Great post, but I'll take a stab at a rebuttal anyway...
The FairTax can claim (and rightly so) that it is progressive because of the prebate. Each family gets a check from the government monthly that pays for the tax on necessities. Why do that? To keep the tax SIMPLE. If we try to untax milk, bread & other "necessities," we open the floodgates for lobbyists and manipulators. It's much easier to tax EVERYTHING, and give you back what you pay on necessities. For a family of 4, that would be about $525 per month. A family of 4 making $50K per year could live in the U.S. and pay NO tax (just keep your retail purchases of new goods/services below $2300/month, and your tax burden is 0). Compare this to our current system. A head of household (family of 4) with an income of $50K pays ~$3600 in FICA/Medicare, plus the employer pays another ~$3600 for that employee. Even if that wage earner gets a refund of all income tax, he starts with ~$44.4K, even though nearly ~$54K was set aside for his income.Compare that to someone making a million per year - the FICA/medicare tax would be around $20K....in % terms, way less than our $50K/year worker.
By the way, your use of the term "billionaire" seems to refer to someone with an annual income of over $1B, not someone with a net worth of $1B. Steve Jobs may have enormous net worth, but his paycheck shows his wages as $1/year (not including stock options).
For most people, taxes aren't negotiable. You can't decide to not pay taxes (even though Harry Reid says taxes are voluntary). Under the FairTax, average citizens would have a choice. Don't want to pay tax? Buy a used car instead of a new one. Save your money instead of spending it. It would be a very different attitude amongst consumers.
What does the FairTax want to accomplish with taxes?
Income for the Federal Government
Transparency of taxes, so those paying the tax see how much
streamlining the taxation process (no invasive 1040 forms, corporate tax, payroll tax, expensive compliance).
freeing the poor from taxation
Taxing those who currently don't report income (unregistered aliens, drug dealers, etc)
making the federal government PART of the economy (if they want more income, they'll have to entice us to spend more of ours, which we'll only do if we are happy!)
Realistically, rewriting the whole tax code or what ever isn't reasonable. There are lots of rules and exceptions in there that have been added for reasons based on the experience of the IRS/government/special interests, lobbyists, corporate greed, welfare exploits
It sounds like your understanding of the FairTax might be retarded, but if you read the bill (it's only a bit over 100 pages long), you might be able to change some of your misconceptions.
the fairtax creates the largest welfare system every envisioned by man and is in no way enforceable.
Please elaborate. Why is it not enforceable? Almost every state in the U.S. runs that way, why can't the federal government? Why do they have to invade every citizen's privacy to tax them on income? There are fewer retail businesses than there are wage earners - it's easier for the IRS to watch over the retail business, just because the numbers are fewer.
What happens when you try to buy a BMW here? Are the German's expected to take a 23% hit because someone here came up with a messed up tax system?
I didn't know the U.S. government was supposed to watch out for German concerns. Wouldn't it be great if U.S. auto companies got a leg-up on foreign competition? What would happen? BMW would build more cars in the U.S.! What happens now? The cars are taxed when they are sent to the U.S., and the person who buys it had his income taxed more than 23% before he spent a dime. Why pay taxes on every penny you make? Just pay taxes when you spend it!
Are you going to charge a sales tax on investments?
No, you might want to read the bill before you blast it. Education and investments aren't taxable. Neither is charitable giving, savings, inheritance or buying used goods. Don't just listen to what the talking heads say, do a little of your own investigation, and compare it to what we have now for a federal revenue system.
Maybe you should take some higher-level courses. What stops them from raising prices is competition. When you tax an industry, you allow all participants in the sector to raise their prices to cover the tax increase. If one company finds a tax loophole, they'll be able to undercut the other players, and force everyone else to find a way to cut their costs, so they can cut prices. Yes, they may be able to sit on higher profits for a while, but anyone who has gotten out of econ 101 knows, growth is the only measuring stick that matters. Cash sitting idle in corporate coffers is not how you win the game.
Here's one corporation using loopholes to dodge billion$ in taxes. Would a black market be any worse? Don't hate the new idea because it's not perfect. What we have now sucks, so I'll take an improvement, warts and all.
The ridiculously complex tax code is to blame. It's time to flush it and start again. That's one of the concepts behind H.R.25, also known as the FairTax.
It's a misconception that corporations pay taxes. They don't. They get all their money from their customers (and some from investment). If you raise corporate taxes, the corporation raises prices to cover the tax. Why hide it like this? Just tax the customer, so we can all SEE how much tax we're paying. It's the only way to keep people involved in the battle to lower government spending, which is out of control.
So they're trying to tell me that within 600 million years of the big bang, that galaxy managed to get 13 billion light years away from where our galaxy now lies? Even if we and it are at opposite ends of the universe, it would have to have gotten 6.5 billion light years from the center of the universe in those 600 million years, yes? It sounds like it must have been going a bit over the speed limit, don't you think? It got that far away, and still had time to form into a galaxy? Why is my slide rule melting as I try to figure out how it got so far away so quickly? Maybe the light took 13 billion years to reach us, but it's been going around in circles? If so, that Galaxy might be a LOT closer, as the crow flies.
Where is the discussion about why the internet can't kill classic TV? The article started out worrying about Rupert Murdoch's increasing empire, and then devolved into a "everything I hate about the internet" speech. In particular, how video interviews are inferior to the printed word, because they're harder to search, you can't pick just the bit you want to read, and you can't "space out" while watching it.
The author seems to think all the "popular" sites will squeeze out the "old school" content, because if they don't join in the "linearized" content, they can't monetize their content. Hopefully, not everyone will feel a need to monetize what they provide, and we'll be able to share in people's passions, not just their livelihood. I may not like what you're selling me, but I'll be interested in what interests you, and Rupert Murdoch can't have that.
I'm guessing you don't really want an answer, but since you asked...
The HR.25 prebate does *not* require ANY form to be filled out. It is automatic. Under the current system, you have to do hours of paperwork to comply with your tax responsibility. That costs us billions in lost productivity annually. Under HR.25, all you need to do to support the federal government is buy stuff. NO paperwork by you, and a 4-line form (the same sales tax form that businesses are already filing) for retailers. They no longer have to do payroll taxes (PITA, just ask any small business owner), corporate taxes, FICA, etc.
Why a prebate? Simple. Rather than start making things complex with lots of exemptions (milk is exempt from tax, but cheese isn't, etc), the prebate allows for tax-free purchases by giving each household the money that they should be spending on tax for necessities. You don't have to use it to pay for the tax, you can buy crack and smoke it if you want. It just makes sure that the working poor are not burdened (unlike the current system that means working poor pay WAY MORE % of their paychecks in taxes than anyone else).
It would be great to just let you keep your money, but taxation is the price of living in a society. Hopefully, if HR.25 passes, you and everyone else will SEE how much the government gets, and will want to work on out-of-control government spending. THAT is the real problem!
Thanks for the non-FUD based criticism. Next time, could you try for an informed non-FUD based criticism?
If you read HR.25, you'll see that it includes a "prebate." Every head of household receives a check from the federal government each month to cover the tax that would be paid on necessities (for a family of 4, that check will be > $500/month). A family of 4 making around $50K per year would actually pay NO tax to the federal gov't (assuming they buy a used car instead of new, etc). That makes HR.25 very progressive. Under the current system, it is widely held that 1/2 of all Americans don't pay federal tax. This is a misconception. They don't pay Income tax, but the FICA (can't escape that unless you work FOR the gov't) is VERY regressive. That is eliminated with HR.25 (Social security is funded from general revenue, not a separate tax).
Now might be a good time for the House of Representatives to look at HR.25, and if they pass it, then getting the IRS back on its feet would suddenly become a VERY low priority.
You should set up multi-level encryption. Encrypt your mildly interesting stuff with one key, and the really nasty stuff with another. When they seize your computer, let them beat you for a bit, then give up the mildly interesting key. They'll give you an ice-pack, and when they find the deeper encryption, just say, "that's old junk, I forgot the password to that, and never got around to deleting it."
Now why would it need a TV tuner? It's not going to get the content from from an OTA antenna, and it's not going to get it from DishTV either. It's going to get it from the interwebs!
How is it different from your desktop w/Boxee? It's going to have a power plug, a video/audio plug, and an Ethernet plug. My grand mama can plug it in and watch dancing babies on Youtube. No OS to install, no drivers to load, just grab the remote and surf for brain-numbing "entertainment."
Some kid, hearing his slashdot-reading parents discuss this, decides to "play doctor" and stuffs his little brother into a trash bag? The industry will have to react by poking air-holes in all plastic bags. Wait, they do that already! Every new zip-top sandwich bag I fill with liquid seems to come pre-perforated.
Offenders can't stop. They're all afraid of Amazon's one-click patent.
BTW, the link will take you to a website where you will be asked if you want to see the patent, and if you click yes, you'll go to a page that lists several patents (along with lots of ads), and if you choose the right link, you might get to see the patent. Good luck.
Now, it's true that the resolution only impacted the Senate -- but when another Senator asked why they didn't ban dial phones from all of Washington DC, Senator Carter Glass from Virginia who sponsored the resolution apparently said that "he hoped the phone company would take the hint," and would remove all dial phones.
Do you want your local supermarket to "get the hint" and stop selling toilet paper?
Just because they didn't want to lift a finger to do something as simple as dial a telephone, that doesn't mean they need to ban it for the rest of us. The Senate is FAMOUS for passing laws that affect them (or affect everyone except them - you know, we get Social Security, they get a really sweet pension).
If they deem a website to be "bad", I have no problem with them blocking it from their own servers, but leave me alone. I can block things at my router quite easily, thank you. Should I be afraid that the Senate will try to ban toilet paper, because they can't manage to wipe their own asses?
I looked at all the videos available for the flight. It is obvious that the flapping is maintaining flight - if he just started gliding at the release point, there is no way the flight would have been as long. This is probably the best view, and it also lets you hear what this thing sounds like when it flaps.
Yeah, I get it. Popcorn in the Sea of tranquility, Re-heated Pizza in the Ocean of Storms, and a nice cup of tea in the Messier crater. Microwave map of the moon, indeed!
Hmmm, the link looks like it has been slashdotted, but since it says "archives," it might not even be the right one. Maybe they meant this one?
As inspiring as the STS program was, it's time to move on. Thinking about a craft that weighs several thousand tons being used to move crew and cargo into space on the same ride just doesn't make sense. We can send an unmanned cargo ship into orbit quite easily, without needing all of the protection that a "human cargo" would require. Having a tiny Orion spacecraft bring the people makes a lot more sense.
How did we get into the "combined crew & cargo" paradigm? Perhaps it was because of the difficulty in providing unmanned vessels that made it to the specified destination, or perhaps it was because the Gemini and Apollo astronauts really hated being compared to the "chimp in a suit" and forced NASA's to put people on every ship.
I'll just be glad when I see something smaller than a double-wide mobile home being used to ferry the humans into space.
Slashdot Mirror
Great post, but I'll take a stab at a rebuttal anyway...
The FairTax can claim (and rightly so) that it is progressive because of the prebate. Each family gets a check from the government monthly that pays for the tax on necessities. Why do that? To keep the tax SIMPLE. If we try to untax milk, bread & other "necessities," we open the floodgates for lobbyists and manipulators. It's much easier to tax EVERYTHING, and give you back what you pay on necessities. For a family of 4, that would be about $525 per month. A family of 4 making $50K per year could live in the U.S. and pay NO tax (just keep your retail purchases of new goods/services below $2300/month, and your tax burden is 0). Compare this to our current system. A head of household (family of 4) with an income of $50K pays ~$3600 in FICA/Medicare, plus the employer pays another ~$3600 for that employee. Even if that wage earner gets a refund of all income tax, he starts with ~$44.4K, even though nearly ~$54K was set aside for his income.Compare that to someone making a million per year - the FICA/medicare tax would be around $20K....in % terms, way less than our $50K/year worker.
By the way, your use of the term "billionaire" seems to refer to someone with an annual income of over $1B, not someone with a net worth of $1B. Steve Jobs may have enormous net worth, but his paycheck shows his wages as $1/year (not including stock options).
For most people, taxes aren't negotiable. You can't decide to not pay taxes (even though Harry Reid says taxes are voluntary). Under the FairTax, average citizens would have a choice. Don't want to pay tax? Buy a used car instead of a new one. Save your money instead of spending it. It would be a very different attitude amongst consumers.
What does the FairTax want to accomplish with taxes?
Realistically, rewriting the whole tax code or what ever isn't reasonable. There are lots of rules and exceptions in there that have been added for reasons based on the experience of the IRS/government/special interests, lobbyists, corporate greed, welfare exploits
There, that's better.
It sounds like your understanding of the FairTax might be retarded, but if you read the bill (it's only a bit over 100 pages long), you might be able to change some of your misconceptions.
the fairtax creates the largest welfare system every envisioned by man and is in no way enforceable.
Please elaborate. Why is it not enforceable? Almost every state in the U.S. runs that way, why can't the federal government? Why do they have to invade every citizen's privacy to tax them on income? There are fewer retail businesses than there are wage earners - it's easier for the IRS to watch over the retail business, just because the numbers are fewer.
What happens when you try to buy a BMW here? Are the German's expected to take a 23% hit because someone here came up with a messed up tax system?
I didn't know the U.S. government was supposed to watch out for German concerns. Wouldn't it be great if U.S. auto companies got a leg-up on foreign competition? What would happen? BMW would build more cars in the U.S.! What happens now? The cars are taxed when they are sent to the U.S., and the person who buys it had his income taxed more than 23% before he spent a dime. Why pay taxes on every penny you make? Just pay taxes when you spend it!
Are you going to charge a sales tax on investments?
No, you might want to read the bill before you blast it. Education and investments aren't taxable. Neither is charitable giving, savings, inheritance or buying used goods. Don't just listen to what the talking heads say, do a little of your own investigation, and compare it to what we have now for a federal revenue system.
Maybe you should take some higher-level courses. What stops them from raising prices is competition. When you tax an industry, you allow all participants in the sector to raise their prices to cover the tax increase. If one company finds a tax loophole, they'll be able to undercut the other players, and force everyone else to find a way to cut their costs, so they can cut prices. Yes, they may be able to sit on higher profits for a while, but anyone who has gotten out of econ 101 knows, growth is the only measuring stick that matters. Cash sitting idle in corporate coffers is not how you win the game.
Here's one corporation using loopholes to dodge billion$ in taxes. Would a black market be any worse? Don't hate the new idea because it's not perfect. What we have now sucks, so I'll take an improvement, warts and all.
The ridiculously complex tax code is to blame. It's time to flush it and start again. That's one of the concepts behind H.R.25, also known as the FairTax.
It's a misconception that corporations pay taxes. They don't. They get all their money from their customers (and some from investment). If you raise corporate taxes, the corporation raises prices to cover the tax. Why hide it like this? Just tax the customer, so we can all SEE how much tax we're paying. It's the only way to keep people involved in the battle to lower government spending, which is out of control.
So they're trying to tell me that within 600 million years of the big bang, that galaxy managed to get 13 billion light years away from where our galaxy now lies? Even if we and it are at opposite ends of the universe, it would have to have gotten 6.5 billion light years from the center of the universe in those 600 million years, yes? It sounds like it must have been going a bit over the speed limit, don't you think? It got that far away, and still had time to form into a galaxy? Why is my slide rule melting as I try to figure out how it got so far away so quickly? Maybe the light took 13 billion years to reach us, but it's been going around in circles? If so, that Galaxy might be a LOT closer, as the crow flies.
Where is the discussion about why the internet can't kill classic TV? The article started out worrying about Rupert Murdoch's increasing empire, and then devolved into a "everything I hate about the internet" speech. In particular, how video interviews are inferior to the printed word, because they're harder to search, you can't pick just the bit you want to read, and you can't "space out" while watching it.
The author seems to think all the "popular" sites will squeeze out the "old school" content, because if they don't join in the "linearized" content, they can't monetize their content. Hopefully, not everyone will feel a need to monetize what they provide, and we'll be able to share in people's passions, not just their livelihood. I may not like what you're selling me, but I'll be interested in what interests you, and Rupert Murdoch can't have that.
I think there is strong evidence that humans much older than 18 months cannot make a delineation between sentient beings and inanimate objects.
If the supplied evidence is not enough, try this.
The HR.25 prebate does *not* require ANY form to be filled out. It is automatic. Under the current system, you have to do hours of paperwork to comply with your tax responsibility. That costs us billions in lost productivity annually. Under HR.25, all you need to do to support the federal government is buy stuff. NO paperwork by you, and a 4-line form (the same sales tax form that businesses are already filing) for retailers. They no longer have to do payroll taxes (PITA, just ask any small business owner), corporate taxes, FICA, etc.
Why a prebate? Simple. Rather than start making things complex with lots of exemptions (milk is exempt from tax, but cheese isn't, etc), the prebate allows for tax-free purchases by giving each household the money that they should be spending on tax for necessities. You don't have to use it to pay for the tax, you can buy crack and smoke it if you want. It just makes sure that the working poor are not burdened (unlike the current system that means working poor pay WAY MORE % of their paychecks in taxes than anyone else).
It would be great to just let you keep your money, but taxation is the price of living in a society. Hopefully, if HR.25 passes, you and everyone else will SEE how much the government gets, and will want to work on out-of-control government spending. THAT is the real problem!
If you read HR.25, you'll see that it includes a "prebate." Every head of household receives a check from the federal government each month to cover the tax that would be paid on necessities (for a family of 4, that check will be > $500/month). A family of 4 making around $50K per year would actually pay NO tax to the federal gov't (assuming they buy a used car instead of new, etc). That makes HR.25 very progressive. Under the current system, it is widely held that 1/2 of all Americans don't pay federal tax. This is a misconception. They don't pay Income tax, but the FICA (can't escape that unless you work FOR the gov't) is VERY regressive. That is eliminated with HR.25 (Social security is funded from general revenue, not a separate tax).
Now might be a good time for the House of Representatives to look at HR.25, and if they pass it, then getting the IRS back on its feet would suddenly become a VERY low priority.
You should set up multi-level encryption. Encrypt your mildly interesting stuff with one key, and the really nasty stuff with another. When they seize your computer, let them beat you for a bit, then give up the mildly interesting key. They'll give you an ice-pack, and when they find the deeper encryption, just say, "that's old junk, I forgot the password to that, and never got around to deleting it."
How is it different from your desktop w/Boxee? It's going to have a power plug, a video/audio plug, and an Ethernet plug. My grand mama can plug it in and watch dancing babies on Youtube. No OS to install, no drivers to load, just grab the remote and surf for brain-numbing "entertainment."
why the poor science education in the United States is such a big problem?
Obviously I meant to say "creepy uncle" instead of parents. What was I thinking?
Some kid, hearing his slashdot-reading parents discuss this, decides to "play doctor" and stuffs his little brother into a trash bag? The industry will have to react by poking air-holes in all plastic bags. Wait, they do that already! Every new zip-top sandwich bag I fill with liquid seems to come pre-perforated.
If you can't get rid of the predators, at least help the predators select out their taste for Kakapo
BTW, the link will take you to a website where you will be asked if you want to see the patent, and if you click yes, you'll go to a page that lists several patents (along with lots of ads), and if you choose the right link, you might get to see the patent. Good luck.
Now, it's true that the resolution only impacted the Senate -- but when another Senator asked why they didn't ban dial phones from all of Washington DC, Senator Carter Glass from Virginia who sponsored the resolution apparently said that "he hoped the phone company would take the hint," and would remove all dial phones.
Do you want your local supermarket to "get the hint" and stop selling toilet paper?
Just because they didn't want to lift a finger to do something as simple as dial a telephone, that doesn't mean they need to ban it for the rest of us. The Senate is FAMOUS for passing laws that affect them (or affect everyone except them - you know, we get Social Security, they get a really sweet pension).
If they deem a website to be "bad", I have no problem with them blocking it from their own servers, but leave me alone. I can block things at my router quite easily, thank you. Should I be afraid that the Senate will try to ban toilet paper, because they can't manage to wipe their own asses?
I looked at all the videos available for the flight. It is obvious that the flapping is maintaining flight - if he just started gliding at the release point, there is no way the flight would have been as long. This is probably the best view, and it also lets you hear what this thing sounds like when it flaps.
Yeah, I get it. Popcorn in the Sea of tranquility, Re-heated Pizza in the Ocean of Storms, and a nice cup of tea in the Messier crater. Microwave map of the moon, indeed!
Hmmm, the link looks like it has been slashdotted, but since it says "archives," it might not even be the right one. Maybe they meant this one?
As inspiring as the STS program was, it's time to move on. Thinking about a craft that weighs several thousand tons being used to move crew and cargo into space on the same ride just doesn't make sense. We can send an unmanned cargo ship into orbit quite easily, without needing all of the protection that a "human cargo" would require. Having a tiny Orion spacecraft bring the people makes a lot more sense.
How did we get into the "combined crew & cargo" paradigm? Perhaps it was because of the difficulty in providing unmanned vessels that made it to the specified destination, or perhaps it was because the Gemini and Apollo astronauts really hated being compared to the "chimp in a suit" and forced NASA's to put people on every ship.
I'll just be glad when I see something smaller than a double-wide mobile home being used to ferry the humans into space.
"Baptize an alien?" I guess they had to drop the old euphemism - "nail an altar boy in the rectory."