Posted on 12/15/2014 12:08:35 PM PST by PROCON
In the United States—as in all of the world’s wealthier nations—ending poverty is not a matter of resources. Many economists, including Timothy Smeeding of the University of Wisconsin (and former director of the Institute for Research on Poverty) have argued that every developed nation has the financial wherewithal to eradicate poverty. In large part this is because post-industrial productivity has reached the point where to suggest a deficit in resources is laughably disingenuous. And despite the occasional political grandstanding against welfare, there is no policy, ideology or political party that is on the books as pro-starvation, pro-homelessness, pro-death or anti-dignity.
Yet, poverty continues to exist. In the U.S., for example, almost 15 percent of citizens (and almost 20 percent of children) live in poverty. Of those, slightly under 2 percent live on less than $2 per person per day.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Only for the economically illiterate...
Take water out of one end of the pool, and dump it in the other end... Do you have more water in the pool?
No?
Then how in the hell does “wealth redistribution” work any better? All it does is discourages production and encourages sitting on your arse...
I too am a big fan of “free banking” and competition all around and think it will work better in today’s information sensitive world. Awesome story.
>>>there already is a basic-income check. it’s the standard write-off on taxes. about $12k/yr is not taxed. this yields about $2400 annually (20%) of overlooked tax money<<<
That is a Target I will attempt to reach with the help of some strategic Deductions. I’ve been a “Payer” for over 45 Years and I end up with a Commie running the Country when I get to the end of the road.
So far it’s been a one way street since I’ve never seen a dime of the Taxes that the Feds dole out like candy to their Friends and Family.
After six months if Chemotherapy this year, I’ll be happy living long enough to collect my first SS Check in only eight Months, whoopee! If only I could last long enough to recoup the Principal. Recouping any of the phantom Investment Income that money would have earned, well that’s another story.
Hand the Federal Government a cool $250,000+ in SS Taxes over a lifetime and end up with a Monthly Check equal to what an Illegal Invader will get just for showing up.
Life is fair in the land of President Amnesty and his Merry Band of the Perpetually Offended.
Have you seen or heard of this?
The 5 elements of good laws:
1. Generality - Laws shouldn’t be specially carved out to benefit one group or to attack or harm a narrow group of individuals.
2. Prospectivity - This is the constraint on ex post facto laws. Laws should always apply in the future and never to the past.
3. Publicity - Laws should be broadly published and well known, both to the representatives themselves and general public.
4. Consent - Laws must be generally acceptable to those who will live by them.
5. Proper due process - Due process means that the law is meted out equally and fairly with each similar crime being treated the same. Justice must be blind.
yup... and you just summed up why i went Galt.
after doing 20+ years of 80+ hr weeeks... i found out where 2/3s of the tax money i sent was going... to pay for their votes.
no thanks.
so i flipped a table and quit
No, but this is common sense.
The other problem with exempting certain items is that you now open the door for everyone to start lobbying why their specific product or service should be tax-exempt, and you get a complex mess of a tax code, one of the things NRST proponents try to avoid. Plus, the more items you exempt, the higher the tax rate has to be on everything else if you're gunning for revenue-neutral. (Up to Laffer Curve limits, at which point it might not even be possible to get the revenue targets.) And, of course, the higher the rate, the more lobbying to get products exempted and the higher the tax evasion rate.
Personally, I'd simply ditch the whole "prebate" idea while not exempting anything. Prices should be roughly neutral post-NRST implementation, as it's simply replacing taxes collected one means with a different means. The prebate is included mostly as a political ploy to avoid charges of regressive taxation and as a parallel replacement of the personal exemption/standard deduction of the current code. I understand the thinking behind it, but it's be a better system if it wasn't politically necessary.
But it’s common sense that’s in such short supply. I blame government schooling and the APUSH test.
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