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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (10300)	10/8/2009 3:46:49 PM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I don't expect to se a national sales tax any time soon. Many people who support it view it as an additional source of income. The marginal support comes from those who would only support it along with repealing the income tax. Sure there are the Fair Tax people, but they are pushing water uphill. The people most affected by a sales tax are those who spend the most. Any category of spending that is exempt then becomes a tax preference. For instance if medical expenses are exempt then medical inflation is bound to exceed general inflation. This would continue current policies that treat most healthcare expenses as a tax preference.

To: Lane3 who wrote (10300)	10/8/2009 3:53:38 PM
From: skinowski	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Note that it was Peter who mentioned VAT instead of an income tax. Nancy P. never mentioned anything about repealing the income tax... but she's "open" to the idea of adding a VAT... :)

To: Lane3 who wrote (10300)	10/16/2009 6:37:09 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

Since we've been discussing taxes here this might be slightly interesting. Where do the various states get their revenues? bizecon.wordpress.com freemarketmojo.wordpress.com Also government spending as a percentage of GDP over the last 107 years thecoffeeshopblog.blogspot.com freemarketmojo.wordpress.com I don't know about that supposed dip in 2010, the federal government budget proposal for FY2010 is significantly higher than the FY 2009 budget, I guess it has to be an anticipated drop in state spending because of the precarious fiscal position of a number of states. Still the drop is small compared to the trend.

To: Lane3 who wrote (10300)	11/10/2009 5:02:07 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 42652

It would also put a burden, and unfair one IMO, on the young elderly. Those of us who paid income taxes all our lives while we accumulated enough money to live on in old age--earning more than we spent--would find ourselves paying again on the money when we used it to support ourselves--spending more than we earned. That's double taxation--. I appreciate the benefit of a sales tax in principle. If I were building a country from scratch I might well prefer a sales tax over an income tax. But we're not starting from scratch and the transition would be the worst of both worlds for people who were right at retirement age. Until and unless someone comes up with a way to transition fairly, I'm opposed to the shift. Good points. But if you have a bad system, rather than resigning to stick with it forever, a gradual phase out of bad and phase in of better system may be the right solution...