Perry Proposes (no surprise) a flat tax…
by Linda Beale
Perry Proposes (no surprise) a flat tax….
Rick Perry, one night after what has been termed an ‘invigorated’ debate performance, has climbed on the flat-tax bandwagon (presumably meaning a flat-rate consumption tax a la the national retail sales tax idea). See Tumulty, Rick Perry to Announce Flat Tax as Part of Economic Plan, Washington Post (Oct. 19, 2011).
See prior posting on ataxingmatter regarding Cain’s 9-9-9 plan and generally about the flat tax, here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here…..
Put briefly, having as the sole source of revenue for the federal government’s environmental protection, disease control, anti-trust, bank regulation, securities regulation, tax enforcement, consumer protection, military and defense functions a regressive national sales tax that would stifle the consumerism that accounts for about 70% of our economy would likely be quite harmful to the U.S. economy and to the overwhelming majority of Americans who earn less than $100,000 a year.
I trust that it is a flat tax on wealth, because, as we all know, the burden of taxes is roughly proportional to one’s wealth. 😉 {sigh}
funny that. a “consumption tax” is what Kotlikoff is proposing to replace Social Security
and he enhances this idea with an imputed rent tax. so that the value you get out of living in your house, or owning your refrigerator is counted as income and you get to pay taxes on it.
this does sound a bit like a “wealth” tax… but i hope you can see the insanity of it.
meanwhile the wealthy get wealthy from income. so tax that. it’s easier to count and much easier to understand. but you might have to get over giving them tax breaks so the dears can create jobs for all. as they do, you know.
Coberly,
“the wealthy get wealthy from income.”
You can’t have it both ways. If you want to tax the revenue side then you have to increase the tax base, and decrease the rates. You seem to advocate a decrese in the tax base and an increase in the rates…..this is a pointless if not destructive revenue stream. It is part of the reason we are in this mess. I always felt when Bush cuts taxes, he should have done two things:
1.) Expired the cut when the defcicit reached a certain point
2.) Instead of dropping off brackets he should have created more brackets and decreased the rates of each of the brackets, but everybody should pay something besides payroll, and nobody should get money for nothing thru the tax system. We have social saftey nets in place already to handle these conditions.
Darren
I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about.
I oppose a “wealth tax” for the reasons I indicated above. I also oppose a “soak the rich” tax. I do feel that it is time for the rich to repay the money they effectively borrowed under the Bush “tax cuts that will pay for themselves” but didn’t.
But I also think the poor and the middle need to pay a slightly higher tax rate themselves just to maintain their mental hygiene.
And I probably agree with you about gaming the tax system to reward the people you want to reward. There are better and more honest ways to do that.
I never said, and never had a thought about increasing or decreasing the tax base. I am reasonably confident that a simple,progressive tax on income would be sufficient to pay for what the people through their congress want to buy. A payroll tax would pay for the “insurance” that Social Security is, and Medicare ought to be… that is a tax that is not a tax.
oops. forgot my punch line
with a simple, moderately progressive income tax, the economy would adjust itself to the new “real” incomes. the magic of the marketplace works just fine. taxes are just another cost of doing business, like gravity and friction.
it’s all the gaming, and the trying to get something for nothing by using tax cuts as a stimulus like cocaine for all purposes… and running the Mercedes out of oil… that causes all the problems.
that does not mean that a stimulus is not needed from time to time, or that the workers can get by without some kind of safety net to carry them through hard times.
Darren,
Your logic is [utterly, tho there is only one level of] invalid.
I cannot tell if it is contrived or mendaciously invalid.
Did the Bush administration not change the Iraqi economy to a neo-liberal economy with no or not much input from the Iraqis? Bremer signed orders to allow foreign corporations 100% ownership of Iraqi banks, oil and other corporations with permission to take 100% of the profits out of the country, and a flat rate tax? If I recall they eliminated unions also. Whatever happened to the perfect capitalistic American economic model in Iraq?
The capitalists in Iraq must be in hog heaven. Why don’t we hear anything about that success story? We did win the war in Iraq it looks like, was worth every $$$.
As I am posting this, it sounds and feels surreal.
Lets get as good an economy as we left behind in Iraq, nothing less will do.