What do you all think about the FairTax?
I saw a new discussion on business tax proposals and thought about the FairTax. I'm not sure I've ever seen a discussion about it here. What do think?
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A fair tax will make imported goods cost more than goods manufactured here in the US. This is because the cost of income tax for the employees and the companies is simply added to the cost of the products. This cost will be eliminated resulting in a reduction of 25-30% in the cost of US manufactured goods. Meanwhile imported goods will be more expensive because a 35% tariff will be added to their cost.
A fair tax will be great for our economy.
Also A Galt's Gulch-like community can exist where neighbors reduce their use of money by self-sufficiency and bartering.
We can agree as regards modes of communication, transport, and shipment. I would point out that duties and imposts still fall under the broad category of "taxes," so they are "voluntary" only in that one need not import anything if one wishes to avoid such payments.
Residential and industrial users of streets can form associations to pay to keep them up. Storekeepers can likewise pay to keep up the roads that bring their customers to their own markets. Highway owners can charge tolls. And anyone who runs a firm that insures property can run a fire brigade to provide direct management of risk.
Likewise, litigants, registrants, and other users of the courts can pay fees for whatever services they require. This can include "requests for judicial intervention" to certify the results of arbitrations.
But what incentive has anyone to pay for the police or the military? How does one keep order in a society, the membership of which is not "by invitation only"?
But what we do have is a philosophy of reality as it is and a mind that can logically, rationally think about the world we live in and assess and determine what we should and shouldn't do in order to survive and improve our lives. Compromising with the wrong/evil/anti-human system only leaves one with no principles, and weakened morality.
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If this sounds severe, that's life and that's reality. That's how we've wound up in the situation we find ourselves in today. Want to change it, stand up and say NO. Exercise your Right of Resistance. That's what the Declaration of Independence and the 2nd Amendment is all about.
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(1) The government would no longer have an excuse to make you tell them all about your wealth, where you got it, and where it is stored.
(2) The marginal tax rate, and with it the disincentive on producing wealth, would be substantially less than now.
But there are even better alternatives. One would be a simple sales tax, with all food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and services exempt (thus amounting to a tax on discretionary spending). No need to annually refund everybody a "living allowance" under that scheme, the exemptions take care of that.
The original income tax was simple and claimed to be "fair", too. Why would this addition of a major new national sales tax be any different? All the promises and reassurances from advocates making promises they have no authority to make or keep is the slick sales tactic used in virtually any controversial legislation as they try to avoid the essentials and their consequences in pandering to every conceivable interest group. Once the premise is entrenched they go on from there with divide and conquer.
Still not discussed is the the nightmare maze of civil rights threats set up by giving states jurisdiction to go after people with shakedowns anywhere outside of their own borders, which this scheme shares with the internet sales tax expansion agenda. Not having to contend with a maze of different state actions interfering in trade was supposed to have been addressed by the Commerce clause in the Constitution. The kind of aggressive punishment and shakedowns this sets up is even worse.
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