The Perfect Storm / BUSH

[AgingYoung]

You can't eat gold and people that have food aren't going to be inclined to trade you theirs for gold. John the revelator put the impending doom you see this way, 'Rev 6:6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and [see] thou hurt not the oil and the wine.' A penny or danarius (denarius = "containing ten") was a day's wage and a measure {a choenix, a dry measure, containing four cotylae or two setarii (less than our quart, one litre) (or as much as would support a man of moderate appetite for a day)} of wheat was the amount you need to eat in a day. Barley was a cheaper grain.

Gene

[ken_behrendt]

Gene writes:

You can't eat gold and people that have food aren't going to be inclined to trade you theirs for gold

Well, I do not envision a shortage of food in the USA following the "big flush", but those that have some to spare certainly aren't going to want any sort of fiat currency the government prints up for it. They'll want what people throughout the ages have wanted in hard times...precious metals that, unlike excess food, do not deteriorate over time.

Here's an interesting little story I heard about during the late '70's.

After the North Vienamese successfully invaded the South, there was a complete economic collapse and the money printed up by the ousted South Vietnam government became worthless.

People in the cities were desperate for food which, being in the cities, they could not grow for themselves. Well, there was extra food for sale from farmers in the surrounding countryside, but they would only except gold for it!

There was much starvation in the cities and the only people who ate were those with some gold to trade for the food. Many a woman survived and fed her children because she allowed her wedding ring to be cut, straightened out, and then slowly filed away so that the grains of gold that came from it could be used to buy rice. For many, it meant the difference between life and death!

I'm not advocating that anyone put all of their wealth in to gold bullion. But, considering the huge levels of debt being run up in the world today, I think it is certainly prudent to have a small amount of one's wealth in the form of precious metals. Also, and most importantly, one should make sure that he can get to his wealth in a hurry and it, thus, has maximum "portability". I do not recommend keeping it in a local bank's safety deposit box. If all hell breaks loose during a financial meltdown, the hungry and desperate masses will smash their way into those boxes looking for anything of value they can steal (remember the looters down in New Orleans?). As in ancient times, one might want to keep it hidden on one's property or person...


ken

[Dave]

I believe 4% of the tax payers pay 96% of the tax. What percentage should it be????

[Jonathan]

That didn't seem quite right, so I looked it up, and here is what I think you meant to say:

The numbers are stark: the most recent IRS data show that the top 50% of earners pay 96% of the total burden, leaving only 4% to be paid by the entire remaining half of the incoming-earning population. Remarkably, the top 5% of taxpayers pay over 56% of the total. These numbers have changed significantly over the past decade. In 1986 the top 5% paid only 42% of the total. At the bottom of the scale the lowest 20% pay no income tax at all. In fact they get a refund from the system through the earned income-tax credit.

From Taxing the Minority.

[winkle]

give bush his way and the bottom 98% won't be paying enything..

[Dave]

How about ALL of the wage earners paying a flat tax independant of wages?? Just like sales tax. I believe 6 states have cut taxes and have seen tax revenue increase.

PS Thanks for the correction in the percentages. It just goes to show, you have to make wages to pay taxes under the present scheme.

[ken_behrendt]

I favor the complete scrapping of the IRS and replacing it with a single flat sales tax on all purchases. All of the funds needed by federal, state, and local government agencies would then be funded by the revenue from this single sales tax. Thus, there would be no more state sales taxes, property taxes, etc.

What would that tax be? Maybe a nickel on every dollar spent would suffice.

Most importantly, we could finally be freed from the burden of having to go through the yearly headache of tax preparation and the growing expenses associated with it.


ken

[winkle]

How about ALL of the wage earners paying a flat tax independant of wages?? Just like sales tax. I believe 6 states have cut taxes and have seen tax revenue increase.

thinking it through..........................one guy makes 20,000 has to spend all of it to live on and is taxed on all of it..........other guy makes 10 kazillion spends only one kazillion of it the rest is tax free..........nine kazilion tax free...................................sounds like a bunch of crap to me..........is bush behind this..............it would the biggest tax cut to the rich yet

[terry5732]

State, Federal and local governments are completely seperate entities and couldn't be financed out of ONE tax.
Wouldn't every component of a vehicle for example be taxed at every sale level and then taxed as a whole? Or say your loaf of bread being taxed as farmer sells wheat, elevator sells wheat, ADM sells wheat, mills sells flower, wholesaler sells flower, wholesaler sells flower, bakery sells bread, grocery store sells bread....? And how about the accountants expenses for bookkeeping on all this ADDED tax? Maybe $20.95 a loaf?
And going back a page to your socialist thinking on healthcare - have you talked to anyone in the UK or Canada about how wonderful their rationed waiting system is? And their 50%+ tax rates? The real problem with healthcare is TOO MANY people with insurance. There is no supply - demand control. You can go to any urgentcare center with a real life threatening problem and wait behind 75 mothers who have achild with sniffles and are demanding something be done for juniors runny nose. In most cases they won't leave if they don't get a prescription for something , even though there is no drug for their childs cold. How many people would fork out $150,000 for a bypass to live another two years as an invalid? Why do we have such procedures? Death is a part of life and you shouldn't be trying to take others with you via this insurance racket. Your solution of government handling would do nothing to correct this. There are 2 million employees of health insurance companies currently in this country. Figure what that costs. You would simply be making them government employees. How did it come to pass that you should pay someone else to pay your doctor bill? The first step to reducing cost is to reduce these middlemen.

[winkle]

ode to the middle man :D

[AgingYoung]

I like the idea of a flat tax on income. The idea has somewhat of a constitutional basis. Article I, section 2, '(Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.)

The sense of apportioned is:

In the context of the Constitution, apportionment means that each state gets a number appropriate to its population. For example, Representatives are apportioned among the states, with the most populous getting the greater share. Direct taxes (of which there are none today) were to be charged to the states in this manner as well.

The idea is one person, one vote and everyone in a state pays an equal share of the direct tax. That's equality.

I really like the idea of congress not spending like a fleet of drunken sailors on crack but you can't have everything.

Gene

[winkle]

i would reather have a tax on imports as we once had

[ken_behrendt]

terry5732 writes:

State, Federal and local governments are completely seperate entities and couldn't be financed out of ONE tax.
Wouldn't every component of a vehicle for example be taxed at every sale level and then taxed as a whole?

Where there's a will, there's a way. All federal sales taxes collected would flow into the US Treasury via electronic funds transfer and then, by a similar manner, fed out to the various government agencies at the federal, state, county, municipal, etc. levels.

No, the 5% federal sales tax would only be collected on the final retail price of an item, not on the sale of its component parts or on the movement of the finished product through the distribution system from manufacturer to wholesaler to distributor to store. The tax is only collected with the item moves from retail store to consumer.

The important thing is to keep this system simple so that the retail buyer is virtually unaware of its presence.

Once the system was in place and functioning smoothly, the rate of federal tax on purchases would have to be carefully maintained within a certain limit. Perhaps it could drift between 4% and 6% and would only average 5%. The total amount of money available in the US Treasury would be constantly monitored to make sure it was sufficient to meet the huge outflow of funds needed to make America operate. If more money was in the treasury than needed, the tax could be reduced and if less was there than needed, the tax would be increased. However, it could not be raised above a certain level, say 6%. It that was in danger of happening, then there would be an across the board reduction in salaries keep the treasury from operating in the red.

Thus, with one new, simple system, we can do away with personal and corporate income taxes, control inflation, and get out of debt.

I truly believe that if financial "doomsday" arrives in the next couple of years, then the current huge unsustainable amounts of debt worldwide will be the major cause. If that does happen, then I can virtually assure everyone that the system I envision above will come into existence afterwards...


ken

[terry5732]

It would be great to see the Federal budget SHRINK to 5% of retail spending. But no-one sees that much reduction in spending any time soon. How do you propose to finance the huge shortfall?
If the federal government went back to it's constitutional roles (defense and post office only) then import duties could pay for it's running as they did for the first 100+ years.
There needs to be reciprocal duties for all countries (most) that have import duties on US goods.

[Dave]

In 2004, a record 42.5 million tax returns – one-third of all returns filed – had no income tax liability because of the available credits and deductions in the tax code. This is a 42 percent increase in the number of zero-tax filers in just four years. The 42.5 million non-payers are largely low-income. Indeed, 91 percent of them earned less than $30,000 per year and 96 percent earned less than $40,000.