(03-07-2018 03:56 PM)Tom in Lazybrook Wrote: Actually, I don't see how a consumption tax would help sell American products versus foreign ones. Unless you're setting up the consumption tax as an effective tariff. Basically, consumption would fall (as per the slope of the individual products' price demand elasticity. Consumption taxes can be highly detrimental to an economy.
So too can income taxes.
First, you've taken the concept of a consumption tax... thought of the worst possible way to implement it, completely counter to any proposal that anyone has seriously put forward or the experience of Europe.... and then used THAT as your 'default' set up.
All imported goods get a 15% tax tacked on top of the total cost
All exported goods are exempt from that tax because they aren't consumed under our taxing authority
A VAT/Consumption tax WILL be (effectively) a Tariff that counters the one that Europeans and others have. To set it up any other way makes no sense
Second, your 'could' ALSO makes no sense that we would structure it in such a way.
The PURPOSE of a VAT would be to replace (at least partially) income taxes.
If you replace corporate income taxes with an equivalent amount of VAT, then the economy is no worse off.
For personal income taxes, If you use a prefund or some sort of exemption based on 'what' (as we do sales taxes now) or 'whom' (via some mechanism in our income taxes, which would be cumbersome but is effectively no different than the person who currently makes 16k/yr, gets $300/mo in food plus free insurance and WIC and pays $2k in total taxes who gets an $8k refund... yes, it works that way for someone I know) then it is functionally no different than our current system in that you can essentially exempt or 'make whole' or 'make better off' people who earn less than some magic number, and have an increasingly progressive effective tax rate as spending increases.
People on your side of the debate often look at the marginal rate where the guy who earns or spends $1 more than the 'base' pays the same rate as the guy earning or spending millions above it.... ignoring that the (as an example) $50,000 exemption can certainly be structured so that people below that amount pay no net taxes, but could ALSO be designed so that it be a 'guaranteed minimum income' that the left wants and that paying 20% on $51,000 in spending - the $50,000 exemption is $200 on $51,000 or 0.4%.... while the guy who spends $1,000,000 - 50,000 will pay $190,000 or 19%... and records show that most of those people currently pay LESS than 19% net... despite the 39.6 MARGINAL top rate...
and that a prefund to make 'the poor' at least indifferent in spending and the focusing of taxes on the wealthy, but at a rate HIGHER, though not stiflingly so (like the 90% some Dems have suggested) than the current wouldn't possibly harm the economy more
If you (and the rest of the left) would be open to the idea that the European experience proves that there are ways to make a VAT MORE fair than our current system, and your own opinion that the left is growing in power who could ensure that it be so... whether anyone else agrees or not, then we could actually FIX some of the issues that the left laments.