How is this not just an semantical difference of income tax? How is ANY tax not a semantical difference of income tax? Income is money. You are taxing money. All taxes tax money. All taxes are income tax. Now, there's a ton of minor details, but I'm guessing you're trying to gloss those over with your 'semantical difference' phrase.

Out of curiosity, what stops rich people from just buying their shit in other countries? As mentioned, customs agents. Also, the fact that buying from other countries is inconvenient and often they're charging the same or higher consumption taxes. And since we're talking (at least I'm talking) about a consumption tax in addition to the current tax structure, you can allow for a nonzero noncompliance rate and it's probably still be worth it. I was less than $10k/year for months and am still on the waiting list for all these miraculous government services I've heard of. Most of them (in wisconsin anyway) take 3 months to years to get, I think it's entirely possible to starve to death if you lose your job and have no family (my mom is on month 3 for waiting for unemployment to contact her) I managed to get onto unemployment benefits pretty quickly, but that was before the economy was ground into dust (back in 2005). Aside from that, yeah...our safety net is far from impressive. It's even worse if you don't have kids; it seems like in most cases our social safety net for singles or couples without children bears a striking resemblence to the Republican health care plan, only instead it's "find a job, you bum" or if you can't find a job "go die somewhere out of sight."

How is this not just an semantical difference of income tax? How is ANY tax not a semantical difference of income tax? Income is money. You are taxing money. All taxes tax money. All taxes are income tax. Now, there's a ton of minor details, but I'm guessing you're trying to gloss those over with your 'semantical difference' phrase. Yes, precisely - if you consider an idealised perfectly-applied VAT with no loopholes, under a simple model it becomes essentially identical to a proportional income tax, since all income was someone else's spending. An income tax reduces your wage; a sales tax makes said wage able to buy less stuff - plug the numbers in and the effects are identical. Now there are a ton of aberrations from this model in reality, but all of these involve a model of society substantially more complicated than "rich people" and "poor people".

I managed to get onto unemployment benefits pretty quickly, but that was before the economy was ground into dust (back in 2005). Aside from that, yeah...our safety net is far from impressive. It's even worse if you don't have kids; it seems like in most cases our social safety net for singles or couples without children bears a striking resemblence to the Republican health care plan, only instead it's "find a job, you bum" or if you can't find a job "go die somewhere out of sight." What's really ironic is that Milton goddamn Friedman was the economist who coined the modern idea of a natural equilibrium rate of unemployment - so there are always people who are unemployed for no fault of their own. Dudes don't even read the ideas they're pushing.

How is this not just an semantical difference of income tax? How is ANY tax not a semantical difference of income tax? Income is money. You are taxing money. All taxes tax money. All taxes are income tax. Now, there's a ton of minor details, but I'm guessing you're trying to gloss those over with your 'semantical difference' phrase. I explained it what I meant; once you start adding in all the progressive features of an income tax to sales tax it's kinda pointless to tout the amazing fairness of a sales tax only system.

I managed to get onto unemployment benefits pretty quickly, but that was before the economy was ground into dust (back in 2005). Aside from that, yeah...our safety net is far from impressive. It's even worse if you don't have kids; it seems like in most cases our social safety net for singles or couples without children bears a striking resemblence to the Republican health care plan, only instead it's "find a job, you bum" or if you can't find a job "go die somewhere out of sight." What's really ironic is that Milton goddamn Friedman was the economist who coined the modern idea of a natural equilibrium rate of unemployment - so there are always people who are unemployed for no fault of their own. Dudes don't even read the ideas they're pushing. People like to eat the creme filling of the Oreo.