conservation of Euros

[Bill Sloman]

On May 13, 10:13 pm, Greegor <greego...@gmail.com> wrote:

BS > Of course you love it. You are a right-wing
BS > nitwit, and enthuse about every proposition
BS > that favours the rich, as "The Fair Tax" most
BS > certainly does.  Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

For an Aussie who lives near Amsterdam you
sure are emotional about taxation in the USA!

Nijmegen is about as far east of Amsterdam as you can get - the German
border is just eight kilometres east of our house.

And I'm not emotional about the US tax system - I'm just emotional
about people who post half-baked nonsense as if it were some kind of
revelation.

You are cartoon like in your liberal extremism.

You obviously haven't yet run into a doctinaire socialist.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 13, 6:32 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 07:32:26 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:



On May 13, 4:39 am,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 13, 1:51 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 12, 5:48 pm, "krw wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 09:34:59 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

Maybe.  A 10% VAT would raise $1.5T a year, enough to pay for Obama's
permanent spending bender on...whatever it was we got for all that
dough he spent--I can't remember.

*Maybe*.  The deficit for just April was $83B.  Note that April is also the
month when the government intake is *highest*, do to the April 15 tax filing
date.  In 43 of the last 56 years April has been a net surplus month.  

snip

A 10% VAT gives Obama $125B more/month to fritter away on nothing.
(Enough for break-even, not enough to pay off any debt.)

Of course that assumes  people continue to buy stuff at the same rate,
which they won't.  They won't work at the same rate either.  Better
make it 18%, like Europe.  And, naturally, that won't be enough
either.  He'll spend more.

That said, Obama won't push a VAT--it doesn't redistribute wealth.
Deficit spending does.

Actually, VAT does redistribute wealth - away from the poor towards
the rich. The poor spend most of their income on buying stuff, which
attracts VAT.

True.

The rich divert a larger part of their income into investment, which
doesn't attract VAT.

Naturally.  As a nation, we spend 10% of our time and creative energy
figuring out how to pay our taxes, and 5% (maybe more) planning the
course that minimizes them.

Technically speaking, this makes VAT is a
regressive tax.

In the US we have a proposal called "The Fair Tax," a simple 23%
national sales tax.  It would replace all of our federal tax system
(personal and corporate income tax, Medicare, Social Security, etc),
and eliminate all the credits, deductions, receipts, bookkeeping and
time spent dodging & gaming the various income taxes.  The latter
costs us hundreds of billions a year, not to mention human energy
wasted unproductively.

A simple "prebate" makes the Fair Tax progressive.

Just exempt basics, like sensible food, reasonable rent, generic
medicines, public transport, education, stuff like that. Use tax
policy to steer behavior.

They tried that in the UK. It rapidly got silly. Food was VAT-exempt,
but eating in a restaurant was not a necessity, so you had to pay VAT
on the bill - unless you bought a take-away meal.

The UK still has an extra tax on alcohol and tobacco, over and above
VAT, and everybody seems to slap an extra tax on gasoline.

Try not to re-invent the wheel.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:39:28 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:12:11 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 13, 6:32 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 07:32:26 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:



On May 13, 4:39 am,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 13, 1:51 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 12, 5:48 pm, "krw wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 09:34:59 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

Maybe.  A 10% VAT would raise $1.5T a year, enough to pay for Obama's
permanent spending bender on...whatever it was we got for all that
dough he spent--I can't remember.

*Maybe*.  The deficit for just April was $83B.  Note that April is also the
month when the government intake is *highest*, do to the April 15 tax filing
date.  In 43 of the last 56 years April has been a net surplus month.  

snip

A 10% VAT gives Obama $125B more/month to fritter away on nothing.
(Enough for break-even, not enough to pay off any debt.)

Of course that assumes  people continue to buy stuff at the same rate,
which they won't.  They won't work at the same rate either.  Better
make it 18%, like Europe.  And, naturally, that won't be enough
either.  He'll spend more.

That said, Obama won't push a VAT--it doesn't redistribute wealth.
Deficit spending does.

Actually, VAT does redistribute wealth - away from the poor towards
the rich. The poor spend most of their income on buying stuff, which
attracts VAT.

True.

The rich divert a larger part of their income into investment, which
doesn't attract VAT.

Naturally.  As a nation, we spend 10% of our time and creative energy
figuring out how to pay our taxes, and 5% (maybe more) planning the
course that minimizes them.

Technically speaking, this makes VAT is a
regressive tax.

In the US we have a proposal called "The Fair Tax," a simple 23%
national sales tax.  It would replace all of our federal tax system
(personal and corporate income tax, Medicare, Social Security, etc),
and eliminate all the credits, deductions, receipts, bookkeeping and
time spent dodging & gaming the various income taxes.  The latter
costs us hundreds of billions a year, not to mention human energy
wasted unproductively.

A simple "prebate" makes the Fair Tax progressive.

Just exempt basics, like sensible food, reasonable rent, generic
medicines, public transport, education, stuff like that. Use tax
policy to steer behavior.

They tried that in the UK. It rapidly got silly. Food was VAT-exempt,
but eating in a restaurant was not a necessity, so you had to pay VAT
on the bill - unless you bought a take-away meal.

That's the way sales tax works in California. If I buy uncooked
chicken at Safeway, there's no sales tax. If I buy cooked, hot,
ready-to-eat chicken, it's taxed. It's simple, because it's a visible,
automated-cash-register, point-of-sale tax. Restaurant food is taxed
whether you eat it there or not.

In Vermong there is a so called "bagel tax". If you buy one bagel, it's taxed
as "prepared food". If you buy six they're not taxed because they've now
become "groceries". NY has similar silliness, orange juice is not taxed,
Hawaiian Punch and Tang are.

I can't imagine how you could work a
thing like this all the way back up the VAT chain.

VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality.

It would be easy to structure a national sales tax to exempt the
things poorer people actually need. There would be some cheating
around the edges, but there always will be some cheating. But things
like VAT carousel fraud couldn't happen.

(One shop near here sells " *WARM* " corned-beef sandwiches because
hot ones have a higher tax rate.)

I like the sales tax, as opposed to income tax, because it puts
business on a better basis against imports, so saves jobs. And because
it would be enormously simpler and cheaper to comply with. No
accountants, no tax returns, no exemptions, no deductions, no
quarterly estimates, no loopholes... almost.

Tax consumption. Don't tax savings or investment or job creation. If a
person is rich but doesn't spend any money, nobody can reasonably be
jealous of his wealth.

Leftists and those on the receiving end aren't reasonable.

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:15:42 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
<krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:39:28 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:12:11 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 13, 6:32 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 07:32:26 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:



On May 13, 4:39 am,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 13, 1:51 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 12, 5:48 pm, "krw wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 09:34:59 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

Maybe.  A 10% VAT would raise $1.5T a year, enough to pay for Obama's
permanent spending bender on...whatever it was we got for all that
dough he spent--I can't remember.

*Maybe*.  The deficit for just April was $83B.  Note that April is also the
month when the government intake is *highest*, do to the April 15 tax filing
date.  In 43 of the last 56 years April has been a net surplus month.  

snip

A 10% VAT gives Obama $125B more/month to fritter away on nothing.
(Enough for break-even, not enough to pay off any debt.)

Of course that assumes  people continue to buy stuff at the same rate,
which they won't.  They won't work at the same rate either.  Better
make it 18%, like Europe.  And, naturally, that won't be enough
either.  He'll spend more.

That said, Obama won't push a VAT--it doesn't redistribute wealth.
Deficit spending does.

Actually, VAT does redistribute wealth - away from the poor towards
the rich. The poor spend most of their income on buying stuff, which
attracts VAT.

True.

The rich divert a larger part of their income into investment, which
doesn't attract VAT.

Naturally.  As a nation, we spend 10% of our time and creative energy
figuring out how to pay our taxes, and 5% (maybe more) planning the
course that minimizes them.

Technically speaking, this makes VAT is a
regressive tax.

In the US we have a proposal called "The Fair Tax," a simple 23%
national sales tax.  It would replace all of our federal tax system
(personal and corporate income tax, Medicare, Social Security, etc),
and eliminate all the credits, deductions, receipts, bookkeeping and
time spent dodging & gaming the various income taxes.  The latter
costs us hundreds of billions a year, not to mention human energy
wasted unproductively.

A simple "prebate" makes the Fair Tax progressive.

Just exempt basics, like sensible food, reasonable rent, generic
medicines, public transport, education, stuff like that. Use tax
policy to steer behavior.

They tried that in the UK. It rapidly got silly. Food was VAT-exempt,
but eating in a restaurant was not a necessity, so you had to pay VAT
on the bill - unless you bought a take-away meal.

That's the way sales tax works in California. If I buy uncooked
chicken at Safeway, there's no sales tax. If I buy cooked, hot,
ready-to-eat chicken, it's taxed. It's simple, because it's a visible,
automated-cash-register, point-of-sale tax. Restaurant food is taxed
whether you eat it there or not.

In Vermong there is a so called "bagel tax". If you buy one bagel, it's taxed
as "prepared food". If you buy six they're not taxed because they've now
become "groceries". NY has similar silliness, orange juice is not taxed,
Hawaiian Punch and Tang are.

It's sometimes silly and arbitrary, but it's still pretty simple to
administer... the cash register reads the UPC and adds tax or
doesn't... and it generally exempts the basics that lower-income
people need.

A 20% tax on junk food, and zero on broccoli, would encourage people
to eat their broccoli.

I can't imagine how you could work a
thing like this all the way back up the VAT chain.

VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality.

VAT is applied all up and down the production chain. So the only stage
that can be selectively taxes is the last one, at point of sale. I
prefer a true 100% visible point of sale sales tax. VAT is designed to
hide the actual taxation level, at considerable cost of complexity.

It would be easy to structure a national sales tax to exempt the
things poorer people actually need. There would be some cheating
around the edges, but there always will be some cheating. But things
like VAT carousel fraud couldn't happen.

(One shop near here sells " *WARM* " corned-beef sandwiches because
hot ones have a higher tax rate.)

I like the sales tax, as opposed to income tax, because it puts
business on a better basis against imports, so saves jobs. And because
it would be enormously simpler and cheaper to comply with. No
accountants, no tax returns, no exemptions, no deductions, no
quarterly estimates, no loopholes... almost.

Tax consumption. Don't tax savings or investment or job creation. If a
person is rich but doesn't spend any money, nobody can reasonably be
jealous of his wealth.

Leftists and those on the receiving end aren't reasonable.

Oh. Right.

John

 

[JosephKK]

On Thu, 13 May 2010 00:24:38 -0700 (PDT), "enot.nona"
<namenot.noname@gmail.com> wrote:

Well gosh, you no name coward, why don't you start addressing the crimes of your government?

And what government is that?

I haven't a clue nameless coward, you haven't told us.

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:08:20 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:15:42 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:39:28 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:12:11 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 13, 6:32 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 07:32:26 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:



On May 13, 4:39 am,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 13, 1:51 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 12, 5:48 pm, "krw wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 09:34:59 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

Maybe.  A 10% VAT would raise $1.5T a year, enough to pay for Obama's
permanent spending bender on...whatever it was we got for all that
dough he spent--I can't remember.

*Maybe*.  The deficit for just April was $83B.  Note that April is also the
month when the government intake is *highest*, do to the April 15 tax filing
date.  In 43 of the last 56 years April has been a net surplus month.  

snip

A 10% VAT gives Obama $125B more/month to fritter away on nothing.
(Enough for break-even, not enough to pay off any debt.)

Of course that assumes  people continue to buy stuff at the same rate,
which they won't.  They won't work at the same rate either.  Better
make it 18%, like Europe.  And, naturally, that won't be enough
either.  He'll spend more.

That said, Obama won't push a VAT--it doesn't redistribute wealth.
Deficit spending does.

Actually, VAT does redistribute wealth - away from the poor towards
the rich. The poor spend most of their income on buying stuff, which
attracts VAT.

True.

The rich divert a larger part of their income into investment, which
doesn't attract VAT.

Naturally.  As a nation, we spend 10% of our time and creative energy
figuring out how to pay our taxes, and 5% (maybe more) planning the
course that minimizes them.

Technically speaking, this makes VAT is a
regressive tax.

In the US we have a proposal called "The Fair Tax," a simple 23%
national sales tax.  It would replace all of our federal tax system
(personal and corporate income tax, Medicare, Social Security, etc),
and eliminate all the credits, deductions, receipts, bookkeeping and
time spent dodging & gaming the various income taxes.  The latter
costs us hundreds of billions a year, not to mention human energy
wasted unproductively.

A simple "prebate" makes the Fair Tax progressive.

Just exempt basics, like sensible food, reasonable rent, generic
medicines, public transport, education, stuff like that. Use tax
policy to steer behavior.

They tried that in the UK. It rapidly got silly. Food was VAT-exempt,
but eating in a restaurant was not a necessity, so you had to pay VAT
on the bill - unless you bought a take-away meal.

That's the way sales tax works in California. If I buy uncooked
chicken at Safeway, there's no sales tax. If I buy cooked, hot,
ready-to-eat chicken, it's taxed. It's simple, because it's a visible,
automated-cash-register, point-of-sale tax. Restaurant food is taxed
whether you eat it there or not.

In Vermong there is a so called "bagel tax". If you buy one bagel, it's taxed
as "prepared food". If you buy six they're not taxed because they've now
become "groceries". NY has similar silliness, orange juice is not taxed,
Hawaiian Punch and Tang are.

It's sometimes silly and arbitrary, but it's still pretty simple to
administer... the cash register reads the UPC and adds tax or
doesn't... and it generally exempts the basics that lower-income
people need.

A 20% tax on junk food, and zero on broccoli, would encourage people
to eat their broccoli.



I can't imagine how you could work a
thing like this all the way back up the VAT chain.

VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality.

VAT is applied all up and down the production chain. So the only stage
that can be selectively taxes is the last one, at point of sale. I
prefer a true 100% visible point of sale sales tax. VAT is designed to
hide the actual taxation level, at considerable cost of complexity.

That's the theory but in practice, AIUI, VATs are only collected at the end of
the pipe.

<...>

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:15:42 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:39:28 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:12:11 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 13, 6:32 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 07:32:26 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:



On May 13, 4:39 am,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 13, 1:51 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 12, 5:48 pm, "krw wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 09:34:59 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

Maybe. A 10% VAT would raise $1.5T a year, enough to pay for Obama's
permanent spending bender on...whatever it was we got for all that
dough he spent--I can't remember.

*Maybe*. The deficit for just April was $83B. Note that April is also the
month when the government intake is *highest*, do to the April 15 tax filing
date. In 43 of the last 56 years April has been a net surplus month.

snip

A 10% VAT gives Obama $125B more/month to fritter away on nothing.
(Enough for break-even, not enough to pay off any debt.)

Of course that assumes people continue to buy stuff at the same rate,
which they won't. They won't work at the same rate either. Better
make it 18%, like Europe. And, naturally, that won't be enough
either. He'll spend more.

That said, Obama won't push a VAT--it doesn't redistribute wealth.
Deficit spending does.

Actually, VAT does redistribute wealth - away from the poor towards
the rich. The poor spend most of their income on buying stuff, which
attracts VAT.

True.

The rich divert a larger part of their income into investment, which
doesn't attract VAT.

Naturally. As a nation, we spend 10% of our time and creative energy
figuring out how to pay our taxes, and 5% (maybe more) planning the
course that minimizes them.

Technically speaking, this makes VAT is a
regressive tax.

In the US we have a proposal called "The Fair Tax," a simple 23%
national sales tax. It would replace all of our federal tax system
(personal and corporate income tax, Medicare, Social Security, etc),
and eliminate all the credits, deductions, receipts, bookkeeping and
time spent dodging & gaming the various income taxes. The latter
costs us hundreds of billions a year, not to mention human energy
wasted unproductively.

A simple "prebate" makes the Fair Tax progressive.

Just exempt basics, like sensible food, reasonable rent, generic
medicines, public transport, education, stuff like that. Use tax
policy to steer behavior.

They tried that in the UK. It rapidly got silly. Food was VAT-exempt,
but eating in a restaurant was not a necessity, so you had to pay VAT
on the bill - unless you bought a take-away meal.

That's the way sales tax works in California. If I buy uncooked
chicken at Safeway, there's no sales tax. If I buy cooked, hot,
ready-to-eat chicken, it's taxed. It's simple, because it's a visible,
automated-cash-register, point-of-sale tax. Restaurant food is taxed
whether you eat it there or not.

In Vermong there is a so called "bagel tax". If you buy one bagel, it's taxed
as "prepared food". If you buy six they're not taxed because they've now
become "groceries". NY has similar silliness, orange juice is not taxed,
Hawaiian Punch and Tang are.

It's sometimes silly and arbitrary, but it's still pretty simple to
administer... the cash register reads the UPC and adds tax or
doesn't... and it generally exempts the basics that lower-income
people need.

A 20% tax on junk food, and zero on broccoli, would encourage people
to eat their broccoli.

Not if Broccoli makes you vommit.


--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:59:14 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On May 13, 5:41 pm, "k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 08:36:44 +0100, Martin Brown

|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
On 13/05/2010 04:49, JosephKK wrote:
On Tue, 11 May 2010 14:36:14 -0700 (PDT), x x<noname.name...@gmail.com
wrote:

Larkin, why don't you mind your own fucking business?

No big deal. We'll never pay it back.

The doomsday repayment scenario is a major earthquake in Tokyo resulting
in the Japanese calling in their huge loans to the US quickly to do a
rebuild. I think you will find it hard to resist paying up.

There is no "calling" Treasury bonds.  They could sell them to the Chinese,
perhaps.  Of course, this could make Obama's plan to float another 1.5T to the
Chinese, over the next year, a bit problematic.

No need to. 38% of the debt is financed with a maturity of less than
one year.

Yes, Clinton started that.

No kidding--they *are* that dumb. Google it. The Economist, IIRC.

*Really* dumb since long-term debt is so cheap now.

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Thu, 13 May 2010 21:03:14 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On May 13, 10:21 pm, "k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:08:20 -0700, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality.

VAT is applied all up and down the production chain. So the only stage
that can be selectively taxes is the last one, at point of sale. I
prefer a true 100% visible point of sale sales tax. VAT is designed to
hide the actual taxation level, at considerable cost of complexity.

That's the theory but in practice, AIUI, VATs are only collected at the end of
the pipe.

No. They're charged and credited throughout the chain. Your thing
gets taxed, then rebated and the next guy pays, then gets his rebate,
etc.

So it's only collected at the end.

Maximum work for everyone. Maximum intrusion. Horrible.

A lot of work, sure, but money only changes hands at the end of the pipe.
....and IIRC, the Canuckistani VAT is paid by the buyer; a sales tax.

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Thu, 13 May 2010 23:41:27 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
<mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 20:15:42 -0500, "krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:39:28 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 15:12:11 -0700 (PDT), Bill Sloman
bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 13, 6:32 pm, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 07:32:26 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com
wrote:



On May 13, 4:39 am,Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 13, 1:51 am, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 12, 5:48 pm, "krw wrote:
On Wed, 12 May 2010 09:34:59 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

Maybe. A 10% VAT would raise $1.5T a year, enough to pay for Obama's
permanent spending bender on...whatever it was we got for all that
dough he spent--I can't remember.

*Maybe*. The deficit for just April was $83B. Note that April is also the
month when the government intake is *highest*, do to the April 15 tax filing
date. In 43 of the last 56 years April has been a net surplus month.

snip

A 10% VAT gives Obama $125B more/month to fritter away on nothing.
(Enough for break-even, not enough to pay off any debt.)

Of course that assumes people continue to buy stuff at the same rate,
which they won't. They won't work at the same rate either. Better
make it 18%, like Europe. And, naturally, that won't be enough
either. He'll spend more.

That said, Obama won't push a VAT--it doesn't redistribute wealth.
Deficit spending does.

Actually, VAT does redistribute wealth - away from the poor towards
the rich. The poor spend most of their income on buying stuff, which
attracts VAT.

True.

The rich divert a larger part of their income into investment, which
doesn't attract VAT.

Naturally. As a nation, we spend 10% of our time and creative energy
figuring out how to pay our taxes, and 5% (maybe more) planning the
course that minimizes them.

Technically speaking, this makes VAT is a
regressive tax.

In the US we have a proposal called "The Fair Tax," a simple 23%
national sales tax. It would replace all of our federal tax system
(personal and corporate income tax, Medicare, Social Security, etc),
and eliminate all the credits, deductions, receipts, bookkeeping and
time spent dodging & gaming the various income taxes. The latter
costs us hundreds of billions a year, not to mention human energy
wasted unproductively.

A simple "prebate" makes the Fair Tax progressive.

Just exempt basics, like sensible food, reasonable rent, generic
medicines, public transport, education, stuff like that. Use tax
policy to steer behavior.

They tried that in the UK. It rapidly got silly. Food was VAT-exempt,
but eating in a restaurant was not a necessity, so you had to pay VAT
on the bill - unless you bought a take-away meal.

That's the way sales tax works in California. If I buy uncooked
chicken at Safeway, there's no sales tax. If I buy cooked, hot,
ready-to-eat chicken, it's taxed. It's simple, because it's a visible,
automated-cash-register, point-of-sale tax. Restaurant food is taxed
whether you eat it there or not.

In Vermong there is a so called "bagel tax". If you buy one bagel, it's taxed
as "prepared food". If you buy six they're not taxed because they've now
become "groceries". NY has similar silliness, orange juice is not taxed,
Hawaiian Punch and Tang are.

It's sometimes silly and arbitrary, but it's still pretty simple to
administer... the cash register reads the UPC and adds tax or
doesn't... and it generally exempts the basics that lower-income
people need.

A 20% tax on junk food, and zero on broccoli, would encourage people
to eat their broccoli.


Not if Broccoli makes you vommit.

I'd consider it a 20% vomit tax, and gladly pay it.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

"krw@att.bizz" wrote:

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Not if Broccoli makes you vommit.

I'd consider it a 20% vomit tax, and gladly pay it.

I've always had some food allergies, and all the medicine I'm on now
only makes it worse.


--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

 

On May 13, 5:41 pm, "k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
<k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 08:36:44 +0100, Martin Brown

|||newspam...@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:
On 13/05/2010 04:49, JosephKK wrote:
On Tue, 11 May 2010 14:36:14 -0700 (PDT), x x<noname.name...@gmail.com
wrote:

Larkin, why don't you mind your own fucking business?

No big deal. We'll never pay it back.

The doomsday repayment scenario is a major earthquake in Tokyo resulting
in the Japanese calling in their huge loans to the US quickly to do a
rebuild. I think you will find it hard to resist paying up.

There is no "calling" Treasury bonds.  They could sell them to the Chinese,
perhaps.  Of course, this could make Obama's plan to float another 1.5T to the
Chinese, over the next year, a bit problematic.

No need to. 38% of the debt is financed with a maturity of less than
one year.

No kidding--they *are* that dumb. Google it. The Economist, IIRC.

James Arthur

 

On May 13, 10:21 pm, "k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
<k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:08:20 -0700, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality.

VAT is applied all up and down the production chain. So the only stage
that can be selectively taxes is the last one, at point of sale. I
prefer a true 100% visible point of sale sales tax. VAT is designed to
hide the actual taxation level, at considerable cost of complexity.

That's the theory but in practice, AIUI, VATs are only collected at the end of
the pipe.

No. They're charged and credited throughout the chain. Your thing
gets taxed, then rebated and the next guy pays, then gets his rebate,
etc.

Maximum work for everyone. Maximum intrusion. Horrible.

James Arthur

 

[Robert Baer]

All of this is a bit entertaining, but..
To conserve Euros (and Dollars), paste them on the wall and admire
the boring wallpaper..
...their "value" is getting to that point as the governments are all
bankrupt.

 

On May 13, 5:02 pm, Bill Sloman <bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:

On May 13, 8:20 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

The argument for progressive taxation is usually put in terms of those
with the broadest shoulders carrying more of the load.

Right. That's how the Little Red Hen got a hold of all the other
animals' bread, greedy thing that she was. She had broad shoulders.

This falls a
long way short of Marx -

Marx was kind of an idiot.

"The average price of wage labor is the minimum wage, i.e.,
that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely
requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer."
--The Communist Manifesto

See what I mean?

Of course Marx himself was a n'er-do-well who never earned his keep,
a pseudo-academic parasite sponging off patron Engels. Engels in turn
coasted off the family business. Marx made his living guilt-tripping
Engels with econobabble, a fine tradition carried on by Marxists
today.

"To each according to need" really means "From you to me." "Dear
Fred, I need that grocery money, and I deserve it, luv Karl, xoxoxoxo
P.S. Stop exploiting me! KM"

Marx's moronic precepts ruined scores of countries, and killed tens
of millions, maybe hundreds.

"Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean
the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form
of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no
need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a
great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying
it daily." --The Communist Manifesto

But, dim-witted Marx had it exactly bass-ackwards--industry was the
very salvation for the proletariat, pulling them up out of poverty.
"Industry?" you ask? Productivity-amplifying machines, powered by
fossil fuels. Let's get rid of those, shall we?

from each according to the abilities, to each
according to their needs - and is compatible with a society where some
people can afford fancier cars, bigger houses and finer wines than
their neighbours, though the rich no longer have access to the
services of a truly deprived under-class who will do almost anything
to save their kids from starvation.

Socialist countries are the ones who crush their peoples in poverty,
and whose people flee to the USA, not the reverse.

This guy makes your case for you:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0wwK7fggOs&NR=1

The link doesn't work for me, and if it had worked I imagine that its
content would be just as half-baked as your argument.

Pity. A conspiracy idiot. He makes your case well.

James Arthur

 

On May 13, 11:12 pm, "k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
<k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 21:03:14 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:
On May 13, 10:21 pm, "k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:08:20 -0700, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality.

VAT is applied all up and down the production chain. So the only stage
that can be selectively taxes is the last one, at point of sale. I
prefer a true 100% visible point of sale sales tax. VAT is designed to
hide the actual taxation level, at considerable cost of complexity.

That's the theory but in practice, AIUI, VATs are only collected at the end of
the pipe.

No.  They're charged and credited throughout the chain.  Your thing
gets taxed, then rebated and the next guy pays, then gets his rebate,
etc.

So it's only collected at the end.

Theoretically. It's kind of a guilty-until-proven-innocent thing--
you're constantly striving to prove what you don't owe, and if you
falter, you pay.

Meanwhile, it's maximum paperwork for everyone.

Maximum work for everyone.  Maximum intrusion.  Horrible.

A lot of work, sure, but money only changes hands at the end of the pipe.
...and IIRC, the Canuckistani VAT is paid by the buyer; a sales tax.

If so that's not really a value-added tax. VAT means taxing every
increase in value, at every stage of production. Raveninghorde posted
some of the flaming hoops he had to leap through.

Just taxing something once, at the point-of-sale is, well, a sales
tax.

--
Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Martin Brown]

On 14/05/2010 06:16, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On May 13, 5:02 pm, Bill Sloman<bill.slo...@ieee.org> wrote:
On May 13, 8:20 pm, dagmargoodb...@yahoo.com wrote:

The argument for progressive taxation is usually put in terms of those
with the broadest shoulders carrying more of the load.

Right. That's how the Little Red Hen got a hold of all the other
animals' bread, greedy thing that she was. She had broad shoulders.

This falls a
long way short of Marx -

Marx was kind of an idiot.

"The average price of wage labor is the minimum wage, i.e.,
that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely
requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer."
--The Communist Manifesto

See what I mean?

Of course Marx himself was a n'er-do-well who never earned his keep,
a pseudo-academic parasite sponging off patron Engels. Engels in turn
coasted off the family business. Marx made his living guilt-tripping
Engels with econobabble, a fine tradition carried on by Marxists
today.

Engels saw first hand what greedy industrialists were doing to their
workers in the Lancashire cotton industry. Boiler explosions were
commonplace up until the Vulcan insurers made a stand and insisted on
proper boiler safety inspections. And in cases of tampering with safety
relief valves they would not pay out.

It was common practice to overstoke the fire before the first shift and
add weight to the pressure relief valve - this resulted in several large
scale boiler explosions destroying big mills in the early morning and
killing many workers in the Lancashire cotton industry.

http://www.camdenmin.co.uk/technical-steam/historic-steam-boiler-explosions-p-2658.html

Articles on the history of boiler insurance show that the US had a worse
record despite having the advantage of seeing the innovations in UK
boilers. Some element of NIH played a part but mostly it was that
industrialists greed was paramount and the workers powerless. eg.

http://www.casact.org/pubs/proceed/proceed15/15407.pdf
first page and page 7 under Normal Loss Hazard

"To each according to need" really means "From you to me." "Dear
Fred, I need that grocery money, and I deserve it, luv Karl, xoxoxoxo
P.S. Stop exploiting me! KM"

It makes reasonable sense to pay your workers a living wage for the work
that they do rather than pay them less than they can sensibly live on.
Ford was about the first in the USA to actually do this.

In the UK there were some decent industrialists mostly of quaker
families who did treat their workforce fairly - examples include some
household names like Pilkingtons, Cadbury, Bournville, Marks&Spencer.

But most of the rest were complete bastards who built large factories
and employed the equivalent of bonded labour stuck very high density
slum housing. It was not surprising that unions were formed in some
cases the manager really did hold the whip hand - literally.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 14/05/2010 05:12, krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 21:03:14 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On May 13, 10:21 pm, "k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz"
k...@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz> wrote:
On Thu, 13 May 2010 19:08:20 -0700, John Larkin
jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

VATs tend to be sales taxes, in reality.

VAT is applied all up and down the production chain. So the only stage
that can be selectively taxes is the last one, at point of sale. I
prefer a true 100% visible point of sale sales tax. VAT is designed to
hide the actual taxation level, at considerable cost of complexity.

That's the theory but in practice, AIUI, VATs are only collected at the end of
the pipe.

No. They're charged and credited throughout the chain. Your thing
gets taxed, then rebated and the next guy pays, then gets his rebate,
etc.

So it's only collected at the end.

Maximum work for everyone. Maximum intrusion. Horrible.

A lot of work, sure, but money only changes hands at the end of the pipe.

No. You have it wrong. Every stage in the pipeline *pays* VAT inclusive
prices to their suppliers and totals up their input tax and then charges
their customers including VAT and totals up their output tax. Then
every month if large or three months if a small company you send a VAT
cheque to HMRC which is the difference of those two numbers.

A modern computer system doesn't find this too difficult. Unless that is
some half baked government changes the VAT rate from 17.5% to 15% in the
run up to Christmas as they did last year. That was a disaster for shops
as shelf prices are all marked inclusive of VAT. UK VAT is expected to
go to 20% shortly to deal with the deficit. It will make mental
arithmetic a lot easier - I never learnt my 17.5x table.

Exceptions exist for cross boarder trades in the EEC which allow not
charging VAT if the goods are for export to another country in the EEC.
This leads to a complex form of cross border trade called carousel fraud
which typically involves small high value objects like memory chips,
mobile phones and latterly carbon credits.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5204422.stm

...and IIRC, the Canuckistani VAT is paid by the buyer; a sales tax.

A pure sales tax paid only by the non-business end user would be a lot
simpler. Allowing businesses not to have to fight with badly paid VAT
advisers. I have had some amusing run-ins with them on reclaiming VAT
for a charity making disabled access improvements.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 13, 10:05 pm, Greegor <greego...@gmail.com> wrote:

BS > Do pay attention. The trouble that Greece is
BS > now in will be fixed by Greece. The EU - as
BS > a whole - will under-write Greek borrowing
BS > until that happens.

Oh GOODY!   More DEBT!   THAT'LL fix em!   LOL!

The alternative was to let them go bankrupt, taking down a bunch of
Eurpean banks that had lent them money. This is pretty much what
happend in 1929, and the relevant politicians know enough history to
be aware of this, and didn't fancy going down that route again.

Right-wing nitwits are less familiar with history, and correspondingly
more enthusiastic about repeating their ancestor's mistakes.

Make no mistake. The Greeks are in the process of reforming their
economy. Already public servants are getting 10% lower salaries, and
their retirement age has been raised from 61 to 65. There's a lot
more of that kind of belt-tightening in the pipe-line.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Bill Sloman]

On May 14, 12:17 am, Jim Thompson <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-I...@On-
My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Thu, 13 May 2010 13:13:00 -0700 (PDT), Greegor

greego...@gmail.com> wrote:
BS > Of course you love it. You are a right-wing
BS > nitwit, and enthuse about every proposition
BS > that favours the rich, as "The Fair Tax" most
BS > certainly does.  Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

For an Aussie who lives near Amsterdam you
sure are emotional about taxation in the USA!

You are cartoon like in your liberal extremism.

Isn't a VAT very much like the "Fair Tax", a flat rate for all?

It's a little more complicated

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax

but in essence it is a properly worked out application of the same
basic idea. The French governemnt gets more than 50% of it revenue
from VAT.

Because it is a tax on consumption, rather than income, the poor pay
out a larger proportion of their income in VAT than do the rich, who
are in a position to save and invest more of their income. It
consequently appeals to right-wing nitwits, who have a rather
ideosyncratic understanding of the word "fair".

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen