4 ms·

Just my opinion, but I think that even this may be striking at the root. I've long thought that what we really need is a constitutional amendment dictating the

by JeffL 16y ago

Just my opinion, but I think that even this may be striking at the root. I've long thought that what we really need is a constitutional amendment dictating the separation of economy and state, just as we separate church and state. There should be no tariffs, since those economically benefit some while hurting everyone else. There should be no subsidies, as those economically benefit some while hurting everyone else. Congress shouldn't be allowed to make complicated tax laws. If there's to be a tax, it should be simple and described in 1 paragraph. No exemptions, no breaks, no deductions. Those things are all trying to encourage or discourage some sort of activity, but it just ends up helping some while hurting everyone else more. Congress shouldn't be allowed to redistribute wealth. It just helps some people while hurting everyone else and has negative secondary consequences. It as also not a necessary role for government. Every way that congress dictates that the economy should go ends up helping some group by some amount and hurting everyone else by even more. That's sort of by definition, because if it helped everyone involved, it would take place naturally without the need to legally dictate it. The domain of government is ultimately force, and when it tries to act in other areas, its monopoly on force corrupts its actions in those other areas, so it really needs to be restricted to the very simple act of protecting our rights as originally spelled out in the constitution. Things like tariffs, tax exemptions, redistribution of wealth, etc, have nothing to do with the protection of rights.

psadauskas 16y ago
You should read about fairtax.org . Its just a flat sales tax on everything, and removes all other taxes. People below a set poverty line get 100% of their taxes refunded. No room for loopholes.
- JeffL 16y ago
  Yeah, I think the fair tax is a great idea. Just thinking of the savings on tax compliance alone is almost mind boggling.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  loopholes: 1. no sales tax on anything considered an investment. only on "consumer" retail goods. 2. if you owned say a farm to grow food and owned a company or factory or machinery that could provide for you all the goods and services you needed (directly, without "selling" it to you) then you would pay no federal sales tax and therefore no federal tax at all, of any kind. Guess what class of people would most likely to be able to pull that off? That's right, the very rich, especially the inherited rich (remember, no tax on inheritance in this scheme!). Oh but you'd still have to buy the farm/factory/company right? But that would be an investment. No tax on buying an investment/asset. 3. buy a "used" good there would be no federal sales tax. only when buying a new good. (This would probably be abused. Imagine a bunch of people suddenly only wanting to buy "used" new things (one previous owner, still in new condition, no more than say 1 day old, etc.) 4. only retailers would have to collect this tax. if one private individual sold something to another private individual (or business!) then no tax. Also, in a system like they propose where there is no IRS and no income tax reporting, how do they know who is below or above the poverty line? Psychic powers? I'll stop now. I haven't even dug very deep. FairTax.org has some attractive elements but it has a lot of suspicious elements too that makes me think it's a ploy by the rich/aristocratic class.
  - psadauskas 16y ago
    1) Yup. Encourages saving/investing over spending, and credit for more spending. Not a loophole, this is a win. 2) Yes, a very rich person owning a farm, and the tractors to farm. No private jet, no Ferrari, no mansion. If someone is able to produce every luxury item they need, from scratch, then yeah, that wouldn't be taxed. But its such a tiny minority, I don't think it matters. 3) Um, ok? Sounds like the person that owned it for the one day got hosed. 4) I think thats good, too. There are problems with FairTax, to be sure, but you listed none of them.
    - mkramlich 16y ago
      I pointed out 4 loopholes which let one evade paying any taxes at all to the Federal government under this system. Meanwhile, said citizen would still be benefiting from the expenditures made by that same government (defense, highways, welfare net, etc.) I didn't even list all the loopholes or flaws with it (for example, no gift tax allows some pretty evil hacks to evade paying taxes as well. Also a citizen could buy goods and services from foreign countries and have them mailed home to him, and pay no tax to Fed govt.) Therefore from my perspective it's a horribly broken proposal as it stands now. Also any tax scheme which allows the rich to not pay any taxes at all, while still requiring working class to do so, cannot be described as a Fair Tax. If anything the name is an Orwellian mindfuck where the substance is the opposite of the surface. What's good about it is the attempt to drastically simplify the tax code and reduce the amount of government spying on private lives. That goal (assuming that was their actual goal) is noble. The means described, however, are not.
scrod 16y ago
>Congress shouldn't be allowed to redistribute wealth. When wealth is redistributed in the right direction, then there are empirical, measurable, positive benefits across the whole of society -- including those who are already wealthy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level:_Why_More_Equal_Societies_Almost_Always_Do_Better http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level:_Why_More_Equa... It's fallacious to assume that, because many laws passed within the last 30 years have inappropriately favored large corporations, effectively redistributing public money to them, the process of redistribution itself shouldn't occur anywhere at all -- and that the issue of inequality can't or shouldn't be addressed. If you really want to "strike at the root" of the problem, then you need to look toward the influence of money in our political system. The more unequal the distribution of wealth in our society, the easier it is for a small financial elite to bend the law in their favor.
- JeffL 16y ago
  Don't you think that almost by definition, the more free a society is economically, the more unequal wealth will be distributed? As entrepreneurs, we are certainly aware of this fact in striving to found businesses. In a society where people are not free to easily start businesses, then it becomes very hard to get ahead because there is no way to effectively make oneself more productive, or magnify ones productivity via a business. It seems to me like any act of forcibly taking wealth from those who created it and giving it to others is a perversion of freedom, since it acts against the very freedom which created the disparity. Not positive that this means that redistribution is absolutely a bad thing, but I also think the argument in favor of it is far from clear. It seems to me like the default would be to leave well enough alone and leave people to keep what they earn in a free society where there would be a separation of economy and state.
  - scrod 16y ago
    The problem is when "getting ahead" becomes the only way to gain freedom in a society. With economic freedom as the primary form of liberty, people must effectively compete for freedom, or in a way "earning" it as an indentured servant would. The majority of the citizens of such a society would live under absolute tyranny and serfdom; those who owned nothing would be slaves. The most certain way to guarantee freedom is through democratic* empowerment in a community that controls its own resources, where one's decisions directly effect changes in his/her own life. In this way all people are guaranteed control over their own destinies. * (I'd rather see participatory democracy in small communities than the republican form of representative democracy that the U.S. constitution specifies.)

by JeffL 16y ago

psadauskas 16y ago

You should read about fairtax.org . Its just a flat sales tax on everything, and removes all other taxes. People below a set poverty line get 100% of their taxes refunded. No room for loopholes.

JeffL 16y ago
Yeah, I think the fair tax is a great idea. Just thinking of the savings on tax compliance alone is almost mind boggling.
mkramlich 16y ago
loopholes: 1. no sales tax on anything considered an investment. only on "consumer" retail goods. 2. if you owned say a farm to grow food and owned a company or factory or machinery that could provide for you all the goods and services you needed (directly, without "selling" it to you) then you would pay no federal sales tax and therefore no federal tax at all, of any kind. Guess what class of people would most likely to be able to pull that off? That's right, the very rich, especially the inherited rich (remember, no tax on inheritance in this scheme!). Oh but you'd still have to buy the farm/factory/company right? But that would be an investment. No tax on buying an investment/asset. 3. buy a "used" good there would be no federal sales tax. only when buying a new good. (This would probably be abused. Imagine a bunch of people suddenly only wanting to buy "used" new things (one previous owner, still in new condition, no more than say 1 day old, etc.) 4. only retailers would have to collect this tax. if one private individual sold something to another private individual (or business!) then no tax. Also, in a system like they propose where there is no IRS and no income tax reporting, how do they know who is below or above the poverty line? Psychic powers? I'll stop now. I haven't even dug very deep. FairTax.org has some attractive elements but it has a lot of suspicious elements too that makes me think it's a ploy by the rich/aristocratic class.
- psadauskas 16y ago
  1) Yup. Encourages saving/investing over spending, and credit for more spending. Not a loophole, this is a win. 2) Yes, a very rich person owning a farm, and the tractors to farm. No private jet, no Ferrari, no mansion. If someone is able to produce every luxury item they need, from scratch, then yeah, that wouldn't be taxed. But its such a tiny minority, I don't think it matters. 3) Um, ok? Sounds like the person that owned it for the one day got hosed. 4) I think thats good, too. There are problems with FairTax, to be sure, but you listed none of them.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    I pointed out 4 loopholes which let one evade paying any taxes at all to the Federal government under this system. Meanwhile, said citizen would still be benefiting from the expenditures made by that same government (defense, highways, welfare net, etc.) I didn't even list all the loopholes or flaws with it (for example, no gift tax allows some pretty evil hacks to evade paying taxes as well. Also a citizen could buy goods and services from foreign countries and have them mailed home to him, and pay no tax to Fed govt.) Therefore from my perspective it's a horribly broken proposal as it stands now. Also any tax scheme which allows the rich to not pay any taxes at all, while still requiring working class to do so, cannot be described as a Fair Tax. If anything the name is an Orwellian mindfuck where the substance is the opposite of the surface. What's good about it is the attempt to drastically simplify the tax code and reduce the amount of government spying on private lives. That goal (assuming that was their actual goal) is noble. The means described, however, are not.

scrod 16y ago

>Congress shouldn't be allowed to redistribute wealth. When wealth is redistributed in the right direction, then there are empirical, measurable, positive benefits across the whole of society -- including those who are already wealthy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level:_Why_More_Equal_Societies_Almost_Always_Do_Better http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level:_Why_More_Equa... It's fallacious to assume that, because many laws passed within the last 30 years have inappropriately favored large corporations, effectively redistributing public money to them, the process of redistribution itself shouldn't occur anywhere at all -- and that the issue of inequality can't or shouldn't be addressed. If you really want to "strike at the root" of the problem, then you need to look toward the influence of money in our political system. The more unequal the distribution of wealth in our society, the easier it is for a small financial elite to bend the law in their favor.

JeffL 16y ago
Don't you think that almost by definition, the more free a society is economically, the more unequal wealth will be distributed? As entrepreneurs, we are certainly aware of this fact in striving to found businesses. In a society where people are not free to easily start businesses, then it becomes very hard to get ahead because there is no way to effectively make oneself more productive, or magnify ones productivity via a business. It seems to me like any act of forcibly taking wealth from those who created it and giving it to others is a perversion of freedom, since it acts against the very freedom which created the disparity. Not positive that this means that redistribution is absolutely a bad thing, but I also think the argument in favor of it is far from clear. It seems to me like the default would be to leave well enough alone and leave people to keep what they earn in a free society where there would be a separation of economy and state.
- scrod 16y ago
  The problem is when "getting ahead" becomes the only way to gain freedom in a society. With economic freedom as the primary form of liberty, people must effectively compete for freedom, or in a way "earning" it as an indentured servant would. The majority of the citizens of such a society would live under absolute tyranny and serfdom; those who owned nothing would be slaves. The most certain way to guarantee freedom is through democratic* empowerment in a community that controls its own resources, where one's decisions directly effect changes in his/her own life. In this way all people are guaranteed control over their own destinies. * (I'd rather see participatory democracy in small communities than the republican form of representative democracy that the U.S. constitution specifies.)