| mrstickball said:
2. When I talk about a flat tax, I am talking about a flat tax with a pre-built deduction, which would be a percentage above the poverty level. Anything below that is 100% exempt. Therefore, if the deduction was $30,000 and you made $50,000, only $20,000 would be taxed. If you made $100,000, you would be taxed on the $70,000. The FairTax comes with a built-in prebate system, in which the government would pay each family a fixed amount of money each month to offset the tax. That would ensure that it is not regressive.
3. No. I'm talking about transitioning away from the 9.6% to 11.3% of highly regressive taxes that are under the "payroll" heading. Every American is taxed up to $107,000 USD annually, which is put into Social Security. The huge issue with that is that Social Security is not solvent, meaning that you will not get that 9.6% to 11.3% back, unless there are huge, negative changes made to Social Security (such as raising the retirement age). Furthermore, another issue is with how Social Security invests its money. Instead of investing in American businesses, it invests in American government. That is, buys T-bills and other government debt. That provides an atrocious return on investment, which is about 2.32% annually. That is barely above inflation. Therefore, if the system was changed to a defined benefit plan, which invested the payroll taxes into bonds, stocks, and other securities (which would be selected by the government, or whatever entity was preferred - many countries do this, as well as state governments), a much higher interest rate would be achieved, which would result in a solvent pension system. You could then easily lower taxes (since less money was needed to meet OASDI guidelines), or pay out more money.
4. How so? Our Federal Reserve just stated they are printing $40 billion dollars each month to buy mortgages and securities. The result is very inflationary.
5. There are government regulations over almost everything you partake in. Your job has many government regulations. The cars you drive have many regulations. The healthcare you buy has many regulations. One way or another, government regulations restrict lots of things you do. You may not realize it, but it absolutely does. For example, I looked over car regulations yesterday - what it takes to get a vehicle on the road. Do you know how many tens of millions of dollars must be spent on compliance costs? The result is the monopolization of the auto industry. New competitors cannot afford the government mandates, so they fold up. It stifles technology. Therefore, my suggestion is to allow businesses to compete in a very free-market experiment. If they can't build a better car, give better health care, or build a cheaper, safer house, then keep the regulations. But if they can innovate, then let them.
6. Health care costs have shot up since ACA went into effect. It does nothing to contain costs. Nothing. As I said, a huge amount of costs in regards to health care are due to government regulations - about 50-60% of every dollar spent on health care in America goes to government mandates and requirements for care. Get rid of many of them, and you'd see costs drop by the aforementioned 50-60%. Do you know why universal health care is cheaper outside of the US? Because its easier to get paid than it is through our Medicare system. Fix that by deregulation and more competition, and it gets much cheaper.
7. Look at the history of tariffs and trade wars. The thing about tariffs is that it is a two-way street. If America hits China with tariffs on, say, toys, they will hit us with a tariff on food. We would suffer under such a scenario. Look at when American industry began to go overseas - it all started in the 1970s. The same time the EPA was founded, and began to create regulation after regulation. Even Steve Jobs begged Obama before he died to make regulations easier, so he could bring the jobs back from China. The rebuttal is that "We don't want to destroy our environment! We need the protections!". That is true, but what would you rather have? Reasonable regulations, American jobs, and a better environment because we're dealing with the consequences, or no jobs, a Chinese wasteland, and keeping what we have today? |
Lol like Steve Jobs cares about that stuff. He would have never brought the jobs back here (he said so himself) - he enjoyed the cheap Foxconn labor too much. But the problem is not just Foxconn is cheaper, but are more skilled as well. Though I will agree we need to do something about the EPA.
