[Will]

Renegade 13 said:
Well this all depends on the size of the city you're talking about, but if you're talking a large city then yeah, cost of houses and land is considerably cheaper in rural areas. But take a look at the taxes for in a different light. People who live in rural areas are often farmers and ranchers. Namely, the people who need to fuel their tractors and other farm machinery. Add these taxes on when your fuel bill is already at a couple thousand (at least) per month, and you're going to be killing off a lot of small operations. Simple fix, exempt farms and ranches and the like from these new taxes, as they are already exempted from many taxes.

And farmers and ranchers already get huge subsidies. Slight adjustments to these would more than offset additional costs.

Renegade 13 said:
I'm actually not sure about more going to rural than urban (though I am sure sub-urban gets more than both!). In Vancouver, billions are being spent on new rapid-transit systems. Billions extra, on top of the usual. All we get is cracks sealed on our highways, sometimes not even that. Can't cost more than a few dozen million per year. Of course, things you mentioned such as military bases etc. are for the benefit of all, not one single group, so it can't be counted in the equation. As are trans-continental highways and the like, since they're necessary for industry to occur in the cities as well, so they can't really be counted as solely rural either.

Per-capita. It would be silly to look at total dollar amount going to a given area, you need to see how many people it is being spent on. If you just look at total amount, then yes, I could see where you get the idea that rural taxes pay for urban mass transit. But it's simply false, taxes from urban areas subsidize development in suburban and rural areas, not the other way around. And yes, while some things like major roads and military bases are for the benefit of all, the economy of the area immediately surrounding the (often rural) area gets a huge boost out of it.

Renegade 13 said:
That's the thing, in a capitalist society the economy isn't supposed to be "guided" by the government. It's not capitalism then, it's closer to socialism. And yes, I think it is an arrogant attitude to think that the American idea is the best idea there is or can be! Tariffs for not doing as the States thinks is best is arrogant, since it's automatically dismissing the idea that other countries have the right to do as they wish with their own economic policy. If the States decides to implement such an idea, go for it, but don't try to force the rest of the world into doing what ONE country thinks is a wise measure. Of course, I'm sure I'll be disagreed with on this particular point.

Economics 101, Renegade
You are wrong on one point though. While the economy in that case would not be a laissez-faire free market captialist economy, it is still a free market, and it is still capitalism. Socialism implies that at least some part of the economy is planned (presumably by everyone, but the government is a 'good enough' substitution). Canada has this in its health care system; entirely government owned, paid for by taxes, free to the people. And yes, that has problems. But if you think that any government intervention in economic issues makes the economy not capitalist, or socialist, then there is not a single capitalist economy on this planet. That would require no zoning laws, no emissions laws, no controls on banking, no oversight of accounting practices, no tax deductions or exemptions of any sort, and so on, and so on. We learned a long time ago that pure captialism, or pure socialism, or pure communism, is a bad idea. So, any economy in the world worth speaking of combines elements of all forms. These taxes would just be another form of it.

And you have missed my point entirely for the reason the tarrifs are valid. They are not a policy tool to force other countries to do as the US. And frankly, most countries don't need any encouragement, and will end up doing something similar regardless of US actions. The tarrif is meant to allow fair competition between US and foreign firms. For example, take steel. If it is estimated that the new taxes directly cause steel made in the US to be $10 more expensive per ton, then US steel is at a disadvantage to say, Chinese steel. But! If the US put a tariff on steel coming from China, to the amount of $10 per ton, then the two can compete evenly in the market. The tariff isn't forcing China to adopt the same policies at all, but it does force domestic buyers of steel to buy based on the controllable costs of producing the steel only. Otherwise, US producers would be saddled with the double burden of increased costs and cheaper competitors. The tariff doesn't apply to countries with similar policies because those policies result in the same costs for producers in that country, so no adjustment is required. The other government already took care of it.

Now, an "arrogant" way of forcing policy change would involve telling the other government they need to adopt certain changes, implement a tariff on their products that is very much in excess of the difference of costs based on the policy difference (take the above example, and make the tariff $100 instead of $10), threaten to put an embargo into effect, and 'accidentally' blow up a building during a training exercise. We're not talking about that though, are we now?