I.E. property, income, or sales taxes. Use any criteria you wish: fairness, most revenue generated, least harmful economic impact My take is you start with the presumption that anything you tax you get less of. So taxing wealth and income depresses savings and productivity. And we are taught from a young age to be frugal and productive and not spendthrift. Another upside to taxing consumption is you don't need to reveal personal financial information to the state. It can be done through sales reciepts. This has appeal from an efficiency standpoint as well as the collecting/filing would be minimal. There is also the fairness element of no special carveouts and exemptions for favored parties. So I'm inclined to support a consumption tax. However, there are tradeoffs like anything else. Depressing consumption depresses demand for goods and services. Consumption taxes can eat into a larger percentage of a poor person's wealth. But any tax system can be modified to avoid hitting the poor (FairTax is a consumption tax that exempts the poor).
There is no better way to tax. Tax is just a necessary fee for living in a society. We should tax all 3 to make sure everyone pays what they can afford to pay for the services that our society wants. Sales tax mostly impacts poor people. Property tax mostly impacts really wealthy people. Income tax mostly impacts the working rich.
Society precedes state. Tax is the fee for living under a state. I don't support any taxes. But if I had to choose between one of these three options, it would probably be a consumption tax (I feel dirty even typing that).
Supporting ZERO tax is an absolutely silly position. You cannot live in a modern society with ZERO tax. At the basic level there are SOME functions that are necessary for a government to perform that cannot be done for free.
To go along with this, I think at a macro level, it's the quantity of wealth confiscated that's more of a problem than where the pound of flesh is taken (at the individual level the type of taxation is more of an issue).
Again, society does not equal state. As for the necessity of a government, that's another issue and I don't want to hijack the thread. If you're actually interested in that, shoot me an email. vanburen_boy@hotmail.com
I favor the use of all 3 types. Taxes influence behaviour. They're an important tool for government to prod us in a certain direction. A variety of taxes gives flexibility for various objectives. That being said, a national sales tax/"Fair tax" would be my favorite.
Savings assuming savings are above X amount >> this seems logical to me, but I know little to nothing about tax systems.
If you hate government so much why not move to Afghanistan or Somalia? Why do the less crappy places in this earth tend to be places with relatively high taxes?
I kind of agree despite being on the opposite political spectrum. America needs a blended tax system with a national consumption tax of some type. (It seems like most countries have moved toward Value Added Taxes but the method of the consumption tax can vary) Obviously we could exempt basic items to mitigate the impact on the poor. America's tax code promotes permanent corporate subsidies in the form of tax exemptions. And the worst part is that they're hidden and consequently impossible to repeal. Once you manage to get a tax subsidy, it pretty much sticks around forever. A Consumption tax, while much less progressive, would at least limit the ability of corporations and wealthy individuals to dodge taxes. That said, I'd still keep the income tax around on a much smaller scale as an additional tool to counter the regressive nature of the consumption tax. The whole reason we even have a progressive income tax is to counter the largely regressive nature of the rest of the American taxation system. I'd also substantially boost capital gains taxes back to the Reagan era levels but that's a debate for another day.
Consumption tax is the fairest and the best for encouraging savings and decreasing consumption. The best of a bunch of bad alternatives that is.
Not necessarily. Savings can also be essential for growth. I.E. a company saving its profits until it can use those savings to expand. Now if you want to talk what is bad for growth, there is nothing worse than taxation.
Not at all. There's a healthy medium. A completely consumption based economy is awful. (See the US economy on that) Our growth was entirely based on continuous consumption growth that was funded on ever growing amounts of consumer debt (be it mortgages or credit card debt) that happened because wages stagnated and didn't keep up with consumption growth. A consumption based economy will only work in a world where the average worker's wages are growing in concert but median wages have been stagnant for over 30 years so that isn't the case at all here. Not to mention savings growth means lower interest rates since it creates more loanable funds (but that isn't much of an issue here since interest rates are basically zero due to aggressive action by the Fed)
