You'd think the IRS could tell what you owe...

[Lurker66]

So the socialist Theodor Adorno doesn't like it and justify's it in a way you can't understand it.

That makes sense of why you can't explain it.

The flat tax is what it is. A flat tax. Its lower than 99% of Americans pay right now. Its simple. You can fire the IRS, and hire some book keepers.

Whatd you do, hit Adorno up on wiki? Read the damn book, your retired now, quit using cliff notes.

 

[Dale00]

Im not arguing that the current income tax is fair or good. Just that the "fair" tax aint.

If you produce it, it has to be bought. To be bought, consumers must have money to "blow". Our economy is flourishing because of our need for excess "stuff". If we only bought what we needed, the economy would crash. And the wealthy would stay wealthy, the midfle will slip lower and the poor, poorer.

You should read "the Culture Industry" by Theodor Adorno. He kinda Explains this whole consumer of goods in a way I cant on a forum. The middle class and poor numbers grow bigger every day at a huge rate. And condume more stuff, While the Rich grows slow and consumes at a slower rate. Thats whats giving us this huge gap between the haves and have nots.

Adorno sounds like quite an eccentric thinker. According to one reviewer of "The Culture Industry"...

Adorno writes on the culture of his time, and tries to underpine a theoretical base to what he observes, this involves a mix of Marxism, Freudian theory, empirical work on mass culture, his own sometimes tenuous observations on culture as well as his background and upbringing in the Schoenberg school of composition.

This is a work which is seminal to my thinking. I absolutely love Adorno, and I do believe that there are some aspects of this work that he needs to be called out on. One is the lack of reference to empirical studies, there are some, but not enough. Another is a lack of methodological rigour and a potential lack of operationalisation characteristic of good social research.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201385.The_Culture_Industry

If the reviewer is right then Adorno is thinking in purely conceptual terms without using the measuring stick of the real world to validate his thoughts. A pure academic with his head in the clouds.


Now back to the real world: The Fair Tax is a national sales tax that would replace the income tax. You are thinking that it will reduce consumer spending. It will not. The elimination of the income tax would leave more money in your pocket - no more federal tax withholding. It would also increase free-market competition resulting in greater productivity.

From Fairtax.org:

How will the plan affect economic growth?

With the penalty for working harder and producing more removed, Americans are free to keep every dollar they earn, and a new era of economic growth and job creation is unleashed. Hidden taxes are history, Americans are able to save more, and businesses invest more. Capital formation, the real source of job creation and innovation, is facilitated. Gross domestic product (GDP) increases by an estimated 10.5 percent in the first year alone. The FairTax as proposed raises the economy’s capital stock by 42 percent, its labor supply by 4 percent, its output by 12 percent, and its real wage rate by 8 percent.

As U.S. companies and individuals repatriate, on a tax-free basis, income generated overseas, huge amounts of new capital flood into the United States. With such a huge capital supply, real interest rates remain low. Additionally, other international investors will seek to invest here to avoid taxes on income in their own countries, thereby further spurring the growth of our own economy.

What's not to like about that?

Time for bed.