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Post by AztecWilliam on Mar 26, 2010 22:31:43 GMT -8
Charles Krauthammer thinks so (see link below) and I'm afraid his reasoning is all too persuasive. A national sales tax will be added ON TOP OF THE INCOME TAX! If that happens, be assured that the transformation of the U.S.A. from the last bastion of (more or less) free enterprise and personal liberty to something very much like the sclerotic nations (god love em!) of Europe will be complete. And there will be no turning back. *Say, how would you like to pay a national sales tax (e.g., the VAT) of $6,250 on the purchase of a $25,000 automobile? That would be 25%, which is typical in Europe. That would be on top of the various taxes and license fees one already pays for such a purchase. Would such a VAT be applied to houses? Let's see, on a $250,000 mortgage that would be a cool $12,500. Change we may yet HAVE to believe in. Check out Krauthammer's prediction. www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/26/the_vat_cometh_104936.htmlAzWm * And at that point, the Republican Party would once and for all be totally neutered and marginalized. With a federal government handing out so many benefits to so many citizens, most of whom would scream if asked to forgo a penny of it even in a good cause, just how many elections would the GOP win? Not many. And if, every 16-20 years the GOP did win the White House and eek out a slim majority in Congress (which might happen after it became abundantly clear even to the most enthusiastic supporters of the welfare state that something had gone terribly wrong), just what would the Republicans do? Suggest that the government must cut back on entitlements? Boom! Come the next election, the Dems would be back in power to begin the process all over again. In short, if Obama completes two terms and wins all his collectivist battles, no party standing for limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility will have a dog's chance of winning anything. At that point there will truly be no significant difference between the two major parties. |
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Post by The Aztec Panther on Mar 27, 2010 11:19:52 GMT -8
Sadly, you're right.
Once those entitlements are started the genie is out of the bottle. Once done, it's almost impossible to have it undone - no matter how catastrophic the effects may be on the overall economy.
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Post by aztecwin on Mar 28, 2010 8:04:19 GMT -8
We are faced with a real sad set of circumstances right now, but we have the chance to start reversing it in Nov.
In general, I am for replacing progressive taxes with regressive taxes like the VAT. The problem is they will want a VAT on top of all these other oppressive taxes.
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Post by AlwaysAnAztec on Mar 29, 2010 8:17:07 GMT -8
I have seen many proposals for income tax reform that include REPLACING the current system with a VAT. I have never seen a proposal to institute a VAT on top of the current tax system. Just because Charles Krauthammer says it doesn't make it so.
More wing-nut sabre rattling.
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Post by aztecwin on Mar 29, 2010 14:49:13 GMT -8
I have seen many proposals for income tax reform that include REPLACING the current system with a VAT. I have never seen a proposal to institute a VAT on top of the current tax system. Just because Charles Krauthammer says it doesn't make it so. More wing-nut sabre rattling. I hope you are right, but don't see right now how Obama Kare will be paid for in full. They have started by the decrease in Medicare by 500 Bil and it looks like business sees it will have to shoulder more of a burden and that is why they are starting to take these huge writedowns. So much for no taxes for those making less than $250K. Your mother, who has 200 shares of Sempra is going to have the earnings on her shares charged for ObamaKare. |
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Post by AlwaysAnAztec on Mar 29, 2010 16:19:48 GMT -8
Your mother, who has 200 shares of Sempra is going to have the earnings on her shares charged for ObamaKare. umm... "Mom" already pays taxes on any dividend income at normal rates. She'll pay capital gains on any profit when she sells the stock. If you are trying to say that taxes will be paid on unrealized gain of an investment you should stop smoking your socks because that is just plain foolish.  |
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Post by AztecWilliam on Mar 29, 2010 21:33:08 GMT -8
Your mother, who has 200 shares of Sempra is going to have the earnings on her shares charged for ObamaKare. umm... "Mom" already pays taxes on any dividend income at normal rates. She'll pay capital gains on any profit when she sells the stock. If you are trying to say that taxes will be paid on unrealized gain of an investment you should stop smoking your socks because that is just plain foolish. Look, if the Democrats seriously want a VAT, and if they have the type of majorities they now enjoy, what is to stop them from designing a VAT any way they choose? I think we really are at a crossroads. For decades we have heard people on the Left speak admiringly of how sensible and civilized the European nations govern themselves. Why can't we be just as sensible and civilized? Why can't American workers all have government mandated vacation of six weeks a year, 35 hour work weeks, and almost free health care? Well, some of us say that the reason is that such a system is unsustainable in the long run. But once the government starts mandating those things there is no practical way to reverse them. Look, we are all human, and it's easier to do very little than to do a lot. Too many people are all too willing to go with the flow, and if Uncle Sam is going to spread the wealth around, why should I not put my hands out to get some just like everybody else? So now we have the most left-wing administration ever in power and it is determined to "transform America" along lines it believes are right and good. The welfare state is right and good according to the Left. The land of opportunity, which also means the opportunity to fail, is the ideal for many of the rest of us. Once the welfare state is solidly in place right down the line, no politician is going to want to risk the wrath of the voters whom they, the politicians, have convinced are owed so much by the state. Case in point. Let's see if the Congress has the guts to actually vote to cut Medicare by the billions of dollars announced earlier. You want to bet on that? And if those cuts are not made, what will the CBO say about Obama's Magical Budget Numbers Machine that some apparently believed as they were voting yes a few days ago? AzWm |
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Post by AlwaysAnAztec on Mar 30, 2010 8:13:25 GMT -8
I think we really are at a crossroads. For decades we have heard people on the Left speak admiringly of how sensible and civilized the European nations govern themselves. Why can't we be just as sensible and civilized? Why can't American workers all have government mandated vacation of six weeks a year, 35 hour work weeks, and almost free health care? AzWm It is my opinion that the policies of Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II were pushing the U.S. into a two class society much like Mexico where the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, currently lives. So, if you ask me which society I would rather emulate; capitalistic Mexico or socialistic Sweden, I would choose Sweden in a heartbeat. I don't see anything wrong with a good vacation, a 35 hour workweek, or universal health care. Unfortunately, since Reagan, the average workweek has gone up almost 8 hours, the number of days off per worker has dropped, and many fewer working Americans have health care. |
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Post by AztecWilliam on Mar 30, 2010 10:50:24 GMT -8
I think we really are at a crossroads. For decades we have heard people on the Left speak admiringly of how sensible and civilized the European nations govern themselves. Why can't we be just as sensible and civilized? Why can't American workers all have government mandated vacation of six weeks a year, 35 hour work weeks, and almost free health care? AzWm It is my opinion that the policies of Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II were pushing the U.S. into a two class society much like Mexico where the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, currently lives. So, if you ask me which society I would rather emulate; capitalistic Mexico or socialistic Sweden, I would choose Sweden in a heartbeat. I don't see anything wrong with a good vacation, a 35 hour workweek, or universal health care. Unfortunately, since Reagan, the average workweek has gone up almost 8 hours, the number of days off per worker has dropped, and many fewer working Americans have health care. Spoken like a true lefty-collectivist! ;D Who wouldn't want a 35 hour work week, etc.? The question is, should the government mandate those requirements with no respect to economic consequences? Seriously, just what do you mean? Reagan was a champion of free-enterprise. He succeeded in lowering the tax rates for all Americans. That's important to keep in mind. . . ALL Americans! The Reagan tax cuts applied across the board, not just to those earning $200,000 or more. Did the rich (  ) benefit more? Well, yes, they did in the sense that they made more money in the first place. An X% tax rate cut meant that the rich did in fact have to pay a lot less to the government than less well-off earners whose wages were substantially lower to begin with. Now, if the Reagan tax cuts had called for a 10% lax cut for people over 200 Grand in earnings but only a 5% cut for those earning 20 Grand you would be correct in accusing Reagan of unfair treatment of less well-off Americans. That, of course, is not what happened. Let me offer a different theory. To the extent that many Americans have not experienced rising incomes, perhaps we need to keep in mind that those people in the lower brackets more and more are in competition with workers around the world. My Dad worked 39 years for Douglas Aircraft. He did not graduate from college (though he attended for 3 years). Nevertheless, our family did manage to get by okay. And that even though there five kids to house, clothe, and feed. My folks even managed to pay off the mortgage on a house. Well, you know what? There is no Douglas Aircraft anymore. Nor is there any Packard Motor Company, nor are there many (or perhaps any) plants manufacturing TVs, radios, appliances, etc. And GM, Ford, and Chrysler employ far fewer workers than they did in 1950, 1960, etc. And U.S. Steel is not the giant it used to be. Here's the bottom line; as our economy became inexorably tied in with the world economy, we were faced with competition from people willing to work just as hard as were our own workers and generally for a lot less. Does that mean that those other workers were getting less than what is fair, or were our workers getting paid more than they should have been? Once you start talking about what a worker "should" be paid, you have abandoned market mechanisms and are entering into the political realm in which practical economic factors are replaced by pressure from special interest groups who neither understand nor appreciate economic realities. I would say that such a trade off is decidedly a step backward. The move toward a global economy was not some evil plan hatched in a smoke filled back room as a posh hotel in New York, Detroit, or Pittsburgh. It was the inevitable outgrowth of the recovery of Europe after World War Two (for which our help was crucial) and the emergences of the Asian Tigers and other formerly impoverished countries not willing to accept the past as their god-dictated fate. Our own complacency was also responsible for much of our job losses, too. GM is a prime example of management laboring under the delusion that once Number One they would always remain Number One. Now that it's pretty much too late, even GM has wised up. Here is one final example. At one time New England was home to many textile mills. Then, probably in the late 19th or early 20th Century, owners figured out that workers in the Carolinas would do the same work that was being done around Boston for a lot less money. (The film "The Little Foxes" portrays this.) Zoom went the jobs to the Carolinas! Now those jobs are going to China, etc. It's all a matter of perspective. Would anyone take us here in San Diego seriously if we complained that workers in Imperial County or Arizona would work for less? Probably not. Hey, it's all the U.S.A., right? We may not like, but surely accept, the fact that business can (and should) move to whatever part of the country is best suited for the needs of the individual company. To ask a company to do otherwise is ask for economic stagnation or even collapse. (I guess Michael Moore feels that GM should have kept a plant in Flint open just because the workers there needed jobs. Moore is apparently too stupid to understand that had that been done, many other workers elsewhere would have suffered due to the bad economic consequences of that decision. I guess Moore, plus quite a few Democratic office-holders, think companies should be run along the lines of charitable foundations instead of profit-making enterprises.) Now the playing field is the whole world. I suggest that the inevitable move to a world economy is largely responsible for the decline in many good manufacturing jobs here, not some devious Republican Presidents. Our reaction to that should be to work harder, work smarter, and, in some case perhaps even to work for a bit less than what we have been used to. Of course, I should say we might have to work for a bit less than what people who actually have jobs are used to getting. Which is better, working for $35 an hour with 10% to 12% unemployment or working to $20 an hour with 6% unemployment? It's very difficult, and likely impossible, to have both world-leading wages and very low unemployment.. AzWm |
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Post by aztecwin on Mar 30, 2010 11:20:43 GMT -8
Your mother, who has 200 shares of Sempra is going to have the earnings on her shares charged for ObamaKare. umm... "Mom" already pays taxes on any dividend income at normal rates. She'll pay capital gains on any profit when she sells the stock. If you are trying to say that taxes will be paid on unrealized gain of an investment you should stop smoking your socks because that is just plain foolish. Just what do you think a charge against earning is? It is a decrease in what each share earns and therefore the ability of that share to pay dividends. You can't be that naive. Of course she pays on dividends at the current rate, but this is about the first level of taxes before we even get to the double taxation on dividends. |
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) benefit more? Well, yes, they did in the sense that they made more money in the first place. An X% tax rate cut meant that the rich did in fact have to pay a lot less to the government than less well-off earners whose wages were substantially lower to begin with.