European tourism to the USA in free fall
European tourism to the USA in free fall
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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'.
What a fucking moron.
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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.
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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?
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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).
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that's because he cratered the housing market and made it the most expensive place to insure your house
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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thank you for coming to my ted talk lol
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Thanks, zero regrets for attending this ted talk (´･ᴗ･ ` )
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Oh you replied quickly, I may have still been cleaning up the formatting.
Either way: =D
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“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.
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146 comments