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From: ncg@ukc.UUCP (N.C.Gale)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Libertarianism as ideology (repl
Message-ID: <5004@ukc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Mar-85 09:58:49 EST
Article-I.D.: ukc.5004
Posted: Fri Mar 22 09:58:49 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Mar-85 04:26:54 EST
References: <inmet.2042> <1467@dciem.UUCP> <834@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA>
Reply-To: ncg@ukc.UUCP (Nigel Gale)
Organization: Computing Laboratory, U of Kent at Canterbury, UK
Lines: 39
Summary: 

In article <834@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA> mwm@ucbtopaz.UUCP (Praiser of Bob) writes:
>
>My personal favorite (if we absolutely must have a tax) is sales tax,
>excluding staple foods and rent/upkeep on a single domicile. If you let
>people post prices with "sales tax included," it can even be made as
>invisible as income tax. And of course, it seems "totally fair, easy to
>administer, and just."
>

I beg to differ.
Someone with twenty times as much income as someone else will
not necessarily spend it all on taxed items.
(S)He is quite likely, in fact, to invest it in attaining a
larger income (do stocks and shares get sales taxed?)

So pleb X gets taxed so much, and rich pleb Y gets taxed not
much more.
This will discourage people from spending money (horror).

Mind you, income tax falls apart fairly quickly, too.
Why should married couples (or even unmarried couples) be penalised?
But if you state that everyone, married or not, should be taxed
on the same scale - doesn't a housewife whose husband is raking in
X0,000 per annum become entitled to social security? Not if you
have a means test, I suppose - but people regard this as degrading.
Should housewives be entitled to a minimum wage? If so, who pays her?
If the husband, what if he doesn't earn enough?

No taxation system is ideal, same as there being no perfect
political doctrine.
What we have at the moment is pretty good, all things considered,
and I can't see anything being solved by fantastic political
experimentation. Restructuring society would be very expensive,
and with very little chance of success.


-Nigel Gale
(another middleoftheroad extremist rebelling against change)