DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
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DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
4mo ago
What really sold the “six swing states were stolen” narrative for me was that, except for Michigan which was half a million more for Biden, they all had some dozen thousand more Biden votes. Miniscule.
With a margin that razor thin, finding three or four different illicit ways to tip it in those states, each one more feasible in a different set of swing states, is easily within the grasp of a coordinated effort between intelligence agencies, a handful of nonprofits, and the top ranks of real power.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
4mo ago
The services of the contractor repairing the old house would be FairTaxed, as would services on old cars, tailoring of old clothes, and tenant remodeling for business suites in old business buildings. It’s only tax-free if you buy the thing and repair it yourself.
Also, why would repaired items be considered less productive? They use less resources to be restored to the same utility as a new thing. Unless you’re talking GDP-style metrics?
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
Thanks for the PDF! Here's a summary of the FairTax proposal.
America's current income tax system is a vast and arcane compromise between taxing economic activity to pay for necessary services which enable that activity and finding unescapable means of confiscating the wealth of those who can most afford to see it gone in order to help those without the opportunities the rich have had. Thus, it ends up
By being produced in a jurisdiction in which income is taxed, every product and service has some dollar amount built into its price which ends up in the hands of the government, that is, in the hands of the well-pensioned union of taxmen of the IRS. The hamburger I purchased today cost me $11 of my own post-tax income, and some 20-30% of that $11 is "embedded taxes":
- some of that went to the cook, whose income is taxed
- some of that went to the cashier, whose income is taxed
- some of that went to the owner, whose income is taxed
- some of that went to the foodservice wholesaler's truckers, warehousemen, and owners, whose incomes are taxed
- some of that went to the farmers who grew the wheat, lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumber for pickle, soybeans for mayo, and the rancher whose cow I ate, all of whose incomes are taxed
- et cetera throughout the supply chain
Each of these individuals is at risk of underpaying the government, at which point men with guns will come to their homes and take them to a holding cell.
Imagine if, instead of having three hundred million potential tax cheats to monitor and prosecute, the government revenue service only had some two to ten million, all of them business owners and accountants and none of them laborers.
Imagine all IRS agents going into retirement and the Sixteenth Amendment riding off into the sunset, never to be seen again, all replaced by an automatic and easy-to-comprehend tax system which is the fairest ever devised by men.
Imagine if you paid the same amount for goods and services, paid the "embedded taxes" you were already paying for, but no money came out of your payroll for taxes.
Imagine never being at risk of tax fraud, not even for investments or selling your own property.
Imagine getting a monthly tax refund of 100% of the taxes you've paid the government.
The FairTax proposal has six moving parts:
- FICA payroll tax would be replaced by a point of sale tax: 23% of what you pay for services and new goods at retail would go directly to the government. (Some people say it's 30% on top of the price, but that's just the exclusive/inclusive viewpoint shift.) Price-gouging would be investigated and prosecuted, because the goal here is for prices to remain the same across the board as the government swaps one entire tax system for another.
- Your payroll wage amount would suffer a one-time drop to what it is after tax withholding. For example, if you make $15/hr. but take home $12.50/hr after taxes, your new wage is $12.50, of which you keep every dime. If you make $79k/yr but only take home $54k, you now make $54k/yr.
- Investment taxes would be a thing of the past. Anyone, no matter how poor, could gamble in the stock market without having to track the money for the government.
- Wholesale supply chain purchases would not be subject to the 23% FairTax, thus avoiding creating an advantage for vertically integrated companies. This however does not include business-to-business purchases between suppliers and vendors!
- Used goods would not be subject to the 23% FairTax, thus encouraging refurbishment and reuse instead of disposal, and avoiding taxing estate sales, yard sales, used goods auctions, and thrift stores. This includes used buildings, even skyscrapers and stadiums. Once it's been purchased taxed, it'll never be taxed again.
- Any adult who registers for the pre-calculated rebate ("prebate") gets around $250-$300/mo. by direct deposit, and a lower amount per dependent child. This covers 100% of the FairTax embedded into the goods and services of someone living at the Federal poverty level, paying all they earn for their daily needs which are assumed to be all services or new goods, and thus FairTaxed.
The last part, the prebate, is what keeps this consumption tax from being regressive. The middle class buy more due to a more expansive lifestyle, and the investment class buy a huge amount more; they'll pay a lot more to the government than $300 each month, but both get the same flat $250-$300/mo. prebate. The 1% of the 1% might not even bother registering for such a relatively miniscule rebate, and the government gets to keep it. Meanwhile, it would be a source of direct income to the homeless and indigent, who could sign up for a bank account with their FairTax registration and direct deposit.
There are lots of arguments against the FairTax, but most of them are based on misunderstandings of one of the six moving parts above. I've collected exactly three cogent arguments against, which is a lot less than any other system, even Georgism.
(On a slight tangent, excluding groceries from sales taxes is surprisingly regressive.)
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
Thomas rejects the consequentialism of the majority in their mentioning the large amount of tax revenue that would be lost.
My main man comes through again! “Collectivists hate this one weird trick.”
I’d love a thorough unpacking of his opinion in this case. Where might I find it without having to sign up for something?
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
His Chronicles of Narnia and Sci-Fi Trilogy also give hypothetical answers for the problem of the existence of nonhuman sapients in a God-created world, which is a variety of theodicy.
He portrays in Narnia a multiversal God the Son who may incarnate as a different representative of sapience in any universe created for sapients, in a multiverse where Jesus of Nazareth had already been wrongly crucified as an innocent as a sacrifice for the fallen and resurrected three days later.
In the SF Trilogy, he posits that Satan may be ruler of this world for a time, but that Adversary might be limited to one planet by divine fiat.
My own take is that each sapient species is given a prime metaphor for their relationship with God; for humans, it’s the husband/wife/offspring paradigm, thus how every sin against fruitfulness and multiplying is considered abominable. God may give aliens another prime metaphor entirely.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
Triessentialism would not be surprised that people with an especial intuition of power (its acquisition, maintenance, threats of use used as leverage, etc.) would be ideologically uncommitted.
Assume three basic mindsets of people in this world: people with intuition of power, of logic and reason, or of emotional motivations. I, as a person with intuition of logic (hereafter “a Thinker”), am unfamiliar with power except in its media (nonfiction and fiction) portrayals, and I had to build my own philosophy from scratch for ten years to begin to understand how Feelers use emotions to shape their world.
Movers are intuitive in matters of power, whether they’ve studied and practiced car repair or geopolitics, but without study find logic and emotion to be wastes of time and Thinkers and Feelers mysterious antagonists with hidden sources of power.
I am likely to agree with a Mover if he suggests a course of action. It’s no surprise to me that a Mover would find the most “powerful” Thinkers and Feelers to inform him of what his politics should be; what his purpose should be.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
Seriously. I’m not thinking of a job where Excel will be a primary tool for database work, but admin jobs and other jobs where Excel is an ancillary tool.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
the only issue I could possibly imagine is the question of whether NDAs are enforceable in the first place (as they involve creating a legal penalty for engaging in certain types of speech)
As I understand it, an NDA is a voluntary contract between two parties, trading one party’s things of value for the other’s agreement not to say a certain set of things. That means breach of contract (disclosing the thing and not paying the penalty listed in the contract) falls under civil suit law, with penalties being restricted to the monetary and enforceable by public judges.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
· Edited 5mo ago
Not so arbitrary; selecting for intelligence may have its drawbacks. The infamous paper Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence (NHAI) hypothesizes that Europe accidentally selected the Ashkenazi Jews for intelligence for 800 years, and that their population also got a larger proportion of genetic brain disorders compared to human baseline as a result. The implicit warning is that anyone attempting a similar result on purpose will get genetic brain disorders in the resulting population.
Some people try to find scientific refutations for this hypothesis (PDF), instead of outright rejecting it as “eugenics bad” and refusing to do science.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
I’d personally love to give someone a blank Excel and that mileage problem, if I was interviewing them for a job with Excel use as part of the job description/job ad.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
· Edited 5mo ago
My church used to (through the 80's, in the preschool and elementary age classes only!) sing a song with the line, "Red and Yellow, Black and White, they are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world."
These Boomer "phrenotypes" have been remixed by Millennials, with "Red" and half of "Yellow" being combined into Brown, and the rest of "Yellow" being merged into White.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
It usually connotes inner-city and coastal city/suburb people of "low Hispanic" or Mestizo ethnicity. Albuquerque's Chicano populace has a culture more akin to that of Los Angelinos than the Hispanic / Latino people in the rest of New Mexico, for example.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
I’m in the same boat as you, description-wise. Neither of us have aphantasia, the literal description is just poor.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
I stopped needing a day nap about a year after I started taking vitamin D at five times the recommended daily allowance within an hour of waking up. In addition, it was no longer literally painful to awaken before 8am.
My mood benefited too, more resilient against depression.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
So does paying a grifter to go away if they sign an NDA with a huge clawback clause.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
I’ve noted before the similarity of America’s adversarial justice system to the scientific process: a theory must be proposed, all evidence (experimental, forensic, eyewitness) must be logged, all reasonable alternative explanations must be falsified, and only then do we consider it proved, and thus, known.
But there’s a well-known way around the scientific method.
A focus on novel, confirmatory, and statistically significant results leads to substantial bias in the scientific literature. One type of bias, known as “p-hacking,” occurs when researchers collect or select data or statistical analyses until nonsignificant results become significant.
The judge told the jury to break into groups of four, and that each group only had to find one of the three modifiers to be true — and they didn’t have to be the same modifier. Judge Merchan has p-hacked misdemeanors into a felony!
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
Maybe the neocon or Whig wings, but the minarchist and libertarian wings are quite willing to end subsidies.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
In that case, I recommend checking this chart (PDF link) to see how many codependent characteristics you currently have. You should know that this was made for a vaguely theistic 12-step recovery group designed by and for neurotypical people.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
Although I don’t know your exact situation, my mind immediately goes to the elements of harmony and the levels of relationship.
First, identify the level of relationship with the person you’re trying to have cooperate. Acquaintances share attributes, Friends share experiences, Ohana share purpose. (Ohana, Hawaiian for family, is the name I’ve chosen for the category of people who go in together on ventures, such as marriages or businesses, or who rely on each other for survival such as brothers in arms. Best friendships, our closest confidants, are here too, as are intimate lovers. They hold our hearts and hopes, and a betrayal from Ohana hurts more than anything else.)
Identifying the level of the relationship can help you to see what you’re asking from their perspective; do they consider you to be their acquaintance, friend, or Ohana?
An analogy is a house. Acquaintances get basic hospitality; they can come into the living room, the dining room, the den, the backyard, and the bathroom. Friends can come into the kitchen and get snacks from the refrigerator, get asked to help with the dishes, can hang out in personal spaces occasionally, and can borrow books from the shelves. Ohana have a free bed whenever needed, can leave stuff in the house indefinitely, can share resources, may even be asked to do laundry.
Next, consider the elements of harmony and where the other person stopped being an “us” and started being a “them” to you: are they being unkind, untruthful, disloyal, ungenerous, too serious, or under-involved?
If not, it’s not a relationship issue but just someone not modeling the world as you do. Being neuro-atypical myself, this is my everyday life; I have to make people see things the way I do by starting from their perspective and working toward mine. It’s difficult and requires patience, coming to an understanding with people who don’t see the same structures of importance and imperative when they look at the world.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
Hear, hear.
There’s a statement which I’ve heard semi-frequently in church and on Christian radio, and I know not its provenance: “God has no grandchildren.” It means that people may be culturally similar to their Christian parents and ancestors, but faith in Jesus as savior and God as father is an individual matter, not a familial/cultural one. For example, my father’s stories of his conversion have been vitally important to my own faith, but my faith has a different genesis (pun intended) and is inextricably mine.
Institutional churches, like the Church of England, tend to lose sight of this fact and settle for children inheriting the faith of their fathers, putting it on a shelf for safekeeping like the family china and bringing it out on holidays.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
The dichotomy between communitarian tribalism and serfdom under “great men” was broken by capitalism/libertarian thinking in the 1700’s, and resulted in more prosperity than the human mind could handle.
We’re living in the ruins of that singularity, which was seized, restrained, and looted by both communitarians and “great men” to the point where prosperity of innovation has been reduced to the dull grey grinding of the workaday life. The point of life is, currently, getting a good credit score, and affording good medical insurance to avoid ruining the credit score come the next emergency.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
I presume here you meant the able but non-productive/anti-productive, the purposeful parasites, the proud takers and exploiters, the looters of the producers in Ayn Rand’s terminology. (I have no problem with society supporting the unable/disabled, but I hope they can be supported in becoming artists or scientists of some sort. Either way, I don’t count them as looters.)
The trick of a functional civilization is reducing the incentives to become a looter and lowering the bar to becoming a producer. We seem to be doing the exact opposite, from my lower-middle-class perspective.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
The point wasn’t just anti-corporate, it was anti-marketing. It’s in the name. McDonalds cashiers would ask, “Would you like to supersize that?” to upsell. People who can’t say no and people with weak personal boundaries were (perceived as) getting fatter than they would have anyway. It appealed to defending less able people against attacks.
Remember the viral scissor question from a while back, “In front of you appears red and blue button. If more than 50% of the people presses the red button, everybody who pressed the blue button dies.” A lot of people defended pressing the blue button because even if they themselves thought it smarter to press the red button, they’d press blue in case other people, possibly within their circle of friends, were tricked into pressing blue. They were trying to be heroes.
And it “worked”: one effect of the film was the end of the supersizing upselling, and eventually the end of the supersize option.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5mo ago
Exactly. When one party can simply import third world socialists (including religiously socialist Muslims) and make them voters, the other party has to either become a competing socialist party or stand on principle and expire.
Although I agree with you, an alternate “bad end” had the potential to happen during the armed FBI raid on Mar A Lago. If President Trump had been shot, President Biden would not be prosecutable as the raid ostensibly fell under item one. An impeachment for a high crime would have been the only recourse other than Civil War II, and there’s little doubt its fate in the Senate would have been short.
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