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by settrans
1778 days ago
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I happen to mostly agree with you, but to play devil's advocate, consider the practical reality that government (as currently expressed) is expensive. New Hampshire is a great example of your model working well: nearly half of its tax revenue is consumption-derived (compared to ~10% of New York's). Except New York collects more than double the tax per head versus NH. Let's assume that we can't easily shrink the size of government. Middle class incomes are just too lucrative of a piggy bank, which is why tax policy is so reliant on it. How do you make up for the $3.3 trillion in income and payroll tax revenues without taking people's property? The US only imported $2.5 trillion in 2019, so you'd need an import tariff rate of 130%! If you used a federal sales tax instead, you'd likely need a rate of > 24% to replace the income tax (extrapolating from New Jersey as a reasonable lower bound). |
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