How the #CNBCGOPDebate topics compared with the first Democratic debate https://t.co/kApNPhjwXW pic.twitter.com/zQ1tPvDupl
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) October 29, 2015
#GOPdebate pic.twitter.com/rBT90JvCmM
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 29, 2015
Tonight's #GOPDebate made it clear: We cannot afford a Republican in the White House. Get your free sticker: https://t.co/o662Sz9ACJ
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 29, 2015
redshirt
OMG HOW SHRILL!!!!!
NotMax
The whole G.O.P. shebang is like an extended version of MAD TV’s Lowered Expectations.
Switching gears, caught up on the latest episode of the second season of Fargo. Who would have guessed that Jean Smart could so effectively portray an amoral matriarch with a will of iron?
This season is so far just fine in its own right, however lacking in the same sense of whimsy that tempered the gore of the first season.
Warren Terra
Shame the sticker is so terrible.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Will have to wait at Jebbie’s place for the convoy of trucks backing up to clear the loading dock.
:)
redshirt
@Warren Terra: Yeah it’s not good.
For a bumper sticker to work it has to work at a distance,
unless it’s a joke about being too close to read your bumper sticker.
This one does not, and even up close is lame.
But! I like the idea of mocking and attacking republicans.
It’s the only way we have of defeating them.
Goblue72
In terms of public policy, I’m a Sanders supporter. What this country needs is a VAT tax system and a whole big mess of democratic socialism style transfer of wealth spending.
That said, I will say Clinton has gotten a lot better at managing her image – and even seems to have figured out – along with her team – how to take someone who is a grandma and make her sorta kinda hip. Seemed to have started around the time that Texts From Hillary tumblr happened and Clinton’s team pulled a meta and got her to text the TFH tumblr site’s hosts.
Not youthful & effortless cool like Obama. But a kind of O.G. cool. That quite intentional and on point shoulder brush she did at the Benghazi hearings might have been the most gangster thing I’ve ever seen her do.
jl
From what I heard and read, glad I missed it.
Read that the contestants spent quite a bit of time bashing and promising to cut Social Security and Medicare. So, I like how the GO is positioning itself for the general election.
But how many people watched it? It was CNBC.
redshirt
@Goblue72:
Totally gangster. And guaranteed to be replayed by right wing media till the end of days – which is a power move on Hillary’s part. Giving this move to them, and to us – for very different reasons! It’s a great political move, and might be THE move of the 2016 election.
redshirt
@efgoldman: Facts and logic don’t work on them. They’re immune.
Only mockery.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@redshirt: That was my reaction to Lindsay Graham. He actually is shrill.
Elizabelle
In news of other resurrected hopes, just enjoyed Frankenweenie on TCM. Early Tim Burton. It’s all there.
Haven’t seen the brush off move, but like Hillary being commended for a gangster move. First I’ve heard of that slang. Funny.
Anne Laurie
@Warren Terra: I think the idea was to lure GOP-leaning voters into giving the sticker a closer read — and maybe helping them catch a clue.
Goblue72
@redshirt: Center-left/liberalish Maggie Thatcher with a blackberry is sorta a good frame for her. For example, take her quite smart decision to make clear direct statements on women’s issues and not shying from the word feminist. She’s used those statements – along with careful media ops with younger female celebrities like Lena Dunham and Katy Perry – as crafty signals to young women voters that she’s the tough grandma who has their back.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Goblue72: Why do you want a VAT tax? Most states have it; it’s called a sales tax, and it’s repressive.
TS
@Goblue72:
VAT style taxes are like flat tax rates – they cost the poor much much more than they cost the wealthy.
Steeplejack
@Goblue72:
With you on Clinton, with you on commie socialist transfer-of-wealth spending. Not with you on a regressive VAT. First let’s run the numbers on capital paying the same tax rate as labor (capital gains vs. income tax) and having a transaction tax on stock trades. Let Goldman Sachs et al. pay some vig for their millions(?) of front-running trades every day.
redshirt
@Goblue72: To heck with the VAT tax man!
Steeplejack
@Elizabelle:
Brush-off move is in the GIF over the Hillary tweet above.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): And regressive. I’ve never understood why some liberals love the VAT, it’s regressive and complicated.
redshirt
Was marijuana really talked about in both debates?
Goblue72
@Elizabelle: O.G. = Original Gangster
Today most commonly associated with hip hop slang as a term of respect for older or deceased influential rappers; its origins are in 1970s LA gang culture, and specifically the Crips.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: I agree, make making money from money pay the same as money from work.
David Koch
@efgoldman:
eta: It’s as if they think it’s beneath them to ask Obama’s 70,000,000 million voters for their support.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@BillinGlendaleCA: Regressive! D’oh! That’s what I meant.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack: Saw it. Was expecting more gangstery, but love that word and how GOP will take it.
@Goblue72: Relieved you defined O.G.
I was afraid it meant Old Girl.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@BillinGlendaleCA: I didn’t realize this was a fave of liberals. It’s certainly not mine. Washington state has no state income tax but they do have a sales tax and relatively high property taxes. Oregon has a state income tax and no sales tax. The ideal place for retirement would be somewhere around Vancouver, WA, and to do all your shopping in Oregon. It doesn’t work for large purchases like cars, though.
Ruckus
@Goblue72:
Have to go with the smart people here.
A VAT style tax is very regressive, just like a flat tax. It sounds nice if presented very superficially by libertarians but if you look at how people really are taxed both are horrible for a very large segment of the population. All of them in at least the bottom half of society if not more. That so many people think that a flat tax would be great shows that reality and politics often are at direct odds. Especially conservative/libertarian politics.
TriassicSands
Gee, the barking seals had another debate tonight and I missed it. I couldn’t watch it, because, unlike CNN, which streamed the Democratic debate live, the Republican debates (so far, anyway) are only available (apparently) to people with paid TV subscriptions, which I don’t have (never had, never will).
Doesn’t a presidential primary debate seem like something that should be available to every American free of charge? In the past, I’ve sometimes listened to debates on the radio, which is a very different experience from watching a debate on TV. I think listening focuses the mind on what is said without the distraction of visual images. That makes it easier to gauge substance.
That said, I suppose I should be grateful for the pay wall that CNBC (and Fox and NBC) have erected. It prevented me from wasting my time listening to a bunch of lunatics lying about everything.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Ruckus: I think the fascination with the flat tax is mostly people who have no concept of what they actually pay in taxes now, or people who can’t do math.
Goblue72
@Steeplejack: oh I totally support equalizing tax rates between income and capital gains, and ending carried interest deductions. But none of those proposals will raise enough money to support a robust social welfare state.
And we need a broader tax base as much as we need higher rates. We don’t pay enough in taxes in this country. Not just the rich, but everybody. And a VAT has proven to be an effective means at collecting a broad tax base, with incidence falling along all transactions along the supply chain, and serves as an effective substitute to replace the governmental revenues lost due to lower import tariffs.
Sorry folks, but none of you pay enough in taxes.
redshirt
@Ruckus: So Goblue72 is a Libertarian?
seaboogie
@Elizabelle: I LOVE Frankenweenie! Saw it as a short when I went to see another film, and remember it well, still…
Ruckus
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne):
When I was looking for a place to open my retail business Washington/Oregon were two places I looked at. Traveled there to get a closer look and stayed at a hotel in WA real near the OR border. The clerk and I got to talking and he said that no one around there buys anything of much value in WA, they all cross the border into OR to purchase. That’s why I didn’t see any small retail shops like appliance/furniture stores, they were all in OR. It was like the bars outside most military bases. Go where the business is.
Ruckus
@redshirt:
Who’d have known?
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@TriassicSands: It would seem to be an important part of a democracy, but in this case you didn’t miss much. The yelling and lying and complete lack of understanding of how taxes, SS, Medicare, and the world actually work, became too much for us and we turned to other forms of entertainment. It only took about 20 minutes to be very well informed of just how nuts these candidates are. Trump was the only bright spot early on, but it wasn’t enough to justify the torture of listening to how Rubio (I think it was him, could have been Cruz) claimed that the deficit would be $90 trillion if the budget deal wet through.
David Koch
@TriassicSands: Meh. it ends up on youtube in short order.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@redshirt: Is that it?
Ruckus
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne):
Math has a liberal bias, doncha know.
Goblue72
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): Look, leaving aside the flat tax straw man, most people already pay taxes that are “flat”. State sales taxes for one. And in most states that have a state income tax, the ra rate is fixed. Few states have a state income tax with marginal rates – Califirnia being one of the exceptions.
At the Federal level, we may have a marginal tax rate system, but the marginal rates have seen a lot of compression since the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and various tax reforms since. We occasionally tack on an extra high income bracket or two (see Clinton, then Obama), then lop it off (see Bush).
And you can introduce progressiveness by assessing a lower VAT rate to certain classes of goods or services (like groceries for example) or provide rebates to lower income households. Or, provide transfer of wealth payments.
Ruckus
@redshirt:
I rest my case.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Ruckus: Except for cars. You register your car in Washington and they get the sales tax from you even if you bought it in Oregon.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Goblue72: No. Just no. It hits the poorest the hardest.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Ruckus: Dear Lord…
Ruckus
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne):
CA does that as well. You buy a used car from a private party or out of state and they collect sales tax when you register it with the DMV.
Goblue72
@redshirt: I’m a democratic socialist. I believe everyone – EVERYONE – needs to pay more in taxes. With the rich paying even more more. And a much much larger social welfare and public infrastructure state to spend it all.
Universal healthcare, free college education, subsidized housing, high speed rail, a smart electric grid, 100% electricity from renewables, wage insurance, and subsidized child care and maternity leave is not cheap. I want lots of taxes and lots of services.
Ruckus
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne):
You hadn’t noticed this tendency before? It has been pretty clear to me before, tonight was just the pudding.
And with that, off to bed, work calls way too early. WAY too early.
redshirt
@Goblue72:
I agree with all of this 100%.
Let’s make it happen!
David Koch
1. Does any working class stiff want to pay a 25% Federal
SalesVAT tax?2. How many states would vote for a candidate advocating this?
Goblue72
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): The poor must pay taxes too. The rich must pay even more.
Our friends in Canada have a VAT. The EU has a VAT. Most member states in the EU also have their own VAT over the baseline EU VAT.
Stuff costs money and there’s only so much at the top before you run out (for various reasons, including but not limited to those related to tax avoidance when marginal rates get to a certain point)
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Ruckus:
Several years ago at our Christmas Eve party, when W was still in the WH, we had a guest from Austria who claimed to be a prince or something; disowned by his family, but he had money of his own.
A friend was regaling a bunch of us liberals in the kitchen with a righteous rant about Republican policies when the prince appeared and started spouting nonsense that would only appeal to 19 yo boys. We all paused and looked at him thoughtfully, and my friend asked if the prince was a libertarian, and when he confirmed it we all sighed a little, thinking that now we understood his motivations. He left, satisfied that he had given us useful advice and information.
It’s a good thing he left the room when he did. It was a very small kitchen and I was holding a very large knife.
redshirt
FYI: The VAT was not mentioned in either party’s word bubble.
Goblue72
@Ruckus: Contrary to you idiots fantasies, I’m not a Libertarian. I’m a democratic socialist. I just happen to understand that the robust social welfare state requires more taxes to be collected from everyone. Mostly the rich, but also more from everyone else too.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Ruckus: Sorry, I guess I forgot who the libertarians were.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Goblue72: I’m very well aware of the VAT tax and which countries have it.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@redshirt: Nor would it be. Too foreign for the Repulicans, not attractive to the Democrats.
Goblue72
@David Koch: I would gladly pay Danish levels of taxation in exchange for Danish levels of welfare state spending. Danes have one of the lowest levels of income inequality on the planet and one of the most happy. They cannot afford to buy a new IPhone every year or go on fancy vacations, but they have robust maternity leave supports, flexcare unemployment supports, generously long vacations, subsidized higher education, practically no childhood malnutrition, etc.
dogwood
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne):
I live in a two state community divided by the Snake River. Other than Costco, there are no major retailers on the Washington side. When I decide to sell my home and downsize, I’ll more than likely move across the river. Then I’ll be a constituent of Cathy McMorris Rogers, which unfortunately will be an upgrade from my freedom caucus kook, Raul Labrador.
redshirt
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne):
I haven’t. They can’t be trusted. Never look away……….
Anne Laurie
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne):
Similar thing happens out here — New Hampshire has no income tax, but the property taxes are crippling. Massachusetts taxes income, and has higher sales taxes, but our property taxes are much lower. We also have more & better jobs. So lots of Massholes commute to NH for mid-range purchases (as you say, there’s a cap over which the savings no longer apply). And the NooHampsters commute to work in MA… but can only afford to rent in their ‘home’ state.
Goblue72
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): @Pie Happens (opiejeanne): You seem to want things but not want to pay taxes. That your ideal is to live in WA state (no income tax), and shop in OR (no sales tax) is evidence of that. It’s a mooching mentality that says it’s the “other” guy who should foot the bill.
That’s just free rider bullshit.
Anne Laurie
@Goblue72:
And I would love to be 6′ 4″ — it would have made so many things in my life happier & easier! — but I’ve never been able to find a magic solution that will add those essential inches to my Napoleonic stance.
It’s not that turning America into Denmark wouldn’t be an improvement, it’s just that nobody’s been able to propose a method for doing so that doesn’t involve the equivalent of “just assume a miracle happens”.
And that’s leaving aside the genuine scaling difference between a small mostly-homogenous Nordic nation and our own sprawling, heterogeneous country. You can’t have mouse-sized elephants or elephant-sized mice, and geopolitics are every bit as complicated as biology…
notorious JRT
@Goblue72:
Sorry folks, but none of you pay enough in taxes.
Perhaps. But that doesn’t make a VAT the answer. Not to mention the fact that there is no infrastructure for it.
David Koch
Drudge Poll — who won the debate
TRUMP……………..56.79%
CRUZ……………….19.96%
RUBIO……………….9.67%
PAUL………………..4.34%
CARSON……………3.49%
FIORINA…………….2.06%
CHRISTIE…………..1.43%
KASICH……………..1.17%
HUCKABEE…………0.58%
¿JEB?……………….0.51% ◄
¿JEB? is toast. Comin in dead fucking last in the polls. Fat cats will cut him off after this debacle. He’ll doesn’t have enough money to last 4 months; his burn rate is too high. He’ll be out before Feb 2nd.
sm*t cl*de
@Goblue72:
If you are telling me that the overnight ferry trip to Oslo is not a “fancy vacation” then I laugh in your face.
Goblue72
@sm*t cl*de: good point. When the rest of Europe is a short hop away, there’s a whole lot of nice that pretty easy to get to. Sure better than a trip to the Jersey Shore is for working class Staten Islanders.
dogwood
@Goblue72:
What the hell are you talking about? If I sell my home in Idaho and move across the river where I won’t have state income tax on my retirement income, I’m not looking for free stuff. I’m looking to save some money. I’ll be paying all kinds of Washington taxes. You make no sense. I have no obligation to stay on the Idaho size of the river if it makes more sense financially to live in Washington.
Goblue72
@Anne Laurie: The argument isn’t about feasibility. It’s about whether proposing a VAT makes one a Libertarian. Which is probably one of the stupider arguments I’ve seen.
As for the homogeneity argument and why “it can’t happen here”, it’s a bullshit strawman argument preferred by conservatives and centrists. Liberals should be rejecting that kind of crap, not parroting it.
We don’t get progress by acting like wimps and giving up before starting.
Goblue72
@dogwood: was I talking to you? No. My comment was directed at the poster say g the ideal was to situate oneself to avoid state income taxes and state sales tax (in this case, by living in Vancouver WA). It’s bullshit freeloading and nothing more.
Goblue72
@David Koch: I guess the Brinks truck got lost crossing the continental divide.
BillinGlendaleCA
So I guess the answer is, A VAT tax is good because European countries do it.
dogwood
@Goblue72:
You make it sound as if by living in Vaancouver, she won’t be paying any taxes. She’ll pay lots of Washinton tax. There’s a lot of advantageous reciprocity that goes on between interstate communities. The Washington side passed a bond levy and built an aquatic center that the entire community enjoys. Idahoans built a wonderful city library, and subsidize a civic theater. Ultimately, federalism is complicated.
Warren Terra
@BillinGlendaleCA:
VAT is regressive, sometimes extremely so. It has I think some advantages regarding tax evasion (it’s harder to do), but mostly it is seen in a positive light because the countries that have high VAT often pair it with progressive social spending.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Warren Terra: I studied VAT in grad school, and have never understood why liberals are attracted to it. I guess you said pretty much what I said, in a much less snarky manner.
Thoughtful Today
@David Koch:
“It’s as if they think it’s beneath them to ask Obama’s 70,000,000 million voters for their support. “
Bernie is explicitly asking for the millions who voted for Obama to support him.
He’s also asking for informed adults to have honest conversations.
Political choices made by the Clintons and Obama exacerbated inequality in America while vastly enriching the billionaire class.
America’s middle class was gutted through the last 40 years.
Factual record.
Bernie’s saying that can change.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Thoughtful Today: You seem to think that Bill Clinton and Obama made these choices in isolation. In both cases, save the first two years of each of their administrations, they had a hostile Congress.
jl
@BillinGlendaleCA: VAT can be designed to lessen its regressive aspects. Some countries exempt many necessities from VAT. Differential VATS are common in Nordic countries by class of good, with necessities like food and utilitarian household durable goods and sundries having a much lower rate.
That, plus fact it exists in context of much less regressive fiscal system overall, with more comprehensive social insurance nd subsidized education and job training, makes VAT much less burdensome on lower income people than a flat VAT.
Amir Khalid
@Thoughtful Today:
So Bernie’s campaign staff are saying one thing, and he’s saying another. Are we seeing a message-discipline issue here? It wouldn’t be the first time, as I recall.
Your friendly neighbourhood slaver
Amir Khalid
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: I understand that, what I don’t understand is the infatuation of some liberals with the VAT. A sales tax with exemptions for certain necessities seems to have a lower administrative cost than a VAT. My personal feeling is that we should not have consumption taxes on the national level, though there are good finance reasons for having them on the state level. An comprehensive income tax with more brackets and higher marginal rates would be my preference.
Montanareddog
@jl:
Is is true that France taxes deodorant and soap as luxury goods, or is that a snarky urban myth?
David Koch
@Thoughtful Today:
You’re a dumb asshole.
Obama prevented a 2nd great depression. Obama rescued the auto industry and millions of jobs. Obama eliminated the Bush tax cuts for the rich, hiked the capital gains tax, and medicare tax on the rich. Obama brought medical insurance to 31,600,000 people, enacted Dodd-Frank financial reform, Credit Card Reform Act, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Lilly Ledbetter Act, 6 weeks maternity leave for federal workers, ended federal criminal asset forfeiture, extended Social Security benefits to gay couples, increased the minimum wage on federal contracts 40%, doubled the threshold for overtime pay, doubled the budget on pell grant and eliminated banks from student loans.
“The Obama presidency is one of the most monumental shifts in
American society and social life and policy of any presidency,
particularly, you know, in the last 100 years.” ~ Chris Hayes
Applejinx
I’d like to see it framed as ‘everybody should BUY more in taxes’ rather than ‘pay more in taxes’ because the whole Norquist spin is fundamentally about the idea that government can do nothing, nothing at all.
The idea is that all taxes are totally wasted, spent on Washington bozos who bathe in it or eat it or something. That it’s tribute, nothing more, and there’s no possible use for any of it.
In the real world, you start doing things with nation-sized economies of scale and potentially low overhead costs compared to private companies, never mind if you can socialize stuff and administrate it as a public service, in that real world taxes can be an extremely efficient way of buying stuff like roads, communication services like mail, and so on. You can buy putting the American flag on the moon. Outlandish, amazing things beyond your wildest dreams. The Internet. Taxes buy you things, that’s the whole point.
The talking point should be ‘taxes should buy you more’ because that correctly assumes that taxes have been buying us less and less. It’s a shitshow, but only because the revenue’s been hijacked, firstly by the military-industrial complex, and now apparently by high finance and the 0.001%. We can collectively demand better. Taxes should buy us more, it’s stupid to pretend the current situation’s worth defending and stupider to turn to the hijackers for aid. The anti-tax people are part of the hijackers.
Thoughtful Today
@David Koch:
“Obama prevented a 2nd great depression.”
I didn’t dispute that.
Unemployment, real unemployment, is still depressingly high.
The majority of those employed still see most of their productivity siphoned off by the billionaire class (as it has been for 40 years now).
Obama gave Republicans massive tax cuts that disproportionately helped the richest amongst us.
Millions still don’t have health care (and Corporate Dems often confuse corporate insurance with health care).
Dodd-Frank was deliberately weakened and hasn’t yet been aggressively enforced (let alone any serious accoutability for the Banksters).
I can celebrate good things while recognizing that a small step on a righteous path is still only a small step.
I want serious change, not more Third Way DLC triangulation.
Chyron HR
@Applejinx:
But I guess “Obama and Clinton are the worst presidents in the last 20 years” comes more naturally to you guys.
ETA: Not to suggest that Berninators ranting about “moochers” who don’t pay enough taxes aren’t THE HEART AND SOUL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. I would never suggest that.
Matt McIrvin
@BillinGlendaleCA: Liberals love the VAT because European social democracies have them. If your economy has relatively little income inequality, there’s nothing wrong with it. But having a broad-based, regressive tax like that before you’ve flattened out the income distribution, and when your economy has persistently slack labor demand, is putting the cart before the horse.
I figure consumption taxes are mostly good for things like environmental purposes, actually discouraging types of consumption you want to discourage. But if they really are going to have that purpose, they should be revenue-neutral, progressively rebated kinds of things. And the regressive aspect of them is a necessary evil you have to work around, not a positive feature.
You know who really likes consumption taxes? Matthew Yglesias.
Thoughtful Today
The word you are looking for is:
Investment.
Infrastructure investments.
Investments in education.
Investments in health.
EconWatcher
@David Koch:
Well, yeah. But he didn’t get the public option with the ACA. So that stuff’s all worthless. Plus, he’s a war criminal.
(Snark, in case anyone’s meter is off. )
Matt McIrvin
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Carbon tax. We need that at the national level for planetary-survival reasons.
But there has to be some remedy for the regressive aspects, which is why the versions that environmentalists usually propose are revenue-neutral with a progressive rebate system. Unfortunately it’s hard to politically sell any kind of tax, and it’s harder if it doesn’t actually produce net revenue.
Matt McIrvin
@Anne Laurie: The NH residents who work in MA still have to pay MA income tax, though. They get hit coming and going, which is pretty funny considering how many of them are quasi-libertarians who went there as some kind of tax haven.
Matt McIrvin
@Goblue72:
Bullshit. I don’t pay enough in taxes. Donald Trump doesn’t pay enough in taxes. People who have no jobs or are making $2.13 an hour pay too much in taxes.
Mike E
This has been another episode of Somebody Is Wrong On The Internet.
PaulW
HILLARY CLINTON 2016
WHY DENY THE INEVITABLE?
Paul in KY
@redshirt: Elect GOP, Money Gone PDQ
Paul in KY
@Anne Laurie: Excellent points, Anne. That would have had to have been done back in 30s or maybe 1965 or so.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Absolutely a must that the tax on investment profits must be raised from 15%. That has created a kinds of problems. No need to create/manage a business (to make money) if your pile of money will get taxed less by it just sitting there.
Joel
@Ruckus: I fucking hate the VAT — it’s just a gussied-up sales tax.
Fuck the Cato Institute and their VAT-loving economists. Those fuckers can DIAF as far as I’m concerned.
Betty
I live in a country with VAT, and I say it is regressive. Best part about it is that it makes collection easy if that’s what you’re after.
goblue72
@dogwood: Missing the forest for the trees.
goblue72
@Matt McIrvin: Somebody making $2.13 doesn’t make enough money, that’s the problem. Yes we should have more taxes. And we should also have a higher minimum wage. And that $2.13 per hour person will get back a lot more in social welfare benefits and transfer payments in a system where everyone pays a lot more taxes.
We can’t load all the taxes onto an income tax system. Its too volatile. (California is heavily skewed that way and its part of the state’s problem with how its revenue tends to boom and bust so dramatically). Again, the rich should pay more in income taxes than they do. And capital gains taxes rates should be increased. AND we should all pay more in consumption taxes.