Tis' the Season to be Taxed (embedded taxes)

The Cato Institute ^ | December 6, 1996 | Peter Ferrara

[groanup]

Found this oldie by accident. Good argument for the Fair Tax.

[groanup]

For your ping list sir.

[QQQQQ]

Tax PING

[groanup]

LOL! By one second!

[EagleUSA]

...and who said we are not ALREADY OVERTAXED into socialism??? Over half of my income goes to taxation -- how about you??? --- and Washington hears about it DAILY!

[smokeyb]

Doesn't really look a bit old, does it?

[smokeyb]

That's a tie in my book! Calling all Ancient_geezers!

[ancient_geezer]

Talk about buying a pig-in-a-poke.
Hide at tax is the biggest game in town.

 

A Taxreform bump for you all.

If you would like to be added to this ping list let me know.

John Linder in the House(HR25) & Saxby Chambliss Senate(S25), offer a comprehensive bill to kill all income and SS/Medicare payroll taxes outright, and provide a IRS free replacement in the form of a retail sales tax:

H.R.25,S.25
A bill to promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity by repealing the income tax and other taxes, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, and enacting a national retail sales tax to be administered primarily by the States.

Refer for additional information:

• http://www.fairtax.org,
• http://www.salestax.org &
• http://www.geocities.com/cmcofer/ftax.html

[BobL]

I get a kick out of Cato. Talk about speaking out of both sides of your mouth. It is the Libertarian clowns at places like Cato (and Reason) that somehow convinced our "Republican" governor here that it is better for Texans to pay tens of billions of dollars to private companies to help finance condos on the French Riviera (via privately built and operated toll roads - with monopoly-type protections), instead of several billions of dollars to have the state build and expand freeways.

No we Texans are guinea pigs for the biggest experiment in government giving away its assets that this country (or maybe the world) has ever seen. We're screwed - and in large part because of outfits like Cato. So it is hard to take them seriously when it comes to taxes.

[groanup]

That's a tie in my book!

Okay, no payoff.

Calling all Ancient_geezers!

Must be dinnertime.

[marblehead17]

ping

[smokeyb]

Must be dinnertime.

Wrong! It took 38 seconds! ;-)

[groanup]

It is the Libertarian clowns at places like Cato (and Reason) that somehow convinced our "Republican" governor here that it is better for Texans to pay tens of billions of dollars to private companies to help finance condos on the French Riviera (via privately built and operated toll roads - with monopoly-type protections), instead of several billions of dollars to have the state build and expand freeways.

I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you could elaborate so the rest of us are up to speed on this.

[Conservative Goddess]

"Calling all Ancient_geezers!"

Ancient Goddesses too? LOL......I resemble that remark.

The "Tax Bite" of several products and services can be found at: http://www.atr.org/taxbites/index.html

[groanup]

Might as well get these guys over here as well so they can tell us how wrong this article is.

[groanup]

Thanks for a good link. Bookmarked.

[BobL]

"I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you could elaborate so the rest of us are up to speed on this."

Sorry - it's called the Trans-Texas Corridor Plan. It's basically a bunch of toll roads that will be built across the state of Texas (4,000 miles total). The difference is that these roads will be built using private money (using the government power of eminent domain), but those investors will get special protections to make sure that the existing freeways can never compete against them. Then, they will be able to charge whatever they can get away with.

Right now, Governor Perry is secretly completing the negotiations on first of those highways. For some who-knows-why reason, the governor announced that Cintra (a Spanish firm) had been selected, but that the contract had still not been finalized. Needless to say, Perry now has to bend over for Cintra, and agree to whatever they want, or else he looks like a total idiot. Perry has already said that the contract will be for 50 years.

Cintra is in Canada, and the robbed the people of Ontario blind. They bought an existing government-owned toll road, and then jacked the prices sky high (20 US cents per mile, for cars). The Canadians found themselves locked into this deal with Cintra for 99 years, and there is nothing that they can do about it now.

The dingbat Libertarians think it's the second coming of Reagan, the people who are being robbed blind think differently.

[Pearls Before Swine]

My economist brother in law estimated that the overall government share of GDP was in the 45% range. This discussion was 10 or 15 years ago. Why should it be surprising that an automobile's cost to a consumer would include about this amount in taxes?

He then went on to say that we were better off than the Europeans, because they were closer to the 60% range. I was unconsoled.

For me, a big issue about large government involvement in the economy is inefficiency. Do government employees work as hard or spend money as efficiently as private workers do? No way (at least in the aggregate, if someone has a story about some individual government employee who takes his trust seriously)!

[Your Nightmare]

And even if you just drink soda, 35 percent of what you pay for a can goes for taxes at all levels.

This could only be possible if people didn't pay income and payroll taxes. But guess what! They do.

So do I pay my income and payroll taxes through my paycheck or through my purchase. Pick one.

[groanup]

Sorry - it's called the Trans-Texas Corridor Plan. It's basically a bunch of toll roads that will be built across the state of Texas (4,000 miles total). The difference is that these roads will be built using private money (using the government power of eminent domain), but those investors will get special protections to make sure that the existing freeways can never compete against them. Then, they will be able to charge whatever they can get away with.

I have spent a lot of time in Texas. The roads, for the most part, are excellent. A lot of farm roads and county maintained roads. Why on earth does Texas need another 4,000 miles of new roads? This sounds like a sweetheart deal and I can't believe Texans would go for it. I have been just as disillusioned with Republicans in Georgia who were swept into power for the first time since WBTS reconstruction. They have taken it upon themselves to posit all sorts of mischief. One of their dumb ideas was to enact an emminent domain law that made it easier for private developers to steal land from private individuals. Neal Boortz got on that one and with the help of a lot of Freepers and others got it squashed.

Now, having said all of that, I can't think of anything libertarians have ever gotten that they wanted.