Is history about to repeat itself?

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If I was planning to kill a bunch of people to improve society, it wouldn't be the homeless and the poor, I usually imagine starting with dirty judges, prosecutors, and cops and working down (you know, those people who actually prey on the disadvantaged...), but idiots who make stupid straw-man statements about ideologies they don't understand are starting to creep up the list.

Yeah, I saw this sort of irrational, heartless attitude all the time while I was interning at a local homeless charity. Most chronic homeless people are mentally ill and self-medicate. AND, they are usually denied help unless/until they can get sober and stable.

They're expected to EARN their shelter/help by getting sober and stable on their own first.

It's completely asinine. Most of these folks can't get sober on their own and they end up bouncing between living on the street or being in jail.

The average chronically homeless person costs society $60,000.00/year in emergency services and jail costs. We could house most of them for about $30,000.00/year in permanent supportive housing. This is proven to be an effective approach by the way (google pathways to housing if interested).

BUT, this approach is seen as "rewarding bad behavior" because mental illness, like homosexuality, is a choice, and therefore cannot be done.


The only program where a housing first approach is actually used in VA supportive housing for homeless vets because the government insists that local programs provide services unconditionally, or they'll pull funding. And guess what... IT WORKS GREAT.

This is why we need government involved in social services and just another reason why the libertarian idea of "family, friends, and local charity" won't work.

This x 10,000,000. I'm thinking of someone with schizophrenia, who is completely cut off from reality. They deal with horrifying delusions and hallucinations, an inability to think straight, and major problems with motivation and other aspects of emotions, and here they would be expected to get stable on their own? That is so unrealistic!

It looks more like just an excuse to penny-pinch and maybe move some of that money into bonuses for charity executives.

Yeah, just ignore all the effects that the state has on increasing the cost of housing substantially, ignore how they regulate and tax people to stop them supporting themselves, and then point to it and say "see, the free market doesn't work"...

Oh, and they do housing first in Utah. It works. It costs them $11k a year to provide an apartment.

That must include construction costs because apartments in Salt Lake range a little lower than $917 a month. Still, I hadn't heard of this (I tend to ignore local news because of the constant slew of "killer bees" and "fluffy dog" reports). Actually, what the Salt Lake area needs desperately is low-income housing for seniors and individuals with disabilities. Right now, applications are being declined "until further notice" because they are full up.

Interest-Rates & Taxes need to be REMOVED from society altogether ! They are the SOLE reason why "Economy" is never stable. Get rid of Taxes & Interest-Rates & the 100$ you earn today will still be able to buy you 100$ worth of goods even 200 years into the future.

Indeed. The Sixteenth Amendment needs to be repealed if only for the reason that the United States survived for 137 years without it before it was adopted (or not, depending on how the ratification votes turned out). If the U.S. government existed that long without taxing its citizens beyond interstate-goods excise taxes, why couldn't we do that today? I am also a big fan of the Fair Tax if it was constitutionally provided.

hope you anti tax people never get your way, or millions upon millions will die.

Huh?

Get rid of interest rates and taxes and you can be absolutely positive that the money you have today will be worthless in the future.

There are many government functions that must be done and so they need funding. Without taxes, the choices would be user fees, donations, and inflation. Guess which they would turn to. That's right -- inflation. And it would undoubtedly be rather high inflation. In that scenario, $100 today probably wouldn't buy a piece of gum in a hundred years.

As for interest rates, that would virtually destroy the lending of money. Interested in buying a house, building a businesses, ... ? Your only financing would be by investments and that is generally much more difficult to get than a loan. With no interest, loans would be nearly impossible to get -- you might be able to get a loan from a close friend or family member, but certainly not from anyone else including banks, mortgage companies, ... .

The Fair Tax would be an enormous disaster to the country from which it might never recover.

What people don't understand is that high consumption taxes destroy economic activity. We have a prime example of a high consumption tax that did enormous damage to entire industries from 1990s when we had a Luxury Tax on expensive boats, cars, and jewelry.

For example, look at what the Luxury Tax did to the boat industry -- to the best of my knowledge every large boat builder in the country had to lay people off because demand for boats for which the Luxury Tax applied went nearly to zero. Not only for companies that built boats, but companies that sold boats and companies that manufactured boat equipment. I haven't seen the numbers, but I would not be surprised if most people involved in the larger boat industry lost their jobs.

The only saving grace was that Congress recognized the enormity of their mistake in passing the tax and eliminated it within a couple of years. If they had not done so, we would have virtually no luxury boat industry of any kind in the United States. I suspect the same would apply to luxury jewelry and luxury cars as well. And that was a consumption tax much smaller than the Fair Tax.

Like it or not, people do change their purchasing behavior because of prices. Raise the price of goods by adding consumption taxes and people quit buying.

With the Fair Tax, the higher prices would apply to everything. It would apply to new houses. Buy a new house and pay an enormous tax on it. That would pretty much eliminate the housing industry and all its related jobs. It would be much cheaper for the very wealthy to buy their houses in other countries without the tax and commute to work.

With the Fair Tax, there is a proposed tax rate of 30%. (The Fair Tax people like to call it 23% by considering the tax rate to be the percentage of taxes paid on the entire price with taxes but that is rather misleading.) A consumption tax of 30% would definitely suppress purchases of new goods which would result in the shrinking of entire industries within the country. There is an often overlooked provision in the Fair Tax proposals that the Fair Tax rate would be adjusted if it is not revenue neutral (i.e., if it fails to raise as much tax revenue after the switch as before). There is no way that it can bring in the same revenue if people change their purchasing habits and so that rate would rise and result in even more damage to the country.

It seems to me that much of the desire for the Fair Tax lies in the proposal to eliminate income taxes in the process. The reality is that income taxes would not be eliminated -- after all, it only takes an amendment to remove that provision and you can bet that amendment would happen. The inevitable result would be that we would end up with both the Fair Tax and an income tax and the percent of our income going to taxes would increase, not decrease.

Furthermore, the Fair Tax would shift a larger part of the tax burden on the lower and middle classes. Think about it -- it is designed to raise the same revenue as before. Today, a great percent of the personal income taxes are paid by a small percentage of people at the very highest income levels -- people who would be unlikely to spend the same portion of their income on consumables taxable under the Fair Tax. Their tax burden would go down tremendously as they would be paying taxes based only on their purchases within this country. Guess who would end up making up for those taxes? That's right -- the rest of us including you and me.

The Fair Tax should be renamed to the Sucker Tax.

Most forecast models show that the 30-percent figure would be an initial rate with expectations for it to stabilize near 11 percent. As for expectations "to raise as much tax revenue after the switch as before[,]" most constitutionalists, Jeffersonians and libertarians believe that less revenue would actually spur a better economy that promised fewer taxes and fewer unnecessary government programs (see $682,570 grant for studying shrimp on a treadmill among others). But, budget cuts wouldn't be disastrous. President Kennedy's plan (which was adopted successfully by his successor, President Lyndon Johnson) to cut upper- and middle-income taxes yielded a notable windfall of unexpected revenue proving the idea that lower taxes cause more government revenue (because businesses expand and employ more workers who become additional taxpayers themselves).

But, I am less enthusiastic about the Fair Tax (with or without Ron Paul's idea for a family-food exemption) as I would be about a repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment and a return to interstate excise tax (which would increase the costs of goods among all buyers, including the very rich).

The thing is, people advocating for ending taxation think only about business and property owners. The needy and disabled don't even cross their minds, which is practically as bad as wanting them to die.

Cites? I flat don't believe that an 11% tax rate is at all achievable with today's spending. The only way to do that would be to borrow far more money to make up the difference.



I agree that less revenue would spur a better economy. But with Republicans and Democrats in charge, that isn't going to happen.

The notion that lower taxes cause more government revenue goes back to the Laffer Curve. If you haven't looked at it, you should. The Laffer Curve is idealized as a concave down curve that produces $0 at 0% tax rate and $0 at 100% tax rate. In between the two, the amount of revenue generated would be nearly linear for very low tax rates and with each incremental increase in the tax rate resulting in less revenue than the increment prior to that. At some point, it would reach a maximum and after that each incremental increase in tax rates would result in a drop in the total tax revenue.

I have seen the claim many times that reducing taxes will result in higher tax rates. Inevitably, the claim is made by someone who has no comprehension of the Laffer Curve. If the current tax rate is to the left of the tax rate that results in the maxima on the Laffer Curve, lowering tax rates is going to decrease tax rates, not increase them. if the current tax rate is to the right of the tax rate that results in the maxima on the Laffer Curve, then lowering the tax rates will result in an increase in revenue. (That, of course, ignores the obvious objection that the Laffer Curve is not static. There are situations that can happen in real life that could result in a lowering of tax revenue while lowering the tax rate even to the right of the maxima.

The real question is where is the maxima? Many on the right assume that the current tax rate is to the right of the maxima in spite of there being no evidence to support that. In reality, when Reagan cut tax rates, it resulted in a lowering of tax revenue to the point that they had to start closing loop holes to bring in more tax revenue. And the left, of course, tries to either ignore the idea or cast doubt on it.

I think it is rather clear that the real situation is that our tax rate is to the left of the tax rate that results in the maximal taxes, not to the right of it. As such, increasing the tax rate will increase taxes collected while decreasing the tax rate will decrease the taxes collected. I think that the tax rate that would produce the maximal revenue is likely to be something in the 70% to 90% tax rate area.

Think about it. Would you start to forgo income to increase leisure if the tax rate were to increase 5%? Do you know anyone who would? I sure don't. But if it was 90%, I know people who probably would choose more leisure. We will not be at the tax rate to maximize revenue on the Laffer Curve until such time as great numbers of people are choosing to work less hours because the government takes so much of their money that it isn't worth working the extra hours to them. There may be some like that today, but it is a very small minority. Those I know who choose to work less hours today do so not because of the effect of taxes but because they make enough that they don't feel like they need to maximize their income.

So for those who think that lowering taxes will increase revenue, they clearly either have no understanding of even the basics of economics or they are so busy pushing their own agenda that they are blinded to reality.



The excise taxes of the past could never pay for all the government programs we have now.

The real answer is not to cut taxes but to cut spending. I don't care what we do to taxes -- until we cut spending things are going to be in a mess. Taxes are the symptom -- spending is the disease.

I personally think that we should have a balanced budget. We should pay for all of our spending out of taxes. If we had to raise taxes to 75%, then what it would really do is show to everyone what the real cost of our spending is. As long as our spending depends on borrowing so much money, nothing is going to be fixed.

Fix spending and taxes will follow. Trying to fix taxes without fixing spending first is nothing but foolishness.

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul replied often during his 2012 presidential campaign that, while the FairTax isn't perfect, it might allow for an effective tax rate of about 11 percent after a few years of FairTax transitioning (but, I can't find any citation of these statements). He also advocated for repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment which would provide for a 0-percent income-tax rate which worked well for the United States until 1913. Instead, the FairTax rate (with its monthly FairTax Prebate) discussed by its supporters ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax ) suggest that the "[b]ottom line is that the 23% rate works [--] it replaces the revenue generated by the repealed taxes, maintains the real value of federal spending, and imposes no additional fiscal burden on state and local governments." Others note that, because the collection of a FairTax (like an excise tax) is in the form of a sales tax, compliance would be universal and, as transitioning is completed, the rate would likely be reduced. The tax-rate reduction would be realized further with accompanying budget reductions, most notably under a constitutional budget amendment which would restrict annual budgets to a certain percentage of the GDP. But, budgeting is another matter altogether.

Ron Paul has always been against taxes. As such, he has never been a supporter of the Fair Tax. He did say that he would probably vote for it if it ever came to a vote, but he was not a supporter of it.

I'm can't imagine where he would have come up with the 11% figure. There is certainly no reason to believe that such a figure could be possible.



The 23% is really a 30% tax. Something that costs $1 would have thirty cents added to it (30% of $1) for a total of $1.30. The 23% rate is calculated by looking at the percentage of the tax to the total price including the tax: .3/1.3 would give 23.076923%.

By the way, there is one other thing about the Fair Tax that people don't understand. There are claims from the Fair Tax people that by eliminating the hidden taxes in what we buy, the prices would fall so that the new prices with the tax would be about the same as today.

What they don't make clear is that those hidden taxes are mostly in payroll taxes. For businesses to save the the taxes, they would have to reduce the pay of the workers so that the take home pay by the workers with a Fair Tax would be the same as their take home pay now after income taxes are removed. If you dig enough into the details, you can find where they actually admit that fact.

In other words, by design eliminating the income tax and replacing it with the Fair Tax would not change your take-home pay at all. If you take home $2,000 a month today, you would take home $2,000 a month with a Fair Tax -- you would not get those income taxes deducted from your paychecks back at all.

However, that would not be the case for everybody. For those with an employment contract that specified their pay rates (such as unions), they would get that money back. For imports, of which we see more and more, the pay of the manufacturing employees isn't even taxed by the US. So prices would not fall for a great many products and so they would cost more. The result would be a major increase in the cost of living for many people.

If you make $1,000,000 a year or more, you would almost surely come out much better with the Fair Tax. If you make $30,000 a year, you would be spending more in taxes to make up for the enormous tax cuts for the wealthiest.

If you make enough to save money now, with a Fair Tax, you would be spending most or even all of those savings in more taxes.

If you don't believe that, then ask yourself what is going to happen when those earning the most and paying the most in taxes start paying taxes based on their spending in the country. Keeping in mind that the Fair Tax is supposed to raise the same amount in taxes as with the income tax, just who do you think is going to be making up for enormous reduction in taxes now paid by the top 5% of income earners.

indeed. probably why they dream of the days that only rich property owning white men were citizens. so all the rest of us can be slaves or indentured servants(slaves) to them.