Everyone hates taxes. There is nothing about my financial situation that pisses me off quite as much as getting my paycheck and seeing exactly how much money the government has dug out of my pockets. Not only that, but in the US at least, taxes are a pretty complicated procedure. I have no clue how to do anything with taxes except pay them and seeth with impotent rage about it. So I'd be pretty open to the idea of tax reform.
Apparently, Mike Huckabee has a plan for this. He has embraced the idea of a national flat sales tax of 23%, instead of the current system. Now I don't know if 23% would be enough to support the monster that is the federal and state governments of this "free" country, but it occurs to me that the adoption of such a system would have one major bonus: the dissolution of the IRS and all related government organisations. There wouldn't really be any way to commit tax evasion; there's no income to lie about or tax returns to file. I'm not sure how much it costs to run the IRS, but I'd bet it's a hell of a lot of money. It would take a more informed man than me to figure out how much that would offset the much larger total budget, but in theory, it seems preferable.
Such a system would also remain progressive - people with higher incomes would still pay more taxes. Not because they have higher incomes, exactly, but because they would (theoretically) be spending more. The percent of thier income that is taxed might be less, but the absolute amount of the tax would be increased. This would mean that everyone would always retain the incentive to make more money; there would be nobody bent on making no more than $49,999 so that they stay out of the $50,000 tax bracket.
The article mentions that this system would be an incentive for people to save money, since it is a tax on spending and not on income. This makes sense to me, but I am under the impression that our economy improves by increasing spending, not reducing it. Rampant spending and lots of debt fuel the fires of the US economy - more spending means more income and more GDP. Not to say there's anything wrong with saving, exactly, but I wonder if excessive saving would save us from the credit failure we're supposed to be entering, only to plunge us into a completely different kind of recession, where people just don't spend enough money.
8 comments:
We're definately heading in the wrong direction in terms of personal debt.
The flaw I can see in such a tax plan is, with our increases in communication and transportation, I'd think people would start purchasing expensive items online and having them shipped back to the US. I'll have to look into his plan... I hear the buzz about Mike, but havn't heard him speak yet.
Huckabee's a great speaker with a fabulous sense of humour, but there's no way he'll win.
Megan,
I wouldn't be so sure about Huckabee's poor chances. I know the pundits don't give him much of a chance, but we are dealing here with a political element (evangelical Christians) for which the pundits have demonstrated contempt and ignorance.
Dad
I'm kinda curious about the reasoning behind the 'evangelical Christian' vote. Don't these people have any other guidlines to follow other than electing the most conservative Christian running? It doesn't make a lick of sense. Let's use the old noggin' for once. A holy man once told me 'follow your MIND, not your heart'.
On another note, after reading the article I saw no good reasoning against the proposal. The crazy thing is that currently ~50% of my $ ends up in the hands of the government. If a flat rate of 23% is enough to support it, then who are the people currently keeping extra dollars in thier pockets thanks to the extra 27% I'm shelling out? Huckabee's plan excludes the impoverished as well, so it's not them.
The Evangelical Christian vote is an eastern liberal fantasy. They assume all these folks are hicks and automatons, who cannot or will not think for themselves. A few months ago, the pundits were confidently predicting that the E.C.'s would never vote for Romney, because he's a Mormon (and, as everybody knows, E.C's hate all non E.C.'s). Of course, the facts have proven otherwise.
The truth is, E.C.'s are diverse, politically. They used to vote Democratic, until the abortion wars. Now they more commonly vote Republican, and are generally "conservative", but NOT RELIABLY. (The word "conservative" is rich.)
Bush got the E.C. vote in 2000, in large proportions, and this has spooked the pundits, creating the bogeyman.
Dad
Huckabee himself shows that not all Evangelicals are politically conservative, as in many cases, (like education and immigration) Huckabee is quite liberal.
His tax scheme is pretty neat though, it makes a great deal of money on the simple fact that in order to use wealth, you have to purchase things. even if done out of country you can ding the purchaser for a sales tax at the border (as happens when I order from Amazon.... I need to pay the evil empire of soviet canuckistan somehow).
If such a tax schema was joined with the elimination of say, the unconstitutional federal department of education, you Americans would be doing well on the federal governance front.
OK, I can accept that, but E.C's were mentioned as a group earlier, which is what got my rise. I see how it's difficult to clarify.
If that tax scheme actually comes into effect and begins working, I'll be the first one on the bus back to the U.S.
Didn't they used to have a special box on ballots so that people could just make one mark, and vote all Republican or all Democrat?
Frankly, I'm not entirely sure I see the usefulness of parties. There's a certain utility in that it facilitates stereotyping and, theoretically, an overview of someone's political stance, but it seems to me that current politics is far too divided even among any one party for that to really be useful. Perhaps someone can explain to me why we have parties at all? They seem like a colossal waste of time and money to me...
Not only that, but the current election system is (as was pointed out when George was elected) quite unfair. Not only in terms of the electoral college, which with our current state of infrastructure shouldn't be useful, but also in terms of primaries and all those other political words that I don't know the meaning of. There are enough cases of people registering with the opposite party in order to vote for a weaker candidate that we might want to consider scrapping that system too.
And don't forget the financial drain of all this political crap. I wonder just how much money has been wasted on the 2008 presidential campaign? I bet if we outlawed all campaign ads, we could finance ten times as many debates, and feed half of Africa besides.
Post a Comment