Posted on 04/14/2006 2:42:07 PM PDT by Eaglewatcher
of good news is that support is growing for complete replacement of the tax code with a national consumption tax. More and more taxpayers are demanding action from their representatives in Congress, and their representatives are listening.
Just one year ago, there were 33 sponsors and co-sponsors of HR 25, The FairTax Act, in the U.S. House. Now there are 53 supporters, and new co-sponsors are joining every month. In the Senate, Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) was the lone sponsor of the FairTax Act, S 25, one year ago. Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John Cornyn (R-TX) now join Senator Chambliss as co-sponsors. The word is spreading about the overwhelming benefits to our economy and our wallets when we replace the nine-million-word tax code mess with the fair and simple FairTax.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
I can't recall a bill that has. So, if that's the requirement, there will be no bill passed.
I don't know how many bills you can recall but I'm sure it is a very small percentage compared to all the bills that have been introduced since the First Congress. Out of all the bills ever written since the inception of Congress, you assume none have ever passed in their original form based on your recollection. That's a very faulty premise without any research to back up your claim.
If the removal of the prebate will make the NRST bill less of a "fair tax", can you tell me why?
As I already have told you more than once this question is moot because Americans For Fair Taxation will not support any part of the bill being omitted.
When it comes to the track records of you vs. the FairTax organization, I'll take the FairTax group's credibility and honesty over yours BY FAR ... and twice on Sunday.
Oh, and Nigntie, the Library of Congress isn't the issue at all (that's merely another of your straw men) since they merely publish or print the stuff. They don't originate it.
See post #76. The word "fairtax" is meaningless, but I'm assuming you speak of the FairTax.
Or perhaps you mean fair tax and have some clever wordplay in mind to bedazzle everyone with?
So Willie Tee, you've studied each and every bill passed and have determined that they have all been changed dramatically? And you KNOW the FairTax won't pass as is?
How prescient (that means you have, as we all know, divine omniscience) of you. But then that's always been true with you hasn't it?
He'd be worth voting for on that basis alone. Go, John!!
Ah, but Willie Tee, the prebate is not socialist at all. It is merely a refunding of a portion of taxes paid back to the taxpayer. That's no more "socialist" than giving you your tax refund when too mush was grabbed off by the government without your having any control over the money grab.
With the FairTax not only does the prebate help low income taxpayers, it helps everyone since they all get the refund. That's not socialism at all in any way, shape, or form and it is certainly NOT a "redistribution of wealth" either, but a refund of tax money.
I believe that the FairTax will not only provide more disposable personal income for each taxpayer, but that it will also provide more revenue than expected meaning that you can help the rest of us in putting the squeeze on the pols to reduce the tax rate starting almost immediately. If spending is too high, it's up to voters to make there desires known and not be silent as we have been and the FairTax offers the voters a method of putting the preseure on the political types.
After all, we are the government and will be able to vote or displeasure with our consumption or lack thereof. And certainly every argument of unfairness is NOT resisted by citing the prebate. that is only one aspect of the FairTax. Thewre are many other fair aspects to it also.
Oh, and Nigntie, the Library of Congress isn't the issue at all (that's merely another of your straw men) since they merely publish or print the stuff. They don't originate it.No, Congress does - and they just happen to have a library.
Correct, Willie Tee, you wwill not. You have the ability to control your consumption and the timing of it and therefore the amount and timing of your taxation.
That is far and away more control than you have over the present tax system - far more. And it gives you the ability to vote your displeasure with the government by consuming less or later or both. At present some part of your income is confiscated and you cant control that to any real degree.
It's just not in your soul to be honest and forthright, is it? Now we see you lied when you said it was the "Library of Congress" we trusted over the AFT (or vice versa) and now you say well, err, it really NOT the Library of Congress but Congress,
You're nothing if not intellectually cheap.
It's just not in your soul to be honest and forthright, is it? Now we see you lied when you said it was the "Library of Congress" we trusted over the AFT (or vice versa) and now you say well, err, it really NOT the Library of Congress but Congress,What the hell are you talking about. Y'all claimed, based on the AFT, that there were 53 cosponsors in the House. I pointed out that there were 52, based on the Library of Congress. I was right, y'all were wrong and now I'm a liar.
You can argue with me all day long. We shall see.
It is giving people something they did not earn from those that did earn it.
Nice theory about the timing of consumption. Everything that keeps you alive on this Earth must be bought.
You think a NRST bill will pass as written? Ok, if it ever gets that far, we will see. I think not.
The prebate gives to someone something he did not earn taken from someone who earned it. Else he would need a prebate at all.
Life ain't fair. Fairness, is like the "road of good intentions". Fairness is a tool the socialist use to create social divisions based upon social status, to tax the other group.
Your the one who has decided that a capitation is fair, not I. I not interested in head or poll taxes, the second merely a head tax that is a pre-condition to the vote.
If every body paid the same equal bill to the tax man, politicians would not be able to play one group of taxpayers off against another.
Sure they would, those who feel the burden less would simply be the ones to call for more government benefit to themselves on the backs of those who shoulder burden most. Doesn't matter where the significant burdens lay, if one group pays more in relation to there capacity for payment, the group the receives the least burden is pandered to for votes.
Sounds reasonable to me.
Which just demonstrates your lack of indepth analysis. Looking only in terms of absolute quantity, without preceiving that burden is a function one's capacity to sustain a burden. The best way to measure burden is on an equal percentage basis, not a absolute amount that decreases burden with capacity to service said tax.
A flat and equal rate of taxation is by far the best measure of burden, and equal measure.
Fairness resides in the basis of the burden, in the case of a consumption tax, he who derives the greatest benefit from society and the economy pays the most in absolute terms, but at the same rate on consumption as everyone else.
"[T]he Equity of Imposition, consisteth rather in the Equality of that which is consumed, than of the riches of the persons that consume the same. For what reason is there, that he which laboureth much, and sparing the fruits of his labor, consumeth little, should be more charged, than he that living idlely, getteth little, and spendeth all he gets; seeing the one hath no more protection from the Common-wealth, than the other? "
--- Thomas Hobbes (1651, Leviathan)
"Imposts, excises, and, in general, all duties upon articles of consumption, may be compared to a fluid, which will, in time, find its level with the means of paying them. The amount to be contributed by each citizen will in a degree be at his own option, and can be regulated by an attention to his resources. The rich may be extravagant, the poor can be frugal; and private oppression may always be avoided by a judicious selection of objects proper for such impositions. "
"It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess.
Aha! Geezer, you are letting your Socialist side creep out with that statement. When you get a driver license, do you pay according to you income? No, you pay a set fee because you are a driver. Ask yourself why an American should pay a tax to be an American according to his wealth? That is pure socialism, from each according to his ability... etc.
You're evading what I said.
Once again:
Dang it, WT, someone as smart as you should easily grasp the difference between a tax bill and a spending bill...and that the kind of visibility that the retail sales tax affords will make it much, much easier to fight the battle against spending that is outside of the enumerated powers.
While I'm concerned about the amount of money taken from people's pockets, I'm more concerned with the amount of money going to the governments.
Socialist programs require vast amounts of substance to remain viable. Right now social security, the base program for our socialist structure, is starving to death. I want it to starve to death.
Face it, Will. --- The USA is committed to some form of 'social security/medicare', and the way we fund it now is not working. -- The FairTax scheme is as good a start towards true reform in that area as is possible.
The NRST will fund it, and it's perpherial programs, into perpetuity.
Like it or not, some sort of 'social welfare' programs are a political reality. We may as well find a Constitutional way to fund them.
The viability of the NRST is itself dependent on socialist principles, the prebate, which is simply another form of redistribution of wealth. And the NRST depends on it.
I think a 'prebate' of taxes is Constitutonal, as long as every citizen is equally reimbursed. -- If it takes $1500 a month in purchases [taxed at 30%] to nominally exist, a $450 prebate per person would be 'fair'..
All the arguments of "fair" rest on it.
Of course they do. -- Because it would be 'fair' to exempt basic living expenses from taxation.. The prebate scheme accomplishes that goal with its innate simplicity.
Every argument of unfairness of the NRST impacting low income and elderly is resisted by citing that provision.
The 'prebate' idea, implemented properly, could conceivably replace all of the current fed, state, & local welfare mess.. -- With enormous savings & reductions in government.
While I'm not convinced that the NRST, when codified, will actually take less money from each citizen, I am convinced that more money will be funneled to the feds; this has been a high profile argument in favor of the NRST.
Sure, the fed gov would gain in perceived political power from the monthly prebate payment. But that type of power [controlling people through taxation] is easily countered in a system free from IRS goons.
What could the fed tax men do, insist that we consume more goods?
Ask yourself why an American should pay a tax to be an American according to his wealth?
He shouldn't, he should pay tax in accord with the benefit he derives from the American society and its economy.
One should not be taxed on their productivity, (that which they contribute to society and economy as measured by income), only on that by which they as measured by their consumption.
That which is put back into the economym growing your wealth as well as expanding productivity and economic capacity, should never be taxed.
Socialism looks to equalize everyone down to the same level of wealth and income. Capitalism and free enterprise looks to encourage and provide the expansion of wealth and capacity for growth, ones productivity over one's consumption of goods and services derived as benefit as a member of society.
I'll take an individual consumption tax anyday, over the socialist's tax on incomes and productivity.
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