[You Dirty Rats]

There was a thread on NYC cigarette taxes over the weekend on how people are buying their cancer sticks outside the Big Apple and evading the very high tax. Everyone posting thought that was just ducky, but it never occurs to people that the "FairTax" has ZERO chance of working in this country for the same reason. Americans have been the best smugglers and bootleggers in the world going back to colonial times -- just ask the Kennedys! People will start buying goods here just like they do fireworks in Ohio -- swear you are a wholesaler and then consume the goods. Or perhaps they will buy through tthe Internet -- since the anti-internet tax lobby here won't hear of applying the FairTax to that channel!

Anyone who believes the Federal and State governments can actually collect 30% sales taxes on every transaction is either delusional or an ivory-tower professor from a second-rate school.

[CSM]

Don't you think that your statement (which I'm not necessarily arguing against) is just a statement that supports the fact that the cost of government is already more than the citizens are willing to bear. How could it be possible that the revenue nuetral NRST becomes an unbearable burden when the cost is brought to light? Could it be that with the current structure the politicians can continue to expand their control out of the sight of the citizens?

How do you propose reducing the size of the government, to a level that the citizens are willing to bear, while still keeping the cost hidden from the citizens?

Do you have an alternative?

[phil_will1]

".....is either delusional or an ivory-tower professor from a second-rate school."

Yes, indeed. A second rate school such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Rice.

LOL

[Always Right]

Anyone who believes the Federal and State governments can actually collect 30% sales taxes on every transaction is either delusional or an ivory-tower professor from a second-rate school.

Yep, and just think of the beast you would have to create to try to enforce it. I would imagine it would be something like the ATF only on a more massive scale. Studies in Europe have shown once a sales tax gets above 11%, the evasion rates skyrocket. The idea that you can get $2.5 trillion out of our economy without a strong federal agency is pure fantasy. The existence of an IRS-type is not unique to an income tax, but to any tax. Internet sales and e-mails and shipments will have to be monitored heavily for this system to have any chance at working.

[Iwo Jima]

You are exactly right. The NRST would create the biggest black market and police state that you could ever imagine. It would be the IRS on steroids.