The FairTax, Join in!

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I doubt this will help convince you but FairTax.org has 10 reasons why Democrats should be for the FairTax.

Top Ten Reasons Why Democrats Should Strongly Support the FairTax

Reason 1: The FairTax meets the entire Democratic tax agenda, starting with progressivity.
This has been in dispute since almost the beginning of the thread. Let's go for understatement and say "I disagree."

Reason 2: The FairTax eliminates the highly regressive tax on wages of the working poor and middle class.
Yes, it does.

Reason 3: The FairTax is the only plan that completely untaxes the poor.
"The FairTax removes these hidden taxes, eliminates the payroll tax, and holds all taxpayers harmless against any taxes on essentials such as food, clothing, and shelter."
That's a very misleading way of saying (as we both know) they're basically going to send out welfare checks to every single taxpayer. (To those with a mailing address, anyway, as others have pointed out; not very nice to migrant workers.) Not knowing the truth, I would expect "holding me harmless" for taxes on food, shelter, and clothing to mean no taxes on them.

Reason 4: The FairTax stops the export of jobs.
I don't happen to have a reason this wouldn't happen off the top of my head, but neither do I concede that it would be true.

Reason 5: The FairTax untaxes education.
That does sound good.

Reason 6: The FairTax is the only plan that targets and taxes existing wealth, not the fruits of labor.
The title is not really true, but the real problem with this is that not taxing investments while exclusively taxing consumption will greatly accelerate the concentration of wealth among the wealthy, while the abolition of the estate tax will keep it there indefinitely.

Hey, yeah! The FairTax quite explicitly removes the only tax I'm aware of that really does target and tax existing wealth -- the estate tax.

Reason 7: The FairTax boosts the real growth and prosperity of the U.S.
Those numbers are at least twice as high as more conservative estimates. That would still be good growth but the real questions are: Who would benefit from that growth? Would it be everyone, or would it be the richest tiny fraction yet again? Is this kind of growth achievable is some better and less risky way?

Reason 8: The FairTax is revenue neutral.
This thread has not yet been able to debate this one in detail, but I do disagree that the 23/30 figure is correct for revenue neutrality -- partially because it is (as of 2007) based on an assumption of a 0% rate of tax evasion.

Reason 9: The FairTax promotes the American Dream.
"Untaxed" used goods prices will go up in direct correlation to the price of new goods. The FairTax doesn't tax the income used to pay mortgage loans, but I understand that it does tax the mortgage interest itself, which the current system doesn't. Lower rates due to banks not having to pay taxes in interest income will be offset by you having to pay taxes on interest payments.

Reason 10: The FairTax is not a political slogan.
This is not a reason to support the FairTax, this is a reason to not hate the FairTax. And I don't hate the FairTax due to partisan politics; I hate it because I think it's a gigantic mistake.


P.S. The overused "untaxes" theme is clearly an appeal to sheer unreasoning taxophobia and I dislike it. But that's not important to the actual merits and faults of the program.