists that can't stand the idea of getting mistakenly deported into a High Security Salvadoran prison and then being left to rot there because 'yeah, it's kinda annoying but we can't get him back, you know'.
If I were the all-mighty orange dude, I would put a 146% tax on every single tourist that is refusing to come spend their money in the USA! They're nothing but traitors! They should pay! And maybe I would invade their country, to show the world who's the boss.
That whole "throwing people in jail for weeks for thought crime" thing isn't as inviting as Trump thinks, apparently.
Straight from Musk's playbook of business success.
"I've let all the Nazis back on Xitter. Wait! Advertisers! Where are you going?!??"
How long until they start suing tourists for not going to the US?
"People not coming to the US on vacation will be labelled as foreign terrorists. They're doing great harm to a tremendous American industry." - Trump, probably
no shit, dont want to have some border police going through my phone and putting me on detention only to deport me back later
If you're lucky you'll be deported back to your own country.
I don't blame a single person for not wanting to tour the US ATM.
Quite literally, as this is going on, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida is trying to convince everyone in the state that it would be a really good idea to just... massively reduce, if not entirely get rid of property taxes.... and base government revenue off of higher sales taxes... on tourists.
https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2025/04/01/ron-desantis-sales-property-tax-relief-florida-homeowners-plan/82753401007/
Florida is ... almost certainly the US state with the highest proportion of its economy/tax revenue ... tied to tourism.
I struggle to comprehend this level of stupidity, to the point that I am more inclined to believe DeSantis is just trying to make himself king of a rapidly economically declining and literally sinking fiefdom.
Agriculture and fishing? scared all the immigrants away.
Tourism? tanking.
Property values? also tanking.
Property insurance? fleeing the state, no more mortgages.
Uh uh what do what do?
Tax break!
If Dems get the epithet 'tax and spend', Reps get the epithet 'Slash and burn'.
What a fucking moron.
Honestly, if Florida wants to economically strangle themselves, I’m not going to stand in the way of them having the day they voted for. They’re literally (traditional definition) putting children to work now, because they scared most of the migrant workforce away by being super racist.
They have enough selfish boomers to pull it off. Strike while the iron is hot! Don't let your dreams be dreams Florida! Can't insure the property anyway, why tax something temporary?
He might honestly be too stupid to believe it is a real problem.
He openly trolled Canadians not long ago by showing that Canadian travel numbers were up in 2024. “Nice boycott” he laughed.
Of course, the numbers in 2024 show what he has to lose, not what he is going to get. 2025 numbers are not going to look as good (and certainly do not already).
that's because he cratered the housing market and made it the most expensive place to insure your house
Yep.
Concentrate wealth accumulation upward, socializes lossss downward.
Except this time the strategy is so fucking bad that it may very well bankrupt the state and just destroy its whole economy, which will ultimately lead to massive losses for many of the rich folks as well.
I agree this is stupid but I haven't seen any figures on internal tourism, which would also be taxed. They have theme parks and nature, Miami and a lot of grandparents living there, so might still be a lot of tourism from other states going on now. Although as Americans get pooreer the percentage of people that can afford is getting smaller.
I didn't go into in the main post but yeah, US domestic air travel is down as well, which is a pretty good indicator domestic tourism is also down.
... Also, they want to just generally raise the sales tax, with the idea that this will mostly tax tourists.
But... theres no actual ... mechanism, to differentiate between a local resident sales tax and an out of state or international tourist sales tax.
... So what they want to do is bail out the already wealthier property owners, on the backs of the already poor non property owners, who pay much more of their income toward sales taxes than to property taxes.
It is literally rob the poor to prop up the idiot home and condo owners and corporations with mortgages they can't afford because they thought the housing bubble would never pop.
There are people who say that a high sales tax benefits the poor because rich people buy more stuff but there is also people who say that high sales tax benefit the rich because they have relatively more money 'left over' to buy more stuff. I don't know what would be more fair when it comes to sales tax, but lowering property tax is definitely only beneficial for the people who have enough money 'left over' to own property in the first place. But Florida is ruled by republicans and they say they are there for the working class but their legislation has proven otherwise many times before.
It's to do with the proportion of one's income that goes into purchases and the proportion of one's income that goes into savings (which generally ends up as investments):
Absolutely, the more income people have the more they spend, but spending doesn't grow at the same rate as income and beyond a certain point people just naturally end up earning so much that they don't spend it all or even most of it.
In percentage terms, the poor and working class are the worst hit by sales taxes because, after paying rent and mortgage 100% of their income ends spent purchasing essential goods hence hit by sales tax, whilst the rich are the least hit by sales tax because their income is so vast that they spend only a tiny amount of it on things covered by sales tax.
Whilst in absolute, dollar terms it's not the poor that pay the most in sales tax per person, they're hit the hardest because sales taxes hits all of their income (after rent/mortgage) hence hurts them more, plus that income was already not sufficient to live well enough the first place and sales tax just makes it worse.
Thanks, this makes it clear for me. I think the tax burden shouldn't be spread thinking about who pays the most in the absolute sense but according to how much the tax burden weighs them down. Not being able to save money for a rainy day is definitely a sign the tax burden is too high. I imagine there is plenty of research of what is fair and what is not, also on what is wise policy and what is foolish. But it's so easy to spin these theories to make them seem like something they're not. Paying less taxes is so attractive, people might vote for something that actually hurts them because they're (intentionally) confused about how a certain tax affects them.
A sales tax is 100% a regressive tax.
What that means is a poor person loses way more of their own income to a sales tax then a rich person loses.
::: spoiler Example:
Poor person has 20k a year, spends 300 (before taxes) a month in groceries, thats 3600 a year.
Say the sales tax is 10%. Ok, that is 360/20000.
1.8% of a poor person's income goes to just tax on groceries a year.
Ok, now someone who makes 80k spends the same amount on groceries.
360/80000 = 0.45% of their income goes toward grocery sales taxes.
Thus the tax burden of a sales tax hits poorer people harder than richer people.
:::
A progressive tax, like most income taxes... well the taxed amount increases as your income increases, so this is basically reversed: a richer person is taxed more in absolute terms than a poor person.
...
A high sales tax does not stimulate rich people to buy more.
All it does is mean poor people buy much less, and rich people buy slightly less, thus shifting the demographic of people buying things.
Whoever told told you that a high sales tax... stimulates rich spending... is economically illiterate, as in, they'd flunk an AP Micro course or a first year of a 4 year degree... that is absolute nonsense.
All it does is filter out the poors, who now have a dramtically tighter budget than the rich, and make it seem like only rich people are coming into your store... because poor people stopped coming in.
::: spoiler Could a Sales Tax be Progressive?
Theoretically, you could have a progressive sales tax... but that would realistically require all POS sales sytems to also pull your income when you swipe a debit or credit card.
Its not totally impossible to do this, but it would be quite complicated to implement, you'd have privacy issues, data security issues, smaller business owners would have to foot a disproportionate cost as compared to large businesses to upgrade their systems... how do you handle cash transactions, id verification, etc.
To my knowledge, no such system has ever been implemented in the US... or possibly anywhere, at a large scale.
:::
::: spoiler Bonus! Property Taxes:
Property taxes vary much more locally and regionally, with many more possible complicating factors.
Basically, some government system or process estimates the value of your home as if you tried to sell it on the market, that year.
Then taxes are applied to that estimated value.
But... lots of governments do the value estimation part in ways that are both absurdly complicated and often quite out of step with actual the actual market, and there are often complex rules determining what triggers a new valuation or when it occurs.
Usually property taxes themselves, once your property value is assesed, are a flat rate based on the assesed value.
So... that too is a regressive tax, that effectively punishes less wealthy property owners more than wealthier property owners...
But there are so manh caveats and complications to any given city or county or state's local property tax laws that it can vary quite significantly.
::: ...
thank you for coming to my ted talk lol
Thanks, zero regrets for attending this ted talk (´･ᴗ･ ` )
Oh you replied quickly, I may have still been cleaning up the formatting.
Either way: =D
He doesn't mention how. There is already a "foreigner premium" land transfer tax in FL. That has always been a non-starter for me to consider property there. Recent evil, would require free gold card as an incentive for me to go to US.
Also, municipal bonds are tanking even harder than US bonds. Cuts to federal education, and then now state tax cuts to education is going to download budgets to cities with high replication of functions. ie. education bureaucracy is getting bigger even if Fed cuts.
i really hope the majority of countries boycott the 2028 games and don't show up in la.
Nazi Germany, China and Russia/Soviet Union set a rather bad precedent for this.
Yeah, I bet barely anyone will boycott it.
Not even CA can stop the ICE from harassing people at airports.
Attendance will double you say?
Couldn't agree more, people need to get a lot more overt on this.
I don't blame any non-American for staying out of the insanity soup going on here.
Even as a middle age, "white privilege" guy, I'm concerned about traveling outside the U.S. and coming back through immigration. I'm liberal, protester, and strongly anti-Maga on the socials.
i’m currently in the US supporting a queer minority group with services to provide access to an event to a global audience… i’ve done it every year, and this year i’m here only because i’d promised and it seems awful to that group to walk away
next year is going to be really hard: my presence here adds value to the economy and in some small way takes away from the boycott, helps to reinforce american centrism and gives advantage to US citizens (they can attend far easier, etc), not to mention im literally taking a risk that i could be detained for weeks and then banned from coming back
… but on the other hand, if i don’t come am i abandoning the community? am i abandoning a vulnerable group that needs support, and to be shown they’re not alone now more than ever? that globally, queer is normal, fine, valued - that they’re wanted and what’s happening is not normal
i hate that im having to make these choices, and i hate that i feel bad even for feeling conflicted when im not even living through it
IMO: you are tremendously more vulnerable than I am.
If you can leave the U.S. into a stable "home base", you absolutely should.
From there you can try to use any open source Social groups to continue protesting against Trump.
Protect yourself above all else. Unless you've reached a point in your own "circle of life" that you're willing to die for the insanity of America's shit storm.
I'm at the age and experience I'm willing to die in defense of kind humanity vs. whatever the fuck is imploding in the U.S.
Best of luck!
Those charts are soon going to look a lot worse. I know of many people who had already paid for their vacation before the tariffs were announced, so they went anyway. New bookings for flights from Canada to the U.S. are down over 70%.
Yeah I think so too.
People have always talked about a long weekend in New York or a cruise from Miami.
Now it's just dead. No mention of the US at all, other than the blithering baboon.
Would not want to be a trans atlantic airliner this sunmer
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if you are trans-atlantic, their DEI policy mistakes this for something LGBT-related and you face automatic detention.
For sure family summer holidays are the sort of thing most people would be planning round about now. The lines at Disney World are going to be shorter this year…
Only 20 to 30%?
Well people don't want to be sold into slavery to El Salvador. Big surprise!
I'm worried of traveling outside of the US because that means I have to come back in through the borders again and be subjected to invasive searches
Ez, just skip the part were you travel back.
I heard something about you can go to EU and Australia for 180 days visa free with a us passport (might not be true, i don't know) so if you have enough money / a job you can do as a digital nomad you could technically move back and forth and you'd still live in a western country. Although I you could afford that I guess you can buy some kind of golden visa somewhere and just migrate there.
You can look up and compare this kind of thing on this handy website: United States of America Tableau de bord | Passport Index 2025 https://www.passportindex.org/passport/united-states-of-america/
Cool site, thanks for the tip!
Land of the free
On the bright side, if they refuse you entry you get to live somewhere else.
Yeah I haven't even seen enough amazing places in my own country let along mainland where there's actual history,good unprocessed food,sun,cycling adventures,cheese rolling down hills... Why would I need to go to Stroad Walmart
Could've been anywhere in Europe until the cheese bit.
Yeah, cuz French brie and camembert run down the hills.
That is what you get when you transport your tourism in a Boeing plane.
And in vacuum, if I understood correctly⸮
I wonder how low it will go. I was tentively planning a holiday trip to New York and another to a conference in Chicago. Both of which are totally off the cards having seen the horror stories of people having their phones searched, refused entry and even being detained for extended periods without justification.
Instead, I think I'm going to finally make a long wished trip to Canada.
I do feel sorry for those working in the US tourism and hospitality industry. It's hardly well paid work and often filled by new migrants and the young / students. It won't start recovering until the craziness of ICE abates but it's the sort of damage that is fast to take place and takes a long time to heal once it's reversed - and a reversal isn't even on the cards for the foreseeable future.
Yeah, I don't want to get detained for a week and sent to el salvador.
Marketing opportunity - TWO countries for the price of ONE!!!
I guess that pineapple they are fucking you with has a silver lining
I don't blame anyone, there is no need to personally see the circus that is our country currently. Watch the circus from stands unless you want to be a part of it.
I'm an American who has traveled to Europe a few times since Trump. I talked with a few Europeans about our president and all but one were not shy about disliking Trump. The only exception was a polish man who honestly seemed like not the greatest guy. MRA type from my interactions with him. Trump is more unhinged than ever so I wouldn't travel here. I absolutely think about the politics of a place and how it could contribute to things going wrong when I travel abroad, so I get it
Thank you! As confusing and scary as it is for us in the rest of the world, it must be positively terrifying for someone who's not a hardcore MAGA to see this happening to your country.
And with the rise of the far right, following much of the same playbook in many of our countries, this is unfortunately less about Trump being personally unhinged and more about all of us trying to rediscover why our grandfather fought to defend our democracy, before it's too late.
I appreciate your empathy and recognition of what is happening. It definitely is not okay. It is very scary that people are still taking a look at an end goal and then allowing the means to be okay no matter what :'(
You're right about this:
My grandfather just died a couple of years ago at age 100. He fought the fucking Nazis -- lost teeth and most of his hearing in the war, and he was very lucky (as am I, to consequently exist). I never asked if or how many of them he killed, but I have to hope and imagine it was at least a few.
I wish we could all agree that power grabs and scapegoating minorities are never okay, and get back to yelling about what healthcare we should have. It was bad enough when one side was saying anything but the current US healthcare system is socialism and evil, but now we have people in Congress who routinely lie and spout bullshit conspiracy theories to push their agendas. The fact that in our presidential campaign, people let it fucking fly that Vance and Trump both lied their asses off, knowingly, about Haitians eating dogs and how that's a threat to everyone, is horrific news.
I was in a train lately and there was this really loud American tourist going on about why Trump was amazing. Everytime the train stopped the person he was talking to coincedently had to exit the train, he continued his 'conversation' with the next person near him like a drunk in a bar looking for some company I guess. Let me mention I know there are plenty of Americans who don't think or act this way, before people reply about this. What I want to point out people here would openly talk about politics to strangers, but much they're much less willing to get in to an argument with a stranger that has opposing political views whether that stranger is a tourist or not. Just saying because this because it's easier then ever to start believing the world agrees with you. There are a lot of people in Europe who liked trump before he started to make enemies with his allies.
Yeah, as you probably know that was a rare person. Firstly, trump support was just high enough to win elections in this fucked system. Then most trumpers would barely engage much even if you asked. Further still, they're not usually the travelling type. Sorry you had the misfortune of suffering through that dullard. Most people oppose him here. Voter suppression and the electoral college are the only reason those fucks can win
It must be the fear of having to say thank you to everyone you meet there
While wearing a
suitcostumeI feel bad for the Olympic organizers. Good luck luring tourists to the Olympics.
especially considering the us is pulling visas for athletes.
When the US Olympics are worse than the literal 1936 Nazi Olympics
Love olympic athletes and the sport of it, loathe the perennial corruption in the IOC (olympic comittee).
Olympics are probably the worst organization out there.
Totally understandable, a lot of us who live here wish we didn't right now.
You guys deserve better than this. I hope you get justice
Thanks. We've been through worse, just not in my lifetime. I feel bad for the effects America has on the rest of the world. IMO the US should be a group of smaller countries. But then we've still got China and Russia, so I dunno. I just wish people all over didn't let so many assholes be in charge - but that's always been a problem.
I actually am an EU-federalist mostly because big countries exist, and I'd rather be one than be bullied by one.
meh, canada and mexico are nice too.
Mexico has some of the most beautiful beaches on both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, but their cannabis is awful. Canada on the other hand....
Soon Trump will issue an executive order making it illegal not to visit the US. Everyone in the world not visiting the US because of boycott will be sent to a Salvadoran gulag.
Good, who would want to visit Nazi Germany. Trump's admin has basically labeled anyone, not a Trumper, an enemy of the state, or is trying to label them as such.
I wanted to visit before the collapse, but it didn't work out for multiple reasons.
Now I'm doubly sad that I didn't go. Because if I would indeed decide to go now, it would be a coin toss if a random typo in some papers would land me in a gulag
U.K. has fallen by the least, which is disappointing to see.
Let's be honest, it's the most America coded European country
Yup. The EU doesn’t want us back in cos the USA will use us as a back door. It’s infuriating cause I don’t want to be that guy.
How would that manifest itself sorry?
Do you mean we're America's bitch so we'd use our influence as part of the EU to campaign for things that benefit the US? That seems plausible
That’s my understanding.
We never seemed to be particularly constructive in our involvement.
I almost feel it's better for the EU if area separate entity that they can deal with if they choose (and vice versa naturally)
Honestly as someone living here, I agree
Canada is down 70% including bookings for rest of year. Canadian also own a lot of snowbird property in US, and there's a large amount for sale.
I used to visit once or twice a year. I don't have any plans any time soon to go back.
Canadian's too!
There was something else I read saying it was down to pandemic levels of border crossing. You know....when it was only essential
And yet she says in the video she still loves America!?!? How can you love a country that tortured you? Even when you did nothing wrong!
It boggles most of us too. Even the most conservative people in my circles are taking up anti American purchasing practices, uniting under the maple leaf. Even the most conservative people in my circles are looking to te liberal party as the only sane option (which is an entirely different conversation but the point is PP scares them)
Disneyland tickets are now affordable?
If they do come they should go to a blue state and any companies taking advantage of cheap offices in places like texas and such should move them over to a blue state as well.
GOOD! Dem furners eat our cats!
Ready for 2025?
sickos haha yes.bmp
Go MAGA get SAD-GA
How did Norway manage to go against the trend and increase visits in 2024?
If you look closely, the graph goes up in winter which you can see has happened similarly in the winter of 2023/2024
Not doing too badly with the UK tourists yet. Lets double down on British cuisine to entice them over.