JUST: adj. - 1. right or fair; impartial [a just decision] 2. righteous; upright [a just man] 3. deserved; merited [just praise] 4. legally right; lawful; rightful 5. proper, fitting, etc. [a just balance of colors] 6. well-founded; reasonable [a just suspicion] 7. Correct or true [a just report] 8. accurate; exact [a just measure].

Those are all the adjective definitions of "just" in my dictionary, obviously the adverb definitions would not apply.

Truth be told, we could nitpick for days (as we already have) about which definition of which word, "just" or "fair," is being referred to when leftists refer to the progressive income tax as "fair."

But this is such an utter waste of time that I just don't wish to devote any more time to it. The bottom line is, whether one considers it "fair" or not, it has been such an irredeemable failure since its inception in 1913 that it matters not how one characterizes it.

What we should be debating is the actual merits of a progressive national retail sales tax on the end-consumption of all new goods and services over a progressive, graduated tax on all income no matter from whence it is derived.

I think I have laid out a very compelling case for the Fair Tax and yet no one has yet adressed that or countered with why a massively bloated and corrupt income tax is better.

Under the Fair Tax compliance costs would be the tiniest FRACTION of 100's of billions wasted on complying with the income tax. Politicians could no longer hide taxes on rank-and-file citizens by hiding them in direct income taxes, excises, imposts, or duties on corporations (no company actually pays these taxes as, like all other costs of production, they are simply included in the price of their products or services as a cost of doing business and it is the end consumers of those products or services who thus pay those taxes, unbeknownst to them, because they cannot pass those taxes on, being end consumers and all).

Under the Fair Tax politicians and big businesses would no longer be able to manipulate the tax code to serve crony capitalist ends. No one would be forced to pay the Fair Tax as the prebate covers spending on the basic necessities and thus only unnecessary expenditures would be taxed, and only if those were made on NEW products or services.

Because there would be no corporate income taxes, America would become a haven for international businesses who would leap to locate facilities and plants here bringing millions of new, high-paying jobs to this country. And tourists to America would also be paying the Fair Tax and thus contributing to our federal revenue (as opposed to just local revenues now).

I could write for pages on just why the Fair Tax is so incredibly superior to our current broken and corrupt income tax system. In fact I did a short 20-page paper on this very topic for one of my college English classes and got an A+ on it, and that from a liberal professor who was a former journalist and a published author.

So rather than nitpicking on one single word, "fair," what say we actually get into debating the actual issue at hand - the Fair Tax vs. the income tax?

Ah... I see. Don't wish to debate the actual merits of the Fair Tax over the income tax do we?

Rather have meaningless quibbles of the definition of words would you?

Pity that.

This thread is an illustration of what happens when someone on the left is presented with a position that has substantial merit, would accomplish the goals so many leftists SAY they favor, but would do so by transferring power from the government to the people.

They either quibble over the most trivial aspects of the position or flee the debate altogether as any further opposition would expose them as actually favoring government control over our lives.

Leftists don't believe the rank-and-file citizen is capable of solving their own problems without the government. They are statists who are but a hop, skip and a jump from favoring a totalitarian government.

The language is all there, the collectivist desires all to present.

It is but a matter of time if we contine on the path we are now on... which truly is the road to serfdom.

The problem with this 'fair tax' is that once you've bought everything you need (i.e. rich) all you'll be paying tax on is a very small amount of annual purchases.

If you spend a significant proportion of your money in other jurisdictions, where there is no sales tax (i.e. rich) you won't be paying any tax.

If you need to spend your entire income as soon as you receive it on food, clothes, accommodation, transport (i.e. poor) you will be paying a staggeringly higher proportion of your income in taxes than that paid by a rich person.

How is tax on property sales going to be collected? Or is there going to be no tax on property sales, the one thing (other than cars and boats - which can be bought abroad and sailed back to the US) on which rich people spend most of their money?

Just because a country's income tax system is inequitable doesn't mean income tax is intrinsically unfair.

Just because a tax proposal is called 'Fair tax' doesn't make it fairer than income tax.

Your problem in America is a) most people seem to think they get the best results from electing people who are no smarter than they are themselves, and b) you have allowed your country to become the prey of rich people - look at the ridiculous sums of money Mitt Romney spent in Florida, to us in the UK that just stinks, buying an election (we put an end to it 150 years ago). As a result, you can't get elected unless either you are dumb and can be controlled by wealthy interests or you are really really rich. In either case, it's no wonder the less well off in the US are really pissed about what's happening in the country. The sad part is that most of them seem too stupid to identify where the problem lies. Hence they buy into ideas like Fair Tax.

The Fair Tax is levied on ALL purchases of NEW GOODS and SERVICES. Every trip to your lawyer or doctor, every meal at a fancy restaurant, every stay at a posh hotel, every rental of a luxury car or charter of a luxury Lear jet or yacht, the hiring of that fancy party planner and crack cooking staff for that special affair, that remodel of the summer home in the Hamptons, the workers, the materials, the furniture, the new fixtures and appliances, that fancy accountant, that private masseuse and personal trainer, that expensive new bauble from Tiffany’s for the significant other, ALL of the things one associates with the activities of the “hated rich,” ALL of them will be subject to the FAIR TAX.

You clearly have not even the slightest clue as to just how much money the wealthy actually spend and what they spend it on. The spending of the wealthy keeps 100’s of thousands of people gainfully employed meeting those needs.

Another point you seem to be missing is that the wealthy, no being freed from capital gains taxes and death taxes, will have more disposable income and will dispose of it as they always have, but that disposal will now BENEFIT the federal revenue.



A big “if” for which you present no figures. Get back to me when you’ve done your homework on this point.



There is something you are not considering here, and that is the staggeringly higher proportion of their income that lower income Americans are already paying in the hidden taxes embedded in the prices of every single product and service they now purchase – a hidden tax of about 21%.

The corporate income tax is nothing more than a covert means of taxing the people without them realizing it. A company can NEVER pay taxes because they do not print money. ANY money a company has to pay for ANYTHING – labor, material, equipment, rent, utilities, warehousing, distribution, dividends, profits AND TAXES – comes from the sales of their products or services. All of those costs are embedded in the prices of their products and services and it is the end consumer who bears those costs.

The Fair Tax does away with this hidden burden on the poor and compensates for the regressive nature of a flat, one-rate, tax – whether that be a flat income tax or a flat sales tax – by establishing a rebate to all Americans on any taxes they pay on the purchase of the basic necessities (food, rent, utilities, etc.) up to the established national poverty levels of income. In point of fact, this “rebate” is actually paid to all American’s in advance of that spending in the form of a “pre-bate,” which will be direct deposited or (more likely) be put on something much like a debit card (a system we already have in place for certain government benefit programs).

And one final point respecting low-income Americans, the Fair Tax is only levied on NEW goods, so the poor could escape federal taxation almost entirely if they wished by purchasing only used goods.



New homes would be subject to the Fair Tax. Used homes would not. And I would hardly say that property is the one thing on which the wealthy spend most of their money. Do you have a factual reference for that claim? Or is that just another off-the-cuff WAG (Wild-Assed-Guess)?



Let’s leave the word “fair” out of this, it is not necessary to address “fairness” to attack the income tax system. The income tax code is the easiest means of practicing crony capitalism ever devised in this country. Before 1913, such a tax was unconstitutional in this country, and for a very good reason, as our current dilemma clearly illustrates! Ever since its inception, the income tax code has been manipulated to pick winners and losers in the private sector. It has been abused by politicians and the wealth almost from day one and has grown so massively in size and complexity that it now costs HUNDERDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to comply with it every year! It is a MASSIVE waste of wealth and it is a tool that only serves those with the monetary means to manipulate it to their advantage!



It is not its name that makes it “fairer” than an income tax, it’s the fact that it eliminates previously hidden embedded tax burden on ALL Americans and ultimately lowers the tax rate they pay when the elimination of this hidden burden is factored in, that makes it “fairer.” It is the fact that NO American will pay ANY taxes until the basic necessities of life have been met, that makes it “fairer.” It is the fact NO American need bear their very soul to the federal government in an annual income return and can put the money spent on tax compliance to more profitable uses that makes it “fairer.” It is the fact that, with a ZERO PERCENT corporate tax rate America would become a premiere destination for existing and new multinational businesses that would add MILLIONS of new, higher-paying jobs for ALL Americans, especially lower-income Americans!

As I’ve said many, many times before, I could write an entire book (and three have already been written on it) on the many virtues of the Fair Tax, but that’s because I’ve been directly involved in pushing for this legislation on the Hill (our nation’s capital for Brits not up on our political lingo) for years!



Rather than hurling insults on topics of which you know less than nothing, perhaps you’d care to provide a citation backing up this outrageous claim.



Again, yet another reason to do away with that corrupt, crony-capitalist tool, the federal income tax system!



The so-called “poor” have no one to blame but themselves for the sorry state of America today. It is the poor who vote in overwhelming numbers to elect those Democrats, leftists and RINO’s who promise them the most money from the federal coffer!

As for your self-righteous attitude respecting the difference in elections in the US and UK, we have completely different systems of government. Our elections are held on fixed dates that cannot be changed, thus candidates have a much longer time in which they can campaign (and raise money for those longer campaigns). In the UK, the PM can call for an election anytime (even timing the call for an election at a particularly advantageous time for his/her party) and can set the date of the election (like in 2005 when Tony Blair announced a general for May 5th on April 5th, leaving just one month for campaigning). There is nothing, in as much as I can see, that is inherently better in the political machine of the UK than that in the US. Your country has just as many problems, if not MORE, than we have in America. And I would venture to guess that your tax system is being manipulated to pick winners and losers by those in power just as ours is here.



And here you expose YOUR ignorance on a topic on which you presume to lecture me!

And I don’t call a person “stupid” unless they are genuinely mentally challenged; otherwise it is an offensive and uncalled for insult.

A more accurate term when it comes to the American people is “ignorance,” which is something that can be fixed through education, something that could occur if we would but get the federal government out of the education business. You see, it is the federal government that has the greatest stake at perpetuating our corrupt, crony-capitalist income tax system as it is an ENORMOUS source of power for them! And thus their involvement in education has been directed at indoctrinating all Americans in school as to the virtues of big-government and keeping them ignorant of things like basic economics, constitutional republicanism and how the government actually works.

Naturally, these are things you would have already been cognizant of had you done your homework before spouting off on a topic on which you are clearly ill-informed.

It's all Bush's fault.

But of course.

Why is it that I don't think you actually believe that?

And this is yet another thread abandoned by the left because there are no rational arguments to oppose my positions here.

And thus there is silence from the left here.

Of course the excuse for a lack of a response will be my "condescension" to the leftists here. But this a just a dodge. Leftists cannot refute my positions, and that is why this tread died with my last response.

"Let's leave the word 'fair' out of this"? Can we spell 'I-R-O-N-Y'?

"
As for your self-righteous attitude respecting the difference in elections in the US and UK, we have completely different systems of government. Our elections are held on fixed dates that cannot be changed, thus candidates have a much longer time in which they can campaign (and raise money for those longer campaigns). In the UK, the PM can call for an election anytime (even timing the call for an election at a particularly advantageous time for his/her party) and can set the date of the election (like in 2005 when Tony Blair announced a general for May 5th on April 5th, leaving just one month for campaigning). There is nothing, in as much as I can see, that is inherently better in the political machine of the UK than that in the US. Your country has just as many problems, if not MORE, than we have in America. And I would venture to guess that your tax system is being manipulated to pick winners and losers by those in power just as ours is here."
A Prime Minister certainly cannot announce an election at any time, and never has been able to. He (or the one she) is however able to resign at any point, which might well precipitate a general election - or it might simply result in a new Prime Minister.
We do have a lot of problems in this country, well spotted. But at least you cannot buy the election over here. It is symptomatic of your problem that you seem to see a prolonged election campaign as something that justifies horrendous expenditure. It's very simple to have laws, as we do, that prohibit the expenditure that candidates are permitted, mandates equal-time presentation on broadcast media for any election, and rules on broadcasting generally which prevent the kind of vile and distasteful slagging off of your opponent which is an uncivilised badge of American politics.

You're right to pick me up for saying "property sales, the one thing...on which rich people spend most of their money?"

What I intended to write was 'the one thing on which most rich people spend their money'.

You say I haven't done my homework: here's a question for you. What proportion of their income do people like senior management of global companies earning several million dollars per annum spend on things which will attract your 'fair tax'?