You think that will remain uniform for any meaningful length of time? Some self-identified group will lobby Congress to grant them greater rebates (and to reduce some other alleged group’s).
There’s lots of outrage about people making money off “refundable tax credits”, and additional outrage over the proposition of the government paying everyone a “living wage”. How then is it suddenly “sensible” for the feds to give a family of 4 $38,180 no strings attached? especially when anyone can work a high-paying job, and by operating exclusively in used goods and private sales pay no taxes regardless of income? How is this any different from the well-despised “redistributing the wealth”?
Lesseehere, work 2000+ hours a year for twice the income but have half of it confiscated (don’t forget _all_ levels of taxation), or do nothing and collect a check for half as much with no taxation ... same net, lots of effort vs. zero effort, gee I wonder which will encourage creation of wealth. Retail sales & the new goods market will collapse overnight.
Once Progressives realize this is a means to “guaranteed living wage”, they’ll be all for the FairTax - for the wrong reasons.
The Constitution does not provide for giving people “living wage” money just because they exist. Doesn’t matter if it’s dispersed uniformly.
> “You think that will remain uniform for any meaningful length of time? “
Do I think the FairTax will remain uniform? It must if it is to be constitutional. Because in the legislation for the FairTax (H.R.25), the proposed law has a provision that sunsets the FairTax if the 16th Amendment is not repealed within a certain time frame.
Here’s the essential idea to understand, the Constitution with the 16th Amendment repealed requires taxes to be uniform. So the answer is yes the FairTax will remain uniform or else it goes away. How does this happen you say?
To be clear the FairTax:
1. Abolishes the Income Tax code, scraps it altogether.
2. Requires a stake to be driven through the heart of the Income Tax by requiring the 16th Amendment to be repealed within a certain time frame.
This number 2 above guarantees the Income Tax never comes back without apportionment, and apportionment puts pressure to generate all manner of non-uniformities when used to collect income taxes, so it ain’t gonna ever happen because without the 16th, all taxes must be uniform or else they will be stricken from the code.
What 1 and 2 above mean is that Americans will be enjoying life under the FairTax and then be told that the FairTax will go away and the Income Tax will come back if the 16th Amendment is not repealed. So the pressure will be on to perform 2 above.
> “How then is it suddenly “sensible” for the feds to give a family of 4 $38,180 no strings attached? especially when anyone can work a high-paying job, and by operating exclusively in used goods and private sales pay no taxes regardless of income? How is this any different from the well-despised “redistributing the wealth”? “
The FairTax does not give a family of 4 (you are mistaken twice here, see below) the amount of $38,180. This amount is a consumption allowance based on purchasing essentials for living and is in fact the level at which FairTax federal taxation begins for this family structure.
First off your $38,180 applies to a family of six, a couple and 4 children:
http://www.fairtax.org/PDF/PrebateExplained2012.pdf
The rebate is $8,781 ($2,569 for each adult and $911 for each child).
Secondly, buying used goods is a good idea for frugal families and people when it makes sense. But we are not going to buy used light bulbs, or used detergent, or used oil etc. Are you going to buy a used car for the rest of your life? Who will be buying the new cars?
We will buy many many new things just as do now and the price is going to be about the same! Say what? Yes, the price is going to be about the same. Because all the taxes applied up and down supply and production chains get pushed out down to the end of the chain to the consumer of the product or service and that’s where the FairTax NRST is applied.
Thirdly, the FairTax Rebate is not an entitlement, it is a reimbursement of National Retail Sales Tax (NRST) paid based on a consumption allowance for living essentials. If this rebate is increased it must be the same increase for every person, the same for grandma on Social Security as for billionaire Warren Buffett. It must be uniform for all because the repeal of the 16th will not allow for different rates and rebates.
You see all we are doing with the FairTax is just making the whole process simpler and more transparent. And the political class don’t like transparency anymore than cock roaches welcome light.
With the FairTax, we are pushing all the supply chain taxes down to the end of the line and we are paying just about the same taxes that we pay today but don’t see. For example, your employer had to pay a matching amount of your social security and also had to pay federal corporate tax. These taxes form a part of the cost of doing business so prices are inflated by federal taxes at each step for each business in the supply chain. These are called the hidden embedded taxes and they form on average about 23% inclusive of the price of a product or service before reaching the consumer.
To give a simple example, I go to Home Depot to buy a 2 X 4 piece of wood. It sits on the shelf at $2. I go to the cash register and pay $2 for it and no state sales tax if I am in Oregon.
Under the Fair Tax I go to Home Depot to buy a 2 X 4 and it sits on the shelf at $1.54. I go to the cash register to purchase it and there is added $0.46 FairTax NRST to bring the total to $2.
Lastly, private sales. One of the great things about the FairTax from an enforcement point of view is that it is easy to sting people on either side of a sale. Because with the FairTax it takes two people to cheat whereas with the Income Tax it takes only one.
The bottomline is that the FairTax wins the debate on every point but it is opposed by the political class because it take away their power to tinker with code and social engineer things for us. It takes their power away to cause us trouble.