Taxing Decisions
Deborah Venable
04/30/10
Once
upon a time in a galaxy far, far away someone proposed an alternative to the
ungodly and immoral income tax. After
giving it a careful reading and a lot of thought, I decided that, while it was
far from perfect, it is the only sensible alternative that stands better than a
snowball’s chance in hell of working – and more importantly actually getting
passed in a legislature and signed by a president. That would be the Fair Tax proposal.
To
date, it is the only proposal that demands the two things that must happen in
order to set America back on the road to both cultural and economic
advancement. The Fair Tax insists on
the abolishment of the 16th amendment and the Internal Revenue
Service before anything else contained in it can kick in. It also taxes the right end of the whole
economic process. Those are the big
pluses, and they more than carry the day in the positive and negative argument.
I
just the read the article, Fair
Tax Distraction
in the American Thinker, by Rosslyn Smith, which presents the antithesis to my
argument. The author presents the Fair
Tax, (referred to as a national sales tax) as “one of those ideas that seems
seductive at first glance but whose promise doesn't hold up well on close
examination.”
Its
proponents argue that since everyone would pay their
share simply by conducting day-to-day commerce, people would thus
come to know the real cost of government. They argue that it follows,
then, that the total demand for government services would shrink.
As
always, whenever I refer to someone else’s point of view, I advise a good
reading of that view, so please follow the link to the article and consider what
the author has to say. My intention
with this article is certainly not to parse Rosslyn Smith’s opinion, but rather
to present my own.
I
was not “seduced” by the Fair Tax proposal because I thought it would shrink
government in any way. It very probably
would not because it is not designed to do so.
It is simply designed to supply government’s needs (and supposed needs)
with the sole alternative source at the end of the Capitalist system and not
the beginning and throughout as it is now.
We need only to look at the VAT (Value Added Tax) currently being batted
around and probably headed for reality, to see that unrestrained government
access to individual’s and business pocketbooks at every point of the
Capitalist system of economics is a much more dire enemy to freedom than the
Fair Tax proposal.
Lawrence
M. Vance also attacks the taxing problem in an article called, The Flat Tax Is
Not Flat and the Fair Tax Is Not Fair, which may be found here.
The
only fair tax is a tax low enough to flatten skyrocketing congressional
spending.
I
totally agree with that assessment, but I also know that you can’t get there by
wiggling your nose or rubbing a magic lamp.
The very people that you are trying to harness are the ones that must
approve that harness. Therefore, those
hated words, “revenue neutral” are the only path toward drastically changing
tax policy in this country.
While
some tweaking in the Fair Tax proposal is definitely called for, all-in-all it
is the best hope we have for getting that necessary harness on federal
government spending. Most of the real
work must be done at the state level to achieve any “fairness” in government
spending or taxation to support it.
Government should be funded from the bottom up not top down
mandates. It is pretty simple to see
that the federal government is controlling states and individual behavior via
withholding and granting of funding because of the present tax code. Individuals must regain those purse strings
to control government spending. Tax
cuts, loopholes, credits, and anything else with the word, tax in front of it
are gimmicks to hide government deceit.
That includes the “prebate” in the Fair Tax, but that will be far easier
to attack after a bright light is shined on the exact cost of government at
every level. If we are paying that cost
with every purchase we make, it will become glaringly clear, and then we can do
the necessary “withholding” from government when we need to.
One
of the most important reasons for fighting for this “Fair” Tax enactment is to
insure that a modicum of balance is returned to the funding of the federal
government. Right now there is no
balance of any kind, which means that the greatest benefactors of government
are being unfairly taken advantage of by the greatest beneficiaries of
government largesse. Both groups are
being constantly shackled with more and more government control, and that is
just the way government bureaucrats want it.
They stay in power and we stay dependent slaves to their evil whims.
Consider
this. There are some even calling for
voting rights to be tied to whether or not an individual is paying any
taxes. I can’t say that I disagree with
this at all, but I know that such a measure would lead to untold divisiveness
and upheaval – the likes of which we have never seen. Though a great majority of those who could vote choose not to, if
the right were suddenly taken away, we wouldn’t hear the end of it!
The
bottom line of these taxing decisions is this:
we are definitely headed for the VAT – on top of the existing taxes our
economy is already burdened with.
Anyone who thinks that anything reminiscent of what America is all about
will withstand such a strain on the economy and personal freedoms simply hasn’t
studied any human history.
It
is time to stand for something while we can still lift our chains enough to do
it. Check out the Fair Tax with an open mind.