🚀 go-pugleaf

Bill Mechlenburg (mechlen@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: 1.  A national sales tax would have to be in the order of 30 to 40% on
: top of state and local sales tax to produce enough revenue to replace
: the present income tax.  This high a tax would be a huge incentive for
: cheating and evasion requiring a bureaucratic army of auditors and
: enforcers.

Only 18% if there were no exceptions.

: 2.  A national sales tax would be regressive in the extreme.  It would
: massively increase the cost of living adding millions to the number of
: people in poverty, on welfare and on income supplimentation schemes. 
: At the very time we should be shrinking welfare and all of it's
: problems we would be increasing it.

Every business that touches any item you buy is currently passing on its
corporate income tax to you.  I've seen estimates that this increases the
cost of goods 30% to 50%.  A $100 bag of groceries would cost *less* after 
switching to a NST.  ($100/1.3)*1.18 = $90.77.  

: 3.  This tax is popularily called a consumption tax to encourage
: savings.  Why should we tax consumption?  Consumption is not bad. 
: Consumption is just another phrase for prosperty and high standard of
: living.  Consumtion provides emplyment. Why do we save?  We don't save
: just to fill our matress with money.  We save to invest, increase
: productivity and production so we can CONSUME MORE!

No.  The consumer does not get rich by consuming, the producer does.
Excess production creates wealth and a high standard of living.  

: 4.  The most logical and direct way to encourage adequit saving is to
: stop punishing it by taxing it.  We tax the interest on savings and the
: specious interest that is inflation.  We double tax investment in
: businesses by taxing their profit and then taxing the dividends paid to
: the stock holders.  We tax capital gains punishingly by not allowing
: for inflation which can and does result in taxing fictious profit and
: in some instances taxing an actual loss! 

Yes.  A NST is just what we need.