Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke has a plan to get AR-15s and “AK-47s” off the street. Of course, you’ve heard all about his “buyback,” but now he’s explained how he’ll pay for it without costing taxpayers a cent.
“I think a mandatory buyback can be financed with a surcharge that would be paid by gun manufacturers, those who are making the AR-15s and AK-47s and continue to sell them into our communities despite the terror that they’ve inspired and the lives that have been taken.”
[…]
“without imposing any new taxes on… Americans.”
Let us see how that would work. First, just for the sake of discussion, I’ll pretend I’d be willing to sell my hypothetical AR to the government (stop giggling; assumption), if they fully reimburse me the cost of the firearm.
So I go out and buy a…let’s call it a $600 AR, so I’ll have something to turn in. I would then sell it to Beto for the $600.
…except the surcharge-which-magically-isn’t-a-tax has to be large enough to allow the government to pay me full cost (they are going to pay full value…right?). So my new AR suddenly costs me $1,200, so they can collect enough cash to pay me the full price.
Um. Now, I want to be paid the full $1,200 I paid for the rifle. So the surcharge becomes that, making the price $2,400.
Lather, rinse, repeat ad infinitum.
And the surcharge rapidly exceeds the federal debt, and continues soaring on a hyperbolic trajectory.
Clearly Beto Bobby’s grasp of economics is only exceeded by Congresswoman Occasional Cortex with her Monopoly Money Theory of modern slavery. But that’s another story.