“But man, a VAT is just obnoxious, and would live beyond a government default.”
Sorry, I meant to respond here. You do have a point. If we enter the crash with a VAT, we’ll have it on the way out and it will weigh us down. I guess the difference is that I still think that a crash can be avoided...or I used to think that. I was hoping that ALL of Bush’s tax cuts would have expired, along with a new VAT, along with European prices for gasoline (i.e., $9.00 per gallon). For all of those things would actually give us a fighting chance to balance the budget (again, because the taxes are what they need to be, which is regressive).
But Bush’s tax cuts are now permanent, so the ingrates at the bottom end never pay their share of the mess we have - so I’m starting to think also that a crash is no longer avoidable - we might as well just get it over with, and doing it with no VAT means that it will be sooner (which is good) and we may come out the other end in better shape.
So I’m thinking you convinced me.
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.