Your Government At Work

VATS don’t work. I’ve seen them put into place in two countries–Canada, and Japan.
First of all, when you’re taxing every transaction in an entire country, you’re talking about a ginourmous crapload of money. So why are these taxes always 9.5% or 15% or (in some places in Europe) nearly 30%? You’d think that even 1/4% of every sale in an entire country would be a huge amount of money.
In Canada it was sold as “the only way to save the heath care system” (yet another example of how the government owns you once they control health care). It was passed, the “death of health care” was averted, and…the money vanished without a trace. Three years later the health care system was back in trouble, and there had been no discernible benefit from taking away another 10% of the entire population’s after-tax income. They’re still arguing in Ottawa over where the money from the GST went. No one seems to be able to figure it out. Well, I know the ex-Minister of the Environment for Canada and it’s her considered opinion, based on talking to others in the government, that the cost of administrating the ridiculous system eats up almost the entire tax taken in.
These taxes are a typical political trick. The pols say “Everyone must Pay! Slam those evil corporations!” In reality, while every commercial transaction is traced and taxed…all but the final consumer get the tax back as a refund. Nice scam, huh? Kind of like the corporate tax. Lefty pols love that one. But corporations don’t pay it. They add it to the cost of their goods or services. The consumer pays.
Same thing in Japan. Slap a 10% tax on every consumer transaction, add a huge new bureaucracy, multiple layers of incomprehensible paperwork, and the glorious opportunity for entire new areas of corruption…and same result as Canada. Everything you buy costs significantly more, and you get diddley-squat. A lot of Japanese economists blame it for stretching out the recession there by reducing purchasing power and slowing recovery of the retail sector (which seems Econ 101 to me, but I’m not working for the US Government, I guess.)
VAT or Luxury Tax or GST…whatever you want to call it, it is probably the most evil and heinous (not to mention regressive) tax ever invented. Naturally, all the EU countries have one….

Jesus, I just heard last night that the VAT they want in the US is 25%!!!
Washington will be burned to the ground by mobs if they try that.

I agree both parties need a purge.
The Tea Parties are a tough thing to keep going, but I don’t think anything more potentially politically important is currently occurring in America. The fact that they are becoming much more bipartisan is heartening, but that might be because more Americans now identify themselves as “Independent” than either “Republican” or “Democrat,” with the Democrats taking the heaviest loss. I switched my ID to Independent just before the last election. And I never refer to myself as a Republican now, but a conservative. Or a South Park conservative. Maybe someday soon people will call themselves “Tea Party Independents.”
No wonder Obama is in such a screaming panic to get the permanent slavery of rationed health care into place.