* Ten Objections: Bob gave National Sales Tax author Ken Hoagland the first eight objections below to the FairTax, a National 22% Sales Tax (and he kept the last two objections for this list):
1. No Right of Conscription: The government does not have the right to force a businessman to become a tax collector, something that millions rightfully hate. Hoagland Reply: Just like Neal Boortz and other FairTax leaders over the last twenty years on BEL, Hoagland could not give a defense for this. And of course, excusing an injustice by saying we already do this is simply an admission that the proponent has no answer. (Boortz said he'd look into this point, and four years later, he's still looking into it.)
2. The FairTax Continues Confiscatory Taxation: The FairTax Solution's own description admits, "The FairTax produces the same amount of revenue" as the current oppressive tax system. Bob Enyart argues that the biggest problem with taxes in America is the horrendous amount of money taken. Regardless of how it is taken and of where the money comes from, giving absurdly vast tax revenues to a bloated socialist government is like giving heroin to an addict. Ken agreed with that lesser point, but he missed Bob's bigger point. "You're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic when you change the method of confiscatory taxation but continue to rob the country of trillions of dollars." Hoagland Reply (this is the best BEL could make of it; listen to the show to get Ken's exact words): Ken justified the government's over-taxation throughout a man's life as a defense for the confiscatory amount of taxes raised by his own FairTax Solution. The argument appears convoluted and seems to go like this: Because the government has taken so much from a worker for fifty years, we propose continuing to take this money from everyone so that the government can pay us all back for the money it has taken from us all our lives. Huh? Bob responds to that: Valid tax reform would both cut the amount of taxes and remove injustices in the collection system (see 1 above).
3. Fraud Enticement to Strangers: A sales tax entices millions of strangers, who briefly meet, to conspire together to defraud the government, fueling an illicit underground economy with far more interactions between individuals. Why? Because we all buy and sell from a hundred times more people than we employ. This systemic encouragement for strangers to conspire to defraud the government makes a terrible impression on the children who grow up around such transactions and it generally undermines respect for government itself. Hoagland Reply: Disagreed that the buying and selling relationship will give opportunity to more people to defraud the government than the employment relationship does. (Ken probably misunderstood the point.)
Today's Resource: God's Principles of Government
See more on kgov.com!
