Posted on 07/26/2008 4:54:58 AM PDT by Man50D
Like all the great nations and societies of history the United States is rapidly coming to the end of its existence as a great and powerful country. The shackles of our nearly 70,000 page tax code are making us less and less able to compete in the global economy. Our tax on capital is cutting our businesses off at the knees. Our highest earners have half their income confiscated by the IRS. All of these taxes along with the cost of complying with nearly unfathomable tax regulations put us at a severe disadvantage as competitors in the global economy since these expenses must be added to the price of the goods and services we sell.
Ireland with its business friendly tax laws has experienced a huge economic boom while because of its punitive taxes the United States has experienced an economic slowdown. The Irish are praying that we do not adopt the FairTax. They recognize that the relocation of American companies to Ireland was precipitated by our smothering taxes on capital and labor. Ireland realizes that the establishment of the FairTax would give America the best business climate in the world drawing its American companies back home along with attracting many other foreign businesses.
The passage of the simple, fair, and transparent FairTax Bill, only 132 pages long, will abolish all Federal income taxes, including personal, estate, gift, capital gains, alternative minimum, corporate, payroll, and self-employment taxes, and replace them with one simple, visible, personal consumption tax. It would tax what we remove from society by consumption instead of taxing what we contribute to society by production and investment.
Every American household would receive a cash distribution every month to cover the consumption taxes they would spend for their basic nourishment, housing, transportation, and medical needs. There will be zero taxes paid for necessities. Beyond what Americans spend for necessities 23% of what they choose to spend at the retail level for personal use will be forwarded to the treasury. The FairTax will replace dollar for dollar the current revenues confiscated by the IRS.
Politicians have been changing the tax code since 1913 to gain the favor of one voting bloc or another. We have had some 16,000 changes to the code since the mid-eighties and the problems these changes were supposed to help have been exacerbated or replaced with other problems. Therefore, the changes go on and on and on and the power it yields to our politicians corrupts them more and more and more. Our tax code has driven $2 trillion into the underground economy costing us about $50 billion in tax collections. Our tax code has driven $12 trillion into offshore financial centers. These funds should be working in our markets and banks. We are spending between $400 and $500 billion each year just complying with the code. That money is a total and unnecessary loss to the economy.
Everybody complains about the complexity, unfairness, and intrusiveness of the IRS. Our politicians in response to our complaints all claim to be for reforming the tax code but reforming it is not the solution. It does not need reforming. It needs to be replaced by the FairTax. Top American businessmen, tax experts, and economists have devoted years to the development of the simple, fair, and transparent FairTax Bill. These experts spent some 12 years formulating the FairTax Bill. At the pace of our “do nothing” Congress it would take 1200 years to reform our hopelessly complicated Tax Code. Tweaking the Tax Code fixes nothing. Getting rid of the IRS fixes everything.
When John Linder and some of his FairTax supporters presented the FairTax Bill to former Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, he said, “You have just proposed the largest magnet for capital and jobs in history.” It is a good thing for all Americans for the United States to be the outsource destination for jobs. It is a good thing for all Americans for our nation to be the world’s safest and most stable tax haven. The FairTax will give us these results as well as a business climate that will expand freedom.
BTTT
This is a factually untrue statement. The US has outperformed most of the world's economies over the last 25 years, especially most of the European economies.
Most of the world's "advanced" economies face much worse taxation burden, regulatory, entitlement and demographic problems than we do.
Tax code caused inefficiencies may at some point cause a decline in our global competitiveness, but it hasn't happened yet. It may never happen, as a free market is remarkably adaptable.
These sorts of whines remind me of the stories we used to hear of how the US military was losing its competitiveness. Military or economic competitiveness is only relevant against a competitor. Unless somebody can point out some large group of nations that is dramatically outperforming us, the claim is a bunch of hooey.
FWIW, the coming thing in Europe is an attempt to imitate economic vitality of the US. Thus the election of Merkel and Sarkozy.
Yes, the average American works 4 to 5 months just to pay his or her taxes...
It’s a wonderful system I am sure our Founding Fathers had in mind...
“The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.”
Jefferson Davis
You are confusing the issue.
I do not claim we have the best of all possible systems, or that it is one the Founders would approve of.
I’m saying other nations, in general, have greater competitive problems than we do.
In a race (or any other competition) how fast you can run is not relevant, it only matters whether you can run faster than the other runners.
In this case, just about all the other runners have even greater problems with these issues than we do. For example, just about all the other advanced economies take a greater proportion of earnings in taxes than the US does.
I found it fascinating that the only example the author could come up with was Ireland.
Run for the hills! The Irish juggernaut will soon destroy the US economy!
Your analysis is like saying we can keep the pace in a sprint with a ball and chain around our ankle all the while ignoring that we could zoom much faster without it.
There is no such thing as a Fair tax. What they don’t tell you is a new Chev or Ford will cost over $10,000.00 more in federal sales tax. Plus the state sales tax. If you don’t believe it do the math yourself.
"the bipartisan Advisory Panel on Tax Reform had “calculated that a sales tax would have to be set at 34 percent of retail sales prices to bring in the same revenue as the taxes it would replace,
A new Chevy can cost upwards to $40,000.00, times a least 30% federal sales tax. 12,000.00 plus the $40,000.000 makes a new Chev cost 52,000.00. Add your state sales tax to the $52,000.00. And hold your hat for the Fair Tax lie.
Plus double taxation for the retired.
The 23 percent number in H.R. 25 is the equivalent of the 4.8 percent in the previous example. To calculate the real rate of the sales tax, we have to determine the original purchase price of an item. We can begin with the same $100 item, keeping in mind that a price tag that reads $100 has sales tax already built in. If our tax rate is 23 percent of the tax-inclusive sales price, then of the $100 final price, $23 of those dollars will be for taxes, meaning that the original pre-tax price of the item is $77. To get $23 in taxes on a $77 item, one must impose a 30 percent tax. In other words, a 23 percent sales tax on the tax-inclusive sales price is equivalent to a 30 percent tax on the actual price of the item.
many FairTax supporters (about 15 percent of those who wrote to us, for example) do not understand that the 23 percent figure is tax inclusive.
Even if Kotlikoff is correct that a 31.2 percent rate is revenue-neutral, there remains some reason to doubt that the rate actually would be that low. The FairTax proposal assumes a 100 percent tax base on consumption. By way of contrast, most states that have sales taxes have roughly a 50 percent tax base. With the FairTax’s 100 percent base, consumers would pay taxes on a great many things that may not intuitively seem like consumption. The list would include:
* Purchases of new homes
* Rent
* Interest on credit cards, mortgages and car loans
* Doctor bills
* Utilities
* Gasoline (30 percent in addition to current taxes, which would not be repealed)
* Legal fees
At today’s prices, gasoline would cost almost $1 per gallon more. A $150,000 new home would run $195,000 – plus the 30 percent tax that the buyer would pay on the interest on the mortgage. In short, the FairTax taxes everything that one buys, with the one notable exception of education. Any exceptions to the tax base (for instance, eliminating rent or credit card interest from the tax base) would require an offsetting increase in the rate. We stand behind our earlier analysis of the FairTax. The proposal to which Gov. Huckabee referred is not a 23 percent tax, but rather a 30 percent tax. And it is revenue-neutral only through an accounting trick. It will collect more money from those earning between $15,000 and $200,000 per year and less from those earning more than $200,000 per year. It is possible that the FairTax would make most people better off, but much of that gain would be a direct result of making the tax code less fair." http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/unspinning_the_fairtax.html
Respectfully, this fine Saturday morning...
So what?
We, as a nation, are overtaxed...
Growth, entrepreneurship, risk taking and capital formation take place when the people have their money and not the government.
These are just not platitudes...
Let's remove the shackles of government from the people and we will do more than win a mere race. We will win in dazzling style. Liberty.
Nope.
The article’s claim is that other countries are out-competing us, not that we could do better. Obviously I agree we could.
A man wearing a 20 pound ball and chain is likely to win a race when he’s competing against others with a 50 pound weight on their chain.
The question here is not whether X is as fast as he could be, it’s whether X is in the process of losing the race to Y. For this assertion to fly, you must come up with a believable Y who is faster than X.
With the exception of some small niche players such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland, etc., there are no such runners in the race. Especially since the race is one of size of economy as well as growth.
Ireland can never be a serious threat, simply because it isn’t large enough. Anyway, the EU is about to start imposing its “fairness” rules on Ireland and there goes their competitive advantage. Nice while it lasted. The Irish people just pissed-off the powers that be in Brussels, and they will have their revenge.
To use a military analogy, WWII-era weaponry might look primitive to us, and we may be aware better armaments are possible. But if the other side fights with WWI or Napoleonic weapons, the side with WWII weapons is likely to win.
Whether we have the best of all possible systems was not the article’s argument. I agree we do not, and would probably agree with many of your ideas for making it better.
The article’s claim is that other systems are working better than ours economically. This is factually incorrect at this point in time, although it could certainly become true at some point in the future.
Given the fact that we are presently carrying the defense/police burden for the entire world so that international trade can go on, I think we’re performing admirably.
Well, there may some truth to what you say...
I see it as a wake up call for all of us.
I am not necessarily advocating the Fair Tax but I would support any idea like it or the flat tax to simplfy our tax code and put the money back in the hands of the people for their hard labor.
Have a great weekend...
That statement could go under the classification of "famous last words".
Hong Kong is an economic powerhouse that sits on a tiny rock and is inhabited by an olio of nationalities.
BTW, the US has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. Are you saying that cutting that rate (or eliminating it) would do no good?
THE HISTORY OF THE SIXTEENTH AMENDMENT
by Dr. W. Cleon Skousen
Strange as it may seem, the Sixteenth Amendment (which gave the American people the affliction of confiscatory income taxes) was never supposed to have passed. It was introduced by the Republicans as part of a political scheme to trick the Democrats, but it backfired.
Here’s the story.
The Founding Fathers had rejected income taxes (or any other direct taxes) unless they were apportioned to each state according to population. Nevertheless, an income tax was levied during the Civil War and upheld by the Supreme Court on the somewhat tenuous reasoning. When another income tax was enacted in 1893, the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional. In connection with the two Pollock case reviewed in 1895, the Court declared that the act violated Article I, section 9 of the Constitution.
During the following decade, however, the complexion of the Court changed somewhat, and so did public sentiment. There was great social unrest and the idea of a tax to “soak the rich” began to take root among liberals in both major parties. Several times the Democrats introduced bills to provide a tax on higher incomes but each time the conservative branch of the Republican party killed it in the Senate. The Democrats used this as evidence that the Republicans were the “party of the rich” and should be thrown out of power, forcing President William Howard Taft to acknowledge in political speeches that income taxes might be all right “in principle”, but it was well known among close associates that he was strongly opposed to such a tax.
The Bailey Bill
In April 1909, Senator Joseph W. Bailey, a conservative Democrat from Texas who was also opposed to income taxes, decided to further embarrass the Republicans by forcing them to openly oppose an income tax bill similar to those which had been introduced in the past. He introduced his bill expecting it to get the usual opposition. However, to his amazement, Teddy Roosevelt and a growing element of liberals in the Republican party came out in favor of the bill and it looked as though it was going to pass.
Not only was Bailey surprised, but Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, the Republican floor leader, frantically met with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of
Massachusetts and President Taft to work out a strategy to demolish the Bailey tax bill. Their own party was split too widely to permit a direct confrontation, so the strategy was to pull a political end run. They announced that they favored an income tax but only if it were an amendment to the Constitution. Within their own circle, they discussed how it might get approval of the House and the Senate, but they were quite certain that it could be defeated in the more conservative states-three-fourths of which were required in order to ratify the amendment.
Thus, the Democrats were off guard when President Taft unexpectedly sent a message to Congress on June 16th, 1909, recommending the passage of a consitutional amendment to legalize federal income tax legislation.
The strategy threw the liberals into an uproar. At the very moment when their Bailey bill was about to pass, the Republicans were coming out for an amendment to the Constitution which would probably be defeated by the states.
Reaction to the Amendment
Congressman Cordell Hull (D-Tenn., and later Secretary of State under FDR) saw exactly what was happening. He took the floor to excoriate the Republican leaders. Said he:
“No person at all familiar with the present trend of national legislation will seriously insist that these same Republican leaders are over-anxious to see the country adopt an income tax...What powerful influence, what new light and deep seated motive suddenly moves these political veterans to ‘about face’ and pretend to warmly embrace this doctrine which they have heretofore uniformly denounced?” {1}
He went on to expose what he considered to be a political trick. He needn’t have been so concerned. The slogan of “soak the rich” automatically aroused Pavlovian salivation among politicians both in Washington and the states. The Senate approved the Sixteenth Amendment with an astonishing unanimity of 77-0! The House approved it by a vote of 318-14.
When Republican Congressman Sereno E. Payne of New York, who had introduced the amendment in the House, saw that this end run was turning into a winning touchdown for the opposition, he was horrified. He went to the floor and openly denounced the bill he had sponsored. Said he:
“As to the general policy of an income tax, I am utterly opposed to it. I believe with Gladstone that it tends to make a nation of liars. I believe it is the most easily concealed of any tax that can be laid, the most difficult of enforcement, and the hardest to collect; that it is, in a word, a tax upon the income of honest men and an exemption, to a greater or lesser extent, of the income of rascals; and so I am opposed to any income tax in time of peace...I hope that if the Constitution is amended in this way the time will not come when the American people will ever want to enact an income tax except in time of war.” {2}
The end run of the Republican leadership did indeed backfire. State after state ratified this “soak the rich” amendment until it went into full force and effect on
February 12, 1913 (Ed.note: Mr. Bill Benson, in his book “The Law That Never Was” has since documented massive...and outcome changing...federal interference in the certification of the votes of the individual state legislatures. The votes for and against from Kentucky, for instance, were switched by then Secretary of State Philander Knox.)
Did it Soak the Rich?
Certain writers such as Alfred Hinsey Kelly and Winfred Audif Harbison (authors of “The American Constitution: Origins” [New York: Norton, 1970]) rejoiced that this
amendment “shifted the growing burden of federal finance to the wealthy.”{3} Nothing could be further from the truth!
The wealthy, especially the super-wealthy, had anticipated this development and had created a clever device to protect their riches. It was called a “charitable
foundation”. The idea was to cosign the ownership of wealth, including stocks and securities, to a foundation and then get Congress and the state legislatures to declare all such charitable institutions exempt from taxes. By setting up boards which were under the control of these wealthy benefactors they could escape the tax and still maintain control over the disposition of these fabulous fortunes.
Long before the federal income tax was in place, multimillionaires such as John D. Rockefeller (who once said “I want to own nothing and control everything”), J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie had their foundations set up and operating. The next step was to make certain that the new tax bill passed by Congress contained a provision
specifically exempting their treasure houses from taxation.
The tax bill which the Sixteenth Amendment authorized was introduced as House Resolution 3321 on October 3, 1913. It turned out to be somewhat of a legislative potpourri for tax attorneys, accountants and the federal courts. In the ensuing years, untold millions of dollars have been spent trying to figure out exactly what this tax law, and those which followed it, were intended to provide. However,
tucked away in its inward parts was that precious key which safely locked up the riches of the super wealthy. Here are the magic words under Section 2, paragraph G:
“Provided, however, that nothing in this section shall apply...to any corporation or association organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific or educational purposes.” All of the foundations of the
super-rich were designed to qualify under one or more of these categories.
How the Cute Little Monkey Grew into a Gorilla
When the first income tax was sent out to the people, the Congress chortled confidently that “all good citizen will willingly and cheerfully support and sustain this, the fairest and cheapest of all taxes.” That was the cute little monkey part. After all, the first tax ranged from merely 1% on the first $20,000 of taxable income and was only 7% on incomes above $500,000. Who could complain?(Ed. note: In 1994 “dollars” that $20K is now over $250K and the $500K is today over $6 million!)
At first, scarcely anyone did. Little did they know that before the tinkering was done in Washington, this system would be described by many Americans as the most
unfair and expensive tax in the history of the nation. Within a few years, it had become the principal source of income for the federal government.
In the beginning, hardly anyone had to file a tax return because the tax did not apply to the vast majority of America’s work-a-day citizens. For example, in 1939, 26 years after the Sixteenth Amendment was adopted, only 5% of the population, counting both taxpayers and their dependents, was required to file returns. Today, more than 80% of the population is under the income tax.
Withholding Taxes
The collection process was greatly facilitated in 1943 by a device created by FDR to pay the costs of WWII. It was called “withholding from wages and salaries”. In other words, the tax was collected at the payroll window before it was even due to be paid by the taxpayer. Economists point out that this device, more than any other single factor, shifted the tax from its original design as a tax on the wealthy to a tax on the masses—mostly the middle class. Investigations disclosed that the truly wealthy pay relatively little or no income tax at all.
Some idea of how the cute little monkey grew into a gorilla is perceived from the fact that nearly half of all federal revenue is now raised by income taxes. Furthermore, the higher brackets are literally confiscatory—but by “due process”, of course, under the Sixteenth Amendment. Rates have been as high as 94% in the upper brackets during wartime, and even in peacetime they are presently 50%. (Ed. note: This piece was apparently written when the top rates were higher than in 1992. Not to worry, however: Watch for higher rates coming soon to an IRS office near you!) Medium income people up through the upper middle class pay between 12 & 35%. Nevertheless, at all levels it has become sufficiently burdensome to discourage the attainment of basic economic advantage which most Americans seek.
Weaknesses of the System
The most damaging aspect of the Sixteenth Amendment is the fact that it vitiated the unalienable rights provided in the 4th Amendment. This is the amendment which protects privacy—privacy of the home, business, personal papers and personal affairs of the private citizen. None of these are disturbed by a poll (head or capitation) tax because it is so much per person regardless of the circumstances, but when the tax is based on income, the IRS is assigned the most unpleasant task of making certain that everyone pays his fair share. This task is physically impossible without prying into the private papers, private business and personal affairs of the individual citizens. By any standard, it is a miserable assignment. Furthermore, it is impossible to run audits and surveys of all taxpayers and so the audits seldom check more than 2% of them.
There are many things wrong with this approach. Worst of all, it puts the government tax collectors in the gorilla role and intimidates citizens who are unlucky enough to be audited with the feeling that they are “victims” of an
unfair system.
The IRS also finds it difficult to avoid the attitude that each taxpayer is a cheat, even a criminal, who must somehow be cornered and caught. This has brought the structure of the entire income tax collection process into question.
For example, the underground economy of monetary transactions (which is conducted without records) is well known. It is estimated that losses in federal revenues from this underground economy are at least $100 billion per year. (Ed. note: Probably closer to $200-300 billion!) Obviously, this is not fair to those who are paying their share. Then there is an estimated $65 billion per year which is lost
because it is not reported. This is considered unfair. There is a lot of padding on expense accounts, which is estimated to reduce the tax total by another $18 billion.
Other operations, both legal and illegal, jumps the total up a few billion more.
There has also been extensive criticism of the prosecution of tax cases. The appeal is through a system of tax courts which are without juries. In order to get a tax case into a regular court where there is a jury, the citizen must pay the tax and then sue the government.
Thousands of complaints have also poured into the IRS concerning the tactics used by some of its agents. Citizens feel they are treated as criminals rather than suspects who are innocent until proven guilty.
Is there a better way? Here is one answer by a former head of the IRS.
A Former IRS Commissioner’s Statement
T. Coleman Andrews served as commissioner of IRS for nearly 3 years during the early 1950s. Following his resignation, he made the following statement:
“Congress [in implementing the Sixteenth Amendment] went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for
inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion.
“The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds.
“The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect,
personal dignity or other attributes of men.
“The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by - _steeply graduated_ taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die.
As matters now stand, if our children make the most of their capabilities and training, they will have to give most of it to the tax collector and so become slaves of the government. People cannot pull themselves up by the bootstraps anymore because the tax collector gets the boots and the straps as well.
“The income tax is bad because it is oppressive to all and discriminates particularly against those people who prove themselves most adept at keeping the wheels of business turning and creating maximum employment and a high standard of living for their fellow men.
“I believe that a better way to raise revenue not only can be found but must be found because I am convinced that the present system is leading us right back to the very tyranny from which those, who established this land of freedom, risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to forever free themselves...”{4}
REFERENCES
{1} Congressional Record-House, July 12,1909,p.4404
{2} Congressional Record-House, July 12,1909,p.4390
{3} Original edition, p.626
{4} The Utah Independent, March 29, 1973
EDITOR’S NOTE:
THERE IS A BETTER WAY. GIVEN THE CURRENT LEVEL OF UNDERSTANDING AMONG THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, AN IMMEDIATE RETURN TO THE FULLY CONSTITUTIONAL CAPITATION, HEAD OR POLL TAX
WOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE AT THIS TIME. THERE IS, HOWEVER, AN INTERIM STEP: THE REPLACEMENT OF THE CURRENT INCOME TAX WITH A FEDERAL CONSUMPTION TAX LEVIED AT THE POINT OF PURCHASE.
IF YOU THINK THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS GREAT, DO NOTHING. I ASSURE YOU THAT IT WILL BECOME EVEN “GREATER” STILL. IF, HOWEVER, YOU BELIEVE THAT AMERICA IS TOO PRECIOUS TO BE FURTHER DAMAGED, BOTH ECONOMICALLY OR MORALLY, BY THE PRESENT SYSTEM, YOU HAD BETTER GET BUSY. YOUR KIDS AND GRANDKIDS WILL THANK YOU.
WANT TO HELP? RUN “FAIRTAX” THROUGH A SEARCH ENGINE, FIND ONE OF THE GROUPS PROLIFERATING AROUND THIS ISSUE, PLUG IN AND WORK TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Two quotations for you to ponder while considering what level of involvement is right for you:
“As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he be involved in the action and passion of his times lest he be judged NEVER TO HAVE LIVED.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
“We believe a man should be concerned about public as well as private affairs, for we regard the person who takes no part in politics not as merely uninterested but as useless.” –Pericles (Citizen of Athens)
So, you have at least two choices:
DO NOTHING – AS ADVOCATED BY SOME OF THE MINDLESS MYRMIDONS OF MEDIOCRITY OF AND WHEN YOU LEAVE THE PLANET – AND, DESPITE RUMORS TO THE CONTRARY, WE ALL DO – IT WILL BE AS THOUGH YOU’D NEVER BEEN HERE (i.e., USELESS) or
DO SOMETHING!
Join with the several millions of Americans who are ready to make this essential change happen by joining one of the growing number of grass-roots organizations now working for this important change in the way we do business in what used to be the “…land of the free and the home of the brave…”
We may never have another shot at ridding ourselves of a tax system an ostensibly free people ought never to have tolerated in the first place. We can spend a few bucks (thanks to the same gang of conspirators who ALLEGEDLY saddled us with the income tax, we no longer have any “dollars” but that’s another story)— now or pay later with even more of our wealth — AND our remaining freedoms.
The choice is yours!
Don't know about the others, but Carnegie retired and started giving away all his money in 1901. This doesn't sound like a scheme to avoid taxes from a law going into effect in 1913.
He gave away $350M, which in today's terms is somewhere between $4B and $40B, depending on which conversion scheme you buy into.
This is a factually untrue statement.
No it isn't.
The US has outperformed most of the world's economies over the last 25 years, especially most of the European economies.
That my be true, but it is in spite of, not because of the asinine tax code. You are arguing apples v. oranges. Most of the world's "advanced" economies face much worse taxation burden, regulatory, entitlement and demographic problems than we do.
That is true. But it is totally unrelated to the truthfullness of Mr. Linder's statement. Apples and oranges again.
code caused inefficiencies may at some point cause a decline in our global competitiveness, but it hasn't happened yet.
Oh, tht's right, we still produce a great big shate of the electronic products market, cars, aircraft parts, textiles, etc., etc., etc.
It may never happen ....
It already has.
... as a free market is remarkably adaptable.
Very true, but it can and has adapted to our stupid, confiscatory tax code by moving a very great percentage of our industry, and hundreds of thousands of our jobs, OUT OF OUR COUNTRY -- at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars annually to our economy.
Unless somebody can point out some large group of nations that is dramatically outperforming us, the claim is a bunch of hooey.
Just A couple -- take a trip to Wa;Mart and check out wht percentage of their goods is produced in the US versus foreign countries. MOST OF IT USED TO BE PRODUCED HERE.
On your way to WalMart, check out the number of cars ACTUALLY PRODUCED AND ASSEMBLED IN THIS COUNTRY v. those from out of country. All of that was not caused byu greedy union; a very large part of the blame goes to tax code theft by Uncle Sam. FWIW, the coming thing in Europe is an attempt to imitate economic vitality of the US. Thus the election of Merkel and Sarkozy.
FWIW I think you had better go bact to the article and read the part about Ireland.
We no longer produce many things in this country because they can be produced more cost-effectively overseas and imported.
This is not necessarily a problem.
In 1800 90% of our population was employed producing food. Today it’s <1%. Is this a problem?
In 1800 the wholesale price of a tonne of wheat, adjusted for inflation, was close to $1000 (which is why small inefficient family farms were viable, by the standards of the day). Today it’s near $20. Is this a problem? Would we be wealthier today if most people still worked producing food? Or does the less expensive food allow people to spend their greatly increased income on other goods and services, thereby providing others with entirely new, and realistically much more gratifying, types of employment?
The same applies to manufacturing. It went overseas because it could be produced for less there. If it had been restricted from doing so, the total wealth of our society would be much lower, and the total number of people employed in manufacturing would still have dropped precipitously. Manufacturers would have just invested more in labor saving equipment, productivity would have increased, and the number of workers would have dropped, although those remaining on the payroll would have been better compensated.
As long as the present worldwide system of trade continues in effect, we should continue to be good to go. There have been numerous claims that the US (and world) economy is about to collapse. I’ve been reading them since the 70s. Their historical accuracy rate is right up there with those predicting imminent environmental collapse.
If predicted long enough, will somebody probably be right eventually? Sure, but reimposition of draconian trade restrictions is perhaps the best of all possible ways to cause a world economic collapse.
With so much manufacturing overseas, will we be in a pickle in the event of a major war? You bet, but then so will all our potential enemies, although perhaps in different ways. No country is an island today.
I’m always amazed by the number of “conservatives” who seem to believe that the free market should stop at the water’s edge, that US citizens should be prohibited from doing business with someone if they live in Mexico or India.
Are you saying that cutting that rate (or eliminating it) would do no good?It won't do them any good when you impose a 30% tax at the other end of their product/service.
The author made claims about the performance of our system as compared to that of other countries.
I am merely pointing out that other countries have their own problems competing. Most of these are considerably greater than those facing the USA.
We have a pretty good system compared to other countries.
I'm not claiming it's the best of all possible systems or that changes wouldn't improve it.
I'm claiming that other countries have even greater problems competing.
Millions of jobs lost overseas is not a problem?
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