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More Jobs,
Fewer and Lower Taxes
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Applying the KISS Principle
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Steve Selengut
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Over the past thirty years Federal Tax receipts (Corporate, Personal, Estate,
Excise, Gift, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, et al) have averaged less
than 20% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Read that again, and don't think for
a minute that it's not a large number.
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But it's not nearly large enough to pay the bills, reduce the national debt,
grow the economy, and come to the aid of all of the people in the world who
need us. Why, because nearly half of us (some legally, some not so) pay little
or no federal income taxes at all - and because our elected representatives
have no financial management skills.
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The only taxes that always get paid are those that reduce the amount of
spending money in our pockets and which raise the cost of the goods and
services we purchase - thus retarding economic growth.
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There is no doubt that a Federal Sales Tax on consumption by final consumers
would produce more revenue than all of the other taxes combined - but how much,
and is it okay to single out things like cigarettes and gas guzzlers for extra
taxes?
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We need to give it a try, and there would be added benefits: (a) we would be
collecting taxes from all of those folk who earn incomes that are just not
reported at all, (b) the products we try to sell in world markets would be
more competitive, and (c) all of us would have more money to spend on stuff
that could actually become lower in price.
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There are no purely economic problems with making the shift to a consumption
tax - just political ones. The legislation has been "on the hill", and summarily
ignored for decades. We need to apply cool economic sense to the elimination
of the Internal Revenue Code and the Social Security Ponzi scheme.
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Steve Selengut is the author of The Brainwashing of the
American Investor: The Book that Wall Street Does Not Want YOU to Read",
and "A Millionaire's Secret Investment Strategy". One of his
websites: Kiawah Golf
Investment Seminars.
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