[OT] Re: Mortgage

[Andy Bradford]

Thus said Michael Halcrow on Mon, 19 Sep 2005 17:38:22 CDT:

> I am horrified by this. I can  think of few better ways to stagnate an
> economy  than to  encourage  this mentality.  ``You  are punished  for
> producing,  so  stop worrying  so  much  about producing,  and  reduce
> your  demand for  other peoples'  production!'' Brilliant.  Absolutely
> brilliant. I'd love to see where that will get us before too long.

Something seems amiss  here... Since when is the customer  not king? Are
we  supposed to  buy things  just for  the sake  of keeping  the economy
going? People saving money is what actually keeps the economy going, not
spending into the obliviousness that is debt.

Oh, and  the effect  of people not  buying products is  a signal  to the
producers to slow down production or drop their prices.

> It  makes  the true  cost  of  government  readily apparent  in  every
> purchase  you make  (increasing pressure  against the  statist agenda,
> which  is partially  hidden now  by spreading  out the  taxes among  a
> plethora  of collections),  it consolidates  all the  myriad forms  of
> taxes  down into  one  well-established  collection mechanism  (saving
> untold billions in tax collection overhead), and it removes the morale
> hit that  we take  when we get  our paychecks and  find a  huge chunks
> ripped  right  out from  them  before  the  cash  ever hits  our  bank
> accounts.

No, the true  cost of government would still be  hidden. To truly reveal
the  cost of  government,  the money  of  the people  would  need to  be
returned to honest money. As it is,  the government can hide many of the
costs by imposing  the hidden tax on the people  that is Federal Reserve
generated inflation.

> There are, of  course, drawbacks to something like  FairTax, but there
> are some interesting ways to mitigate them.

Drawbacks like these?

[The Fair Tax Fraud]
http://www.mises.org/story/1814

Andy
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