Posted on 07/29/2003 7:09:27 AM PDT by Mick2000
Just three years ago, Congress voted to allow more foreign workers into the United States. Times have changed.
Politicians are proposing tough — opponents say misguided — steps to keep jobs at home in the face of rising unemployment, a growing number of white-collar jobs being transferred to India and other countries and lingering anger over some U.S. allies' opposition to the war in Iraq.
The House has passed measures to require the Defense and State departments to buy a larger share of equipment from U.S. firms. The measure, which has provoked a corporate and political uproar, has not been approved by the Senate.
Legislators in several states are trying to bar the export of government jobs to foreign companies.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., chair of a Judiciary subcommittee, plans a hearing today on possible problems in the L-1 visa program, which allows companies to bring workers to the USA from their foreign operations. Workers complain that firms are using the program as a backdoor way to replace domestic employees with cheaper labor.
(Excerpt) Read more at usatoday.com ...
With apologies, others say Bush (government) can't help either. Guess that leaves Clinton or some secret information contained in British intel.
If business(lobbyists) are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.
Also, not taxing any income at all will bring a lot of capital to the US. It seems real to me, but you have some information I need apparently - please share.
I doubt anyone here supports such a thing. But I am not a "conscientious" consumer, if that means making decisions that pose negative consequences to my personal well-being. Some people believe that we should all "think globally and act locally", with respect to economic concerns. Screw that. Successful economies are based on individuals "thinking locally and acting locally". Sorry for refusing to board the canoe and commence singing folk songs.
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
Except in the two years surrounding the conversion, it would totally devastate the US economy. And that is not hyperbole.
Let's say all of these years you have been saving your money to buy a house. All of this money that you saved has been taxed already. Now someone want to sell their house to you that was built during an income tax year. The cost of the labor of all aspects of the house building has been factored into the sale price of the house. Down the street, they are ready to build a new house in a sales tax year. The new house will NOT have the cost of taxed labor factored into it and both houses will have to collect a sales tax. The older house is now artifically more expensive than the new one and the owner of the used house will take it in the shorts - even to the point of paying to get out of the house. Now you as the buyer, are you willing to pay for a house with taxed income dollars and then pay a tax again to purchase either house? Of course not, you will contract to buy the house at the very last moment in before the system changes over so that you will avoid paying the new sales tax.
Now extrapolate this over the entire economy over every big-ticket item. Guess what? You will have massive levels of debt as people put the smallest amount of money down to buy something in the income tax year so they can pay for it with non-taxed dollars the following years. For the first year the tax revenues will be nill as no one is buying anything expensive, and the interest on the borrowed money is far less than an income tax or the sales tax. The economy will essentially shutdown in terms of sales as businesses attempt to fill orders for things bought the previous year.
Will the sales tax interfere with used car sales? Will the taxman show up to garage sales to make sure that every dime is collected, tabulated and sent to the proper government agency? How about those lemon-aid stands? Priv
Then there is the black-market economy that the illegals have mastered, just look at what happened when cigarette taxes went through the roof? The smuggling and back street selling of goods, pioneered by drug dealers will become a major employer and career field.
Not that your point about big ticket items isn't valid. In fact, it seems so obvious that I wonder if there is a credible rebuttal out there. This can't be the first time the issue has been raised, can it?
Look at the boondoggle with the pharma companies; American pharmacies are now allowed to import US drugs from Canada because their socialized medical system fixes the maximum price drugs can be sold for. What a nightmare. Now you have Merck or J&J selling something to Canada that the Canadians mark up and resell to us. This will benefit US business how?
Bad economic policy could very well have us hearing something in 04' like "I told you it was the economy Stupid".
There will be price stability.
The house with taxed materials will not have the retail sale tax due on it, as it has already been taxed (albeit piecemeal). So prices of the homes will be the same.
And yes, you are using hyperbole... to a grreat extent.
The bill taxes things once and only once. Hence the house that was built with tax costs included has already been taxed and will not be taxed again.
The bill is quite short, you should read it because you are making decisions on bad information.
The bill is here, enter "HR25".
Yes, changeover will have challenges - but that is not "totally devastating the US economy".
Also, claims that things will cost less than before are bogus - the profit mentallity, the same which allows petroleum companies to get 600% profit because we can't do anything about it, will find a way to maximize access to consumer pockets, no matter WHAT tax scheme does or does not exist.
I used to think a flat income tax might be the answer, with a lot more input from STATES to limit federal government spending to ONLY CONSTITUTIONAL functions, e.g., the military to protect the country as a whole, et.al. (welfare of the union stuff). Now I'm not so sure, but it WOULD mean less out of my pocket than the current system AND, as far as I can tell, the NRST system, too!
The biggest help would be to do away with the federal reserve bank, which has nothing to do with "federal", but there are too many rich scumbags (a la the trilateral commission) who wouldn't let that happen. Things might be different if tax money (from whatever source) went directly into the US treasury vaults, instead!
At this point, I really don't have a solution, but sure as hades, I don't want to change one lousy system for another which will cost me even more of MY money!
I have searched the national sales tax websites and have attempted to ask this question before. Usually the "rebuttal" is along the lines of that "certainly some people may suffer". The people who will suffer are those who have assets. The people who won't suffer are those who accumualate debt by contracting to buy before the Big Day. Then it will cause those who have massive debts to suffer. In the end, everyone suffers - including those who thought that they could get rich lending money to the "investors".
The issue of credit is what I find most interesting since the wise person will contract to buy before the sales tax comes in. With that much credit crunch, the banks will be able to cherry-pick their borrowers. This will go on for exactly one month then the demographic group that is notorious for poor credit and $15,000 rims for their cars will complain that they can't get the banks to talk to them, and Jesse Jackson will encourage politicians to compel banks to make risky loans to people who will be most negatively effected in an economic paradigm upheaval.
It will certainly be a horrible mess.
Why not? Prices of things will be the same with our income tax or a national sales tax.
Your premise is flawed in that you assert that things can be taxed twice under the nrst. It is at the very heart of the nrst to tax things only once.
When you take a few minutes to read the bill or a synopsis, you will see that things manufactured with income taxed goods and services will NOT pay the national retail sales tax.
So your jumping-off point was bad.
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