The poor are getting raped at 15.3% payroll tax right now, so if they're making $12K, they're really only getting $10.16K.
With the FairTax, they get the full $12K _plus_ the $2,760 Prebate.
The excerpt I posted elsewhere shows you that your laser printers, paper, machines in your business are all bought without FairTax applied.
I get it, you like to argue, but you're posting without even thinking about it. It takes a while to realize how the world of no income taxes works, as well as the world of consumption taxes only on NEW retail items for sale and services. You haven't stopped to think that the poor don't buy a lot at retail. Other than food and shelter, do you think they go down to KMart and get all their clothes? Nope, thrift stores. New TV? Nope, pawn shop or classified ads. New car? Nope, used car. None of those used things are FairTaxed. The poor may not be sitting pretty with the FairTax, but they're waaaaay better off than with income taxes.
"‘‘SEC. 102. INTERMEDIATE AND EXPORT SALES. 4 ‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—For purposes of this subtitle— 5 ‘‘(1) BUSINESS AND EXPORT PURPOSES.—No 6 tax shall be imposed under section 101 on any tax7 able property or service purchased for a business"
"If you have a 15% personal income tax Not related to buying a house."
Of course it is. The money you pay for the house is taxed by the income taxes.
"YOU ARE PAYING CONSUMPTION TAXES. You do not "show up" with all your income because you paid consumption taxes on the goods and services you bought to stay alive."
The FairTax on the good and services you buy to stay alive are rebated to you in advance, by a mechanism called the Prebate, that is essentially the gov't paying those taxes for you.
Otherwise, I feel you have your mind made up no matter what facts I were to be able to find for you, so if you want to find them yourself, you can pull up HR25 from the proposed House Resolutions, and go to www.fairtax.org and read all the info there. Its 131 pages, unlike our 70,000 page income tax code. I don't have time for detailed, point-by-point refutations of what is wrong with the above, but there's a lot. You basically ignore the fact that federal income taxes would go away for all these businesses and can only see the dark side, so you have a nice day, I'm done here.
We could have a shot at not increasing our spending if we could stop believing that the gov't has to do everything for everyone because they can't do it for themselves. I believe with the income taxes gone, the level of prosperity amongst the citizens would be so ever increasing that people would stop demanding handouts from the gov't, and instead join a chorus directed at the gov't to, "Get out of my life, stand back, get out of the way, and watch this" as pretty much everyone finds their niche in the system and uses it for personal prosperity. I think those that would be unable to do this would be so few in number that the rest of us who would be prosperous could easily afford to fund the "welfare" that is necessary for those people to not starve, and lead lives at least free of the oppression of poverty. But most everyone would be able to find a way to, if not a wealthy status, at least a not impoverished status. I mean, right now, as I've discovered in just the last few weeks, there are an enormous number of jobs that are most definitely not occupied by people that are "just entering the workforce", but rather real veterans of being in the workforce, and still making only $11 - $12 an hour. That's nuts. But check out the wages of, say, a cook at a place like Applebees. $11 - $12 an hour. I believe, once generalized prosperity is realized, with far more people working factory jobs that pay far more than average wages, those people working the retail oriented jobs would see their wages rise due to competition from the factories for labor. Why sweat your a** off in a kitchen for $11 - $12 / hr when the factory down the road is paying $30 / hr for their help? I mean, if the smell of frying bacon and eggs is so much more preferable to you than the smell of hot oil, then maybe Applebees gets to pay you $11 - $12 an hour for the rest of your life. But I think most people will go for hot oil when it comes at $30 / hr. With a good labor shortage, the $30 may start going up too. If we were to import all the factories that have left the US in the last 30 - 40 years, we would have a really nice labor shortage, and that would drive up wages under the laws of supply and demand. And, getting back to the FairTax, that means that people would have more money, so they would be spending it on things like jet skis and snowmobiles and so forth, the FairTax on which would boost US revenues. The FairTax might actually get to a point, with enough people here in the US working, that its taxation rate could actually be lowered. That's just wild speculation, of course, , but hey, it might happen. But first we have to get rid of the prosperity-killing income taxes.
Don't feel like the Lone Ranger on not realizing the huge advantage that nuking the income taxes would give the USA. And that's really it, its not that the FairTax is so great, it is that the income taxes are so awful that is the great advantage of the FairTax. Income taxes are so bad on so many levels that it is just hard to imagine how much improved our situation would be if we got rid of them. And, it took me _years_ to realize that the FairTax would give a special advantage to US business, and be pretty much the same thing as a tariff, without technically being a tariff. US Income Taxes skewer the H out of US industry, costing them (us, actually, we pay "corporate" income taxes in higher prices for domestic goods, lower wages, and lower dividends on our stock purchases (which we do thru pension funds that invest in US corporations)) to the point that corporate income taxes are simply tariffs on US produced goods. Removing those tariffs on US industry, while adding sales taxes on all items sold at retail, would tip the balance greatly in favor of US industries. That's what we want...
I can't tell you how the 23% is calculated. I don't know, the group of economists that formulated the FairTax about 20 years ago came up with the number. They took all the retail sales and all the services that would be taxed and figured out what percentage of taxation on those would match the revenue from the US Income Taxes. I don't know how to find the retail sales and services costs for US domestic consumptions today. I suspect that the FairTax would be different from simply matching income taxes today, but don't know whether they would be more or less. I suspect that after the FairTax was passed, in the years following, there would be a mass migration of world manufacturing from other countries to the USA because the USA would be the only place on the planet that is industrialized and a place where the gov't doesn't come tromping thru the doors every year demanding to steal a portion of the profits. I also learned a few months ago, after reading an interview with a Chinese businessman that wanted to move his manufacturing here after Trump's tax cuts, that the US electricity and US land were much cheaper than in China. He didn't, however, also mention our 2nd-to-none freight rail system, the best, most extensive freight rail on the planet. Yeah, if we could just get the income taxes off the backs of the people and our industry, we would be so ferociously competitive in domestic and world markets that I believe that eventually we could begin paying down the National Debt. It'd probably take 100 years to do it, but we could see a way out of the debt if we had most of the world's largest manufacturers here.
The law as proposed in HR25 in Congress now is 23% inclusive. That is, if you spend $100 on something, 23% of that $100 would go to Washington as FairTax. That was supposed to generate equal revenue to the income taxes back when this was first researched. I'd suspect it might require some adjustment now, but of course the income taxes are not providing enough revenue to keep from borrowing money either, so it is safe to say that in order to cease borrowing money to run the country, the FairTax would have to be adjusted upward.
The good news is that adjusting the FairTax upward to cover our spending would NOT adversely affect American business. People would adjust their purchases to live within their means, and they may or may not buy the same stuff as they used to. Calculations for American-built stuff are that American-built stuff would fall in price by 11% - 18% by being relieved of their income tax burden in the manufacturing process. Foreign goods would not fall in price at all, since their manufacturing process, not being inside the USA, would not be relieved of US income tax burden. FairTax researchers calculate that 22% of the price of any US built product, on average, is comprised of US income tax burden. So, a $40K SUV has, on average, $8,800 of income tax burden in its price. After deducting 11% - 18% of the price, that makes, say, a $35K Jeep Cherokee made in Toledo, Ohio fall to $28,700 to $31,150, while the equally-priced $35K SUV from outside the country would be, after the FairTax removed income tax burdens from US factory products, $35,000, since it would gain no advantage. THen, if the FairTax is applied to the Jeep, the resultant selling price would be between $37,310 - $40, 495. The foreign SUV would, after FairTax is applied, cost $45,500.
Of course you have to remember you're buying either SUV with money you make that has NO income tax withheld from it, so you have much more money to buy the SUV. Its just that the Jeep has risen 6.6% - 15.7%, while the foreign-built SUV has risen by 30%. That's a built-in tariff inside the FairTax, but don't tell anybody... Anyway, the bottom line is that whether you pay $37,310, $40,495, or $45,000, you can completely avoid paying the FairTax by buying the same car that is a used car, for which the FairTax would be $0. So, actually, the FairTax is a lot like a luxury tax, only being applied to things that are bought with money spent above the buyer's poverty line.
What would be the rate of FairTax necessary to keep from having to borrow money to run the USA? I don't know. Might be the 23% "embedded", 30% external rate, might be more, might be less. But at least it would be _possible_ to collect enough money to fund the gov't fully. You can't do that with income taxes because the income taxes suppress the prosperity, and drive the money out of the country.
Roger on the communism, its pretty plain from the way they are going now, that's what they want. "Gun Control" means eventual confiscation, otherwise there's no point because not one of the laws, of the 25,000 in existence, is even remotely effective in the stated purpose of reducing crime. Gun control laws don't work AT ALL. And Michelle was controlling her little captive audience of school kids and starving them because some were overweight, while the athletes at the school were nearly malnourished from the dietary restrictions since they were burning 1000's of calories on the gridiron or the cross country and track activities, basketballers, etc... all starving, and now the latest superstar wants to deprive everyone of meat and cars and airplanes. Communism, for sure. We just can't let that happen.
"First if all, you can fund a country with income taxes if you fund the tax auditors. "
The tax auditors are not going to keep businesses being bankrupted by the high taxes from moving overseas or going out of business so the only provider of whatever they were producing is now coming from foreign sources. Either way, the revenue goes down because the source is now foreign, which is not income-taxable. Only a consumption tax can tax the foreign-built stuff.
Raise income taxes, and it suppresses prosperity, and the overall revenue goes down eventually. May take a while as it takes some time for companies to realize they can't make a buck here, and then they decide to make a buck there, where "there" is "anywhere but the USA."
USA before 1913 does. And for practcal purposes, Texas does too, because the STATE is run on sales taxes, the local areas are run on property taxes. We;re only trying to fund the state like the Federal Gov't. Texas runs on sales taxes.
Property tax is a state tax. We're attempting to solve Federal Taxation, so property taxes aren't a part of the equation.
And, you're saying there is STATE property taxes? Yeah, if they have a car tax or something, but real estate taxes are usually local things. And car tax doesn't count for much.
The rich don't spend? Who bought Trump's 757? A rich guy, Donald Trump. Who bought John Travolta's 737? A rich guy, John Travolta. Then there is rich guy Nkck Cage that was, at his height, spending every cent he made. Michael Jackson spent more than he made, and the only reason for his involvement in the tour he was planning was to pay the bills. The rich mostly spend out the wazoo - that's who buys the Ferrarris and the Rolls Royces and such. Sure, there are some that will decide not to be taxed, and not buy a lot, and that's their right, but the point of being rich is enjoying your success, and so they spend.
Sure. Texas. They don't have income taxes at all. Florida also doesn't have personal income taxes, but some on business. Also, the USA before 1913 was running quite nicely on consumption taxes which were tariffs and excise taxes, mostly paid by the rich. The rich would be contributing the most again, due to their egregious spending. Donald's 757 retails at $100M, he got it used from a Dutch Airline, but still... at least $50M, wouldn't you think? That'd be $15M direct to the US Treasury in FairTax. The rich willb e carrying a much bigger share of the load. Poor people will pay $0 because of the family allowance that pays people for the FairTax on their spending up to their personal poverty level. Anyone in poverty will not be paying FairTax, the gov't pays it for them.
"'Cause JFK did slash income taxes.....and there was not a corresponding boom of economic activity."""
How old are you? I lived through that, and yes, there was prosperity all over the place. Good factory jobs, high wages, low unemployment, etc. You know those statistics they're quoting now for, "Best employment figures in 50 years?" 50 years ago was... the 60's.
"Only if you ignore that they're spending more money to buy goods and services to pay your consumption tax."
The FairTax is a consumption tax on new items for sale at RETAIL, and services. The businesses don't buy their supplies at retail, they buy at wholesale. The business stream of manufacturing is not taxed by the FairTax.
"Your plan does not repeal property taxes. Also, car dealers are offering a service, thus putting them under your consumption tax."
The Federal Gov't doesn't have property taxes, those are state and local taxes. We're dealing with Federal Income Taxes right now, and the FairTax is the solution to its depredations.
" Also, there are currently no taxes paid when you buy a house, new or "used" (there are various recording fees). However you did just massively jack up the price of all of the components of the house, massively driving up home prices."
That is not right. There are tons of taxes you're paying, income taxes, when you buy a house right now. If you have a 15% personal income tax, and are paying payroll taxes to the tune of 15.3%, that is 30.3% tax, So if you pay, say $69.7K for a house, you had to earn $100k in order to have the $69.7K to pay for the house after you pay your income taxes and payroll taxes. In contrast, if you earn $100K to buy a house, you will be able to show up at closing with $100K, not $69.7K, because under the FairTax, the personal income taxes and the payroll taxes are repealed.
"tuition....isn't taxed today."
You most certainly are taxed on tuition. Same as buying a house above. You have to earn $100 in order to bring $69.70 to pay for an hour of tuition. $30.30 of the $100 you earned went to the Federal Gov't in income and payroll taxes.
"money used to pay your state taxes, car license fees... Were deductible until the Republicans decided to raise individual income taxes to offset a fraction of their corporate tax cut."
First, individual taxes went down, I'm paying $1500 less this year than last year, and I'm nowhere close to rich. And, under the FairTax, the money you use to pay your state income taxes would still not be taxed.
"No taxes on the money you make and use for savings... Only if your savings is under your mattress. If you invest your savings, guess what? You're using a service and the tax man cometh."
Nope, incorrect. No savings are taxed under the FairTax. In fact, the FairTax removes income tax expense from the banking industry, so interest on your saved monies in banks would be higher, and loan interest from the banks would be lower, due to their not being taxed and therefore not having to charge you in order to come up with the tax money to send to Washington.
"Tax income or tax consumption, you're still taking money from the business."
Businesses aren't taxed under the FairTax, only consumers buying at retail, both items for sale and services, are taxed. Business buy these things at wholesale, and wholesale items aren't taxed.
Canada's corporate income tax is 12% - 38%. 12% would be way less while 38% would be way more. I don't know how it's figured. But I think the bottom line for this is how easy it is to get H1B-equivalent Visas into Canada for this flim-flam on the American worker.
The way to raise taxes on the rich is to pass the consumption tax, because... the rich consume like hell, and consumption taxes are harder to evade, you have to go beyond simply 1 person lying about their income, to 2 people, the buyer and the seller, both putting themselves at risk for prison on a conspiracy charge, to avoid a consumption tax. The seller, BTW, gets nothing out of such a scheme except that risk of prison.
And, something no one seems to think of, is that the rich buy a hell of a lot of stuff that they have out of savings, or inheritance, or money laying around. That is taxed under a consumption tax, but an income tax may miss taxing that altogether, if it was earned long ago. Yeah, it may have been taxed when earned, but it might not have been, too, either by tax evasion or by being under-taxed at a lower rate in the past. The consumption tax would more positively tax the rich than the income taxes, that's why they went out of the way in 1913, when the rich of that day were determined to kill their consumption taxes of the time, and get the income taxes stealing from other people, to help get them off the hook of paying for almost everything via tariffs and excise taxes. The rich are still winning, via the income taxes they have become so adept at avoiding, and we're all picking up the load, but not enough to avoid eventual disaster when this all collapses like a house of cards. The only way to avoid that is... nuking the income taxes, and making the rich pay the way we'd like them to under the income taxes, but cannot make it happen.
Try and balance the budget. Between SS / Medicare, and DoD, there's precious little left over to run the rest of the country. I think I calculated $106 Billion for everything else that is not SS/Medicare and DoD. No, those 2 things shouldn't be cut. The other stuff can't be cut enough to do it, and still end up with a country.
We have to increase revenues or we're going to collapse, sooner or later. If we increase income taxes, the revenues go down as revenue-producing companies flee the country and EVERYBODY figures out new and wondrous ways to cheat on their taxes. At current tax levels, there are estimates / studies that say that there will be 9 Trillion Dollars of tax evasion of the income taxes within the next 10 years. And of you cut the taxes, the revenues go up in accordance with the famous Laffer Curve, but not enough to fund everything.
Bottom line is that we can't fund the country with income taxes. There was a time, tho, from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century, that there was no income taxes, and coincidentally that was called "The Gilded Age" for its fantastic amount of economic growth. That's what can happen without an income tax. We should go back to not having income taxes.
The FairTax variety of consumption tax would set the economy afire. Also, Texas has no income taxes and a few years ago, during the economic doldrums of Obama, Texas was creating 1 of every 3 jobs in the country. And, I just bought a new car, and financed it for $484 a month. If I had to pay the FairTax on it, the payments would have been something like, maybe, $200 a month more. But... I paid $8500, approx, for that income tax last year and dividing by 12, that's about $700 a month MORE I'd have in a paycheck. So, I would have far more from abolishing the income tax than I'd be spending extra for this particular consumption tax. And of course I'd have had the option of buying a slightly used car and paying $0 tax. IOW, _I_ control how much tax I will pay.
I can't see a tax where you can control how much you're going to pay having a great impact on buying and selling.
Leaving the country is easy when the gov't comes tromping thru the door every year wanting 21% of your profits. Lets fix it, by abolishing the prosperity-killing income taxes. In 1963, with the income taxes only 50 years old at the time, JFK said, "“The largest single barrier to full employment of our manpower and resources and to a higher rate of economic growth is the unrealistically heavy drag of federal income taxes on private purchasing power, initiative and incentive.” John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963 " He was right.
The FairTax is a consumption tax that, if enacted, calls for the complete repeal of all income taxes - personal, corporate, capital gains, alternative minimum, gift, estate, self-employment, etc. All of 'em. It replaces them with a consumption tax on new items sold at retail, and services, while giving every legal resident enough money every month in advance, to be able to pay the FairTax on the person's purchases every month up to the poverty level. Poverty level for a single person is about $12K / yr, so every month, that person would get enough money to pay the FairTax on $1K of spending.
How's that help this? The little thing about repealing the corporate income tax would have those companies, and all the rest of the companies on the planet at least WANTING to move their operations to the USA where they could operate without having their profits stolen by the gov't. Move to Canada? Canada will come tromping thru the door and steal a part of their profits via corporate income taxes. So will pretty much everywhere else in the world. The USA would stand alone in NOT stealing from either its businesses or its people. Nobody would owe a dime of taxes from the start, they would be able to regulate how much tax they pay by regulating how much new goods and services they buy. Don't want to pay taxes on a new car? Buy a somewhat used car. No taxes on the used car. No taxes on the used (existing) house, only taxes if you build a new house. No taxes on the money you make and use for savings, tuition (tuition is treated as an investment), money used to pay your state taxes, car license fees, buying stocks and bonds (again, and investment), and so forth.
Bottom line is that the USA would be the place to make the biggest profit, because of the lack of at least the Federal gov't tromping thru the door to steal a portion of the business' profits each year. Companies stay. More companies come. Jobs stay. More jobs come. That's what we want, and killing the income taxes dead is the way to do it.
"If you actually believed this, you wouldn't keep voting for people who keep cutting aid to the poor."
We vote for him because we / he know / knows that the best way to help the poor is not to simply give them a gov't handout, but to instead provide them with an opportunity to work in a well-paying job, which is exactly what he's been doing and continues to attempt to do. Its what the corporate income tax cut is about, since that creates far more manufacturing jobs than other approaches to the problem, and manufacturing jobs traditionally pay better.
3 X 10^12 tons of CO2 in the atmosphere X $100 / ton = $3 X 10^14 to remove it all.
$1K = $1 X 10^3 $1M = $1 X 10^6 $1B = $1 X 10^9 $1T = $1 X 10^12 3 X 10^12 Tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere X $100 / Ton = $300 X 10^12 to remove it all.
Of course removing it all would be suicidal, as the plants would all die, followed by all the animals.
But, we are at about 400 parts per million of concentration of CO2. The pre-industrial level of CO2 was about 280 PPM. So, we really only want to remove 120 ppm of CO2, which is 120 / 400 = 30% of the CO2 in the atmosphere. 30% of the $300T is $90T.
Soooo.... using the MIT approach, it would cost EXACTLY the same impossible amount of money to send CO2 levels back to pre-industrial levels. OBTW, lets not forget that it is impossible to deal with the transportation sector CO2, because we can't run it on electricity generated from the sun or wind or anything else, and you won't get food for 360 million people delivered 100's of miles to your local food store by horses and wagons. It'll have to come on BIG trucks and the have to move by diesel. There's no choice. There are other examples of the absurdity of AOC's Green New Deal, too numerous to ridicule individually, but an approach that would work if we spent the same impossible amount of money would actually succeed.
Oh, wait, wait, wait... MIT's solution would work for the entire planet, while AOC's screwball law would only affect the USA - India, China, Russia, and pretty much everyone else in the world that have historically failed to achieve the objectives of all the CO2 reduction that they've agreed to in the past, would STILL burn fossil fuels whenever they wanted to, and so the AOC approach would be ineffective at everything except bankrupting America.
1) We could possibly, in time, figure out how to do it cheaper, but this would be a start.
Blowing money on "a start" that can never produce the necessary results isn't exactly the best way to spend money.
Its that or doing nothing. So, the approach is not yet perfect. Don't let the perfect get in the way of the good.
2) Is it more or less expensive than wack-job politician's "Green New Deal" that is currently tagged at somewhere around $90T and will NOT actually be capable of solving the problem? ("Solving the problem" means doing so without killing millions of people, which the raising of the price of energy would do by casting more and more people into poverty. Poverty kills. Smoking may take 7 years off your life, but living in poverty is good for a 10 year reduction.)
One key element of the Green New Deal that you are unwilling to understand is the efforts within the program create jobs. Somebody has to actually refit old houses to be better insulated, and so on.
How many? Two? The raising of taxes would put millions out of work.
Those jobs reduce poverty, ameliorating the problem you cite here.
No, they don't. Not everyone can do 'em, and there wouldn't be many of them.
3) Has it escaped everyone that we are currently adding about $1T to the National Debt every year and NOBODY has a clue what to do about it
We know exactly what to do about it because that deficit was created by a massive tax cut on the wealthy.
That is absolutely wrong. Revenues to the gov't WENT UP after the tax cuts, as expected, its just that Congress far outstripped the raise in revenue by spending far more than the extra that came in.
Fixing it is also trivially easy. Reverse those tax cuts. It would require you to give up your tax cut fetish though.
There was a deficit before the tax cuts, too, its just that the tax cuts raised the revenue to the gov't. Had spending not been increased, the deficit would have gone down.
Clue: The last year that the National Debt didn't go up was 1957. We've raised and lowered the income taxes numerous times since without achieving that desired result.
1998-2001 called [cnn.com], and would like to remind you they existed. Though acknowledging that evil liberal tax hikes reduce the deficit and thus debt would require abandoning your tax cut fetish.
The National Debt went up in those years, too, whether witchcraft was used to declare the budget "balanced", the National Debt still went up. The last time it didn't was 1957.
It's blinding obvious to me that income taxes are absolutely incapable of funding the gov't, and should be abolished. The Founders set up the nation to run on consumption taxes such as excise taxes and tariffs
The founders also set up the nation to not have a standing military and pressed for limited-to-no foreign entanglements. So, unless you also want massive defense cuts resulting in the US dropping out of being a superpower, you don't actually want to go back to what the founders set up.
Its a choice. What to sit here with the Russians and the Chinese running carrier task groups and boomer submarines up and down our coasts? Want to not be able to do anything when the next bunch of assholes uses a foreign base to train terrorists to distribute, say, Anthrax from a perch on the Shennendoah Parkway, and let the wind spread it to kill maybe a million people? I may still be immune from my trip to Iraq and its accompanying vaccination, but I'd hate to wake up to having dead neighbors for as far as I could drive, and then not having the military to chase down the perpetrators. We have a treasure of natural resources, infrastructure, and human resources (potenital slaves) that foreigners should not feel free to plot against without the thought that the US Millitary will be landing in their front yards if they attempt to harm America.
Also, between your rant about how terrible poverty is and your tax proposals, you forgot that consumption taxes take a far larger pe
Fixing the refrigerator without killing a lot of folks that are on the lower income end of the economic chart is currently impossible. The GW Alarmists are all about increasingly sucking $$$ out of the USA, and thus killing American citizens via casting them into poverty. Some of us would rather research approaches that do NOT kill millions of Americans by casting them into poverty while trying to pay for the approach of fixing the refrigerator, which is actually beyond repair with the technology we have available to us now. We'd rather turn down the AC, and continue with the refrigerator that is still working, just somewhat poorly. Maybe someday someone will invent the magic battery that is cheap and high enough capacity to compete with fossil fuel cars and cheap and lightweight enough for automotive use and cheap and recharges fairly quickly and cheap and power dense enough to shoehorn it into vehicles and... oh BTW, cheap enough to be used by other than rich people. Then the transportation sector can go full-electric, we will have fixed the refrigerator with new technology, and can then run on energy which can be generated by solar and wind and geo and tidal and so forth - and we can leave the carbon in the ground. But ignoring realities and killing folks via massive poverty is not something I'm inclined to favor.
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The poor are getting raped at 15.3% payroll tax right now, so if they're making $12K, they're really only getting $10.16K.
With the FairTax, they get the full $12K _plus_ the $2,760 Prebate.
The excerpt I posted elsewhere shows you that your laser printers, paper, machines in your business are all bought without FairTax applied.
I get it, you like to argue, but you're posting without even thinking about it. It takes a while to realize how the world of no income taxes works, as well as the world of consumption taxes only on NEW retail items for sale and services. You haven't stopped to think that the poor don't buy a lot at retail. Other than food and shelter, do you think they go down to KMart and get all their clothes? Nope, thrift stores. New TV? Nope, pawn shop or classified ads. New car? Nope, used car. None of those used things are FairTaxed. The poor may not be sitting pretty with the FairTax, but they're waaaaay better off than with income taxes.
From the bill:
"‘‘SEC. 102. INTERMEDIATE AND EXPORT SALES.
4 ‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—For purposes of this subtitle—
5 ‘‘(1) BUSINESS AND EXPORT PURPOSES.—No
6 tax shall be imposed under section 101 on any tax7
able property or service purchased for a business"
"If you have a 15% personal income tax
Not related to buying a house."
Of course it is. The money you pay for the house is taxed by the income taxes.
"YOU ARE PAYING CONSUMPTION TAXES. You do not "show up" with all your income because you paid consumption taxes on the goods and services you bought to stay alive."
The FairTax on the good and services you buy to stay alive are rebated to you in advance, by a mechanism called the Prebate, that is essentially the gov't paying those taxes for you.
Otherwise, I feel you have your mind made up no matter what facts I were to be able to find for you, so if you want to find them yourself, you can pull up HR25 from the proposed House Resolutions, and go to www.fairtax.org and read all the info there. Its 131 pages, unlike our 70,000 page income tax code. I don't have time for detailed, point-by-point refutations of what is wrong with the above, but there's a lot. You basically ignore the fact that federal income taxes would go away for all these businesses and can only see the dark side, so you have a nice day, I'm done here.
We could have a shot at not increasing our spending if we could stop believing that the gov't has to do everything for everyone because they can't do it for themselves. I believe with the income taxes gone, the level of prosperity amongst the citizens would be so ever increasing that people would stop demanding handouts from the gov't, and instead join a chorus directed at the gov't to, "Get out of my life, stand back, get out of the way, and watch this" as pretty much everyone finds their niche in the system and uses it for personal prosperity. I think those that would be unable to do this would be so few in number that the rest of us who would be prosperous could easily afford to fund the "welfare" that is necessary for those people to not starve, and lead lives at least free of the oppression of poverty. But most everyone would be able to find a way to, if not a wealthy status, at least a not impoverished status. I mean, right now, as I've discovered in just the last few weeks, there are an enormous number of jobs that are most definitely not occupied by people that are "just entering the workforce", but rather real veterans of being in the workforce, and still making only $11 - $12 an hour. That's nuts. But check out the wages of, say, a cook at a place like Applebees. $11 - $12 an hour. I believe, once generalized prosperity is realized, with far more people working factory jobs that pay far more than average wages, those people working the retail oriented jobs would see their wages rise due to competition from the factories for labor. Why sweat your a** off in a kitchen for $11 - $12 / hr when the factory down the road is paying $30 / hr for their help? I mean, if the smell of frying bacon and eggs is so much more preferable to you than the smell of hot oil, then maybe Applebees gets to pay you $11 - $12 an hour for the rest of your life. But I think most people will go for hot oil when it comes at $30 / hr. With a good labor shortage, the $30 may start going up too. If we were to import all the factories that have left the US in the last 30 - 40 years, we would have a really nice labor shortage, and that would drive up wages under the laws of supply and demand. And, getting back to the FairTax, that means that people would have more money, so they would be spending it on things like jet skis and snowmobiles and so forth, the FairTax on which would boost US revenues. The FairTax might actually get to a point, with enough people here in the US working, that its taxation rate could actually be lowered. That's just wild speculation, of course, , but hey, it might happen. But first we have to get rid of the prosperity-killing income taxes.
Don't feel like the Lone Ranger on not realizing the huge advantage that nuking the income taxes would give the USA. And that's really it, its not that the FairTax is so great, it is that the income taxes are so awful that is the great advantage of the FairTax. Income taxes are so bad on so many levels that it is just hard to imagine how much improved our situation would be if we got rid of them. And, it took me _years_ to realize that the FairTax would give a special advantage to US business, and be pretty much the same thing as a tariff, without technically being a tariff. US Income Taxes skewer the H out of US industry, costing them (us, actually, we pay "corporate" income taxes in higher prices for domestic goods, lower wages, and lower dividends on our stock purchases (which we do thru pension funds that invest in US corporations)) to the point that corporate income taxes are simply tariffs on US produced goods. Removing those tariffs on US industry, while adding sales taxes on all items sold at retail, would tip the balance greatly in favor of US industries. That's what we want...
I can't tell you how the 23% is calculated. I don't know, the group of economists that formulated the FairTax about 20 years ago came up with the number. They took all the retail sales and all the services that would be taxed and figured out what percentage of taxation on those would match the revenue from the US Income Taxes. I don't know how to find the retail sales and services costs for US domestic consumptions today. I suspect that the FairTax would be different from simply matching income taxes today, but don't know whether they would be more or less. I suspect that after the FairTax was passed, in the years following, there would be a mass migration of world manufacturing from other countries to the USA because the USA would be the only place on the planet that is industrialized and a place where the gov't doesn't come tromping thru the doors every year demanding to steal a portion of the profits. I also learned a few months ago, after reading an interview with a Chinese businessman that wanted to move his manufacturing here after Trump's tax cuts, that the US electricity and US land were much cheaper than in China. He didn't, however, also mention our 2nd-to-none freight rail system, the best, most extensive freight rail on the planet. Yeah, if we could just get the income taxes off the backs of the people and our industry, we would be so ferociously competitive in domestic and world markets that I believe that eventually we could begin paying down the National Debt. It'd probably take 100 years to do it, but we could see a way out of the debt if we had most of the world's largest manufacturers here.
The law as proposed in HR25 in Congress now is 23% inclusive. That is, if you spend $100 on something, 23% of that $100 would go to Washington as FairTax. That was supposed to generate equal revenue to the income taxes back when this was first researched. I'd suspect it might require some adjustment now, but of course the income taxes are not providing enough revenue to keep from borrowing money either, so it is safe to say that in order to cease borrowing money to run the country, the FairTax would have to be adjusted upward.
The good news is that adjusting the FairTax upward to cover our spending would NOT adversely affect American business. People would adjust their purchases to live within their means, and they may or may not buy the same stuff as they used to. Calculations for American-built stuff are that American-built stuff would fall in price by 11% - 18% by being relieved of their income tax burden in the manufacturing process. Foreign goods would not fall in price at all, since their manufacturing process, not being inside the USA, would not be relieved of US income tax burden. FairTax researchers calculate that 22% of the price of any US built product, on average, is comprised of US income tax burden. So, a $40K SUV has, on average, $8,800 of income tax burden in its price. After deducting 11% - 18% of the price, that makes, say, a $35K Jeep Cherokee made in Toledo, Ohio fall to $28,700 to $31,150, while the equally-priced $35K SUV from outside the country would be, after the FairTax removed income tax burdens from US factory products, $35,000, since it would gain no advantage. THen, if the FairTax is applied to the Jeep, the resultant selling price would be between $37,310 - $40, 495. The foreign SUV would, after FairTax is applied, cost $45,500.
Of course you have to remember you're buying either SUV with money you make that has NO income tax withheld from it, so you have much more money to buy the SUV. Its just that the Jeep has risen 6.6% - 15.7%, while the foreign-built SUV has risen by 30%. That's a built-in tariff inside the FairTax, but don't tell anybody... Anyway, the bottom line is that whether you pay $37,310, $40,495, or $45,000, you can completely avoid paying the FairTax by buying the same car that is a used car, for which the FairTax would be $0. So, actually, the FairTax is a lot like a luxury tax, only being applied to things that are bought with money spent above the buyer's poverty line.
What would be the rate of FairTax necessary to keep from having to borrow money to run the USA? I don't know. Might be the 23% "embedded", 30% external rate, might be more, might be less. But at least it would be _possible_ to collect enough money to fund the gov't fully. You can't do that with income taxes because the income taxes suppress the prosperity, and drive the money out of the country.
Roger on the communism, its pretty plain from the way they are going now, that's what they want. "Gun Control" means eventual confiscation, otherwise there's no point because not one of the laws, of the 25,000 in existence, is even remotely effective in the stated purpose of reducing crime. Gun control laws don't work AT ALL. And Michelle was controlling her little captive audience of school kids and starving them because some were overweight, while the athletes at the school were nearly malnourished from the dietary restrictions since they were burning 1000's of calories on the gridiron or the cross country and track activities, basketballers, etc... all starving, and now the latest superstar wants to deprive everyone of meat and cars and airplanes. Communism, for sure. We just can't let that happen.
"First if all, you can fund a country with income taxes if you fund the tax auditors. "
The tax auditors are not going to keep businesses being bankrupted by the high taxes from moving overseas or going out of business so the only provider of whatever they were producing is now coming from foreign sources. Either way, the revenue goes down because the source is now foreign, which is not income-taxable. Only a consumption tax can tax the foreign-built stuff.
Raise income taxes, and it suppresses prosperity, and the overall revenue goes down eventually. May take a while as it takes some time for companies to realize they can't make a buck here, and then they decide to make a buck there, where "there" is "anywhere but the USA."
Uh... yeah... right... you know everything... except the researchers for the FairTax disagree with you. You have a nice day, y'hear?
USA before 1913 does. And for practcal purposes, Texas does too, because the STATE is run on sales taxes, the local areas are run on property taxes. We;re only trying to fund the state like the Federal Gov't. Texas runs on sales taxes.
Property tax is a state tax. We're attempting to solve Federal Taxation, so property taxes aren't a part of the equation.
And, you're saying there is STATE property taxes? Yeah, if they have a car tax or something, but real estate taxes are usually local things. And car tax doesn't count for much.
The rich don't spend? Who bought Trump's 757? A rich guy, Donald Trump. Who bought John Travolta's 737? A rich guy, John Travolta. Then there is rich guy Nkck Cage that was, at his height, spending every cent he made. Michael Jackson spent more than he made, and the only reason for his involvement in the tour he was planning was to pay the bills. The rich mostly spend out the wazoo - that's who buys the Ferrarris and the Rolls Royces and such. Sure, there are some that will decide not to be taxed, and not buy a lot, and that's their right, but the point of being rich is enjoying your success, and so they spend.
Sure. Texas. They don't have income taxes at all. Florida also doesn't have personal income taxes, but some on business. Also, the USA before 1913 was running quite nicely on consumption taxes which were tariffs and excise taxes, mostly paid by the rich. The rich would be contributing the most again, due to their egregious spending. Donald's 757 retails at $100M, he got it used from a Dutch Airline, but still... at least $50M, wouldn't you think? That'd be $15M direct to the US Treasury in FairTax. The rich willb e carrying a much bigger share of the load. Poor people will pay $0 because of the family allowance that pays people for the FairTax on their spending up to their personal poverty level. Anyone in poverty will not be paying FairTax, the gov't pays it for them.
"'Cause JFK did slash income taxes.....and there was not a corresponding boom of economic activity."""
How old are you? I lived through that, and yes, there was prosperity all over the place. Good factory jobs, high wages, low unemployment, etc. You know those statistics they're quoting now for, "Best employment figures in 50 years?" 50 years ago was... the 60's.
"Only if you ignore that they're spending more money to buy goods and services to pay your consumption tax."
The FairTax is a consumption tax on new items for sale at RETAIL, and services. The businesses don't buy their supplies at retail, they buy at wholesale. The business stream of manufacturing is not taxed by the FairTax.
"Your plan does not repeal property taxes. Also, car dealers are offering a service, thus putting them under your consumption tax."
The Federal Gov't doesn't have property taxes, those are state and local taxes. We're dealing with Federal Income Taxes right now, and the FairTax is the solution to its depredations.
" Also, there are currently no taxes paid when you buy a house, new or "used" (there are various recording fees). However you did just massively jack up the price of all of the components of the house, massively driving up home prices."
That is not right. There are tons of taxes you're paying, income taxes, when you buy a house right now. If you have a 15% personal income tax, and are paying payroll taxes to the tune of 15.3%, that is 30.3% tax, So if you pay, say $69.7K for a house, you had to earn $100k in order to have the $69.7K to pay for the house after you pay your income taxes and payroll taxes. In contrast, if you earn $100K to buy a house, you will be able to show up at closing with $100K, not $69.7K, because under the FairTax, the personal income taxes and the payroll taxes are repealed.
"tuition ....isn't taxed today."
You most certainly are taxed on tuition. Same as buying a house above. You have to earn $100 in order to bring $69.70 to pay for an hour of tuition. $30.30 of the $100 you earned went to the Federal Gov't in income and payroll taxes.
"money used to pay your state taxes, car license fees... Were deductible until the Republicans decided to raise individual income taxes to offset a fraction of their corporate tax cut."
First, individual taxes went down, I'm paying $1500 less this year than last year, and I'm nowhere close to rich. And, under the FairTax, the money you use to pay your state income taxes would still not be taxed.
"No taxes on the money you make and use for savings... Only if your savings is under your mattress. If you invest your savings, guess what? You're using a service and the tax man cometh."
Nope, incorrect. No savings are taxed under the FairTax. In fact, the FairTax removes income tax expense from the banking industry, so interest on your saved monies in banks would be higher, and loan interest from the banks would be lower, due to their not being taxed and therefore not having to charge you in order to come up with the tax money to send to Washington.
"Tax income or tax consumption, you're still taking money from the business."
Businesses aren't taxed under the FairTax, only consumers buying at retail, both items for sale and services, are taxed. Business buy these things at wholesale, and wholesale items aren't taxed.
Canada's corporate income tax is 12% - 38%. 12% would be way less while 38% would be way more. I don't know how it's figured. But I think the bottom line for this is how easy it is to get H1B-equivalent Visas into Canada for this flim-flam on the American worker.
The way to raise taxes on the rich is to pass the consumption tax, because... the rich consume like hell, and consumption taxes are harder to evade, you have to go beyond simply 1 person lying about their income, to 2 people, the buyer and the seller, both putting themselves at risk for prison on a conspiracy charge, to avoid a consumption tax. The seller, BTW, gets nothing out of such a scheme except that risk of prison.
And, something no one seems to think of, is that the rich buy a hell of a lot of stuff that they have out of savings, or inheritance, or money laying around. That is taxed under a consumption tax, but an income tax may miss taxing that altogether, if it was earned long ago. Yeah, it may have been taxed when earned, but it might not have been, too, either by tax evasion or by being under-taxed at a lower rate in the past. The consumption tax would more positively tax the rich than the income taxes, that's why they went out of the way in 1913, when the rich of that day were determined to kill their consumption taxes of the time, and get the income taxes stealing from other people, to help get them off the hook of paying for almost everything via tariffs and excise taxes. The rich are still winning, via the income taxes they have become so adept at avoiding, and we're all picking up the load, but not enough to avoid eventual disaster when this all collapses like a house of cards. The only way to avoid that is... nuking the income taxes, and making the rich pay the way we'd like them to under the income taxes, but cannot make it happen.
Try and balance the budget. Between SS / Medicare, and DoD, there's precious little left over to run the rest of the country. I think I calculated $106 Billion for everything else that is not SS/Medicare and DoD. No, those 2 things shouldn't be cut. The other stuff can't be cut enough to do it, and still end up with a country.
We have to increase revenues or we're going to collapse, sooner or later. If we increase income taxes, the revenues go down as revenue-producing companies flee the country and EVERYBODY figures out new and wondrous ways to cheat on their taxes. At current tax levels, there are estimates / studies that say that there will be 9 Trillion Dollars of tax evasion of the income taxes within the next 10 years. And of you cut the taxes, the revenues go up in accordance with the famous Laffer Curve, but not enough to fund everything.
Bottom line is that we can't fund the country with income taxes. There was a time, tho, from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century, that there was no income taxes, and coincidentally that was called "The Gilded Age" for its fantastic amount of economic growth. That's what can happen without an income tax. We should go back to not having income taxes.
The FairTax variety of consumption tax would set the economy afire. Also, Texas has no income taxes and a few years ago, during the economic doldrums of Obama, Texas was creating 1 of every 3 jobs in the country. And, I just bought a new car, and financed it for $484 a month. If I had to pay the FairTax on it, the payments would have been something like, maybe, $200 a month more. But... I paid $8500, approx, for that income tax last year and dividing by 12, that's about $700 a month MORE I'd have in a paycheck. So, I would have far more from abolishing the income tax than I'd be spending extra for this particular consumption tax. And of course I'd have had the option of buying a slightly used car and paying $0 tax. IOW, _I_ control how much tax I will pay.
I can't see a tax where you can control how much you're going to pay having a great impact on buying and selling.
Leaving the country is easy when the gov't comes tromping thru the door every year wanting 21% of your profits. Lets fix it, by abolishing the prosperity-killing income taxes. In 1963, with the income taxes only 50 years old at the time, JFK said, "“The largest single barrier to full employment of our manpower and resources and to a higher rate of economic growth is the unrealistically heavy drag of federal income taxes on private purchasing power, initiative and incentive.” John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963 " He was right.
The FairTax is a consumption tax that, if enacted, calls for the complete repeal of all income taxes - personal, corporate, capital gains, alternative minimum, gift, estate, self-employment, etc. All of 'em. It replaces them with a consumption tax on new items sold at retail, and services, while giving every legal resident enough money every month in advance, to be able to pay the FairTax on the person's purchases every month up to the poverty level. Poverty level for a single person is about $12K / yr, so every month, that person would get enough money to pay the FairTax on $1K of spending.
How's that help this? The little thing about repealing the corporate income tax would have those companies, and all the rest of the companies on the planet at least WANTING to move their operations to the USA where they could operate without having their profits stolen by the gov't. Move to Canada? Canada will come tromping thru the door and steal a part of their profits via corporate income taxes. So will pretty much everywhere else in the world. The USA would stand alone in NOT stealing from either its businesses or its people. Nobody would owe a dime of taxes from the start, they would be able to regulate how much tax they pay by regulating how much new goods and services they buy. Don't want to pay taxes on a new car? Buy a somewhat used car. No taxes on the used car. No taxes on the used (existing) house, only taxes if you build a new house. No taxes on the money you make and use for savings, tuition (tuition is treated as an investment), money used to pay your state taxes, car license fees, buying stocks and bonds (again, and investment), and so forth.
Bottom line is that the USA would be the place to make the biggest profit, because of the lack of at least the Federal gov't tromping thru the door to steal a portion of the business' profits each year. Companies stay. More companies come. Jobs stay. More jobs come. That's what we want, and killing the income taxes dead is the way to do it.
That's Subaru...
"If you actually believed this, you wouldn't keep voting for people who keep cutting aid to the poor."
We vote for him because we / he know / knows that the best way to help the poor is not to simply give them a gov't handout, but to instead provide them with an opportunity to work in a well-paying job, which is exactly what he's been doing and continues to attempt to do. Its what the corporate income tax cut is about, since that creates far more manufacturing jobs than other approaches to the problem, and manufacturing jobs traditionally pay better.
No, they change gender as required, didn't you even watch Jurassic Park?
3 X 10^12 tons of CO2 in the atmosphere X $100 / ton = $3 X 10^14 to remove it all.
$1K = $1 X 10^3
$1M = $1 X 10^6
$1B = $1 X 10^9
$1T = $1 X 10^12
3 X 10^12 Tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere X $100 / Ton = $300 X 10^12 to remove it all.
Of course removing it all would be suicidal, as the plants would all die, followed by all the animals.
But, we are at about 400 parts per million of concentration of CO2. The pre-industrial level of CO2 was about 280 PPM. So, we really only want to remove 120 ppm of CO2, which is 120 / 400 = 30% of the CO2 in the atmosphere. 30% of the $300T is $90T.
Soooo.... using the MIT approach, it would cost EXACTLY the same impossible amount of money to send CO2 levels back to pre-industrial levels. OBTW, lets not forget that it is impossible to deal with the transportation sector CO2, because we can't run it on electricity generated from the sun or wind or anything else, and you won't get food for 360 million people delivered 100's of miles to your local food store by horses and wagons. It'll have to come on BIG trucks and the have to move by diesel. There's no choice. There are other examples of the absurdity of AOC's Green New Deal, too numerous to ridicule individually, but an approach that would work if we spent the same impossible amount of money would actually succeed.
Oh, wait, wait, wait... MIT's solution would work for the entire planet, while AOC's screwball law would only affect the USA - India, China, Russia, and pretty much everyone else in the world that have historically failed to achieve the objectives of all the CO2 reduction that they've agreed to in the past, would STILL burn fossil fuels whenever they wanted to, and so the AOC approach would be ineffective at everything except bankrupting America.
1) We could possibly, in time, figure out how to do it cheaper, but this would be a start.
Blowing money on "a start" that can never produce the necessary results isn't exactly the best way to spend money.
Its that or doing nothing. So, the approach is not yet perfect. Don't let the perfect get in the way of the good.
2) Is it more or less expensive than wack-job politician's "Green New Deal" that is currently tagged at somewhere around $90T and will NOT actually be capable of solving the problem? ("Solving the problem" means doing so without killing millions of people, which the raising of the price of energy would do by casting more and more people into poverty. Poverty kills. Smoking may take 7 years off your life, but living in poverty is good for a 10 year reduction.)
One key element of the Green New Deal that you are unwilling to understand is the efforts within the program create jobs. Somebody has to actually refit old houses to be better insulated, and so on.
How many? Two? The raising of taxes would put millions out of work.
Those jobs reduce poverty, ameliorating the problem you cite here.
No, they don't. Not everyone can do 'em, and there wouldn't be many of them.
3) Has it escaped everyone that we are currently adding about $1T to the National Debt every year and NOBODY has a clue what to do about it
We know exactly what to do about it because that deficit was created by a massive tax cut on the wealthy.
That is absolutely wrong. Revenues to the gov't WENT UP after the tax cuts, as expected, its just that Congress far outstripped the raise in revenue by spending far more than the extra that came in.
Fixing it is also trivially easy. Reverse those tax cuts. It would require you to give up your tax cut fetish though.
There was a deficit before the tax cuts, too, its just that the tax cuts raised the revenue to the gov't. Had spending not been increased, the deficit would have gone down.
Clue: The last year that the National Debt didn't go up was 1957. We've raised and lowered the income taxes numerous times since without achieving that desired result.
1998-2001 called [cnn.com], and would like to remind you they existed. Though acknowledging that evil liberal tax hikes reduce the deficit and thus debt would require abandoning your tax cut fetish.
The National Debt went up in those years, too, whether witchcraft was used to declare the budget "balanced", the National Debt still went up. The last time it didn't was 1957.
It's blinding obvious to me that income taxes are absolutely incapable of funding the gov't, and should be abolished. The Founders set up the nation to run on consumption taxes such as excise taxes and tariffs
The founders also set up the nation to not have a standing military and pressed for limited-to-no foreign entanglements. So, unless you also want massive defense cuts resulting in the US dropping out of being a superpower, you don't actually want to go back to what the founders set up.
Its a choice. What to sit here with the Russians and the Chinese running carrier task groups and boomer submarines up and down our coasts? Want to not be able to do anything when the next bunch of assholes uses a foreign base to train terrorists to distribute, say, Anthrax from a perch on the Shennendoah Parkway, and let the wind spread it to kill maybe a million people? I may still be immune from my trip to Iraq and its accompanying vaccination, but I'd hate to wake up to having dead neighbors for as far as I could drive, and then not having the military to chase down the perpetrators. We have a treasure of natural resources, infrastructure, and human resources (potenital slaves) that foreigners should not feel free to plot against without the thought that the US Millitary will be landing in their front yards if they attempt to harm America.
Also, between your rant about how terrible poverty is and your tax proposals, you forgot that consumption taxes take a far larger pe
Fixing the refrigerator without killing a lot of folks that are on the lower income end of the economic chart is currently impossible. The GW Alarmists are all about increasingly sucking $$$ out of the USA, and thus killing American citizens via casting them into poverty. Some of us would rather research approaches that do NOT kill millions of Americans by casting them into poverty while trying to pay for the approach of fixing the refrigerator, which is actually beyond repair with the technology we have available to us now. We'd rather turn down the AC, and continue with the refrigerator that is still working, just somewhat poorly. Maybe someday someone will invent the magic battery that is cheap and high enough capacity to compete with fossil fuel cars and cheap and lightweight enough for automotive use and cheap and recharges fairly quickly and cheap and power dense enough to shoehorn it into vehicles and... oh BTW, cheap enough to be used by other than rich people. Then the transportation sector can go full-electric, we will have fixed the refrigerator with new technology, and can then run on energy which can be generated by solar and wind and geo and tidal and so forth - and we can leave the carbon in the ground. But ignoring realities and killing folks via massive poverty is not something I'm inclined to favor.