Political Crossfire Forums

[The Impeacher]

frankly,

i find the term "fair tax" an oxymoron no matter the justification. a tax is a penalty, only it's adminsitration and distrubution is where fairness comes into play.

and no, placing the burden directly on the consumer is patently unfair, imho. the net result is a direct disincentive to purchasing, which too directly relates back to punishing the workers - who are those very consumers.

the best way to assess any tax is on property assets and capital gains - the point being that the resources themselves are taxed - not the "transactions."

[Roy L]

The Impeacher wrote: frankly,
i find the term "fair tax" an oxymoron no matter the justification. a tax is a penalty, only it's adminsitration and distrubution is where fairness comes into play. A tax on economic rents is not a penalty, because the rent's recipients are not contributing anything to production in return. And it is very fair, because it simply recovers publicly created value for the purposes and benefit of the public that creates it.
Quote:
and no, placing the burden directly on the consumer is patently unfair, imho. the net result is a direct disincentive to purchasing, which too directly relates back to punishing the workers - who are those very consumers. Bingo. You have understood what thintheherd has not: taxing consumption makes no sense, because the whole point of economic activity is to enable consumption.
Quote:
the best way to assess any tax is on property assets and capital gains - the point being that the resources themselves are taxed - not the "transactions." You are getting close. Taxing capital gains is not a good idea because it is precisely a tax on a transaction: it tends to reduce market liquidity and impede efficient reallocation of resources. The ideal tax is a tax on the capital value of assets that have the form of rent collection privileges, such as land titles, because the owners are thereby encouraged to seek the most productive use of their assets. Such a tax actually increases production, the exact opposite effect from income and sales taxes, including "Fair"Tax.