Posted on 01/23/2013 5:22:11 PM PST by Jacquerie
My favorite radio talk show host, Mark Levin, has repeatedly warned us that among the possible new taxes, on retirement accounts and carbon, we can expect first off, a Value Added Tax. The lead-in will be ever wilder annual deficits; the spark may be a another threatened credit downgrade. A new “do something” solution will magically appear from another long weekend séance hosted by Plugs Biden, and voila, the masterminds will determine our once republic must have a VAT . . . NOW!
Its European pedigree is well known to the Obot regime and rat masterminds in Congress, and it is only a matter of time, the right time, to quickly introduce it and jam it into law.
Allow me a preemptive question that will certainly bounce around FreeRepublic. Is a VAT constitutional? Yes, I know the four stooges plus John Roberts took the fee or penalty or whatever it actually is in Obamacare, then did a little known blackrobe incantation and determined it to be of all things, a tax of an undetermined nature. For this discussion, leave that aside, and consider if an old fashioned European statist method of extracting enormous revenue from a dull witted American proletariat falls into one of the tax categories in our Constitution as written and later amended.
Those categories are direct taxes, capitation taxes, duties, imposts, excises, and income taxes. Which, if any would Constitutionally permit the VAT?
Levin is the BEST.
I support a VAT, in addition to our existing taxes.
Why? Because we are now spending well over a trillion dollars more than we collect in taxes EVERY YEAR. That will (and must) lead this country to economic collapse.
The debt is being piled on to MY KIDS (and even their kids, when they have them). Is this fair??? NO!!! My kids had NOTHING to do with this mess - they are not even old enough to vote. But today’s seniors are DEMANDING and TAKING their money, when they start working - to pay for their welfare (they call it Social Security and Medicare, but it’s welfare, since they’re stealing it from working people).
So let’s get a bit closer to pay-as-you-go and have a VAT. If old people DEMAND WELFARE and have the votes to get it, then fine - let them take it from today’s workers, NOT MY KIDS. My kids have their own lives to live and their own retirements to worry about, and they DESERVE a shot at it. As things stand, that is being robbed from them, every day this goes on.
Of course it is. What is there in the Constitution to forbid it?
Is it wise? Of course not. It's a tax on capital.
But I can't see why you'd question its consitutionality,
New taxes won’t be applied to any of the debt or deficit. New taxes will be used to justify even more spending. The politicians will be lining up and figuring up all kinds of ways to spend any new revenues.
The USSC ruled last year that Obamacare was a “tax” and therefore, Constitutional. If that monstrosity can be contrived as a tax, why wouldn’t a VAT?
Why not cut spending, "BobL"?
Why do we have to keep taking more money from more people? Why can't we cut spending, "BobL"?
I understand that fear, and until Obama took office, that was correct. Even Clinton and Carter hesitated GREATLY about spending like drunks...but this president, and his party, now, COULD CARE LESS about the size of the deficit - it simply is not hurting them, as most Americans cannot even comprehend what’s going on.
So, I think spending and revenue are totally decoupled at this point. If the Dems want to spend more, they will, regardless of whether there exists a means to fund it. So, given that - higher revenues really only mean one thing, less debt.
Now one can argue that higher taxes will slow the economy and not increase revenue, but I don’t buy it, providing that the tax is regressive enough - as taxes on the poor simply force them to stop buy cigarettes and Nike’s, and instead pay that in taxes. Increasing taxes on “the rich” has just the opposite effect, as the rich have ways to avoid the taxes.
“Why not cut spending, “BobL”? “
Because we CANNOT, that simple.
I’ve had more than enough arguments with old people on THIS SITE that insist on taking what they consider THEIR money from my kids, under the pretense that my kids somehow owe it to them.
When I tell them that they don’t have a claim on the earnings on my kids and if they keep pressing the country will collapse under the debt, they tell me they could care less.
I estimate that (non-scientifically) to be half of the FReepers in that age group. These are people that are otherwise conservative. If we cannot get off the government gravy train, why the heck should we expect today’s welfare recipients to sacrifice?
In other words, the issue is settled. People of this country DEMAND a 4 trillion dollar federal government, and we’re not even bringing in 3 trillion dollars. That is the problem - and NO ONE, not even FReepers, will give up their share of their ‘government goodies’.
So we might as well start paying for it, or we will be worse-off than Mexico, and not that long from now.
Raising tax rates and instituting new taxes does not increase revenue to the govt. Ever heard of the laffer curve?
You list Medicare and Social Security as “welfare”. Millions of people have been forced to pay into those two programs. You leave out Medicaid. Now that IS “welfare”. The same people who have paid into the Social Security and Medicare funds have also paid the taxes to support Medicaid. Most of the recipients of Medicaid haven’t paid a penny into the system. You should be ashamed to call Medicare and Social Security “welfare”.
“Raising tax rates and instituting new taxes does not increase revenue to the govt. Ever heard of the laffer curve?”
Unfortunately that only applies to high-end tax payers, not the lower classes that are either paying nothing, or less than nothing (as in EIC). That is why most European countries now have lower top-end marginal rates than even us, but hit the crap out of their lower classes - they know where the money is and who will be forced to pay.
(by the way, I just read today that union membership is even further down...seems like they’re still doing a great job of shutting down manufacturing here - good news to some of us)
Sure, Medicaid is also welfare.
Sorry if you don’t like my definition. But my definition of welfare is “transfer payments”, when the fruits of hard work of one group of people is transferred to a bunch of non-working ingrates - and Social Security fits that definition just as much as Medicaid.
The days of the “Lock Box” are long-gone, as well as any “trust fund”. It was all spent years ago. For the people retired now and those retiring, their “Social Security Tax” is nothing other than another income tax, it all goes into the same place and it is spent as it comes in and then some.
It is welfare...and since even conservatives DEMAND their welfare, nothing will change. I’m not an idiot. I know that there is NOTHING that I can do to change their attitude of entitlement to money that doesn’t exist and must become debt on my kids - but that’s why I support paying for it now - or at least going in that direction. To keep this country from collapsing, we MUST break the cycling of stealing from future generations.
Bobble,
We don’t need a VAT. The best thing we can do for your kids and my kids is keep spending like drunken sailors so that we default.
It will hurt a whole lot of people, but our kids will recover.
But man, a VAT is just obnoxious, and would live beyond a government default.
I’m feeling your rant though. Don’t let the “conservative” government dependents drag you down. Your heart is in the right place but we’re gonna go down in a spending inferno.
Also, suggest you look up Laffer Curve, because your previous answer is incorrect.
Nothing is guaranteed EXCEPT for two things:
1) We will NEVER cut spending because we now have more welfare recipients that vote than workers, at least when everyone is counted. Just no way.
2) This country WILL go broke if we don’t get closer to a balanced budget.
Given those two definites, the only option is to raise revenue, and then HOPE that it all doesn’t get spent. No promises here...but, as I said earlier, spending now has ZERO, NOTHING, at all to do with revenue...they are two different animals, which is why I hold out some hope here.
As to Laffer, he’s talking marginal rates and he’s right. I’m talking about the people on the bottom - I DO NOT support the latest tax increase ‘on the rich’ because I know that Laffer applies there, and it only slows the economy. However, at the bottom, there is revenue to be had...just the idea that some of it will come from Illegals having to pay more to live here, rather than wiring it home, gives me hope.
“We don’t need a VAT. The best thing we can do for your kids and my kids is keep spending like drunken sailors so that we default...It will hurt a whole lot of people, but our kids will recover.”
Thanks. Being an RF engineer, you obviously know how to do math, and have done it. Others simply cannot believe that one day our dollar will not buy us ANYTHING on the world market, and when we need Chinese-made spark plugs to keep our tractors running for food production, we would be out of luck...until we can start making spark plugs (or whatever) again. We WILL be hungry. That is what a crash is, and I can you too have thought it through.
As to coming out better, you have a point. My kids, of course, know what’s in store for them, thanks to our current generation of welfare ingrates (on both sides of the political aisle). They get depressed and are (understandably) angry. I tell them to enjoy these years and remember them - it is the country that was left to us, and we threw it all away. It’s painful, as they know it wasn’t their fault - but there is NOTHING that they can do about it. The concept of starving Americans is alien to them - but when the tractors stop, that is what we’ll have (North Korea saw exactly the same thing, once they stopped getting Russian oil for their factories - before that, they were a wealthy country, at least by Communist standards).
But I also tell them that things may be better on the other side. Russia went through the same when they tossed off Communism. Their currency crashed and people were hungry. But they got by and they are in MUCH, MUCH, better economic shape than us. They have a future and they have the right set of moral values to pull ahead in the world. I wish that I could same the same here...but I cannot - we shall all see what happens.
“But man, a VAT is just obnoxious, and would live beyond a government default.”
Sorry, I meant to respond here. You do have a point. If we enter the crash with a VAT, we’ll have it on the way out and it will weigh us down. I guess the difference is that I still think that a crash can be avoided...or I used to think that. I was hoping that ALL of Bush’s tax cuts would have expired, along with a new VAT, along with European prices for gasoline (i.e., $9.00 per gallon). For all of those things would actually give us a fighting chance to balance the budget (again, because the taxes are what they need to be, which is regressive).
But Bush’s tax cuts are now permanent, so the ingrates at the bottom end never pay their share of the mess we have - so I’m starting to think also that a crash is no longer avoidable - we might as well just get it over with, and doing it with no VAT means that it will be sooner (which is good) and we may come out the other end in better shape.
So I’m thinking you convinced me.
“A bit” is right. It would only go an infinitesimal smidgen toward balancing the budget, and likely any benefit would be crowded out by the resulting economic contraction.
I predict you’re right, and that the Welfare/National Security State will never regress. But so far as that’s true it is equally true we cannot tax ourselves out of the problem, if only because, as a previous poster said, Washington will treat any extra revenue as license for more spending. That’s assuming it would actually result in extra revenue, rather than retard economic growth.
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