As for your argument about the middle class families spending a higher percentage? Well that is true and bully for you. But the effective tax rates for the rich are ALREADY lower than they are for the middle class. Which is a major problem in this country. Perpetuating the problem is not a good thing. Moving to a sales tax-based system will just make it so that it's impossible to do any sort of adjustment of the tax burden in the future. (Such adjustments can be done now via changing the tax brackets.)
The key issue for a successful adoption of the fair tax system is to make sure the percentages of tax paid by the various economic strata do not undergo noticeable changes. Because if they manage that the fair tax system is no more and no LESS fair than the current system. Any change as major as that will always cause a change in the effective tax rates across the board. And in reality, the Fair Tax will be less fair to the middle class, as the tax burden on the rich and poor will decrease, which leaves just one group to make up all that extra tax revenue...
Additionally if the program is implemented correctly you get to throw out the currently incomprehensible Rube Goldberg inspired tax code out the window and replace it with the simple dictum of collecting X amount of retail sales. Going to a flat tax type of system would also get rid of all the paperwork on this, replacing it with a simple method of collection. If you've ever filled out a 1040-EZ you would know just how simple taxes can get - and with a flat tax, it would be even easier than that form.
I am not sure if it can be implemented in a revenue neutral manner that did not significantly shift the tax burden... or ensured any shift would be higher up the economic ladder rather than lower. But if they can solve that particular issue the plan has a great deal of merit. That is why I have a problem with it - I don't see any reasonable way the flat tax can do anything except shift the tax burden downward.
Out of curiosity... do you perhaps have a tax system you favor and would like to illustrate as being a better system than either the existing or the "Fair Tax" system? I think the best method would be a mix of a flat income tax and flat capital gains tax, with very limited deduction types allowed (i.e. verified charities). Everything would be very simple to calculate, but it would spread the tax burden out better, while at the same time getting rid of the morass of paperwork we have in place now. Mixing in a flat sales tax to the above would work, too, but it should never become the primary tax source.
For a business, any expense is a tax deduction. And with certain kinds of business, tax deductions can be rolled over into personal taxes. My point exactly. If they don't want me to deduct my personal purchases from my taxes, don't make me pay taxes when I later sell those items off at a loss. If they're going to require me to treat my personal life a business when I sell some of it off, they should let me consider it a business when I figure out my deductions.
So, food, board, health, and education expenses would be entirely tax deductible, and the rest would be taxed at a flat rate. You mean tax exempt, not tax deductible (deductions are only required for income tax purposes). I do think this would be a very big step towards making "Fair Tax" more fair, but there is one very big problem - what is a basic necessity? Food obviously....but does this only cover grocery store foods, or does it include food from McDonalds? How about Denny's/Perkin's? What about a fancy restaurant? How do you even define (in a legally binding way) "fancy restaurant"? If only grocery store food is covered, do you consider $700/oz. caviar untaxed as long as it comes from the supermarket? If not, then how expensive can it get before it's taxed? Who decides that number, and will it be adjusted for inflation? You will run into these sorts of questions in every area you described above. Moving on, you didn't mention several other things that are considered necessities in the modern world; telephone and internet service, clothing, cars/transportation. If you accept those as necessary (which in modern America, they really are), and therefore tax exempt, what exactly does that leave to tax? On the little that is left, just how high is the tax rate going to have to be? Do you expect these industries to actually survive if they suddenly have a ridiculously high tax rate? This would only serve to shift the tax burden in the other direction - the rich are now paying a much higher % of their income, and as an added bonus you've destroyed a couple of "luxury" industries along the way.
Pay the tax to your county via the real estate and property tax system that's already setup, who then pay the state, who pay the IRS. This is a very bad idea for two reasons. (1) It adds more middlemen to the IRS process, which just means more government waste - whatever tax is in place should go collector -> IRS. (2) Property taxes are high as is. If you make property tax the only tax, it will just guarantee that nobody can afford a house, and we all live in apartments. Family-owned farms will instantly become non-existent. All real estate in the country will be owned by businesses/the rich, since they're the only ones who can afford the taxes. Businesses are in business to make money - this means they will pass that tax, plus a little extra, right onto the renter in the form of higher rents. In the end, this only serves to pass a higher % of taxes on to those who are poorer.
We should find a solution that encourages people to earn money and grow the economy, not to discourage income. For a healthy economy, we need to be encouraging more people to be producers, inventors, business creators, etc. And yet, these are the most taxed individuals when we tax the wealthy, their investments, and their income.
This is not true at all. The vast majority of inventors, creators, etc. either work for someone else, or are forced to sell their inventions to some company if they ever want to see it produced. Look at who makes the most money in most companies. It's the executives, who have nothing to do with any innovation or design work (the Gates/Jobs types are the exception, not the rule). Generally speaking, the people who do the real work, and make the real advancements, are pretty solidly middle class.
When consumers pay the tax, we encourage more efficient behavior.
No, we don't. Look at spending habits in states with 6% tax rates vs. states with 0% tax rates - there will be virtually no difference. What difference there is can often be explained by people "venue shopping" - i.e. those from higher-tax areas going to lower-tax areas to make purchases. I have seen this first-hand, having lived at a border.
Your philosophy that we should adopt a tax based on what impacts the rich the most stems from lumping three groups of people into one.
That is not my philosophy at all. My philosophy is that the tax should be fairly applied based on how much the person has. Sales taxes exclude far, far too many types of the purchases made by the wealthy to ever be fair to those on lower incomes. All it does is cause the poor to pay a proportionately larger percentage of their income in taxes than the rich do. This leads to a "rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer" situation (more so than income taxes do, anyway).
I am not advocating some sort of "eat the rich" mentality. If you make more money, you make more money. I'm fine with that. I just think that if a tax system is going to be unfair (and I've never seen one that's not), it should err on the side of those who would be more harmed by it. Income tax is considered unfair because those who pay more taxes do not get a proportionately larger benefit. Sales tax is considered unfair because those who can least afford it pay as much as those who easily can. While each of these methods is unfair from various points of view, the unfairness towards the rich is much less of a hardship upon them than the unfairness towards the poor. (If you're barely making ends meet, a loss of 10% of your income is crippling. If you're making more money than you know what to do with, 10% of that is barely going to put a dent in your lifestyle.)
The wealth of this world is divided among the kleptocrats, heirs, and entrepreneurs. I think we all agree that the former should be eliminated. Messing with the second is up for debate, but I'm personally against it. And messing with the third group is unhealthy for your nation.
Except that the vast majority of entrepreneurs are middle class (many of whom are forced to give up a large portion of their company to venture capitalists - the "heirs" you refer to). The rich are more easily able to make successful entrepreneurs only because if things get tough (as it almost always will for the first few years of a new business), they are less likely to have to close down the business and get a "normal" job in order to pay the bills. It doesn't matter if the business is gaining steam and will be profitable next year if you can't afford to live through this year. Additionally, the rich are more likely to actually become entrepreneurs because they have the money to fall back on in the case of a failure, and as such are more likely to take the risk involved with starting a new business. However, no matter how rich you are, you can only start up so many businesses at a time. If some more of that money were held by the middle class (that part of
No. 1 Sorry the stock market doesn't create companies. The stock market is little more than a way to get companies that have already proven them selves successful more money. I was talking about the formation of super-huge companies - companies that go public in order to expand to national/international levels.
It takes money, Lots of money, right off the bat to get a business going. That depends on the business. I got my current company set up for under $5,000. I'm working on a second one that will be about a $10,000 start up - neither amount what I would consider "lots of money".
This comes from rich people in the form of capital investors. Or several middle-class people being capital investors. It doesn't all have to come from one source.
Perhaps you didn't know that according to Fortune Magazine 80% of the millionaires in the US are new money. I don't consider millionaires to be rich. I consider that upper middle-class.
Another interesting fact from that same article, 60% of the fortune 500 are also new money. That is over half of the 500 richest people in the world have gone for that caret and got it. And just under half of them did nothing more extraordinary to get on that list than be born. That list should be more like 95% new money - people who actually have vision should be on that list, not some guy who just paid some other guy to invest daddy's money.
There is no way out of a million people you are going to have the same number of people working hard enough to help support the people sitting on their ass if they are not going to get anything out of it. You are misunderstanding my meaning. If someone chooses to "sit on his ass all day" (whether actually sitting, or bumming around the mall/bar/beach/ski slope/wherever), I see no reason to give them any sort of reward. Fuck 'em. Let them work for a living.
To clarify where I am coming from: My problem is that sales tax is more of a burden the poorer you are. All taxes are, really, but sales tax more so than income tax, for the following reasons: Income tax is based on wealth. If you earn more, you pay more. Sales tax is based on spending habits. Depending on what you spend your money on, where, and how, you can make more than someone else but pay far less in taxes. The poorer you are, the higher the percentage of your earnings that will go towards basic living requirements (food, clothing, transportation, etc.). As you get richer, the portion of your income that goes towards taxable necessities (and even luxuries) goes down. This means that the rich pay proportionately less taxes than the poor do (i.e. A higher percentage of the poor's income goes to taxes than the rich's.)
Additionally, the argument based around the idea that letting the rich get more money than the poor will cause more investment to business, which will make the poor get more money than they otherwise would just doesn't work. The economy will generally get just as much regardless of which end of the financial spectrum you tax (either through greater capital investment from the rich, or greater income from the poor being able to purchase more). This idea all comes back to supply-side economics (which George H.W. Bush aptly dubbed "voodoo economics" in 1980), which simply does not work. The results of this were seen over the 1980s - while the economy did become more prosperous in the beginning, its effects were starting to collapse by the end of the decade, becoming a recession under George Bush I's presidency. It also left us with an unbelievably large national debt. Attempting to fix some of this damage is arguably what cost Bush his re-election in 1992.
Do you know what happened when British started over taxing American colonist? Let me refresh your memory. The Colonist had themselves damn fine party in Boston. You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you?
The Boston Tea Party happened because of unfair taxation - not taxation in general, but the idea that they were being hit with a larger tax burden than they should be, while those making the decisions were paying less.
This is exactly what is happening now, and what "Fair Tax" would make worse: Those who can least afford the tax will bear the brunt of it. Those who have influence (the rich/powerful) will only allow change if it benefits them, and will lobby for it to happen (this is why we have a tax code of thousands of pages).
Also, this should be a two-way street; if the IRS starts taxing it as income when you sell your property, then you should be able to claim the difference as a loss if you get less than you paid for it. Somehow, I doubt they'd let the latter happen, so why should we allow the former?
Actually, they do. A few years back, my wife took a year and a half off from work to try and start her own buisness. Yes, but you actually set up a business - you went through the paperwork/etc. with your state agencies, etc. - in that case it's taxed/deductible. What I'm talking about is selling off your own property, not as a business. What I'm implying is that the IRS wants to treat you as a business if you sell anything, but doesn't want to let you write off personal items that you later sell at a loss. They want it both ways; you're a business if you have no receipts for the personal property you sell, but you're not a business (and as such can't claim losses) if you do have those receipts.
If they're using the money to invest in new businesses, it helps the economy and employs more people at better wages. Uhhh... do you realize you just said that the middle class/poor should get less money so the middle class/poor can be given more money?
Besides, this whole myth that only rich people invest in business is unbelievably false.
Um, dude. Whats wrong with you? Taxing the rich more is unfair. No, what's wrong with you? You obviously can't read: I said that they should be taxed the same as the rest of us. Figure out a base percentage and apply it uniformly for any money made over a base minimum "poverty level" income. How is "tax them the same as everyone else" = "Tax them more" ?
These people who have made millions earned their money. Actually, most of them inherited it. But that's beside the point.
They deserve to keep the money they earn. And nobody else does?
So by that logic, every garage sale should be sure to send 30% of it's earnings to the government? After all, the average garage sale probably sells over 100 items.
Simply put, if you did not buy it to make a profit, and actually take a loss when you sell it, you should not have to pay taxes on it. This is why the IRS doesn't go after garage sales, and why they should not go after anyone selling off their own stuff on eBay. I don't care if you sell off one item, one hundred items, or one million items; if you sell it for less than you bought it for, the IRS should stay the hell away.
Also, this should be a two-way street; if the IRS starts taxing it as income when you sell your property, then you should be able to claim the difference as a loss if you get less than you paid for it. Somehow, I doubt they'd let the latter happen, so why should we allow the former?
I think you are missing a big part of amassing wealth. Other than their $10million dollar house and probably that much more in toys, all that wealth is in the hands of the middle class and working poor in the form of investment. ...and it's this attitude that causes much of the problem. Why does it have to be only the rich who have any working capital to invest in something? You think that nobody in the middle class makes any investments? What do you think IRAs and 401(k)s are? Your entire argument here is based around the idea that the rich are the only ones who invest in businesses, but that is hardly the case. The money isn't going to "disappear" if you give it to the middle class and poor - it'll be spent and invested as much or more than it is now.
Allowing rich people to have capital to post is a good thing not a bad thing for two reasons. It takes money, lots of money, to make certain business happen that is an intricate part of our way of life. One word: Corporations. This precisely what corporations, and the stock market, were formed to allow. The rich are not needed to create these types of companies - it doesn't matter if the money comes from one source or one million.
And the other reason is it gives the working class something to strive for. A carrot if you want to call it that, but it is still a goal and a good driving factor. FUCK. YOU."Here's your carrot. You probably won't get it, but be happy that you can see it from there." Prick.
What I think is the worst thing about what you've said is that your entire argument makes it sound like the rich are intrinsically better than everyone else. "Only the rich are qualified to invest money." "Rich people are great. It's good that we have them to show to the poor, so the poor will work harder for us."
I'll happily take a million people living well instead of 999,999 people living barely adequately so one asshole can live like a king.
anyone who has actually read up on the proposed "Fair Tax" laws/reforms and has critical thinking skills knows that your above argument is bullshit. Oh? Let's see these things that are supposed to make up this money...
You don't get rich and stay rich by simply not spending part of your money. Most rich people cycle through most of their money regularly... How so? Most rich people dump their money into stocks. Stocks are not considered a "purchase", but are considered an investment, like putting money in the bank (but more risky). You only ever pay income taxes on stocks and other investments, not sales tax.
you know, paying employees, Tax free.
buying and selling property, Like houses/etc? Property taxes, not sales tax.
paying for components that go into consumer goods that they sell Tax free.
investing in new technologies, Mostly covered by employee wages and component purchases, above. i.e. tax free. There will be some "purchases" of new technology for internal use (thus taxable), but that's not what I think you meant.
funding start-ups that either fail or make you even richer after a few years... Holy crap, you actually came up with something that would be taxed under "Fair Tax"!
Add to that the money saved by getting rid of unnecessary federal institutions if a "Fair Tax" is ever passed. You mean the same savings you'd get under a flat tax plan? (Actually, more savings with flat tax, since you don't need to send out monthly "rebate checks", or totally replace the infrastructure we currently have in place for tax collection.)
I wish people would actually think this through instead of knee-jerking every time it's brought up. I have thought it through. Unless a whole lot of stuff gets added to the "Fair Tax" that isn't currently covered by sales tax, you're still looking at a massive shortfall that will end up with raised taxes that burden the middle class more (as stated in my grandparent post).
How about you show me exactly where and how this extra money will be recovered, rather than listing a whole lot of areas that are never going to be taxed under the "Fair Tax" plan?
What if you bought 3 DVD players (1 for each TV), and a couple hundred DVDs? Now, you decide that you're through with SD, and go to HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/whatever, rebuying all your movies in HD, and replacing those 3 players... then you drop several hundred movies and 3 DVD players onto eBay.
Oops! You possibly just went over BOTH limits! Looks like even though you're selling your old collection off for less than half what you paid for it, you're going to end up paying taxes on all of that. (Or do you keep receipts for every single thing you ever buy for 7+ years?)
The only way this could even out is if you could somehow subtract off the cost of the replacement items, but good luck convincing the IRS of that.
The so-called "Fair Tax" idea is pushed by the rich, as it is of great benefit to them.
Under the "Fair Tax", the rich keep amassing wealth, but will pay absolutely nothing on what they gain but do not spend. Now, with this very large amount of the nation's income sitting around being completely untaxed, all that's left to tax is what is actually spent each year: The very rich, while spending more than the average person, spends a much, much smaller percentage of their income each year. Let's think this through: You are only taxed on what you spend, minus the "poverty level rebate" - the poor pay nothing, so only the middle class and rich really pay taxes. Let's say the average rich person spends 20% of their income each year, and the average middle-class home spends 90% (this is not unrealistic when you consider just how much basic living expenses and a few basic luxuries cost). This means that the rich are paying 80% less taxes on their income than currently, while the middle class only gets a 10% break. Where exactly do you think that loss of taxes will be made up? Well, there's apparently only one place they're allowed to - the "Fair Tax". If this tax rate then doubles to make up for the short fall, the rich are paying 40% of their previous tax rate, while the middle class is paying 180% of their previous tax rate!
When you consider how much time and money the rich spend abroad, you can see that their share of taxes falls even lower, since they will pay no taxes whatsoever to the IRS when they spend it overseas.
Simply put, "Fair Tax" is a bullshit name for this concept; it's the same old "rich get richer, screw the middle class" idea that drives most unfair tax law changes.
You want fair, easy, and simple? Have the IRS tax be "X% of income over $Y minimum", with deductions only for those truly altruistic reasons, such as recognized non-profit charities.
Buy.com has a fraction of the number of books that Amazon offers. If you mean they have a fraction of the books listed, then yes - but whenever I do a search, over 50% of the titles that pop up on Amazon are not even sold by them, and most likely never were. As for the rest, that's probably because Amazon.com opened their doors years before buy.com did - buy.com won't have books in stock that went out of print before they opened for business.
Quick review of top 10 selling books on Amazon and Buy.com show that Amazon lists them cheaper In that case, Amazon and/or Buy.com are giving you different prices than they're showing me. Polling the top 10 books from amazon.com and comparing them to buy.com's prices gives me 3 prices within 1 cent of each other, 3 prices better at buy.com, 3 prices better at amazon.com, and one book that isn't listed at buy.com (however, this book is from the 90s and isn't even in stock at Amazon). Polling the top 10 books from buy.com and comparing them to Amazon's prices gives me 6 within 1 cent of each other, and 4 better prices at buy.com. This leaves Buy.com with a lead in the number of cheaper books.
Free shipping for purchases over $25 on Amazon (not Buy.com) and no cost shipping if you are an Amazon prime member. OK, now I know you're on crack, a shill for Amazon, or both. Buy.com has had free shipping on $25 orders for as long as I can remember. As for the "no cost shipping if you are an Amazon prime member", that's not true: You're paying monthly/yearly membership fees to be an Amazon Prime member, so you are paying for that "free" shipping - you're just paying in advance.
Customer Service at Amazon is year after year rated very high by independent surveys (*much* higher than Buy.com) I've actually never had a single problem with either of them, so from my perspective Buy.com is indeed "as good or better". I also was referencing sites other than Buy.com in that sentence, and I'm sure there ARE other sites that are definitely better for customer service (small shops with that personal touch, etc.)
What are the reasons you say Buy.com is better for books???? Price - No, Selection - No, Customer Service - No.... what? Price: Yes, by a 7:3 margin, if you don't count the books identical in price. Selection: Debatable - Amazon lists just about every book ever published (many they have never stocked), but have an older inventory than Buy.com. Customer Service: Debatable - They are pretty comparable from my point of view.
I find that buy.com is generally better for books, and DeepDiscountDVD, DigitalEyes, and other sites are better for DVDs. Some of the other areas (power tools, food, etc.) I don't know about, but I can't imagine there aren't better places on the 'net to buy the same items for cheaper, and with as good or better customer service.
either Canadians are that much more law abiding, or the U.S. government regularly breaks the first rule of leadership, which is to never make a rule no one will follow. My personal guess it is a mixture of both, with the latter being favoured more highly than the former.
I'd say that the latter is most likely what causes the former. If you break various laws on a daily basis because (either you find it to be an unjust law, or because it's so frivolous that nobody bothers with it), then you start to see the more grey-area laws as not worth your time to find out about and avoid breaking, either.
Really, in the US the average person breaks the law dozens or hundreds of times per day in insignificant ways (jaywalking on an empty street, spitting in public, downloading a TV episode you missed the last 5 minutes of, etc.). Any one of those could get you in trouble if you're unlucky enough to be caught by an officer who is feeling like enough of a dick to harass you.
This really just is an excellent illustration of why there are really so many laws on the books in most countries; the government cares less about protecting the citizens than it does about controlling them: If you're a criminal, the government has much more control over your actions and movements than if you're not.
If it wasn't for patents, what would drive people to look for alternate treatments ?
I dunno... maybe the idea that there are possibly better treatments that could be discovered? Ones with less side effects, that work faster, that work for people that the known treatments don't, or perhaps even ones that have a lower production/materials cost?
[...] ones that aren't error riddled as the Diebold machines have proven to be.
I'm not sure you're being accurate, here... it's only error-ridden if the software doesn't work as the designers intended (regardless of what the users want/expect it to do).
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If they're going to require me to treat my personal life a business when I sell some of it off, they should let me consider it a business when I figure out my deductions.
I do think this would be a very big step towards making "Fair Tax" more fair, but there is one very big problem - what is a basic necessity?
Food obviously.
You will run into these sorts of questions in every area you described above.
Moving on, you didn't mention several other things that are considered necessities in the modern world; telephone and internet service, clothing, cars/transportation.
If you accept those as necessary (which in modern America, they really are), and therefore tax exempt, what exactly does that leave to tax? On the little that is left, just how high is the tax rate going to have to be? Do you expect these industries to actually survive if they suddenly have a ridiculously high tax rate? This would only serve to shift the tax burden in the other direction - the rich are now paying a much higher % of their income, and as an added bonus you've destroyed a couple of "luxury" industries along the way.
We should find a solution that encourages people to earn money and grow the economy, not to discourage income. For a healthy economy, we need to be encouraging more people to be producers, inventors, business creators, etc. And yet, these are the most taxed individuals when we tax the wealthy, their investments, and their income.
This is not true at all. The vast majority of inventors, creators, etc. either work for someone else, or are forced to sell their inventions to some company if they ever want to see it produced. Look at who makes the most money in most companies. It's the executives, who have nothing to do with any innovation or design work (the Gates/Jobs types are the exception, not the rule). Generally speaking, the people who do the real work, and make the real advancements, are pretty solidly middle class.
When consumers pay the tax, we encourage more efficient behavior.
No, we don't. Look at spending habits in states with 6% tax rates vs. states with 0% tax rates - there will be virtually no difference. What difference there is can often be explained by people "venue shopping" - i.e. those from higher-tax areas going to lower-tax areas to make purchases. I have seen this first-hand, having lived at a border.
Your philosophy that we should adopt a tax based on what impacts the rich the most stems from lumping three groups of people into one.
That is not my philosophy at all. My philosophy is that the tax should be fairly applied based on how much the person has. Sales taxes exclude far, far too many types of the purchases made by the wealthy to ever be fair to those on lower incomes. All it does is cause the poor to pay a proportionately larger percentage of their income in taxes than the rich do. This leads to a "rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer" situation (more so than income taxes do, anyway).
I am not advocating some sort of "eat the rich" mentality. If you make more money, you make more money. I'm fine with that. I just think that if a tax system is going to be unfair (and I've never seen one that's not), it should err on the side of those who would be more harmed by it. Income tax is considered unfair because those who pay more taxes do not get a proportionately larger benefit. Sales tax is considered unfair because those who can least afford it pay as much as those who easily can. While each of these methods is unfair from various points of view, the unfairness towards the rich is much less of a hardship upon them than the unfairness towards the poor. (If you're barely making ends meet, a loss of 10% of your income is crippling. If you're making more money than you know what to do with, 10% of that is barely going to put a dent in your lifestyle.)
The wealth of this world is divided among the kleptocrats, heirs, and entrepreneurs. I think we all agree that the former should be eliminated. Messing with the second is up for debate, but I'm personally against it. And messing with the third group is unhealthy for your nation.
Except that the vast majority of entrepreneurs are middle class (many of whom are forced to give up a large portion of their company to venture capitalists - the "heirs" you refer to). The rich are more easily able to make successful entrepreneurs only because if things get tough (as it almost always will for the first few years of a new business), they are less likely to have to close down the business and get a "normal" job in order to pay the bills. It doesn't matter if the business is gaining steam and will be profitable next year if you can't afford to live through this year. Additionally, the rich are more likely to actually become entrepreneurs because they have the money to fall back on in the case of a failure, and as such are more likely to take the risk involved with starting a new business. However, no matter how rich you are, you can only start up so many businesses at a time. If some more of that money were held by the middle class (that part of
To clarify where I am coming from:
My problem is that sales tax is more of a burden the poorer you are. All taxes are, really, but sales tax more so than income tax, for the following reasons:
Income tax is based on wealth. If you earn more, you pay more.
Sales tax is based on spending habits. Depending on what you spend your money on, where, and how, you can make more than someone else but pay far less in taxes.
The poorer you are, the higher the percentage of your earnings that will go towards basic living requirements (food, clothing, transportation, etc.). As you get richer, the portion of your income that goes towards taxable necessities (and even luxuries) goes down. This means that the rich pay proportionately less taxes than the poor do (i.e. A higher percentage of the poor's income goes to taxes than the rich's.)
Additionally, the argument based around the idea that letting the rich get more money than the poor will cause more investment to business, which will make the poor get more money than they otherwise would just doesn't work. The economy will generally get just as much regardless of which end of the financial spectrum you tax (either through greater capital investment from the rich, or greater income from the poor being able to purchase more).
This idea all comes back to supply-side economics (which George H.W. Bush aptly dubbed "voodoo economics" in 1980), which simply does not work. The results of this were seen over the 1980s - while the economy did become more prosperous in the beginning, its effects were starting to collapse by the end of the decade, becoming a recession under George Bush I's presidency. It also left us with an unbelievably large national debt. Attempting to fix some of this damage is arguably what cost Bush his re-election in 1992.
The Boston Tea Party happened because of unfair taxation - not taxation in general, but the idea that they were being hit with a larger tax burden than they should be, while those making the decisions were paying less.
This is exactly what is happening now, and what "Fair Tax" would make worse: Those who can least afford the tax will bear the brunt of it. Those who have influence (the rich/powerful) will only allow change if it benefits them, and will lobby for it to happen (this is why we have a tax code of thousands of pages).
What I'm talking about is selling off your own property, not as a business. What I'm implying is that the IRS wants to treat you as a business if you sell anything, but doesn't want to let you write off personal items that you later sell at a loss. They want it both ways; you're a business if you have no receipts for the personal property you sell, but you're not a business (and as such can't claim losses) if you do have those receipts.
Besides, this whole myth that only rich people invest in business is unbelievably false.
How is "tax them the same as everyone else" = "Tax them more" ? These people who have made millions earned their money. Actually, most of them inherited it. But that's beside the point. They deserve to keep the money they earn. And nobody else does?
So by that logic, every garage sale should be sure to send 30% of it's earnings to the government? After all, the average garage sale probably sells over 100 items.
Simply put, if you did not buy it to make a profit, and actually take a loss when you sell it, you should not have to pay taxes on it. This is why the IRS doesn't go after garage sales, and why they should not go after anyone selling off their own stuff on eBay. I don't care if you sell off one item, one hundred items, or one million items; if you sell it for less than you bought it for, the IRS should stay the hell away.
Also, this should be a two-way street; if the IRS starts taxing it as income when you sell your property, then you should be able to claim the difference as a loss if you get less than you paid for it. Somehow, I doubt they'd let the latter happen, so why should we allow the former?
This precisely what corporations, and the stock market, were formed to allow. The rich are not needed to create these types of companies - it doesn't matter if the money comes from one source or one million. And the other reason is it gives the working class something to strive for. A carrot if you want to call it that, but it is still a goal and a good driving factor. FUCK. YOU. "Here's your carrot. You probably won't get it, but be happy that you can see it from there." Prick.
What I think is the worst thing about what you've said is that your entire argument makes it sound like the rich are intrinsically better than everyone else. "Only the rich are qualified to invest money." "Rich people are great. It's good that we have them to show to the poor, so the poor will work harder for us."
I'll happily take a million people living well instead of 999,999 people living barely adequately so one asshole can live like a king.
How about you show me exactly where and how this extra money will be recovered, rather than listing a whole lot of areas that are never going to be taxed under the "Fair Tax" plan?
What if you bought 3 DVD players (1 for each TV), and a couple hundred DVDs? ... then you drop several hundred movies and 3 DVD players onto eBay.
Now, you decide that you're through with SD, and go to HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/whatever, rebuying all your movies in HD, and replacing those 3 players
Oops! You possibly just went over BOTH limits!
Looks like even though you're selling your old collection off for less than half what you paid for it, you're going to end up paying taxes on all of that. (Or do you keep receipts for every single thing you ever buy for 7+ years?)
The only way this could even out is if you could somehow subtract off the cost of the replacement items, but good luck convincing the IRS of that.
The so-called "Fair Tax" idea is pushed by the rich, as it is of great benefit to them.
Under the "Fair Tax", the rich keep amassing wealth, but will pay absolutely nothing on what they gain but do not spend. Now, with this very large amount of the nation's income sitting around being completely untaxed, all that's left to tax is what is actually spent each year: The very rich, while spending more than the average person, spends a much, much smaller percentage of their income each year. Let's think this through: You are only taxed on what you spend, minus the "poverty level rebate" - the poor pay nothing, so only the middle class and rich really pay taxes. Let's say the average rich person spends 20% of their income each year, and the average middle-class home spends 90% (this is not unrealistic when you consider just how much basic living expenses and a few basic luxuries cost).
This means that the rich are paying 80% less taxes on their income than currently, while the middle class only gets a 10% break. Where exactly do you think that loss of taxes will be made up? Well, there's apparently only one place they're allowed to - the "Fair Tax". If this tax rate then doubles to make up for the short fall, the rich are paying 40% of their previous tax rate, while the middle class is paying 180% of their previous tax rate!
When you consider how much time and money the rich spend abroad, you can see that their share of taxes falls even lower, since they will pay no taxes whatsoever to the IRS when they spend it overseas.
Simply put, "Fair Tax" is a bullshit name for this concept; it's the same old "rich get richer, screw the middle class" idea that drives most unfair tax law changes.
You want fair, easy, and simple? Have the IRS tax be "X% of income over $Y minimum", with deductions only for those truly altruistic reasons, such as recognized non-profit charities.
Polling the top 10 books from amazon.com and comparing them to buy.com's prices gives me 3 prices within 1 cent of each other, 3 prices better at buy.com, 3 prices better at amazon.com, and one book that isn't listed at buy.com (however, this book is from the 90s and isn't even in stock at Amazon).
Polling the top 10 books from buy.com and comparing them to Amazon's prices gives me 6 within 1 cent of each other, and 4 better prices at buy.com.
This leaves Buy.com with a lead in the number of cheaper books. Free shipping for purchases over $25 on Amazon (not Buy.com) and no cost shipping if you are an Amazon prime member. OK, now I know you're on crack, a shill for Amazon, or both. Buy.com has had free shipping on $25 orders for as long as I can remember.
As for the "no cost shipping if you are an Amazon prime member", that's not true: You're paying monthly/yearly membership fees to be an Amazon Prime member, so you are paying for that "free" shipping - you're just paying in advance. Customer Service at Amazon is year after year rated very high by independent surveys (*much* higher than Buy.com) I've actually never had a single problem with either of them, so from my perspective Buy.com is indeed "as good or better". I also was referencing sites other than Buy.com in that sentence, and I'm sure there ARE other sites that are definitely better for customer service (small shops with that personal touch, etc.) What are the reasons you say Buy.com is better for books????
Price - No, Selection - No, Customer Service - No.... what? Price: Yes, by a 7:3 margin, if you don't count the books identical in price.
Selection: Debatable - Amazon lists just about every book ever published (many they have never stocked), but have an older inventory than Buy.com.
Customer Service: Debatable - They are pretty comparable from my point of view.
I find that buy.com is generally better for books, and DeepDiscountDVD, DigitalEyes, and other sites are better for DVDs. Some of the other areas (power tools, food, etc.) I don't know about, but I can't imagine there aren't better places on the 'net to buy the same items for cheaper, and with as good or better customer service.
I'd say that the latter is most likely what causes the former. If you break various laws on a daily basis because (either you find it to be an unjust law, or because it's so frivolous that nobody bothers with it), then you start to see the more grey-area laws as not worth your time to find out about and avoid breaking, either.
Really, in the US the average person breaks the law dozens or hundreds of times per day in insignificant ways (jaywalking on an empty street, spitting in public, downloading a TV episode you missed the last 5 minutes of, etc.). Any one of those could get you in trouble if you're unlucky enough to be caught by an officer who is feeling like enough of a dick to harass you.
This really just is an excellent illustration of why there are really so many laws on the books in most countries; the government cares less about protecting the citizens than it does about controlling them: If you're a criminal, the government has much more control over your actions and movements than if you're not.
If it wasn't for patents, what would drive people to look for alternate treatments ?
... maybe the idea that there are possibly better treatments that could be discovered? Ones with less side effects, that work faster, that work for people that the known treatments don't, or perhaps even ones that have a lower production/materials cost?
I dunno
But the quality of the CF's light is poor, and the color of the light is not the most pleasant.
You just need to get CF "daylight" bulbs. They give a nice, bright white light, not the yellow-hued light you normally get.
Also, the ones I got are so bright that I actually wonder if I got 75W or 100W equivalents instead of the 60W equivalents stated on the package...
The claim is that copyright does not apply if a license is offered.
Try run that one past Microsoft's attorneys when you start selling burned CDs of Vista, then come back and tell us how that went.
you made some businessman oppress a homeless dude for a few days
I'd see it as giving the homeless person a job, but then maybe that's just me...
[...] ones that aren't error riddled as the Diebold machines have proven to be.
I'm not sure you're being accurate, here... it's only error-ridden if the software doesn't work as the designers intended (regardless of what the users want/expect it to do).
Actually, the rate is not the same. Not even close. This is the problem.
Voting irregularities in the last several elections have favored republicans in almost every single instance.
How long until we get our Hitler? Stalin? Moussolini?
I'd say we already have him...