The Glade 4.0

Yes, FairTax is a big improvement over our current tax system. My point was a flat income tax would be better, not that FT is worse than what we have now. I also have serious questions about FairTax's claims, they claim it will not raise taxes on the poor or middle class and that it's revenue neutral, but since it clearly results in a far lower tax rate for the wealthy, I really start to wonder where that money is going to come from.

That's a rather dishonest argument, Khross, and I'm surprised you would use such a transparent switch in terminology (referring to % of expenditures rather than % of income).

RangerDave:

The only person switching terminology here is you.

_________________

*sigh* As you well know, the terms regressive and progressive are generally used in reference to income, as that's the more meaningful measure of how a tax will impact a person's life. If you want to argue that it's more fair/just to think of those terms in reference to expenditures, make that argument. Don't just switch to a less common usage and wait for someone to notice. It just makes you look pedantic at best and dishonest at worst.

Anyway, you and I both know exactly what rhetorical game you're playing, and I'm frankly just not interested. Last word on the subject is yours if you want it.

"A regressive tax is a tax imposed in such a manner that the tax rate decreases as the amount subject to taxation increases."

Income is only part of the equation. Food stuff is the only item I can think of off hand where demand is irrelevant to income.

VATS can be regressive, but you can bet your bottom dollar that it'll be legislated to put a greater burden on those with higher incomes when the US starts.

Even so, a flat VAT is only regressive on some small segment of total purchases and progressive on a the much larger segment. Home prices, cars, etc. would constitute the greater portion of tax income from a VAT, and those would go up in proportion to income. The wealthy would pay MUCH more than the poor.

_________________
In time, this too shall pass.

RangerDave:

Right, because your only answer is continued ad hominems. How is a flat consumption tax on all expenditures regressive?

_________________

Because he is using a definition of a regressive tax where it is defined to do so.

I mean I think thats rather obvious at this point.

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

This is a great idea.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Yeah, I'm a big fan of this approach too, though I think the result would be more spending, not less (at least given the current tax structure). Lots of people like the idea of cutting spending in general, but hate the idea of cutting anything specific. Check out this chart of self-identified conservatives' spending preferences:


h/t Yglesias

You can't even get a majority of conservatives to say they want anything cut. That's why my OP assumes no spending reductions.

Matthew Yglesias isn't exactly credible when you're trying to paint your opposition in broad strokes. Please stop with the partisanship, RangerDave.

_________________

Pick a fight elsewhere, Khross. Like I said, I'm not interested.

Then kindly provide alternative sources that aren't biased. Alternatively, address his questions, shared by others here.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Try clicking through to see where the data comes from if you're actually interested (hint: Yglesias didn't run his own online poll or something like that). Point is, I started this thread in Heckfire for a reason - I wanted a conversation, not an internet-style argument with lots of stupid posturing. That seems unlikely to happen now (thanks guys!), so f*ck it. I have better things to do.

Easy fix to that.

Have them set their acceptable tax level first.

Give them funding to allocate program spending based on the tax level they set. If they want to allocate more funding, they will need to accept the higher tax burden. Do not allow deficit spending under any circumstances.

Honestly, I think you'd see most government spending disappear under such a model.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Consumption tax is only regressive when you consider it compared to the present system where people in the lower income brackets don't pay income tax at all. That isn't a function of the tax itself then, it's a function of how it's implemented.
When they implement it in the US, they'll exempt most foods, tier the product base tax, etc, to overcome any perceived disparity.

_________________
In time, this too shall pass.

I followed it through. The conclusions made by the author, the article he stole it from, and the article they stole their article from, is spurious. They used incorrect data, then, once they'd received corrected data, they stuck to their conclusion.

Furthermore, at a glance (haven't had time to read through the 84 pages), the questionnaireonly distinguishes individuals by party affiliation, not conservative/liberal. As such, all three articles citing the source have drawn a political conclusion, not a scientific one.



Nobody is not having a conversation. You've now resorted to name calling, though, rather than address any given question. You've asked questions about terminology shifts, which have been responded to and addresses (though not well, in my opinion).

No offense intended, but the only person dodging "a conversation" on the topic is you, it seems. Xeq seems to be doing just fine, for example.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I did. The problem is you apparently didn't dig deep enough into the ANES to figure out the political positioning of its board. Nor, for that matter, did you pay attention to the fact that they were all academics. Perhaps, instead of presuming I didn't do due diligence, you actually do it yourself.

I've seen that chart thrown around; I know where the chart originated. And, sadly, it's pretty sparse on methodology and actual data. I'm not a big fan of poll based statistics in the first place; the least you can do is take data from a non-partisan source that doesn't paint your opposition negatively.

But, yes, because we're critical of your positions and your sources, obviously you don't need to debate here. More importantly, you still haven't explained how a flat VAT or consumption tax is actually regressive. You keep shifting the goal posts and using a term that doesn't actually or accurately describe the income scaling or burden scaling on flat VATs. More to the point, when called on the intellectual dishonesty of that particular definition, you resorted to ad hominems instead of explaining why you felt a VAT would more negatively effect certain consumption levels when compared with others.

So, no, you do not get to tell us "**** it". No, you don't get to set debate terms as favorable only to your position. And, no, you do not get to presume we are wasting your time.

_________________

On closer examination, I could see where they could create a dividing line in order to create that graph. What's unclear, then, is how that graph was created.

Interestingly enough, any such divide relies, as does the rest of the prospective poll, on response. How, then, do they correct for response bias?

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

First of all, mods, could you please move this thread to Hellfire, since it's clearly no longer in the spirit of Heckfire.

Now with that out of the way - Khross, you are full of ****. You're doing what you always do - striking an antagonistic tone, making sparse, unsupported statements that shift terms in a way that you know is contrary to what most people mean, getting pissy when called on it, and then, only after you've drawn someone into an argument, do you provide any support for your view or any actual critique of your opponents' views beyond one-liners and snarky statements of opinion as fact.

The first ad hom was yours (accusing me of partisanship). You asserted that a flat consumption tax was not regressive, knowing full-well that in common usage and the usage thus far in the thread, taxes are referred to as progressive or regressive by reference to income. When I called you on it, you got pissy and re-asserted the bit about me being partisan though I had said nothing about political party or philosophy, neither of which are particularly relevant to the conversation at hand. When I ignored your subsequent remarks and responded to Taly's post, you continued your irritability by attacking the source (Yglesias) rather than the data, and when I noted that Yglesias wasn't the underlying source anyway, then and only then did you go on to critique (again, flatly asserting, not actually supporting anything) the actual data. It's your typical cheap, arrogant, and frankly infuriating M.O.

So yeah, **** that.

DFK, your conversational style is that of a "rules-lawyer" (a la D&D), and I admit that it rubs me the wrong way sometimes, but unlike Khross, I think you do debate in good faith, so I'll answer the question for you. A flat consumption tax is called regressive in ordinary usage because it is regressive in reference to income. The lower a person's income, the higher the percentage of their income gets spent and thus is subjected to the consumption tax. So, given an 11% flat consumption tax, a poor person spending 100% of their income pays 11% of their income in taxes, while an upper-middle class person spending 50% of their income pays only 5.5% of their income in taxes.

I'm well aware (as is anyone with 30 seconds and access to Wikipedia) that technically, whether or not a tax is regressive depends on what it's referenced to - so a flat consumption tax is, well, flat when you reference it to expenditure, but it's regressive when you reference it to income. As I said, common usage is to reference it to income.

As for the chart I posted, yeah, it sounds like you've got some solid questions about their methodology, and I didn't really look into it much. Like I said, I intended this thread as a relaxed conversation, not a rigorous debate. The chart struck me as facially plausible, and it was relevant to the conversation, so I linked it in that spirit.

Since this isn't in Hellfire yet - I think you better watch it RD, especially since the source of your information has been found lacking and you defend it only with insults.

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Personal attacks are allowed if you request the thread to be moved? That's a nice loophole.

How can you make an assumption of that nature? Someone else can just assume 100% income consumption on both sides and then it's a wash. Unless you'd like to include income tax in addition to a VAT, then it's a hybrid tax system and any discussion then is all over the place.

_________________
In time, this too shall pass.

I'm not defending my source with insults, Elm. I'm insulting Khross as a general matter, not specifically in regard to the chart! *chuckle*

But yeah, I realize I lost my temper there and should have waited for the thread to be moved first.

I'm a bit curious under the headings of that chart what is left under "Welfare Programs" when the individually separated out foreign aid, aid to the poor, social security and child care.

The cynic in me says it adversely influences both the tendencies of the responders and the tendencies of those drawing conclusions from the data, such as those saying "conservatives don't even know what they want to cut".

I think this post should remain where it is; barring the outburst in the post I'm currently quoting, there is no objectionable behavior in this thread. Really? You have yet to defend either your definition of Regressive Tax or your bare assertion that consumption taxes are regressive successfully. I have, repeatedly, asked you to do so. Your responses, in order, are to accuse me of intellectual dishonesty, outright lying, and willfully deceiving the board. Consequently, those are all ad hominems based on a presumption of intent you can neither substantiate nor defend. Consequently, this entire post, indeed your entire attack on me, seems rather meaningless to me.Again, you cannot substantiate, prove, or even make this statement without presuming to know why I am posting. Consequently, your arguments are in bad faith by ascribing an intent and motive to me that is neither present in my posts or my behavior.This is factually incorrect.This is your statement, which precedes my indication that you are arguing with partisan sources and arguments by 5 posts. Moreover, indicating that your arguments and positioning are partisan is not an ad hominem.No, I did not. You are projecting intent into my arguments. I swill state again: consumption taxes are not regressive, not even relative income. To make the bare assertion that consumption taxes are regressive assumes that percentage paid vs. income is more important and more valid than percentage paid vis-a-vis taxed measure. Consequently, I asked you to justify your assertion that consumption taxes are regressive.Yes, yes. More ad hominems and insults when there is nothing in this thread or any other to substantiate your position. Consequently, you can either put up or shut up at this point. Prove that my intent or behavior is as you say, or apologize. I have done exactly two things in this thread.

1. Asked you to defend a bare assertion of yours which is neither supported by the common definition of Regressive Tax (Taskiss provided it for you, so I saw no reason to reiterate it).

2. Indicate that Yglesias and the underlying sources for that graph are both partisan and flawed. Indeed, I kindly asked you not to resort to such sources.

_________________