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#1
11-09-2007, 01:52 PM
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Flat tax blowback
According to Neil, the flat tax would basically mean a 22-30% sales tax. I have yet to read the manual for this proposed tax plan, but I think it may have a practical problem for the economy. Our economy is ever-growing largely because of our consumer society and people's constant buy, buy, buy, spend, spend, spend mentality. Do you not think the psychological effect of a 25 or 30% sales tax would make people less willing to shop as they currently do? This may be good if people actually invested this money instead, but nonetheless it would be bad for the economy.
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#3
11-09-2007, 02:03 PM
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Re: Flat tax blowback
[ QUOTE ]
I'm so confused, why would a flat tax have any change on sales tax? I'm a noob. [/ QUOTE ] A flat tax reduces tax revenue because it would stop punishing people for being rich. However, tax expenditures sure as heck aren't going down under any government plan. Therefore, to get the tax revenue they need they would need to add a tax. The best way to add a tax (from a political perspective) is to hammer the rich because everybody hates "the rich" (defined as people richer than them) and so a sales tax is perfect - it scales to consumption levels which are higher for the rich. In conclusion, we exchange one tax system that punishes people for being rich for a tax system that punishes people for being rich PLUS highly valuable rhetoric about fairness. Hooray for tax reform.
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#4
11-09-2007, 02:19 PM
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Re: Flat tax blowback
[ QUOTE ]
I'm so confused, why would a flat tax have any change on sales tax? I'm a noob. [/ QUOTE ] The Fair Tax tax proposal that currently has a lot of popular support is a flat tax in the form of a national retail sales tax. Part of it is completely eliminating income tax.
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#5
11-09-2007, 02:16 PM
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Re: Flat tax blowback
Neil?
[ QUOTE ] Do you not think the psychological effect of a 25 or 30% sales tax would make people less willing to shop as they currently do? This may be good if people actually invested this money instead, but nonetheless it would be bad for the economy. [/ QUOTE ] The idea that people not spending money would be "bad for the economy" is a blatant lie perpetuated by those who benefit from the masses burning all their money on crap. It would be bad for the "economy" of corporate America, but it would be amazing for the "economy" of the average American.
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#6
11-09-2007, 02:47 PM
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Re: Flat tax blowback
[ QUOTE ]
Neil? [ QUOTE ] Do you not think the psychological effect of a 25 or 30% sales tax would make people less willing to shop as they currently do? This may be good if people actually invested this money instead, but nonetheless it would be bad for the economy. [/ QUOTE ] The idea that people not spending money would be "bad for the economy" is a blatant lie perpetuated by those who benefit from the masses burning all their money on crap. It would be bad for the "economy" of corporate America, but it would be amazing for the "economy" of the average American. [/ QUOTE ] I suck at the search feature but Boro had a post in EDF or the Lounge awhile back on the basics of Austrian econ and there was a cool part in there about why savings is actually good for the economy. At least when compared to artificially changing interest rates and the money supply to encourage spending.
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#7
11-09-2007, 04:14 PM
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Re: Flat tax blowback
[ QUOTE ]
Neil? [ QUOTE ] Do you not think the psychological effect of a 25 or 30% sales tax would make people less willing to shop as they currently do? This may be good if people actually invested this money instead, but nonetheless it would be bad for the economy. [/ QUOTE ] The idea that people not spending money would be "bad for the economy" is a blatant lie perpetuated by those who benefit from the masses burning all their money on crap. It would be bad for the "economy" of corporate America, but it would be amazing for the "economy" of the average American. [/ QUOTE ] I'm glad there are still things we can agree on. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
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#8
11-09-2007, 06:16 PM
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Re: Flat tax blowback
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Neil? [ QUOTE ] Do you not think the psychological effect of a 25 or 30% sales tax would make people less willing to shop as they currently do? This may be good if people actually invested this money instead, but nonetheless it would be bad for the economy. [/ QUOTE ] The idea that people not spending money would be "bad for the economy" is a blatant lie perpetuated by those who benefit from the masses burning all their money on crap. It would be bad for the "economy" of corporate America, but it would be amazing for the "economy" of the average American. [/ QUOTE ] I'm glad there are still things we can agree on. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] [/ QUOTE ] There is no moral difference between spending and consumption. In a perfect economy, the economy would aggregate everyone's preferences according to their utility curves is determining the optimal amount of investment or consumption. If all we preferred instant gratification, our economy SHOULD be 99% consumption and 1% investment. There's alot of wonderful stuff out there being produced by our economy and I don't blame Americans one bit for spending as much as they do with their distorted incentives. Instead, the logical libertarian ideal is to blame government policies for distorting our "true" preferences that forces resources are misallocated. When you argue to politically unsophisticated people, this is the kind of thinking that understandably makes them wary. This is the exact same fallacy that many liberals make when they decry rising health care spending as a percentage of the economy - we are valuing health care spending higher as the potential rewards of health advances grow. There's nothing WRONG to soon having 30% of GDP spent on healthcare, or people take more time for leisure and consuming as much as they want, as long, again, as they are facing the right incentives. And in fact both of those things are happening. Moralizing saving is no better than moralizing debt.
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#9
11-09-2007, 09:07 PM
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Re: Flat tax blowback
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Neil? [ QUOTE ] Do you not think the psychological effect of a 25 or 30% sales tax would make people less willing to shop as they currently do? This may be good if people actually invested this money instead, but nonetheless it would be bad for the economy. [/ QUOTE ] The idea that people not spending money would be "bad for the economy" is a blatant lie perpetuated by those who benefit from the masses burning all their money on crap. It would be bad for the "economy" of corporate America, but it would be amazing for the "economy" of the average American. [/ QUOTE ] I'm glad there are still things we can agree on. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] [/ QUOTE ] I'm sure there are plenty of things we can agree on. They're just not things worth talking about. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]
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#10
11-09-2007, 03:48 PM
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Re: Flat tax blowback
[ QUOTE ]
According to Neil, the flat tax would basically mean a 22-30% sales tax. I have yet to read the manual for this proposed tax plan, but I think it may have a practical problem for the economy. Our economy is ever-growing largely because of our consumer society and people's constant buy, buy, buy, spend, spend, spend mentality. Do you not think the psychological effect of a 25 or 30% sales tax would make people less willing to shop as they currently do? This may be good if people actually invested this money instead, but nonetheless it would be bad for the economy. [/ QUOTE ] "Fair Tax" != Flat Tax. It is much better than the current system since 1) it is more visible, 2) less time is wasted doing tax compliance work However, I still prefer Ron Paul's Flat tax over it by a long shot, something like 0%.
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Hybrid Mode
