If a man can't afford to buy groceries this month, and next month when will he have enough money to buy groceries? Even though he is given the expected NRST on the groceries, this is money he would have paid but can't. Other people paying the tax will provide enough revenue to give that to him.
The basic fact is he gets money he didn't have before, and didn't earn in the form of a payment in a medium of exchange. He might spend the money on booze.
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 US may be committed, I agree, but I really don't want to help it.
You are 'helping' it now, by cooperating with the withholding system. Do you want that system to continue?
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 problem with some form of social/security/medicare is that, with human nature, it grows. It has certainly grown in this country to what we have now. It's reasonable to assume that that kind of central distribution of wealth will grow from any social payment seed. I believe we will either have a socialist country or we won't. If what Frederic Bastiat said in "The Law" is true.
Look, - no one here likes "social welfare". But we simply have to face the fact that if we want to live in a free republic, we also have to figure out some Constitutional way to fund safety net type welfare programs, if for no other reason than to keep the streets clean. Can you see my reasoning?
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 Constitutional, 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.
If a man can't afford to buy groceries this month, and next month when will he have enough money to buy groceries? Even though he is given the expected NRST on the groceries, this is money he would have paid but can't. Other people paying the tax will provide enough revenue to give that to him.
The basic fact is he gets money he didn't have before, and didn't earn in the form of a payment in a medium of exchange. He might spend the money on booze.
Yep, the 'prebate' would become a defacto welfare payment. -- So what? One way or another, we don't let people in America starve on the streets. -- Will you admit that?
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?