Posted on 02/03/2005 9:54:12 AM PST by EternalVigilance
Strange, 24-64 comes out less than 4.6 hours average a day and yep even those kids going to school strangly like the benefits that their 2.65 hours of outside work time brings.And it includes weekends!! So, to get your 30% increase in labor supply we have to have child labor, no retirement, and a 7 day work week! Ahh, the beauty of the FairTax.
This retired gramps is very likely to go looking for additional taxfree work in the form of self-employment. Other people can clearly be expected to seek to extend overtime, part-time and weekend participations as well as second jobs and homework activities in many potential areas under the incentives that an NRST provides in taxfree work, savings and investment.
When all that is required to increase labor supply by 30% is for people to desire to increase their productive work time by an average of one hour a day, your gross over statements and hyperbole make your actual agenda here very clear and cut your credibility to zilch.And your ability to accept realistic expectations of the economy make your actual agenda here very clear and cuts your credibility to...well, you were already at zero.
I see you're still nitpicking and defending the status quo.From the FairTax Dictionary:
nit·pick·ing n.
- Any criticism of the FairTax.
de·fend·ing the stat·us quo v.
- Not buying the FairTax BS.
Strange, 24-64 comes out less than 4.6 hours average a day and yep even those kids going to school strangly like the benefits that their 2.65 hours of outside work time brings.Uh, that's for a 7 day week. And you're still not giving people time to eat!
And it includes weekends!! So, to get your 30% increase in labor supply we have to have child labor, no retirement, and a 7 day work week! Ahh, the beauty of the FairTax.
And is nothing more than an initial impulse reaction to change that decays to 10% in a short time.
LOL, You are freaking out over a transient behavioural response to a change in how taxes are perceived by the American public with no change in overall level of taxation.
In fact by your claim the Fair Tax Act does not even impose as heavy a tax on the nation as the current income/payroll taxes in your denial that its rate is so low it cannot be revenue neutral.
ROTFLM(_|_)O, and people are supposed to take you seriously.
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
--Hamlet (III, ii, 239)
Uh, that's for a 7 day week.
Maybe you haven't noticed, being the apparent shutin you must be with all your time tied up on FR and google looking for esoteric economic treatises on the internet, commerce goes on 7 days a week 24 hours a day. Different people look for work in differing times, even on weekends, holidays and the middle of the night LOL.
And you're still not giving people time to eat!
Lets see, more than15 waking hours available each day out of which, on average, ~4 are now spent in productive activities; Looking to add a productive 1 additional hour out of reaction to taxfree income, savings and investment and people won't have time to eat.
No wonder the health community claims this nation has a problem with over eaters and obesity.
ROTFLM(_|_)O!!!
Fun is a good thing, but only when it spoils nothing better.
George Santayana
commerce goes on 7 days a week 24 hours a day.We aren't talking about commerce, we are talking about people's ability/willingness to work.
Still making up your own definitions, I see.
Have the orderly up your meds...that might help...
We aren't talking about commerce,
uh uh, sure it all happens in a vaccum.
we are talking about people's ability/willingness to work.
Yes indeed, for we are talking about people's reactions manifested in an impulse of desire to extend their incomes when their production and investment is freed of the immediate tax burdens of the current federal tax system.
Putting a prime incentive to productivity and saving/investment is a indeed a significant change that demands strong initial behaviours in response to fundamental change in the perceptions of tax burdens laid by government.
As with any change in a disturbed dynamic system with an impluse change, reactions will swing wide of their ultimate equilibrium, decaying to lower nominal levels based rooted in experience once novelty wears off. The dynamics of human behaviour will manifest in a swing in labor supply as readily as many other factors in the economy such as growth in investment/savings, dynamic price adjustments seeking new equilibriums as business costs decline, the dynamics of international trade, and general growth in GDP.
Your problems lay in forever thinking in static end results, not the dynamics that are always involved in human behaviours that resolve through time, that manifest in endpoint steadystate levels that comes from thinking in terms of static models and the run-of-the-mill distributrional analysis.
"And like every economic model ever, it fails to achieve accurate results."
"So no economic forecast is even remotely accurate or reliable. Therefore, President Bush was wrong in saying that one of the goals of tax-reform should be to adopt a more "pro-growth" system. After all, if you can't forecast the economic empact, how do you know if ANY proposal is pro-growth or not?"
Post 672
"So no economic forecast is even remotely accurate or reliable."
"Can you show me one that has been? Just one out of the thousands that have been made. What makes you people think somebody has figured out how to accurately predict the economy?"
You didn't answer my question. I don't have the time nor the inclination to scour the internet so that I can play "gotcha" like some people. What is your SOLUTION? To not make any attempt to improve our economy through tax reform?
You have posted in the past that your motive for attacking the FairTax proposal over the years is so that you can save our country from economic disaster. What do you base that concern on?
"And it includes weekends!! So, to get your 30% increase in labor supply we have to have child labor, no retirement, and a 7 day work week! Ahh, the beauty of the FairTax."
Or perhaps we could outsource more to India and China than we do now ..... duh!
That requires 67 US Senators.
No offense, but you can't come close to giving me the names of 67 senators who support the idea.
Thanks, and great post.
IMO, ANY attempt to make a distinction between cash/wealth generated by my own industry, and any other property I own is an exercise in legal "self gratification". Which our courts have a fine tradition of.
However, this states it that most clearly:
KNOWLTON v. MOORE, 178 U.S. 41 (1900)
"The constitutional meaning of the word direct was the matter decided. Considering that the constitutional rule of apportionment had its origin in the purpose to prevent taxes on persons solely because of their general ownership of property from being levied by any other rule than that of apportionment, two things were decided by the court: First, that no sound distinction existed between a tax levied on a person solely because of his general ownership of real property, and the same tax imposed solely because of his general ownership of personal property. Secondly, that the tax on the income derived from such property, real or personal, was the legal equivalent of a direct tax on the property from which said income was derived, and hence must be apportioned."
That's why we continue to educate.
As I have said repeatedly: It won't happen til the American people demand it.
From the sales tax advocacy site FairTaxVolunteer.org.
Many take the position that border adjustment gives foreign firms a large advantage since their goods do not include the VAT in their price while U.S. firms must include incometaxes in their price. Most business leaders would agree. Professional economists are divided. The majority opinion is that foreign exchange rates change in response to border tax adjustment and no competitive advantage is afforded to U.S. exporters.
[Emphasis mine]
Now this is a sales tax advocacy group admitting that their view is a minority view. They admit that the supply side position (along with all the monetarists I know) is a majority. You must concede that your worldview is a minority.
That said, I believe that my position is the overwhelming majority. I can't imagine *ANY* economist making the claims that the sales tax advocacy groups do.
So, since I have proven my position is the majority position (using a sales tax advocacy site!), your burden of proof is to name one (that's all, one) economist who shares your belief that a sales tax would be better for American competitiveness than a flat tax.
For the record, my opinion is that the flat tax and the sales tax are both members of the VAT family. They impact the macroeconomy in the same way. They are what economists call "economically equivalent".
IMO, ANY attempt to make a distinction between cash/wealth generated by my own industry, and any other property I own is an exercise in legal "self gratification". Which our courts have a fine tradition of.
The founders saw it otherwise:
- "A nation cannot long exist without revenues. Destitute of this essential support, it must resign its independence, and sink into the degraded condition of a province. This is an extremity to which no government will of choice accede. Revenue, therefore, must be had at all events. In this country, if the principal part be not drawn from commerce, it must fall with oppressive weight upon land."
- "It is evident from the state of the country, from the habits of the people, from the experience we have had on the point itself, that it is impracticable to raise any very considerable sums by direct taxation."
- "The ability of a country to pay taxes must always be proportioned, in a great degree, to the quantity of money in circulation, and to the celerity with which it circulates. Commerce, contributing to both these objects, must of necessity render the payment of taxes easier, and facilitate the requisite supplies to the treasury."
"A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people."
"As revenue is the essential engine by which the means of answering the national exigencies must be procured, the power of procuring that article in its full extent must necessarily be comprehended in that of providing for those exigencies."
"As theory and practice conspire to prove that the power of procuring revenue is unavailing when exercised over the States in their collective capacities, the federal government must of necessity be invested with an unqualified power of taxation in the ordinary modes. "
James Wilson, Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention
4 Dec. 1787 Elliot 2:466--68
- No man is obliged to consume more than he pleases, and each buys in proportion only to his consumption. The price of the commodity is blended with the tax, and the person is often not sensible of the payment But would it have been proper to rest the matter there? Suppose this fund should not prove sufficient; ought the public debts to remain unpaid, or the exigencies of government be left unprovided for? should our tranquillity be exposed to the assaults of foreign enemies, or violence among ourselves, because the objects of commerce may not furnish a sufficient revenue to secure them all? Certainly, Congress should possess the power of raising revenue from their constituents, for the purpose mentioned in the 8th section of the 1st article; that is, "to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States."
The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787
(Farrand's Records)
James Mchenry before the Maryland House of Delegates.
Maryland Novr. 29th 1787--
Appendix A, CXLVIa, page 149, S9."Convention have also provided against any direct or Capitation Tax but according to an equal proportion among the respective States: This was thought a necessary precaution though it was the idea of every one that government would seldom have recourse to direct Taxation, and that the objects of Commerce would be more than Sufficient to answer the common exigencies of State and should further supplies be necessary, the power of Congress would not be exercised while the respective States would raise those supplies in any other manner more suitable to their own inclinations --"
What, what you have missed in only concentrating on what a direct tax might be, is the justifications that provide for the levy of indirect taxes on commercial activity:
KNOWLTON v. MOORE, 178 U.S. 41 (1900)
- 'indirect taxes are levied upon the happening of an event or an exchange.'
BROMLEY v. MCCAUGHN, 280 U.S. 124 (1929)
- While taxes levied upon or collected from persons because of their general ownership of property may be taken to be direct, Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Turst Co., 157 U.S. 429 , 15 S. Ct. 673; Id., 158 U.S. 601 , 15 S. Ct. 912, this court has consistently held, almost from the foundation of the government, that a tax imposed upon a particular use of property or the exercise of a single power over property incidental to ownership, is an excise which neet not be apportioned
Tyler v. U.S. 281 U.S. 497, 502 (1930)
- An indirect tax is a tax laid upon the happening of an event,as distinguished from its tangible fruits.
And that payment of said tax is an obligation that must be fulfilled even though the resource that is drawn upon is value in otherwise untaxable property.
Flint v. Stone Tracy Co.(1911), 220 U.S. 107
- "This tax, it is expressly stated, is to be equivalent to 1 per centum of the entire net income over and above $5,000 received from all sources during the year, this is the measure of the tax explicitly adopted by the statute." *** In other words, the tax is imposed upon the doing of business of the character described, and the measure of the tax is to be income, with the deduction stated, received not only from property used in business, but from every source."
- "In the present case the tax is not payable unless there be a carrying on or doing of business in the designated capacity, and this is made the occasion for the tax, measured by the standard prescribed. The difference between the acts is not merely nominal, but rests upon substantial differences between the mere ownership of property and the actual doing of business in a certain way."
- "It is therefore well settled by the decisions of this court that when the sovereign authority has exercised the right to tax a legitimate subject of taxation as an exercise of a franchise or privilege, it is no objection that the measure of taxation is found in the income produced in part from property which of itself considered is nontaxable
And that occupations engaged in even of common right, are not expempt as sources of indirect tax revenue:
Charles C. Stewart Machine Co. v. Davis (1937), 301 U.S. 548:
- The tax, which is described in the statute as an excise, is laid with uniformity throughout the United States as a duty, an impost, or an excise upon the relation of employment.
- "But natural rights, so called, are as much subject to taxation as rights of lesser importance. An excise is not limited to vocations or activities that may be prohibited altogether. It is not limited to those that are the outcome of a franchise. It extends to vocations or activities pursued as of common right."
- Employment is a business relation, if not itself a business. It is a relation without which business could seldom be carried on effectively. The power to tax the activities and relations that constitute a calling considered as a unit is the power to tax any of them. The whole includes the parts. Nashville, C. & St. L. Ry. Co. v. Wallace, 288 U.S. 249, 267 , 268 S., 53 S.Ct. 345, 349, 350, 87 A.L.R. 1191
Recalling the decisions of Pollock:
POLLOCK v. FARMERS' LOAN & TRUST CO., 158 U.S. 601 (1895):
- "We have considered the act only in respect of the tax on income derived from real estate, and from invested personal property, and have not commented on so much of it as bears on gains or profits from business, privileges, or employments, in view of the instances in which taxation on business, privileges, or employments has assumed the guise of an excise tax and been sustained as such."
- "We do not mean to say that an act laying by apportionment a direct tax on all real estate and personal property, or the income thereof, might not also lay excise taxes on business, privileges, employments, and vocations. "
- Mr. Justice WHITE, dissenting.
16. The injustice of the conclusion points to the error of adopting it. It takes invested wealth, and reads it into the constitution as a favored and protected class of property, which cannot be taxed without apportionment, while it leaves the occupation of the minister, the doctor, the professor, the lawyer, the inventor, the author, the merchant, the mechanic, and all other forms of industry upon which the prosperity of a people must depend, subject to taxation without that condition.
Which brings you to the modern characterisation of the nature of the income tax as perceived by government:
House Congressional Record, March 27, 1943, pg. 2580:
- "The income tax is, therefore, not a tax on income as such. It is an excise tax with respect to certain activities and privileges (the type 3 and 4 taxes) which is measured by reference to the income which they produce. The income is not the subject of the tax; it is the basis for determining the amount of tax."
And why we will find no relief from the income tax coming from the direction of the Courts.
However, I think we are on the same page. We need an NRST. Constitutional or not, the Income Tax is terrible.
BTW, if there were no question as to the direct vs. excise tax argument there would have been no 16th Amendment. Also note, the 16th is the first expanding power of Government.
For the record, my opinion is that the flat tax and the sales tax are both members of the VAT family. They impact the macroeconomy in the same way. They are what economists call "economically equivalent".
Only as one ignores human behaviour, differnence in overhead costs in between the real world implementations as regard business.
The revenue to government remains constant all taxes are "economically equivalent" when imposed up the same size taxbase, the distinctions arise in the manner in which the taxes are actually implemented and the regulatory costs imposed upon businesses and individuals, even neglecting the political costs in terms of intrusiveness into private enterprise and the individual's life.
The "economic equivalence" of consumption taxes consist only in the tax base reached by the taxes.
consumption = income - investment
The NRST's legal incidence imposed at the left upon the consumption side. The flat tax & VATs legal incidence to the left of the equation, through the production side.
The costs attendent in the impositions being a separate but not unrelated issue from "economic equivalence" of the "tax" systems per-se.
Also note, the 16th is the first expanding power of Government.
Not according to Springer or even Pollock as most income was still subject to taxation. And Pollock merely acted to assure that direct taxes(related to property ownership) were to be imposed by apportionment rather than by the rule of uniformity.
As was recognised in Stanton:
Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co.(1916), 240 U.S. 103:
- "the provisions of the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation, but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged, and being placed in the category of direct taxation subject to apportionment"
It doesn't matter whether the buyer (sales tax) or seller (flat income tax) bears the statutory burden of the tax. The economic burden (who actually bears the burden of the tax) is exactly the same between them. That is why they impact the economy in the same way and are considered "economic equivalents".
And yes, the "economic equivalence" extends to international trade.
All VATs are "economically equivalent".
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Tax History Mueseum: 1815 Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Dallas contemplated the enactment of an income tax to raise up to $3 million dollars for the war effort. He modeled his idea after the income tax Britain adopted in 1799 to finance the Napoleonic Wars. Dallas assumed that such an income tax constituted an indirect tax, and would not require apportionment. The House Ways and Means Committee responded lukewarmly to the proposal, and the war ended before any income tax could be enacted. |
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