If you could do just one thing?
So, fellow objectivists, we all agree we are heading in the wrong direction. Here's an interesting exercise. If you could enact one change right now to begin to turn the ship of state in the right direction, what would it be. I'm torn between reinstituting the gold standard for currency (and in doing so, eliminating the Fed) and the REINS act.
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GAWD bless Texas.
The greatest impact with the simplest change.
Eliminate all taxes except for tariffs on imports and sales tax. Remove them all at both the state and federal level.
Sales tax would be the same percentage for everyone regardless of income. NO other tax exists. No tax code at all, no deductions.
Business simply collects the sales tax on all goods sold and sends it in to local state and federal and your done.
Very little to no IRS. All investment and property taxes are gone. The economy would take off and growth would be very strong.
Perhaps more importantly the amount taxed would be highly visible to everyone. If the federal government charged 35% sales tax and the state 15% you would buy an item for $100.00 and pay 150.00 for at the check stand. The visibility of the level of taxation would change everything else. People would demand it.
In particular the ability to manipulate the useless idiots into voting for what the people in favor of giveaway programs would be hard pressed to convince those people that an increase in the sales tax was required.
Contrary to popular belief, the 16th Amendment doesn't make Income Taxes legal. It was always legal from the beginning. The catch was that Income Taxes collected needed to be spent on everyone equally.
It's no coincidence that when the government could spend Income Taxes on whatever they wanted that things went nuts.
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1. Term limits on all members of congress.
2. All spending bills must be accompanied with a method to fund it and must be a stand alone bill
The Federal government would still be in the position of having to collect import duties, tariffs, and things of that nature which the states would be unable to do by themselves in any kind of equitable manner.
If the particular state legislature would realize that they were going to lose citizens, both private and corporate, they might just also realize that THEIR lavish compensation would also be threatened. It's easy to go along when you have no skin in the game; it's something else entirely when you must risk YOUR hide at the point of attack!
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