Posted on 01/23/2013 5:22:11 PM PST by Jacquerie
My favorite radio talk show host, Mark Levin, has repeatedly warned us that among the possible new taxes, on retirement accounts and carbon, we can expect first off, a Value Added Tax. The lead-in will be ever wilder annual deficits; the spark may be a another threatened credit downgrade. A new “do something” solution will magically appear from another long weekend séance hosted by Plugs Biden, and voila, the masterminds will determine our once republic must have a VAT . . . NOW!
Its European pedigree is well known to the Obot regime and rat masterminds in Congress, and it is only a matter of time, the right time, to quickly introduce it and jam it into law.
Allow me a preemptive question that will certainly bounce around FreeRepublic. Is a VAT constitutional? Yes, I know the four stooges plus John Roberts took the fee or penalty or whatever it actually is in Obamacare, then did a little known blackrobe incantation and determined it to be of all things, a tax of an undetermined nature. For this discussion, leave that aside, and consider if an old fashioned European statist method of extracting enormous revenue from a dull witted American proletariat falls into one of the tax categories in our Constitution as written and later amended.
Those categories are direct taxes, capitation taxes, duties, imposts, excises, and income taxes. Which, if any would Constitutionally permit the VAT?
I am 72 years old. I was forced to pay into Social Security and forced to have Medicare. Do you actually think of these programs as welfare. That we seniors use these because we want to???? I would have loved to take all the money my husband and I paid into these programs over 50 years and put them into a private fund but we had no choice. I resent youremarks and suggest you look up SS and medicare and get educated. I am not an old geezer taking handouts.
“Millions of people have been forced to pay into those two programs.”
No, they were forced to pay taxes, in the same way they’re forced to pay other taxes. Welfare at the other end only connects to what you paid before in your head. Which is exactly what the New Dealers wanted you to think, still more evidence they are gamesmen and Pubs are the Stupid Party.
You are thinking in terms of the progressive income tax. VAT taxes hit low and high together.
Wrong. I can accept your two things, but there’s a third you omit:
3). Deficits and the debt will NEVER be paid for by tax hikes. They can’t even counterfeit their way out, because it’d sink our currency first.
You were nit forced to “pay into” anything but the U.S. treasury. There is no connection between taxes paid and eventual benefits received. That you and others persist in thinking otherwise, even after the central government admitted it, is a testament to the practical political (evil) genius of FDR, or whoever actually came up with it.
A few points:
1). We already have a VAT tax; it us called the corporate tax.
2). Capitation taxes are direct taxes.
3). VATs are indirect taxes and easily fall under the “taxes” and “imposts” headings. For it to be constitutional it must be uniform.
Thanks for the truth. I agree 100% regarding SS and Medicare being welfare. Entitlement mindset is 85% entrenched in even the republican party. I quit discussing SS years ago on FR because most can’t connect it with a wealth transfer scheme that it is. My kids future shouldn’t be borrowed against. I don’t know if the VAT is a good idea but your opinion has value with me. Thanks and keep speaking the truth!
Stay free
“2) This country WILL go broke if we don’t get closer to a balanced budget.”
The country WILL go broke, because we will NEVER “get closer” to a balanced budget, given the current leftward tilt of the nation.
A VAT won’t help, for the very reasons others have given — that is, the more you give them, the more they will spend. They won’t make more than a token effort to slow the progress towards financial collapse.
The ONLY incentive for the DC politicians to repair things will be AFTER:
- the Social Security monthly deposits cease
- the EBT cards run dry
- the doctors and hospitals stop receiving Medicare and Medicaid payments they have billed
- government employees stop receiving payment for their work
- those in the military find they are no longer being paid.
When that happens, you will see a real attempt to fix things.
But not until...
In the third paragraph I asked posters to ignore that monstrosity and refer only to the Constitution.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it will be opposed at all on that basis.
You’re on the wrong site, Bunky.
It’s interesting how you focus on the “old people” who have dumped their tax dollars down the government toilet their whole working lives, rather than focus on the moochers, deadbeats, and parasites who comprise the Democrat party base.
You focus on the “old people” who have dumped their tax dollars down the government toilet their whole working lives rather than on the rampant waste and corruption of intrusive, big thug government.
You focus on the “old people” who have dumped their tax dollars down the government toilet their whole working lives rather on than the illegal aliens who gobble up more and more from working Americans every year.
Take a hike you stinking troll, and take your VAT and the rest of your taxes with you.
After looking over the comments, it seems a lot of people don’t understand what a VAT is.
It is not a tax on capital. It’s a sales tax, only collected at each stage in the process of production rather than at the point of sale. Which greatly reduces the incentive to evade the sales tax.
The weird part is that the VAT is actually not that different from the national sales tax a lot of freepers seem to like. It’s a tax on consumption, not income, and it is not progressive.
If we were to replace our present income tax with a VAT, it might be a very good thing. But of course any VAT will be an additional tax, it will not replace any of the existing ones.
VAT is better than progressive income taxes because everyone pays it rather than 50% getting a free ride. But it should not be an additional tax. For every $1 more in new taxes, the government spends $2. A new VAT income stream isn't going to be any different.
Machines already do most of the work and wealth creation, and paying off debt. With robots that percentage is going way up. Your kids won't need to lift a finger. Their biggest challenge will be to avoid becoming human pets on food stamps, because pets are easily disposed of when their leaders lose interest in taking care of them.
eliminate all welfare, food stamps, housing payments, free medical care and we have too high a tax rate now!!!
I don’t owe those leaches one damn cent!
“I’m not an idiot”
This thread prooves you are!
As far as your kids, that’s your problem for having them, if you’re so worried, provide for them before you croak but not on my dime!
“I am 72 years old. I was forced to pay into Social Security and forced to have Medicare. Do you actually think of these programs as welfare. That we seniors use these because we want to???? I would have loved to take all the money my husband and I paid into these programs over 50 years and put them into a private fund but we had no choice. I resent youremarks and suggest you look up SS and medicare and get educated. I am not an old geezer taking handouts.”
I’ve been working over 30 years myself, and I remember, from DAY ONE, everyone (young) saying that there was no way that Social Security would be there when we retired, so it’s been an OPEN SECRET that Social Security wasn’t real, since you were in your 40s, if not before then (and before then, the tax was much, much, lower than it is now).
Given that, you should have known that Social Security was simply a disguised income tax, since the money was NOT going into Al Gore’s lock box, but was being consumed in the general fund. The company that I worked for back then was also “borrowing” from its own pension fund - and I still remember the old timers then telling me how angry they were about it. They understood what it meant to steal retirement money.
But those people never complained about the same thing being done with Social Security...I guess they figured they were ENTITLED to the earnings of my kids. So I resent that too.
“You are thinking in terms of the progressive income tax. VAT taxes hit low and high together.”
Yes, they do...but not proportionally, assuming the VAT is applied widely, as the lower classes tend to spend a higher percentage of income money on consumption than the better off...at least according to conventional theory - and the Illegals and others paid under the table get a total free ride today at the federal level, on their cash economy.
“3). Deficits and the debt will NEVER be paid for by tax hikes. They can’t even counterfeit their way out, because it’d sink our currency first.”
Then why try. As you can see from some comments here, we’re not about to reform welfare (Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, AFDC, Social Security, and EIC)...so it’s GAME OVER then.
“Thanks and keep speaking the truth!”
Thanks, it’s a rare comment on this subject. But we should keep it up. People need to understand that this is no longer their money, or ‘government money’, it is money from today’s and tomorrow’s workers.
As someone pointed out, support for euthanasia has now resulted from this. Look at Japan, just yesterday, their VICE PRESIDENT told old people to “Get out of the way and die”. He’s a bit more blunt than the Europeans, especially the British, that use the pleasant term “pathways” for executing their old people. These countries have done the math and realize that there is not even enough money for old people to steal from their grandchildren anymore - so now they must die.
I don’t want to get there...which is why I want to either finance this crap TODAY, or reform it (aka, welfare).
“The ONLY incentive for the DC politicians to repair things will be AFTER:
- the Social Security monthly deposits cease
- the EBT cards run dry...”
You’re basically right. But a VAT is a good way to hit others across the face to get them to understand just what’s coming. Right now people think this can go on forever.
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