Posted by
The Proud Liberal on Tuesday, October 09, 2007 4:21:15 PM
Inspired by Prager today to go to Wikipedia for The Fair Tax. A couple of things came to mind while reading the various for and against pronouncements. The first is that there will be unanticipated consequences. There always is - like the general who said a war plan can be thrown away when the first bullets are fired.
The second is that The Very Bright People, i.e., entrepreneurs, scallywags, brokers, etc. will figure out some way to make gravy for themselves from the new taxation scheme - business in already taxed items, i.e., second hand tax-wise is probably a ripe field for making money from The Fair Tax implementation. And, of course, there will be the usual criminal element making their money.
And a question about lobbyists. Surely the high powered K Street lobbyists won't slink away into the night. Surely they will find some way to get congress to favor the big corporations.
Aside from that I still don't know. It might be a good thing, but I don't think anyone can predict the results. We will simply have to try it and then try to fix it when we can get a handle of the problems that will inevitably crop up.