4 ms·
Far better and simpler than flat taxes would be to eliminate all income taxes, both business and personal, and depend entirely on tariffs, excise taxes, and fee
by kingkongreveng_ 17y ago
Far better and simpler than flat taxes would be to eliminate all income taxes, both business and personal, and depend entirely on tariffs, excise taxes, and fees. Arithmetically this is completely feasible. Imagine if outside of import and export business and those industries affected by excise people had practically no interface with the federal government on a year by year basis.
- krakensden 17y agoWouldn't that violate our various free trade agreements and lose us our membership in the WTO?
- anamax 17y agoYou write that like membership in the WTO is necessarily a good thing. It isn't. International organizations range from "mostly harmless" to horrorshows. (The mostly harmless ones are a basically specialized phone books with an information exchange/meet people conference every year or so - think ACM.) Tariffs are a bad thing, but the US is a big enough gorilla that the WTO would figure out some way to accomodate the US in that circumstance.
- krakensden 17y agoLet me rephrase that. Pissing on _every_ _single_ other country we do business with by unilaterally ending free trade after we've spent decades setting up free trade agreements (and organizations like the WTO) seems like a suboptimal stratagem to me.
- anamax 17y agoYes, but that's different. It has almost nothing to do with membership in the WTO.