im not sure you were making this point or not, but in any case, my personal opinion is that without an income tax for at least the super wealthy we would end up with the problems we had at the end of the 18th century: robber barons and mass civil unrest.
i guess the answer to alot of these issues is very nuanced, but yes, i think tariffs are an interesting angle for sure
We may be headed back in that direction. We keep adding required functionality to cars, driving up the cost. We keep allowing mergers of phone, oil, and airline companies.
I don't think income tax plays a part. The super wealthy don't pay it. Many of them take a token salary, often just $1. It's control of a key business that matters anyway, not the wealth of an individual. Somebody could live in their open-plan office, sleeping under a desk, and still have a major impact on our lives.
It's only been about a century that we've had an income tax. Prior to that, we funded the federal government on tariffs. It built the nation. People who buy local goods are unaffected. People wealthy enough to insist on exotic foreign things must pay the tariffs and thus fund our government.