Tim Daneliuk wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:
Tim Daneliuk wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:
SNIP

Not sure that penalizing them for deficit spending is necessarily
a
good idea. Sometimes that helps the economy.

This is arguable. The government produces nothing, hence cannot
add to the GDP.

The effect is indirect.

Only in the sense that government can apply more- or less
force to make the private sector produce less- or more.
The government itself is a consumer unbound by the rules
of supply and demand AND one which has the legal use of
force at its disposal.

So the boom during WWII was due to ther governmnent forcing the
private sector to produce more?

But even if it did so, the Federal Government
has no Constitutional authority to "help the economy".

Comes under "promote the general welfare".

No sir:

1) That statement is in the Preamble. It is not a foundation of
law. It carries all the weight of some Hollyweirdo getting
up at an awards ceremony and saying "I love you all". We
understand the sentiment but do not take it literally.

I seem to recall there being something in the Constitution about
"Supreme Law of the Land".

2) In James Madison's own words, the 'general welfare' was
not to be understood to be a carte blanche for the Feds
to do whatever they wanted. As he pointed out (sorry, do
not have the precise cite), that such an interpretation would
completely undermine the "enumerated powers" doctrine that
drives the whole Constitution.

And James Madison spoke for the Supreme Court when? I'm sorry, but an
opinion expressed by a President is not law. And we were not talking
about "a carte blanche". We were talking about legislation intended
to benefit the economy. Is such legislation forbidden or is it not?
If it is, what ruling of the Supreme Court forbade it?

Step Three
----------

Instantiate a flat tax like the Fair Tax via a Constitutional
Amendment that forbids the institution of *any* other kind of
tax.
So no protective tariffs on foreign trade even if other countries
do
enact such tariffs?
Right. Tariffs are yet another attempt to "manage" economics.

So it's OK for the Chinese to charge a 30 percent tariff on
American
goods imported into China but we have to let them bring theirs into
the US without the same disadvantage? Sorry, but there's a
difference between "managing economics" and "levelling the playing
field".

You live in a world of illusion. No government has enough juice to
actually control economics short of using violent force.

Oh, _beat_ that straw man. Tariffs are not "controlling economics",
they are controlling the prices of imports.

In the
scenario you describe, markets would seek to be efficient and would
punish such bad behavior by the Chinese pretty effectively.

How so? It costs more to bring something into China than it does for
the Chinese to bring an equivalent product into the US. So Americans
buy Chinese goods but Chinese don't buy American goods.

After
all, if people in the US could not get their goods sold overseas,
they
would lack the resource to buy the even very cheap Chinese goods.

And the Chinese, who have Americans outnumbered 3 to 1 care about this
because?

Tariffs these days are primarily political and policy pressure
tools,
not meaningful economic levers (no matter what Carter, Bush,
Clinton,
Bush seem to think).

Yes, they are. And you would deny them. To what purpose would you do
this?

The "Fair Tax" proposal seems to be a 23% sales
tax, which is a "soak the poor" scheme.
Go reread it. It does no such thing. It rebates *everyone* the
amount of money a "poor" family would pay in taxes. This means
the truly poor pay no taxes.

I see. Sounds simple, but now it's yet another "soak the rich"
scheme.


No it's not. It's a "pay in proportion to what you spend" scheme.
The more you spend, the more "sales tax" you pay. If you don't
spend it, this creates working capital for market action. If you
do spend it, you fund your nation. Simple, effective, and fair.

So poor people who don't buy much don't pay any tax and rich people
who buy more pay lots of tax. Sounds like a "soak the rich" scheme to
me, no matter how you sugarcoat it.

And what happens if everybody gets ****ed off at the government and
decides to keep their spending below the limit at which the refund
exceeds the taxes paid?

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)