I don’t want to rewrite the Constitution. The federal government should stick to article 1, section 8. The military, immigration/naturalization, foreign policy, currency, regulate (mostly get out of the way) commerce **between **states and foreign commerce. The rest is local.
So, when Tennessee wants to restrict the vote to white landowning males, you’re ok with that?
Or when Utah declares a restriction on the rights of non-Mormons to marry, do business, etc. (something they already do, in certain areas, but hey… local is better) you have no beef with that, because it’s local?
And when California totally legalizes drugs, and then folks from Oregon and Nevada flood across the border to bring those legal drugs back into their states where it’s illegal, you’re ok with that because hey, local regulations, let the states figure it out.
As for your earlier straw man argument, the problem is that racketeering is illegal. Hence your arguement is invalid. But then, I guess when all you have is the local police, who may be part of the gang doing the crime in the first place, I guess you’re just stuck. After all, local is better. Let’s keep those Federal law types out of our local community!
So how did the government run before income tax was constitutional? It wasn’t just tariffs since this chartshows that tariffs only accounted for half of the revenues for the US after the Civil War.
First of all, if income tax were abolished, we would have to dispense with the current level of Keynsian economics. For an Austrian like me that is a good thing but you can see from this thread that Keynes is so engrained in most Americans that most equate smaller revenue to a complete collapse of Western civilization.
Second, out of necessity we would move to a more Federalist system since the revenue would go to truly national programs such as defense, interstates, etc. Each state would decide how to generate income to carry more of the burden as the pork dries up. It’s not impossible as nine states have no personal income tax.
Third. corporate taxes would increase. I don’t think that would drive out business like some people think. I think most businesses are more concerned with regulation than taxes.
First one is against the Constitution. The other two are not. So the answer is no, yes and yes.
I’ve seen a message-button at SF cons that says, “The United States Constitution has its faults, but it’s a hell of the lot better than what we got now.” Which is clever, and bullshit. The United States Constitution is clearly a hell of a lot worse than what we’ve got now, and I thank you for illustrating the point.
Sure. Cuz the federal government knows better than the locals what’s good for them.
Are you for the elimination of the federal government entirely then?
If not, why not? If you truly believe the hyperbole you are spouting, then how can you justify the existence of a federal government at all? Why not local for everything? Forget state or city either, I’m talking neighborhood level government only.
If local is always better, then why not make all government as local as possible. Hell, why not just make each household its own government. Talk about freedom baby!
Read my above posts for the answer to that question.
The United States Constitution was drafted for a decentralized federation of agrarian republics. The United States today neither is nor should be that. And every industrial power needs a strong national government.
Yeah, but why would you trust the federal government to do anything, if local is better, and the feds are so out of touch.
Why do you want the feds deciding what bombs to build and who to drop them on? Aren’t you worried that they won’t make these decisions with your best interests in mind since they are so distant from you?
I don’t understand why your type distrusts the federal government so much to do anything, yet is totally ok with them controlling the military and deciding what wars to wage. Why? I just don’t understand the inconsistency. You make these snide, snarky comments about how bad the federal government, so why do you trust it to do anything?
There are powers reserved for federal government. Military, immigration/naturalization, foreign policy, currency, macro economic policy. The rest of the powers/decision making should be local.
Yes, but why do you trust them with these powers though?
Your reasoning that the rest of the decisions should go local is because local is better right?
So why is anything best left to the feds? Why do you trust the feds for anything if local is better?
Your position seems inconsistent to me, so clue me in or I’ll just continue to see it that way I guess.
Does it matter at all that in many cases that would be more costly and inefficient? Or does the mantra trump everything?
I think the point that most of us are making is that there is no way to replace the income tax with a revenue generating function that could fund the military, roads, and whatever else you want to put in that bucket. Even if we’re talking a most extreme example, we’re still talking about in the neighborhood of $700 billion a year (perhaps a lot more) to fulfill functions like national defense, foreign relations, roads, regulatory agencies that are clearly interstate in nature (like the FAA). Right now, tariffs make up about $25 billion in US revenue.
So, we could jack up tariffs by 30 times, and we become a North Korean-like country. Or, we could just decide to gut all those Federal functions and hope and pray that the absurdity of the Articles of Confederation is not repeated. Or invent some new tax base, which will change our economy in new ways and there might be constitutional issues (not sure, never thought about it.)
There are plenty of other tax structures that could provide the revenue. Some of them might be better. We could use sales taxes, value added taxes, property taxes, wealth taxes, corporate taxes, or just shift the tax burden to the states to collect whatever way they want. Obviously a lot of people would be unhappy with any change to the system, so even though everybody is unhappy with the system we have, very few are actually willing to risk a change which doesn’t specifically benefit them. But there are plenty of possible changes. Cutting out income tax revenue without replacing it with another source is a total non-starter.
Of course there’s a way to generate the revenue currently generated by the income tax. A broad-based sales tax or value-added tax would work just as well, arguably better in some ways. You don’t pay taxes when you earn your income, you pay taxes when you spend your income. Plenty of countries use this system.
Of course, we’d have to on average take in the exact same amount of government revenue, and so the average tax bill for the average citizen would be on average the same. If your goal is to cut revenue, you don’t need to abolish the income tax, you just need to lower it. The hard part is cutting spending, not cutting taxes. It’s very easy for governments to pay for spending via borrowing rather than taxation, which is why the “Starve the Beast” theory is nonsense.
Because there are powers that are inherently macro. That’s what the Constitution recognized.
It is inefficient for everyone to buy groceries and cook in their homes. The most efficient model is centralized feeding centers, where citizens come and get fed, nutritiously and efficiently. Does the efficiency matter to you in this case?
I don’t consider your example efficient or convenient at all. Just to flesh that idea out a little, either there will be prescribed meal times or food will be wasted since it’ll have to be cooked and kept hot all day. What about people with allergies? Or people who plain just don’t like meatballs on meatball day? Or vegetarians?
How does this compare to, for example, the IRS?
So looking at the chart I linked to, tariffs were historically only about 50% of our economy. What was the other half before 1913?
And while I do not advocate eliminating personal income tax completely, I think that the OP’s question does call for a discussion of:
Whether or not the current Keynesian-based bloated federal government can be significantly trimmed, especially if revenue is lowered. Notice the “can”. Some on this board I think hold that reduction in spending in any significant amount would kill off the economy to almost apocalypic standards.
Whether or not there are other ways to generate money other than personal income tax. This site would indicate that personal income tax is about 50% of the tax burden, payroll tax is about 40% and corporate tax is less than 10%. Seems radically disproportionate to me.
You say that on the most austere budget, the country needs $700B/yr. Payroll and corporate tax is currently at $975B and pro rated out means the country will bring in $2.5T in taxes on that basis alone.