The fair taxers are basically pro-business and anti IRS, but changing to a consumption tax might help Labor even more than business. They say that it is revenue neutral and they would exempt business to business transactions.
I see it as a gold mine to support our government and would not exempt most business purchases
We neeed more tax income to fund our entitlements and even health insurance. Business should not be expected to pay an employees health insurance. Better that it be paid for by taxes on all products including imports and items produced by machines.
Bill Gates has his software written in India, a machine puts it on disks and so far little has gone into Social Security or income taxesd. The machine can be depreciated.
How about the sky boxes and conventions in Las Vegas.They should be taxed.
Look at the high profits in CD's Movies Athletic events. They are all not labor intensive and contribute little to our infrastructure. Imagine getting $100 out of a $400 Bowl Ticket.
I think there is a wealth of non-essentialand imported items that should be taxed at at least 25% to support our nation.
I'm assuredly over in the Progressive tax/left/democratic socialist camp. But that said, I have watched the tax movement and also get why people want to plain shut down the IRS. My concern on a consumption/flat tax is it appears to be highly regressive. I think that's really bad in so many words. At the same time, I am completely aware and just how much of the tax burden are dumped upon w2 workers (employees) and that too seems somewhat regressive. So, ok, you wrote a blog post, let's see some real analysis on what is going to do what. I have on the middle column a nonpartisan organization, Citizens for tax justice which does quite a good bit of objective analysis on the tax code. Then, that blog, tradereform, a group affiliated with it, presents a VAT policy for tax imbalances, which I think after a lot of study, they are dead on correct, it's a good idea.
But the flat tax so far I see it being really unjust to the middle class and the poor and giving the super rich even more of a free pass than is another going on here. That's mean, I believe taxes are a good way as a redistribution of wealth or a final leveler, not too much mind you, for I also believe in incentives for someone to get rich and they deserve to get rich when they work hard and so on, but assuredly some aspect needs to give back to equalize society. We all know things like the hedge fund, LLC loopholes enabling them to pay themselves a 15% tax rate is an obvious abuse. Keeping capital offshore as corporations do in order to not pay any taxes is another....
Yet, the idea of taxing consumption instead of production sure seems like something to explore in terms of incentives versus disincentives.
I also know that one of the advantages of using illegal labor, underground economy is to avoid paying workman's comp, unemployment insurance, FICA and so on.
So, let's look at a specific proposal you want to analyze and let's pick it apart.
Well, this is certainly a welcome message considering the last week.
My own concern is that they really shut it down versus the current legislation they had which would have affected just 1% of all futures commodity trading in energy.
All of what you have so finely shown has occured during our presently so called progressive income tax. Most all of our nation's income comes from taxes on Labor. Social Security is wonderful, but it should not be financed by a tax on labor. 66,000 pages of IRS loopholes don't help the poor. The poor do not have mortgage interest or property taxes to deduct, neither do they have IRA's and 4O1 K's.
Working and Investing are both desirable we should not penalize either one when it is done more often or better.
Taxing only American workers and investors in a highly automated global economy is stupid.
I do not favor the FairTax as it is written, but it deserves consideration. I believe it could be ammended to support health care and social security. It would tax industries that are not labor intensive, imports and outsourced labor. These are things we are not taxed now. A couple of things make it much less regressive tax than you might think
And certainly trying to get Obama to move to more middle class focused policy is a worthy effort.
Myself, I believe that if one gets enough true Progressives and Populists into Congress, well, they write the bills and they vote on the bills, that might be the real power to obtain more policy, legislation that is in the interests of most of America. American workers, US middle class, your "average joe" who doesn't have $5B dollars to influence policy.
In '06 we had a lot of good candidates running who truly were trade reformers, strong middle class, labor advocates. But, if they dump in a ton of money to a deaf ear in the Presidential race, what's the point on it?
the two national union federations (AFL-CIO and CtW) poured around $80 million into the Democratic Congressional races. More so than anyone else, that was what won these races. In 2008, the plan is for the AFL-CIO alone to more than double that.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The AFL-CIO and its unions said Friday they will spend an estimated $200 million on the 2008 elections, with the nation's largest labor federation devoting $53 million exclusively to grass-roots mobilization.
In addition, the AFL-CIO said it would deploy more than 200,000 volunteers leading up to the election, with special focus on battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Obama threw the AFL-CIO a curveball though when he backed out of public funding, and said that he wanted to get 527 groups out of politics. Move-On has already shuttered its 527. 527s are one of the few (legal) ways for institutional donors to pour the kind of money the AFL-CIO wnats to into the presidential race.
Obama's going to eventually have to back out of this and let the 527s come out to play with the groups from the right, and is going to come of as a hypocrite.
This is yet another example of Obama being tone deaf on these things.
This site is even officially non-partisan (although obviously littered with people from the left) and the reason it was set up that way was to analyze policy, votes objectively, analyze economics objectively, but coming from a people powered perspective. If the facts stack up, by all means write it, even if it's unorthodox or goes against party lines.
That's why I blog at least, I want true, detailed change in our government. But, I don't think we should be surprised, selling out the United States has been going on for a long time, certainly accelerated starting with Reagan.
So, who is running that is truly a fair trader, extensively labor focused, middle class focused? Odds are they won't have large campaign finance resources in that case.
Kay Hagan (D-NC Sen) is running against incumbent Elizabeth Dole who might e a Progressive Possible.
Thats the problem really. We can expect no meaningful trade and economic reform as long as we have the free trading DLCer's like Pelosi, Rangel, Emanuel, Hoyer et al in leadership postions in congress. A good place to start would be to toss these economic traitors out on their kiesters next election cycle.
Unfortunately we have the mother of all lesser of evils choices to make for president - the neo-liberal global candidate, and the cowboy capitalism neoconservative global candidate. Which one will do the least damage? which one might bring some incremental improvement? It is really not clear at this point.
Obama is pitching a brand of globalism with increased social safety nets - really just a band aid on the overall structural economic problems, while McCain is pitching the notion that supply side voodoo and its cousin "free" trade isn't working for everyone because we simply aren't doing enough of it
On trade they both stink. On Obama's economic team is a bunch of scary globalist academics, and on McCains team a bunch of big corporate shills.
we are so screwed. I think we have to look beyond the presidential race picking the candidate that we agree on other issues and feel will do the least harm, and focus more efforts on bringing in more populist leaning candidates in congressional and the other down ticket races to reinforce the wave of labor leaning and anti war dems from 06, and repudiate Pelosi's cowardice.
I am deeply disappointed in the major blogs for they turned into glorified cheerleading camps instead of analyzing policy positions, votes, and demanding policy change. I saw what you are pointing out also and that's just not the change we need.
So, here we are. John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, had strong words when Furman was made Obama's economic adviser. strong words about corporate money and influence in the Democratic party.
I think we need to locate Congressional races and see who has overall good positions.
I know Barry Welsh (IN-6th) assuredly does.
I hope the AFL-CIO doesn't pour money into the Presidential race and saves it for any Congressional races.
Now 60% of the American people look up information on candidates via the Internet. Getting the details out there on good candidates can only help.
I think the reason we saw primary blow outs on Clinton in some states is because she started becoming a fire breathing Populist, abet too late. They try to spin it all as cultural or race and so on, but she was really touting some truly Populist positions once she got rid of Mark Penn.
I could already see that things were not as they appeared when Pelosi banned Labor from a meeting with the new Democratic freshman swept into office in 2006.
There's a war on for the heart of our party, and it seems that Speaker Pelosi has chosen sides. In a story that lamentably hasn't recieved the coverage that it deserves, Speaker Pelosi shows that she clearly didn't get the message of last month's election. The base of people power is populism, the sovereignty of the people.
Speaker Pelosi has a arranged a series of seminars for freshman representatives. On Wednesday, December 5, freshman representatives will be subjected to indoctrination in economics of fucking the people who sent you to Washington over by Robert Rubin, a free trade fanatic from the Clinton administration. It gets worse, Speaker Pelosi banned Labor from sending representatives to offer an opposing view. Never in my life did I think that I would see a Democratic speaker of the House ban Labor from talking to the people's representatives.
As far as I know, the later meeting with labor that all the Pelosi apologists kept saying would happen never occurred.
And the Hamilton Project?
They're the source of almost all of Obama's economic policy.
Which I suppose shouldn't be surprising, given that Obama was the keynote speaker at their launch.
As for transformational change, I wrote about that last year.
Sen. Obama isn't offering up transformational change. Unfortunately, it looks like things have to get even worse before they get better. The aftermath of Katrina woke most of American up to the realities of American life, and started a real discussion about what's happened to the social and economic life of this country.
The release of that populist genie into the electorate scared the living hell out of the Rubinites, and they've been priming Sen. Obama as their man for the White House ever since they launched the Hamilton Project. Their purpose is to discredit economic populism, and insert in its place a milquetoast liberalism that refuses to recognize that neo-liberal economic policies have failed us.
That is the first time I have seen a chart showing the breakdowns by wages of the stagnation in the mid and lower brackets and the tremendous increases at the top brackets. - The usual right wing response is "see average wages are up!" - because they take the wages as a whole - and I have long suspected that the huge gains at the top skewed the numbers. would be interesting to see a trend lin of the totals of all combined overlayed on the chart
My question always becomes, how much more does the playing field have to be slanted in favor of the haves and have mores before it actually starts trickling own? I think we all know the answer.
The fact is that under the old New Deal we had four decades of unprecendented and sustainable growth as well as a more shared prosperity and this was during a time when the taxes on corporations and the wealthy were much much higher than they are today. Now we have some of the lowest upper bracket and corporate taxes since pre New Deal and yet the economy - at least for most of us- is in the crapper. The right's response is along the lines of - "the reason it isn't working is because we just aren't doing enough supply side"
This is part of the reason the market shifted to trucks in the 80s - trucks offered spartan utilitarian reliable vehicles at affordable prices. Todays trucks are just as loaded up with power accessories and needles options as cars are - and the prices escalated accordingly, and effciency and reliability went down as maintenace and other costs of ownership rose.
The other prime advantage of simpler and basic car designs is that the average backyard mechanic was able to makes simple repairs and do the routine maintenance himself - todays cars that is virtually impossible - and you can't even get a service tech to lift the hood for less than $150
You bring up an excellent point - what did happen to the true economy car?
Basically the thinking among automakers, and especially in detroit, but they are all guilty to some extent, is to compensate for poor quality, efficiency and style and justification for higher sticker price by packing them full of geegaws and gimmicks.
Personally I prefer a more utilitarian vehicle with spartan appointments and an absense of useless features such as power and heated seats and other unecessary power gadgets and accessories. As my grampa used to say about power accessories - "its just more stuff that can go wrong with it"
As long as the price is right, the reliability is good and it gets me to point a to point b without a lot of expense in fuel and maintenace then thats the car for me.
one of the huge problems facing China is dependence on export markets for growth. In 2005 or 2006, the Economist reported that 43% of Chinese GDP derives from exports.
Which means that about half of their economy is dependent on exports to other countries.
I've discovered they do quite a bit of games with different economic tools. There tariff schedule for example, they will only lower it after they have captured and now control a particular product or industry. I saw Shanghai crash last night and bankers are saying there is way too much speculation money in China.
We're sure hearing that word a lot of recent days but I'm unsure of how much of their stock markets is speculation.
But, looks like you were on target in your contrary piece.
China, the world’s second largest oil consumer, will increase retail gasoline and diesel prices by 1,000 yuan ($145.50) per tonne from Friday, according to industry sources.
….Oil prices tumbled $3 following the news.
“Even with the $18.60 (per barrel) increase in price (Chinese fuel prices) are still well below the global market and the subsidy amounts to something on the order of $56 per barrel [at a level equal to $78.69].”
And it's why if Barak Obama appears to be beating John McCain, this Oregonian will be voting for Chuck Baldwin as the ONLY person running for President in any party, major or minor, who "gets it" from my point of view.
Until we reverse our demographic problems and our reliance on other countries for our security and basic products to live, this country will slowly become a third world slave state to debt service.
The FairTax http://www.fairtax.org
is good place to start!
The fair taxers are basically pro-business and anti IRS, but changing to a consumption tax might help Labor even more than business. They say that it is revenue neutral and they would exempt business to business transactions.
I see it as a gold mine to support our government and would not exempt most business purchases
We neeed more tax income to fund our entitlements and even health insurance. Business should not be expected to pay an employees health insurance. Better that it be paid for by taxes on all products including imports and items produced by machines.
Bill Gates has his software written in India, a machine puts it on disks and so far little has gone into Social Security or income taxesd. The machine can be depreciated.
How about the sky boxes and conventions in Las Vegas.They should be taxed.
Look at the high profits in CD's Movies Athletic events. They are all not labor intensive and contribute little to our infrastructure. Imagine getting $100 out of a $400 Bowl Ticket.
I think there is a wealth of non-essentialand imported items that should be taxed at at least 25% to support our nation.
I'm assuredly over in the Progressive tax/left/democratic socialist camp. But that said, I have watched the tax movement and also get why people want to plain shut down the IRS. My concern on a consumption/flat tax is it appears to be highly regressive. I think that's really bad in so many words. At the same time, I am completely aware and just how much of the tax burden are dumped upon w2 workers (employees) and that too seems somewhat regressive. So, ok, you wrote a blog post, let's see some real analysis on what is going to do what. I have on the middle column a nonpartisan organization, Citizens for tax justice which does quite a good bit of objective analysis on the tax code. Then, that blog, tradereform, a group affiliated with it, presents a VAT policy for tax imbalances, which I think after a lot of study, they are dead on correct, it's a good idea.
But the flat tax so far I see it being really unjust to the middle class and the poor and giving the super rich even more of a free pass than is another going on here. That's mean, I believe taxes are a good way as a redistribution of wealth or a final leveler, not too much mind you, for I also believe in incentives for someone to get rich and they deserve to get rich when they work hard and so on, but assuredly some aspect needs to give back to equalize society. We all know things like the hedge fund, LLC loopholes enabling them to pay themselves a 15% tax rate is an obvious abuse. Keeping capital offshore as corporations do in order to not pay any taxes is another....
Yet, the idea of taxing consumption instead of production sure seems like something to explore in terms of incentives versus disincentives.
I also know that one of the advantages of using illegal labor, underground economy is to avoid paying workman's comp, unemployment insurance, FICA and so on.
So, let's look at a specific proposal you want to analyze and let's pick it apart.
Obama - Enron Loophole.
Well, this is certainly a welcome message considering the last week.
My own concern is that they really shut it down versus the current legislation they had which would have affected just 1% of all futures commodity trading in energy.
All of what you have so finely shown has occured during our presently so called progressive income tax. Most all of our nation's income comes from taxes on Labor. Social Security is wonderful, but it should not be financed by a tax on labor. 66,000 pages of IRS loopholes don't help the poor. The poor do not have mortgage interest or property taxes to deduct, neither do they have IRA's and 4O1 K's.
Working and Investing are both desirable we should not penalize either one when it is done more often or better.
Taxing only American workers and investors in a highly automated global economy is stupid.
I do not favor the FairTax as it is written, but it deserves consideration. I believe it could be ammended to support health care and social security. It would tax industries that are not labor intensive, imports and outsourced labor. These are things we are not taxed now. A couple of things make it much less regressive tax than you might think
And certainly trying to get Obama to move to more middle class focused policy is a worthy effort.
Myself, I believe that if one gets enough true Progressives and Populists into Congress, well, they write the bills and they vote on the bills, that might be the real power to obtain more policy, legislation that is in the interests of most of America. American workers, US middle class, your "average joe" who doesn't have $5B dollars to influence policy.
In '06 we had a lot of good candidates running who truly were trade reformers, strong middle class, labor advocates. But, if they dump in a ton of money to a deaf ear in the Presidential race, what's the point on it?
the two national union federations (AFL-CIO and CtW) poured around $80 million into the Democratic Congressional races. More so than anyone else, that was what won these races. In 2008, the plan is for the AFL-CIO alone to more than double that.
In addition, the AFL-CIO said it would deploy more than 200,000 volunteers leading up to the election, with special focus on battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Obama threw the AFL-CIO a curveball though when he backed out of public funding, and said that he wanted to get 527 groups out of politics. Move-On has already shuttered its 527. 527s are one of the few (legal) ways for institutional donors to pour the kind of money the AFL-CIO wnats to into the presidential race.
Obama's going to eventually have to back out of this and let the 527s come out to play with the groups from the right, and is going to come of as a hypocrite.
This is yet another example of Obama being tone deaf on these things.
This site is even officially non-partisan (although obviously littered with people from the left) and the reason it was set up that way was to analyze policy, votes objectively, analyze economics objectively, but coming from a people powered perspective. If the facts stack up, by all means write it, even if it's unorthodox or goes against party lines.
That's why I blog at least, I want true, detailed change in our government. But, I don't think we should be surprised, selling out the United States has been going on for a long time, certainly accelerated starting with Reagan.
So, who is running that is truly a fair trader, extensively labor focused, middle class focused? Odds are they won't have large campaign finance resources in that case.
Kay Hagan (D-NC Sen) is running against incumbent Elizabeth Dole who might e a Progressive Possible.
Thats the problem really. We can expect no meaningful trade and economic reform as long as we have the free trading DLCer's like Pelosi, Rangel, Emanuel, Hoyer et al in leadership postions in congress. A good place to start would be to toss these economic traitors out on their kiesters next election cycle.
Unfortunately we have the mother of all lesser of evils choices to make for president - the neo-liberal global candidate, and the cowboy capitalism neoconservative global candidate. Which one will do the least damage? which one might bring some incremental improvement? It is really not clear at this point.
Obama is pitching a brand of globalism with increased social safety nets - really just a band aid on the overall structural economic problems, while McCain is pitching the notion that supply side voodoo and its cousin "free" trade isn't working for everyone because we simply aren't doing enough of it
On trade they both stink. On Obama's economic team is a bunch of scary globalist academics, and on McCains team a bunch of big corporate shills.
we are so screwed. I think we have to look beyond the presidential race picking the candidate that we agree on other issues and feel will do the least harm, and focus more efforts on bringing in more populist leaning candidates in congressional and the other down ticket races to reinforce the wave of labor leaning and anti war dems from 06, and repudiate Pelosi's cowardice.
I am deeply disappointed in the major blogs for they turned into glorified cheerleading camps instead of analyzing policy positions, votes, and demanding policy change. I saw what you are pointing out also and that's just not the change we need.
So, here we are. John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, had strong words when Furman was made Obama's economic adviser. strong words about corporate money and influence in the Democratic party.
I think we need to locate Congressional races and see who has overall good positions.
I know Barry Welsh (IN-6th) assuredly does.
I hope the AFL-CIO doesn't pour money into the Presidential race and saves it for any Congressional races.
Now 60% of the American people look up information on candidates via the Internet. Getting the details out there on good candidates can only help.
I think the reason we saw primary blow outs on Clinton in some states is because she started becoming a fire breathing Populist, abet too late. They try to spin it all as cultural or race and so on, but she was really touting some truly Populist positions once she got rid of Mark Penn.
I could already see that things were not as they appeared when Pelosi banned Labor from a meeting with the new Democratic freshman swept into office in 2006.
As far as I know, the later meeting with labor that all the Pelosi apologists kept saying would happen never occurred.
And the Hamilton Project?
They're the source of almost all of Obama's economic policy.
Which I suppose shouldn't be surprising, given that Obama was the keynote speaker at their launch.
As for transformational change, I wrote about that last year.
Sen. Obama isn't offering up transformational change. Unfortunately, it looks like things have to get even worse before they get better. The aftermath of Katrina woke most of American up to the realities of American life, and started a real discussion about what's happened to the social and economic life of this country.
The release of that populist genie into the electorate scared the living hell out of the Rubinites, and they've been priming Sen. Obama as their man for the White House ever since they launched the Hamilton Project. Their purpose is to discredit economic populism, and insert in its place a milquetoast liberalism that refuses to recognize that neo-liberal economic policies have failed us.
Saw your name and just had to say Hi. Michigan's unemployment rate hit 8.5%. They said it was summer job seekers and Amercan Axle.
That is the first time I have seen a chart showing the breakdowns by wages of the stagnation in the mid and lower brackets and the tremendous increases at the top brackets. - The usual right wing response is "see average wages are up!" - because they take the wages as a whole - and I have long suspected that the huge gains at the top skewed the numbers. would be interesting to see a trend lin of the totals of all combined overlayed on the chart
My question always becomes, how much more does the playing field have to be slanted in favor of the haves and have mores before it actually starts trickling own? I think we all know the answer.
The fact is that under the old New Deal we had four decades of unprecendented and sustainable growth as well as a more shared prosperity and this was during a time when the taxes on corporations and the wealthy were much much higher than they are today. Now we have some of the lowest upper bracket and corporate taxes since pre New Deal and yet the economy - at least for most of us- is in the crapper. The right's response is along the lines of - "the reason it isn't working is because we just aren't doing enough supply side"
An excellent article
This is part of the reason the market shifted to trucks in the 80s - trucks offered spartan utilitarian reliable vehicles at affordable prices. Todays trucks are just as loaded up with power accessories and needles options as cars are - and the prices escalated accordingly, and effciency and reliability went down as maintenace and other costs of ownership rose.
The other prime advantage of simpler and basic car designs is that the average backyard mechanic was able to makes simple repairs and do the routine maintenance himself - todays cars that is virtually impossible - and you can't even get a service tech to lift the hood for less than $150
You bring up an excellent point - what did happen to the true economy car?
Basically the thinking among automakers, and especially in detroit, but they are all guilty to some extent, is to compensate for poor quality, efficiency and style and justification for higher sticker price by packing them full of geegaws and gimmicks.
Personally I prefer a more utilitarian vehicle with spartan appointments and an absense of useless features such as power and heated seats and other unecessary power gadgets and accessories. As my grampa used to say about power accessories - "its just more stuff that can go wrong with it"
As long as the price is right, the reliability is good and it gets me to point a to point b without a lot of expense in fuel and maintenace then thats the car for me.
Sadly very few auto makers are making such cars
one of the huge problems facing China is dependence on export markets for growth. In 2005 or 2006, the Economist reported that 43% of Chinese GDP derives from exports.
Which means that about half of their economy is dependent on exports to other countries.
I've discovered they do quite a bit of games with different economic tools. There tariff schedule for example, they will only lower it after they have captured and now control a particular product or industry. I saw Shanghai crash last night and bankers are saying there is way too much speculation money in China.
We're sure hearing that word a lot of recent days but I'm unsure of how much of their stock markets is speculation.
But, looks like you were on target in your contrary piece.
GAME ON! re Chinese Subsidies:
China, the world’s second largest oil consumer, will increase retail gasoline and diesel prices by 1,000 yuan ($145.50) per tonne from Friday, according to industry sources.
….Oil prices tumbled $3 following the news.
“Even with the $18.60 (per barrel) increase in price (Chinese fuel prices) are still well below the global market and the subsidy amounts to something on the order of $56 per barrel [at a level equal to $78.69].”
And it's why if Barak Obama appears to be beating John McCain, this Oregonian will be voting for Chuck Baldwin as the ONLY person running for President in any party, major or minor, who "gets it" from my point of view.
Until we reverse our demographic problems and our reliance on other countries for our security and basic products to live, this country will slowly become a third world slave state to debt service.
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