Income, for the most part, that's a stable variable, now property values will never really decline in numerical value, though they can decline in real value. But all and all, a somewhat stable variable. Sales Taxes are not stable.
As I said earlier in this thread, if revenues fall, the Congress will have two choices: Cut spending, just as the American people are having to do in an economic downturn, or raise the rate. Option two will quite naturally be politically unpopular, and could reduce revenues even further, as Alexander Hamilton explained so clearly in the Federalist.
So, we will have created a situation that naturally puts pressure on our elected leaders to get spending under control.
Please explain to me what can possibly be bad about that.
There are better ways to do it than that, because there are some government programs you have to keep. The other problem with this is, when you introduce sales taxes, you bring in another concept I find abhorrent, the idea of earmarking.
Earmarking states that no matter what our revenues are, this particularly agency or whatever will get a certain amount. Other agencies won't be earmarked (of course, things that would be earmarked are things with powerful lobbies behind them)
Our problem in Alabama is we had so much of our budget earmarked so that we couldn't shift around the general fund. Technically, we were not short. The problem was, so much of our revenue is not really part of the general fund because it is earmarked, meaning you cannot shift that money around, meaning, in times of fiscal crisis you have certain agencies taking the big piece of the pie emboldended by law, and because the other agencies don't have political clout (apparently) they have to fight for crumbs because of earmarking.
Because the minute you have to make contingency plans to cut, every lobbyist will come crawling out of the termite patch to speak for whoever is paying him that week.
Explain to me how earmarking doesn't eventually become part of this scheme. I don't mean by the bill, I mean, looking at the nature of politics, what makes you think that this system is not gonna be tinkered and altered until it's as big a mess as what it replaced.