Hell, for a start I’d settle for a cite that Bartlett claims that Americans pay greater than 50% of their aggregate income in taxes. The whole point of the linked article is to claim that Americans are more productive per capita precisely because we take a lower percentage of aggregate national income for taxes than European nations and that therefore there is a larger incentive to work here than there. Whether his claims hold water, and whether that is a good thing if true might be the subject of legitimate debate, of course.
You think as a woman.
In this piece, I would simply poll every one of those organizations in those Jewish communities and simply ask, do you favor this war, or are you opposed to this war.
Again with the calling someone a female as an insult.
Boyscout, what’s behind this?
Maybe it’s a Southern Gentleman’s way of paying respect?
No, this person is truly a woman, I believe.
The others were messing with me, so I did the same.
Boy Scout:
OK, here’s one last chance to come clean on some evidence. What people here are talking about is that you can’t simply make claims and expect people to believe them. Otherwise, this is what a “Great Debate” would be:
You: Americans pay > 50% in taxes.
Me: No, they don’t pay that much.
You: Yes, they do.
Me: No, they don’t.
You: Yes, they do.
I could continue, but do you get the point? Somewhere, one of us will have to come up with some facts to base our statement on. Those facts have to be referenced somewhere. If I say “It’s from a book I read”, that’s meaningless. We use web cites here because then everyone can share the same material. There isn’t much that ISN’T on the web these days, so it works out great.
And if you’re wrong, do we get to completely dismiss the rest of your bogus allegations?
This is where I formed my opinion from, talk to him as you talk to me.—House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) created a flurry of excitement in Republican circles the other day when it was reported that he is proposing abolition of the Internal Revenue Service in a new book. This would be accomplished by eliminating all existing federal taxes and replacing them with a national retail sales tax.
There is no indication of what tax rate Speaker Hastert thinks would be necessary to replace all federal revenue. A current proposal by Rep. John Linder (R-GA) says that a 23 percent rate would be adequate. But such a low rate can only be sustained by making completely absurd assumptions about what would be taxed. Every serious economist who has ever looked at this question has concluded that a vastly higher rate would in fact be needed.
First, an unstated assumption is that the 23 percent rate proposed by Mr. Linder is comparable to existing state and local sales taxes, where the tax comes on top of the purchase price. Thus, a 5 percent sales tax on a $1 purchase comes to $1.05.
But that’s not the way the Linder plan works. He deceptively calculates the rate as if the tax is part of the purchase price. He calls this the tax-inclusive rate. Calculating the rate the normal way people are accustomed to with state and local sales taxes would require a 30 percent tax rate, not 23 percent.
When Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation scored the Linder proposal 4 years ago, it estimated that it would actually require a tax-inclusive rate of 36 percent, not 23 percent, to equal current federal revenues. Calculating the rate in a normal, tax-exclusive manner would mean a 57 percent rate.
Economist Bill Gale of the Brookings Institution notes that supporters of the sales tax assume that there will be no tax evasion under their proposal and that the size of government will not grow, even though they would send a large annual check to every American in order to offset the regressivity of the tax. Making realistic assumptions, Mr. Gale estimates that the tax-inclusive rate, comparable to Linder’s proposed 23 percent rate, would actually have to be about 50 percent. A rate comparable to existing sales taxes would be close to 100 percent.
And let us not forget that state and local sales taxes would come on top of the federal sales tax, pushing the total rate even higher.
Obviously, the federal government is not going to impose tax rates this high, nor would anyone pay them if it did. There would be a massive tax revolt.
The Linder bill (H.R. 25) is also deceptive in its basic assumption that all consumption of goods and services in the U.S. would be taxed. Implicitly, Americans would be taxed on, among other things, all medical care, purchases of new homes, and services provided by state and local governments if Linder’s bill became law.
This means that if you are sick and have large doctor bills, you are going to pay 30 percent on top to the federal government. (Alternatively, you would pay 30 percent more for health insurance.) If you buy a new house listed for $150,000, your actual purchase price is going to be $195,000, including the sales tax. (Alternatively, there could be a tax on the imputed rent homeowners pay themselves for living in their own homes.) And if your children receive $20,000 worth of education each year from the local public schools, somehow or other you are going to have to pay an additional $6,000 to the federal government.
Of course, it is completely idiotic to think that the American people will ever allow this to happen. The idea of taxing all consumption sounds nice in theory until you realize just how broad the definition of “consumption” would be under Linder’s plan.
Economist Evan Koenig of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas makes the point that any new sales tax is going to raise prices by that amount. If the Federal Reserve accommodates it, we are going to have 30 percent inflation the year the tax is introduced. If it is not accommodated, then producer prices are going to have to fall by 30 percent, which will cause a severe recession and greatly reduce the tax yield.
Somehow or other, Mr. Linder has gotten 54 House members to cosponsor his proposal. They should all pray that their opponents overlook their poor judgment. When last the national retail sales tax was a major campaign issue—in the 1996 senate race in Louisiana—the Republican sales tax supporter was crushed by his anti-sales tax Democratic opponent. That may explain why only two senators support Linder’s plan, one of whom is retiring this year.
With all due respect to Speaker Hastert, trying to eliminate the IRS by adopting a national retail sales tax is a very dumb idea.
Bruce Bartlett is a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.
BARTLETT IS EITHER AN IDIOT ANALYST, OR YOUR IGNORANT.
If you were able to comprehend all that was given you, you woulds not have made yourself out to attack me and made yourself look ignorant, at the same time.
You’re setting your standards too high. In this other craptacular train-wreck masquerading as a debate, I finally put my foot down, and posted the following. In order to try to bring this mess to a halt, I would like to offer the same challenge here:
I hope y’all don’t mind, but this is a bet I would love to lose, because either way, I win.
(1) BoyScout11 learns to use the URL tag, and I can claim that – even though it took all day – I fought me some good ignorance today.
OR
(2) He doesn’t, we win the argument by forfeit, and we can go about fighting other, more worthwhile ignorance.
Herein lays the solution to your conundrum! The reason why the tax rate climbs so high under more “realistic” assumptions is that you are no longer taxing everything. If Americans are paying an average of 30% of their income in taxes (as the cite I gave you shows) and you only tax half of their purchases of goods and services, then roughly speaking (ignoring foreign trade deficits, etc.), they would have to pay a 60% tax on the things that are subject to this tax.
I don’t see any real contradiction here. We have provided you with hard figures about the effective tax rate as a percent of income that we currently have. And, you argue that if we implement a tax that leaves out the taxation of, say, services and big-ticket items like houses, then you will have to tax the rest of the stuff at a much higher rate. Well, yes, that is correct.
There’s nothing to see here…Move along.
If you read and comprehended Bartletts oiece, no where in there did he say, as you did, thgat a housre or anything else was not to be taxed. Why is it you cannot read and fully comprehend what is on that piece? As a matter of fact, he cites the tax on housing.
I don’t see any real contradiction here. We have provided you with hard figures about the effective tax rate as a percent of income that we currently have. And, you argue that if we implement a tax that leaves out the taxation of, say, services and big-ticket items like houses, then you will have to tax the rest of the stuf
There’s nothing to see here…Move along.
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If what you’re afraid of is that the feds will institute a national sales tax, then you can rest easy. AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN. Not in our lifetimes. It sounds grandious to recommend the elimination of the IRS and relpacing it with some alternate tax scheme, but the establishment is too, well, established to let things change that radically.
It could happen, if the 80% really had a vote, but unfortunately, it would take another Boston Tea Party on the hugest of scales, to make them do as they should, for the sake of a nation and not their own greed and corruption. We only have the candidates they wish to offer and they sell out to special interest groups, so there is no way Americans can have liberty and justice for all.
Actually, we know that he’s not. But that as it may,
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Why do you think pointing out someone’s gender should make a difference? I have known many wise and intelligent women, and many foolish and stupid men.
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What does “arguing like a woman” look like, anyway? A lot of emotionally-charged claims without any resort to facts or logic, perhaps?
Actually, we know that he’s not. But be that as it may,
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Why do you think pointing out someone’s gender should make a difference? I have known many wise and intelligent women, and many foolish and stupid men.
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What does “arguing like a woman” look like, anyway? A lot of emotionally-charged claims without any resort to facts or logic, perhaps?
My mother was one of the smartest people I know and I didn’t say that invidious corgette was anything more than a woman. If that is wrong, I apologize to him. Like I said though, I make quite a few mistakes. The good thing about mistakes, is that an apology helps, for those capable of such.
Have a nice day furt.
Well, I think part of the problem here is that you seem to be reading a different Bartlett piece than I am. I am reading the one that Captain Amazing linked to, presuming it was the one you were talking about, since you were not kind enough to give us a link. If you would give us a link and a quote, we could figure out what the heck you are talking about and life would be easier for all of us.
Folks, we’re 79 posts into this thread, and BoyScout still hasn’t specified what the hell he’s talking about. What do you say we all stop responding until he actually provides us with something to respond to?