These people are insane if they think this will "stimulate domestic investment"
The IMF apparently fully supports Obamanomics.
The price of demographic inversion?
discourage consumption and lose income tax from corporations
I think people (Republicans and others) spend WAY too much time on the tax side and WAY too little time on the spending side. Of course the country wants the spending, but not the taxes, so we are kinda stuck.
If I were dictator for a day, I’d turn Social Security and Medicare into Welfare programs - make them means-tested and treat the elderly just like children with regard to child support - in other words, if an old person has kids, and one of them is a doctor - then that kid should pay the cost of his parent’s old age, not some stranger’s kid, at the point of a gun.
Sounds like democrapRATS, don’t it??
Not only was there a burst of buying just before it went into effect, there was an appreciable slow-down in buying after. It was widely held that the increase was a strong factor in the recession worsening for a period after it went up. (For instance, this story recounts it this way: "Japan’s sales tax was introduced in 1989 and raised to 5 percent in 1997. The increase pushed the nation into a 20-month recession and caused then Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto’s Liberal Democratic Party to lose a majority in the lower house of parliament for the first time." That accords pretty much with my memory of the event.)
If going from 3% to 5% caused that much pain, I can only imagine what going from 5% to 15% would.
Well, when did we ever dictate to countries that they should hike their taxes in such a draconian manner?
The IMF, the UN, etc. are the real global superpowers and it is Orwellian.