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From: tedrick@ernie.berkeley.edu.BERKELEY.EDU (Tom Tedrick)
Newsgroups: net.taxes
Subject: Re: Responses on Schiff stuff
Message-ID: <12205@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 6-Mar-86 13:22:53 EST
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Posted: Thu Mar  6 13:22:53 1986
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Reply-To: tedrick@ernie.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Tom Tedrick)
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>	Just out of curiosity, how do you propose that the government
>finance its operation? Seriously - I'm not baiting you, I would truly
>like for my thoughts to be provoked. I agree with you that there are
>aspects that are horrendous, but I haven't heard any reasonable 
>alternatives yet.

Well :-) here is my plan. All taxes should be "indirect", ie no
direct taxes that the general public will notice unless they
make an effort to look into what is going on. Since the masses
tend to sink into complacency when not provoked, this seems
to be the most politically expedient method.

For example, heavy taxes on oil imports and other imported
goods, taxes on liquor, cigarettes levied on the producers,
etc. No direct income or sales taxes. That way, not only
are the masses not stirred up by having to pay taxes directly,
costs of collecting taxes should go down since there would be
fewer groups to collect from and they would be easier to
identify. Also taxing imports is politically expedient since
it would have the support of local producers. Finally, legalization
and heavy taxation of narcotics, would be useful, transferring
wealth from organized crime to organized government, at the
same time reducing enforcement costs, reducing drug related
crime, and returning criminals to more productive activity.

If all else fails, we can also print more money to finance
the government, borrow money, etc., and blame the resulting
inflation on the arabs :-)