[ale] fair tax

[Byron A Jeff]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2007 at 12:15:00PM -0400, Matt Kubilus wrote:
> > Determining what the "necessities of life" are and how much they cost is up to
> > the politicians, hopefully with input from the Census bureau and various industries.
> >
> >
> 
> Shudders.  They are so good at determining a liveable minimum wage,
> I'm sure they'll be great with keeping up with the cost of, and
> determining the nature of, the 'necessities of life'.

Probably not.

> 
> You cannot give an impoverished family one big check at the begining
> of the year.  This is the biggest problem I see with 'fair'tax scheme.

According to the sites I've seen, the prebate will be issued monthly,
not yearly.

>  What do you choose: shoes for jimmy (the bubble gum holding them
> together ain't working so well), bread for dinner, or oh crap Lisa
> just broke her arm and you ain't got insurance.  What do you choose,
> which one do you fix, how do you plan for a year of crisis when your
> budget is on a knife's edge?  And that's for the honest working below
> poverty family, I don't expect many here to relate to this, but exists
> in large numbers in our country.
> 
> What about the darker side of poverty, I gaurantee that you will see a
> huge spike in  drug use and crime at about the same time every year
> with this plan.   'Hey joe homeless who get run out of the mental
> institue, here's a big check, have fun!!!'

I guess the issue will be a bit smaller having it issued monthly.

> The prebate check is irresponsible.  Increase the liveable minimum
> wage, 0 taxes on food, and you might actual get me to agree on some
> fair-tax points.

No arguments on minimum wage. I still see issues with food being singled
out. Should filet mignon, lobster and cavier (classic luxury foods) really
be tax free? What about shelter and clothing?

For it to work, exempted items needs to be minimized. So I'm all for
taxing food, clothing, and shelter along with other goods and services
and refunding (prefunding?) the presumed tax on basic necessities.

BAJ