The fair tax would not be implemented in a fair way. Most of the taxes would come from necessities, thus unduly burdening the poor and middle class and benefitting the wealthy.
Under the current tax system, the wealthy farm the U.S. treasury. Something like 80% of the Small Business Administration loans went to subsidiaries of conglomerates and other large corporate entities; most farm subsidies go to, not the small family farmers who have to endure natural disasters and bad weather, but to conglomerates and very large family farm corporations. Infrastructure improvements on the local level go disproportionately to the wealthy areas, and are rarely done in even the most law-abiding poor and lower middle-class communities on the local level. Fire and police protection? The same thing. I am leaving out consideration of areas where public workers, police officers and emergency medical technicians are called so low-lives can take potshots at them for their amusement.
My dad worked for IRS for many years as an auditor. He had worked as a bookkeeper for a small company for many years, then gone back to school while working to get an MBA. He and several CPA's in the auditing department were demoted to save the federal government money. This also had the affect of giving the supervisors, who had absolutely no training in accountancy or bookkeeping, the opportunity of implementing procedures and policies which could not be criticized, because there would be no one adequately trained to know what was wrong with those policies and procedures. My father's co-workers either went to work elsewhere or retired early. My father was constantly criticized for being too productive and maintaining too high a quality work product, which made the supervisors' cronies look bad. In spite of this incompetence, some folks, entirely self-educated, managed to do a creditable job over the years.
By the way, people who work in the Audits department of the I.R.S. really dislike those who do the active investigations, raids and seize property. Many of those employees will actively bully, terrorize, and seek publicity eagerly. They work in another section of the I.R.S. entirely.
Someone has to pay for government services. The world is too complicated and dangerous a place for folks to do it on their own. Libertarianism is just not practicable. The people who get audited, by and large, are the small taxpayers. Audits are supposedly done at random. Wealthy taxpayers are rarely audited because they have huge law firms at their disposal. Who writes the tax laws and regulations? Many of them are written by tax lawyers at very large law firms. I know, because I was a proofreader at one in Houston, Texas, for three years.
And Bill Gates? For years, the Gates Foundation was giving free computers and Microsoft software to libraries and to public schools. Great idea for the public. But there's one catch--it creates a captive consumer base.
Help
Welcome to BleepingComputer, a free community where people like yourself come together to discuss and learn how to use their computers. Using the site is easy and fun. As a guest, you can browse and view the various discussions in the forums, but can not create a new topic or reply to an existing one unless you are logged in. Other benefits of registering an account are subscribing to topics and forums, creating a blog, and having no ads shown anywhere on the site.
Back to top
Posted 22 November 2008 - 04:54 PM
