In A Related Note
You have probably heard a lot lately about the “value added tax” [VAT] as a better way of raising money and solving the deficit problem. Badtux notes that the normally sane Paul Volcker has started talking it up.
As BT notes, this flies in the face of financial reality. When the economy is in the tank because of a lack of demand, you don’t tax consumption.
I put it down to Volcker being a banker and totally lacking a clue how the real world of the market works. If you don’t make enough money to pay income taxes, tax credits aren’t going to help you. If anyone thinks that shifting all of the paperwork involved in a VAT system is going to be anything but PITA for small businesses, they have never been in business.
The VAT is just another attempt by those at the top to shift the cost of government to those at the bottom.
Jobs! Create jobs and everything gets better.
8 comments
Paraphrasing the Smothers Brothers, “He fell into a VAT on chocolate… / he fell into a VAT on chocolate…”
What a terrible idea, taxing consumption during a recession or depression. Let’s do stifle demand…
When the people making the decisions don’t live in the real world of 90% of the people, they aren’t likely to understand that actual impact of those decisions. If you don’t do the shopping, you don’t know what things cost.
They can’t create jobs. Seems that most of the morons in DC haven’t had a real one and don’t know what one is even if it hit them in the head.
.-= last blog ..the drug addled gasbag (rush limbaugh) =-.
It would be understandable if we didn’t have so much that needed doing, like fixing roads, bridges, sewer treatment and water systems. The Feds have been deferring maintenance for decades and we are paying the price in a failing infrastructure. These are things that need to be done, not make work.
not that there’s anything wrong with make-work either, if the economy is tanking, but yes, we have huge laundry lists of things that really do need to be done.
Take it from someone living in a country totally screwed by Howard’s GST! IT TOTALLY SUX!!
All it’s done is destroy small-medium businesses and makes accountants even wealth er than they were, and make the crooked State Gov’s even wealthier so they can enjoy far more perks while actually spending less on the State!
Should hear the screams of outrage here when Rudd proposed that the Fed Gov should manage the GST pool and dole out amounts for approved legitimate State projects! I was sooo PMSL! 😆
(Mind you… It only took Rudd two days to negotiate Health Reform here (appart from WA, which has the only Liberal Party Gov here (Righty Repug’s to you)! Obama? Ehhhh… Not so much.) 😛
Rudd presses on without WA
See… This is what a Gov that has a majority does when in power! Ignores the minority whiners and takes away their candy until the people get fed up enough to force the whiner to cave in, or sack him! 😉 I think it’s called…. Ummm… Oh, right… Democracy! 😆 😛
That’s disappointing. Volcker was one of the few that actually made sense when he talked. He predicted this financial crisis back in 2005. He saw where we were headed. He seemed to have a grasp of how the real world worked back then. Working as an economic advisor for the Obama administration seems to have affected his brain.
Florida depends primarily on the sales tax, and it isn’t a very efficient or effective funding source. We are in deep yogurt because of the lack of consumption.
The other problem would be the exemptions that would start coming out of Congress immediately following the introduction of a VAT. The most expensive products would be the first to receive exemptions, trust me on this.
Yes, Lady Min, I, too, expected better things of Paul Volcker. He has become a “team player”, which is unfortunate.