Posted on 11/27/2007 6:02:19 AM PST by K-oneTexas
ayup. you sure do credit your position with your classy, dignified argument. You sound like a democrat.
Yes I am proud to say those that love the Income tax hate me.
There are two general classes of beings that hate me:
Liars
Thieves
Guess which class you fall in?
The blog contains comments and links in those comments from many studying Kotlikoff’s estimates. They are a group. They are the Kotlikoff Study Group because there is no formal group that studies Kotlikoff’s estimates.
And linking to his paper does not make you any sort of expert. As has been shown before, your intepretations of his paper and other materials concerning the FairTax are deceptive. You care about only one thing, disrupting FairTax threads with points taken out of context and designed to cause confusion. Witness your lame attempt in post #28 and my response in post #39.
yep. your position doesn’t hold water, so you attack those who point the truth out. your credibility approaches that of Bill Clinton denying having extramarital sex, and you call ME a liar and/or a thief.
your whole proposal has been widely discredited by experts, yet you act like Kerry dodging a swift-boat attack.
what do you have to gain with this proposal?
there are two types of people who favor this unworkable proposal:
Idiots
sychophants
Guess which class you fall in?
it is you and people like you who remove cordial debate from issues. it is tactics like yours that makes good people turn away from you with disgust. it is schoolyard name calling and attempts at smearing opponents that stifles real debate.
but that’s your objective isn’t it? stop debate and let this bad idea progress - just like AlGore and his global warming crowd.
you can tell a lot about people by whom they emulate.
Glad to be the force that gets your gut. All a newcomer needs to do is perform an FR search on your moniker to see your posts and the responses to your posts to get a sense of what you are!
Have a nice day!
before you crawl back from whence you came, you forgot to call me a nazi!
IOW the same BS as he has said before.
It is still the largest new entitlement program since the adoption of Social Security with the prebate.
it will destroy all large items which will move overseas to avoid the insane sales tax ponzi scheme. This is what happened in the 1991 luxury tax regime which killed the luxury boat and car industry.
Bortz has been called out again and again and the only thing he can do is push the same recycled BS.
Hucabee who has risen supports this BIG GOVERNMENT entitlement scam. Hucabee supports the prebate which will put the GOVERNMENT in deciding what are allowable “necessities” for the pre-bate entitlement.
the excuse of we had to include that to sell the deal is just more BS. The current system stinks and the Fair Tax SCAM is not the way to do it.
The fact he has nothing new in his denial retreads only makes him look like a zelot scientologist. (not that he is a scientologist, he vehemently denies the current SCAM has anything to do with the identical SCAM pushed by the church of scientology to abolish the IRS as pushment for not giving them tax exempt status faster. IOW they just ACT like scientologists.)
I have read the legislation and it will be a HUGE new bureacracy with a HUGE new entitlement check.
It will have lobbyists lining up to have their client’s industries to recieve a prebate allowance.
Cable TV prebate allowance.
DVD sale prebate allowance.
Automobile prebate allowance. (SUV? prebate PENALTY)
Cell phone prebate allowance.
Approved internet carrier prebate allowance.
American made clothing prebate allowance.
Home improvement prebate allowance.
Public School prebate allowance. (private school prebate PENALTY)
The list is endless, the politicians will drool at the campaign donations.
It is BAD law, written by people with a nannystate agenda.
The blog contains comments and links in those comments from many studying Kotlikoff’s estimates.It's a blog entry that basically posted the abstract from the paper I linked to. The people "studying Kotlikoff’s estimates" are just the blog's reader comments.
They are a group.It's just a blog with comments, they aren't a group in any real sense.
They are the Kotlikoff Study Group because there is no formal group that studies Kotlikoff’s estimates.Huh? This blog post with comments is the "Kotlikoff Study Group" because there is no formal group that studies Kotlikoff’s estimates. Are you kidding?
And linking to his paper does not make you any sort of expert.I didn't claim it did. I linked to the paper so people could read it for themselves. You linked to a blog entry and some comments and called it "the actual Kotlikoff study group."
As has been shown before, your intepretations of his paper and other materials concerning the FairTax are deceptive.Again, this is a really tired FairTaxer game where they claim someone's points have previously been refuted but fail to show where.
You care about only one thing, disrupting FairTax threads with points taken out of context and designed to cause confusion. Witness your lame attempt in post #28 and my response in post #39.Uh huh. Exactly how is my post #28 out of context. Be specific.
Even the Devil can quote scripture by heart...
Even better then you can quote Lincoln, and probably for the same reasons.
Agreed.
What a revenue neutral shift from a payroll tax to a sales tax does is put more money into the hands of consumers while making goods cost correspondingly more.
You get more dollars, but each dollar buys less. Since each dollar buys less, each dollar is worse less. You get price inflation, but you don't directly get monetary inflation which is based on the money supply.
However, people are currently dumping dollars because of a decrease in yields of a half point here and there. What do you think would happen if you say you are going to decrease the buying power of the dollar by 20% or so when implementing the the Fair Tax?
Anyone with half a brain and investments in dollars is going to dump them before the Fair Tax goes into effect. That's where monetary inflation comes in, and it would make our current issues look like a tiny hiccup.
I'm not just talking about the Fair Tax. Any major shift from a payroll tax to a consumption tax would have the same effect. The only way to mitigate it would be to do it very slowly over a large number of years, and I don't think anyone trusts our government to do that.
The fact that there are vastly fewer points for collection under the FairTax, and the fact that the collection is almost entirely computerized, and the fact that 3,000 large retailers will be collecting more than 50% of federal government revenues leads to an enormous savings in processing revenue collections and in compliance.
Every retailer and everyone who performs services would be a collector. For the big retailers this is a simple automated process, kind of like payroll taxes already are.
The savings for a collection standpoint are minor at best. The place where you might hope to see real savings are from a bookkeeping perspective. However, the since companies still need to track profits, inventory, and most everything they do now anyway, the savings are once again minimal. Accounting departments not only don't disappear, they don't even see much reduction in workload. They have less tax laws to learn, but complying with tax laws is far less burdensome than everything the need to report to stockholders anyway, and the government is not going to let companies be lax in their bookkeeping just because retail sales aren't involved, because they are still going to be watching for money laundering.
Any cost savings are also offset by the need to implement the prebate system.
It's also a bit disingenuous to only compare the Fair Tax to the current tax system. After all it is being sold as the best replacement. So how about comparing it to a flat personal income tax?
Simple. Easy to comply with. Far less transactions to keep track of.
I also notice how you told me that what I was saying was irrelevant and lacking in understanding, but didn't actually address any of my main points.
What is the main purpose of shifting to a consumption tax, as opposed to other simplified forms of taxation such as a flat tax, if not protectionism?
How are you also planning to avoid the price inflation spike caused by the shift from a payroll tax to a consumption tax?
Sorry I don’t have time to go through all your comments but the they seem to be your own, not linked to data and not in agreement with any published professional analysis.
On your first comments concerning price inflation. Answer this please: Where do you get data or information to show that prices will go up? And how do you account for the elimination of all the current embedded federal taxes (average 22%) in the prices of retail products and services?
Yes they are my own. I like to do this thing called thinking for myself.
However, I'm happy to explain my reasoning. I even went into several detail analysis with nice equations and numbers when I got sick of people saying that I had to point to someone else's analysis. So far no one has been able to dispute my numbers.
And how do you account for the elimination of all the current embedded federal taxes (average 22%) in the prices of retail products and services?
I'm going to answer your second question question first.
This is a perfect example of why people need to learn to think for themselves and evaluate statements.
The Fair tax proposes replacing personal and corporate income taxes with a consumption tax. When calculated as an embedded tax, the fair tax needs to be 23% of the price of items in order to be revenue neutral.
OK. So now you are saying that the Fair Tax replaces all the existing embedded taxes, which currently add up to 22% of what we pay for something.
So basically you are saying that all personal income taxes payed by everyone in the country can be replaced by a 1% sales tax?
Ya might want to think about that one a bit more and try and understand the numbers you are using a bit better.
The fair tax is supposed to be revenue equal.
People are going to be taking home 10% to 35% more in their paychecks, they aren't going to be paying taxes on capital gains any more, and they will even get prebate checks as well.
They are going to have considerable more money in their pockets. Are they going to be able to buy a lot more? Or are they just going to be paying the taxes at a different point in the process?
Since the tax is revenue equal and is supposed to tax people approximately the same as the are now as well, the only way they are going to be able to pay less overall is because of cost savings due to greater efficiencies in the system.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but the cost of collecting the income tax doesn't amount to 22% of what we pay for goods. The Fair Tax also has it's own costs to collect taxes and sent out the prebate. Even if those costs are lower than our current tax system, the difference sure isn't going to drop the price of goods by much.
Answer this please: Where do you get data or information to show that prices will go up?
I don't know. Let's see. The tax change is revenue equal. They stop taking money out of your paycheck so you have more money, but they instead take it when you buy an item.
Therefore the total cost you pay for an item goes up proportionally. It's seems pretty simple to me. I guess that algebra I took way back in junior high school 24 years ago really is useful.
-------
OK silly comments that I just couldn't bring myself to not pose aside, what causes the jump in effective prices isn't an increase in taxes, but a change in when they are collected.
The 22% figure on current embedded taxes includes all current taxes including personal income taxes as well as a number of things like excise taxes on goods that the Fair Tax does not replace, like gasoline taxes.
The Fair Tax lets you take home more money, but still collects the same amount of taxes, they just get the portion that are currently taken out of your paycheck when you buy something.
You get more money in your paycheck, but you pay more when you purchase things. It all equals out and is revenue equal. However, the effect is that each dollar actually buys less.
The effect on future earnings is neutral. However, the effect on cash savings is not.
The effect on our national debt is very significant. We basically get to pay back debt with dollars that are roughly worth 20% less. Since this is an intentional act that causes this, it is effectively the same a defaulting on 20% of our national debt. Think our creditors will care?
Got any savings bonds? Got any cash in the bank? Loan anybody any money? Then maybe you should care too. However, if you owe more than you are owed, I guess it works out pretty well for you.
If you move your cash assets into foreign currency you won't get hurt either I guess, but that means a lot of people will be dumping US dollars on the market which brings us back to that whole monetary inflation issue you mentioned earlier.
If you want professional analysis, just reread the papers advocating the Fair Tax, look at what the do say with a more critical eye, and look at what is missing.
Evaluate their comments to see if they are really justified by the facts, and don't let them get off with only comparing to the current tax system, because the current system and the Fair Tax are not our only options.
Ya might want to think about that one a bit more and try and understand the numbers you are using a bit better.
Thinking for yourself? Are you tickled that anyone would even read your posts let alone to respond to them.
Well, think for yourself. I have very little patience with people that think they know something and will tell others they know it all.
So I will leave you with this blurb from your ramblings above that caught my eye, caused my head to shake and made me think to say "don't waste any more time with this one".
Here it is:
So basically you are saying that all personal income taxes...
Did I 'basically' say that? Did I say it at all? No, I did not. And what it reveals is your lack of accuracy and precision or lack of knowledge. Because there are certainly many more taxes that the FairTax eliminates other than the 'personal' income tax.
So there you have it. You got someone to read your post and someone to respond to it. Aren't you the lucky one?
You have a revenue neutral shift from a income tax to a consumption tax. If you put more money in people's paychecks as well as giving them a prebate, how can you not take that money back from them in a sales tax and still remain revenue neutral?
If people have more money, effectively inflating their income, and that additional money is paid at the point of sale. Does not the effective price they pay for goods increase and each dollar buy less?
If you understand how the Fair Tax works, and I'm wrong, you should be able to explain it to me.
Well, think for yourself. I have very little patience with people that think they know something and will tell others they know it all.
You mean like your comments in relation to my first post on this thread? For example:
Simply put, your wandering to a discussion of the dollar is irrelevant.
and
Your other remarks are shallow and lack depth of understanding.
However, I responded rather politely, explaining that I was talking about price inflation rather than monetary inflation and gave more details about how it occurred and how it could lead to monetary inflation.
Another person also jumped in, agreed with me, and provided some supporting information.
You came back with more condensation and asked a couple questions that showed you don't know what the heck you are talking about and are just parroting things other people have said without understanding them.
Yes, at that point, I did start mocking you.
Now in this thread you still don't answer my questions, and the reason you give is to take one of my sentences out of context and that I'm not worth dealing with because I misrepresented what you said, but not how or why.
Well if I misrepresented what you said, it was because what you said wasn't very clear, or because the numbers you used didn't mean what you think they meant. However, if I'm wrong. Explain how and why I'm wrong?
You seem to be really good at telling other people they are stupid, but can take it yourself, and can't back up what you are saying either.
Yes I do avoid your questions or comments or blurbs. They are devoid of intelligence.
Have a nice day!
Since you will nether put up, or shut up, I guess you're just a troll.
Welcome to the wonderful and exciting world of “debating” with FairTaxers. Anything more than saying “NO IRS!” is beyond them.
Most of the ones I dealt with in the past would at least try and argue their points intelligently and could at least slowly be convinced that the Fair Tax isn't what they think it is.
I don't like the IRS either, but the Fair Tax even worse than our current tax system, not better.
I don't like the IRS either, but the Fair Tax even worse than our current tax system, not better.Isn't one of the tenets of conservatism that you don't make radical changes because they lead to unintended consequences. One can only imagine the unintended consequences of moving to the FairTax (how about every child support agreement in the country would have to be renegotiated).
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