I agree.
The acronym VAT has achieved boogeyman status. Mostly because no sensible right winger wants to add a VAT on top of current high personal rates.
However, that is not what Cruz proposes.
He is being criticized both for having a too-low flat income tax AND for having a VAT. Where are all the people who rightly favor consumption-based taxation? It is the best type for Freedom lovers and IRS haters alike.
A movement toward consumption-based taxation is what Ted's plan represents. The article makes that clear. But I don't see the word consumption even mentioned in comments.
Did you fall for the fraud or are you a knowing perpetrator of this fraud?
First a VAT (and we are assured by other Cruzzers that it is not actually a VAT if we only really knew what a VAT is) is a highly regressive tax. It hits those with the lowest incomes hardest.
Second, you are pushing an f'in insane oxymoronic logical swindleby exhalting production while deriding consumption. There is no point in production without consumption. What, are we going to take all that production and put it on barges and dump it in the ocean?
There is no freedom in that whatsoever.
I am not yet quite at the point where I will accuse Cruz of being a snake-oil salesman, although I am very disturbed by his "when I am commander in chief" comments. I do however call his supporters snake-oil salesmen.