[taildragger]

The question to me is has the Fair Tax been Prototyped and tried? I you look to the Euro VAT Taxes I'd say it's a failure.

Conversely, we are up to what 22 or 26 countries with a Flat Tax and they are kicking our a$$ in term of GDP growth.

Someone needs to tell Thomas Freidman the world isn't flat, but the road to national success might be via a tax that is...

[xcamel]

Good point, and a point of abject fear and deinal for fairtaxers.

[Man50D]

The question to me is has the Fair Tax been Prototyped and tried? I you look to the Euro VAT Taxes I'd say it's a failure.

No Fair Tax type of tax has been enacted anywhere in the world. I agree. VAT's are a failure, including our current income tax code that contains nearly 23% embedded VAT's in the price of every product today. The Fair Tax will not be a VAT. It remove VAT's by eliminating the corporate income taxes businesses consider a cost and pass onto the consumer.

Conversely, we are up to what 22 or 26 countries with a Flat Tax and they are kicking our a$$ in term of GDP growth.

The Fair Tax is a flat tax but on consumption instead of productivity. A flat tax on income has been tried in this country and has proven to be an abysmal failure. It;s called the income tax. It taxed 1% on the first $20,000 of income and 7% on income over $500,000 when the income tax was enacted in 1913. Almost everyone paid only the 1% since so few earned more than $500,000. It has evolved into the multi tiered increasingly oppressive and intrusive tax code that exists today in large part due to the thousands of lobbyists that have convinced politicians to create loophole and exemptions for big business. Another flat tax on income will morph into the same monstrosity we have today only faster thanks to the lobbyists that didn't exist in 1913.

Taxing productivity opens the door for an increasing tax burden on producers and is the very reason Karl Marx espoused taxing income as a plank in his Communist Manifesto.