Posted on 04/20/2009 3:15:05 PM PDT by pissant
This is a new book that I have co-authored with Hank Adler, a professor at Chapman University's business school, a post he took up after retirement from a long and successful career as a partner with Deloitte.
Hank and I undertook this project because we had --independent of each other and for different reasons-- arrived at the same conclusion: That the "Fair Tax" proposal put forward by my radio tal show host Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder is a disastrous mirage that far too many Republicans have been drawn too, and for all the wrong reasons. "The Fair Tax" is a hopelessly flawed fantasy, but one with a surface appeal of simplicity that attracts especially politicians in need of energetic volunteers and quick headlines. But if the "Fair Tax" becomes the "Kemp-Roth" of the next few years, the GOP will be rightly punished at the polls as the details of the plan make it to the desks of serious political and economic analysts and from there to large numbers of voters who will examine the plan carefully and reject it almost immediately upon doing so. In short, not only should Republicans and conservatives not endorse the Fair Tax, they ought to affirmatively disavow the plan and press instead for serious and thoroughgoing tax reform, including lower and flatter tax rates.
Fair Tax enthusiasts often call my show and demand that I "read the book," by which they mean one or both of Neal's books. We have, and they do nothing to persuade serious readers of the plans merits, but much to camouflage the scheme's many deeply embedded flaws. Henceforth I'll be able to respond "Yes, but have you read the book that exposes the Fair tax as a destructive fantasy it is?"
(Excerpt) Read more at hughhewitt.townhall.com ...
:-)
Since you used the term “single tax” it sounds like you know something about the concept. I’d be interested in hearing your critique. Certainly, you can do better than dismissing it as garble.
LOL! I never said it was!
Can you even imagine where half the year you work for the government and then half for yourself?
You mean like last year?
The corporations would essentially have NO taxes for their wage earners, no FICA, no medicare, etc...this would definitely allow these businesses to bring back manufacturing jobs here in this country.
OhhhhKay. You are forgetting something.
All those benefits are great if you make something out of nothing, like so much of the US seems wrapped up in.
But if you manfacture hard items, you need materials.
If you produce materials that is your product.
If you produce tools, dies, heavy equipment, wire rope, Drill pipe, casing for oil wells, structural steel, etc, all those things are used to make other things.
WHO pays the tax, when?
Does the tax go on the pig iron, the steel, the rolled steel, the finished beams, the red iron in place, the structure? where?
How about the miners, refiners, shipping, setup, crane services, etc. etc. that all go to putting it together? Do those services get taxed?
If not how long before some poor guy who needed a little more than a come-a-long to get the tree off his house cries "FOul!" and starts a movement because he had to pay tax on a crane service and the people putting up the skyscraper down the road did not?
Now, I agree wholeheartedly that our current tax system is corrupt--about half of the tax code is gimies for special interests. THe rest is an attempt to take a system which should not even exist and try to make it equitable.
I agree even more wholeheartedly (if such is possible) that we need to revamp/replace the system, But I am not willing to trade new problems for old.
One of the most appealing aspects of the Fair Tax is it gets the government out of the picture.
No!!!! It WONT!--not so long as there is that prebate thingy.
That will open the door to government tracking every person and their household on a monthly basis--they'll have to-- to issue the prebate!
Ditch the prebate! Make food, primary housing (shelter!), energy (heat!), and medical care exempt.
Then you will start making for less government, otherwise, you will end up with more!
And, I'll go along with the fact that you are a moron, but please tell me how, in your infinite wisdom, you figured my having used neither the preview nor the spell check features, makes you a moron -- which, of course, as we all have known for many long months, you are.
No there shouldn't have been.
Wrong again. That's why I inferred that you are a moron, Back to the first grade, junior.
You are hardly the one to be giving lessons on pucntuation, grammar and spelling.<.i>
Well, someone needs to.
You're lying again. Every one of them, and many more like thm, have been debated many many times by Man50D and others -- and they have been EXPLAINED TO YOU many times over, but you're either too damned dumb to understand the truth, or to comsumamte a liar to admit the truth when it hits you in the face.
You are pitiful completely.
Post #246 is an excellent example of the mental midgets involved in the FT movement.
Where the hell did tht lie come from. Who ssid that?
And to whom is the money collected under the Fair Tax paid if the government is out of the picture?
I think you have really jumped your trolley on tht one.
Hugh Hewitt has had as his main sponser on his radio program, from its inception, the Mortgage Minute guy.
Anytime in the past, prior to writing this book, when a caller advocated the Fair Tax, Hewitt would always disparage it and bring up the mortgage deduction.
Hewitt is compromised, so I can’t accept his analysis with any credibility.
Hugh’s main advocacy is for himself; he’s always got a book to pitch.
BUMP!
If you are willing to take money from the government then you should expect intrusion into your private life.
The vast majority of people would be lifted above the poverty level and would no longer be subject to that.
So basically don’t let yourself get into a situation where you need the prebate...then the government would be out of your life...tax wise.
Personally I don’t think there should be the prebate in the system. Nor do I believe we should have unemployment, social security, welfare etc...
I have never collected a dime on any of it and I have paid staggering amounts in income tax over my life and quite frankly I don’t get much for it...just a bunch of corrupt individuals who are living off my hard work.
We need more people that have signed the front of checks in office as opposed to just signing the back of a check.
How so?
The only way is if you accept the prebate from the Fair Tax...
Don’t take money from the government. If you take money from them they are going to be in your life.
Denial and delusion.
How quaint.
It is a precondition. One I would not accept in hard times and I helped feed not only myself but others as well for a year (hunting) with a rifle which was not worth enough if sold to buy groceries for one for a month.
The vast majority of people would be lifted above the poverty level and would no longer be subject to that.
Only if they cared, Friend. They have been conditioned for two generations to spew all about themselves to whomever will listen, post it on facebook, etc. We have a significant over/underclass who utilizes the full power of the Federal Government to extract their daily sustenance from the productive, even though they are fully capable of being productive and carrying their own weight.
I do not mind helping those in true need, and there were (nongovernmental) ways to do that without the government which have become impaired as a result of the War on Poverty, not strengthened by it.
That said, the Consumption tax concept may not be a bad one, but I could not accept it as the Fair tax is presented.
I would eliminate the prebate and all the bureaucracy associated with it, and just not collect taxes on the items the prebare was supposed to offset the taxes on.
The essentials. Food, shelter (a home), energy, and medical care including pharmaceuticals/appliances/prosthetics.
All else would be taxable.
But I would consider it if and only if the income tax is buried once and for all, and other avenues of taxation are similarly closed.
You don’t seem to say much...just little quips that benefit no one except for yourself.
If you want to have an intelligent discussion then you should put some effort into your comments otherwise you are just wasting bandwidth.
“If the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is not repealed before the end of the 7-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act,”
IOW, Congress has 7 years to amend the Fair Tax Act and avoid eliminating the federal income tax.
Congress will NEVER relinquish the income tax as long as Constitutional limits on federal spending and monetary policy remain unaddressed.
“The Fair Tax does address keeping spending in check by tying taxation to consumption. Government would need to raise taxes to fund any increase in spending”
Nope, they would just ask the Fed to print the money, like they do now.
The root of the problem is NOT the tax system. It is spending and the Fed.
Oh, and glad to see like every other FT, you have an overblown ego to go with your denial and delusions..
Thank you for saying what the rest of us have said is plain as the nose on any face... again.
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