{"id":731,"date":"2004-03-06T05:11:00","date_gmt":"2004-03-06T05:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=731"},"modified":"2018-08-10T10:47:37","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T15:47:37","slug":"731","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2004\/03\/06\/731\/","title":{"rendered":"Query"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Robert J. Samuelson column in the <i>Washington Post<\/i> about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A31982-2004Mar4.html\" target=\"new\">The Future of the Welfare State<\/a> (registration required) triggered a thought.  When Samuelson says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But Europe relies heavily on a sales tax &#8212; the &#8220;value-added tax&#8221; &#8212; that, in theory, falls on consumption and not investment or work effort.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I think, you know, some people want to introduce a national sales tax, or consumption tax, in these United States to replace the income tax.  I hadn&#8217;t given much thought to the stupidity of the consumption tax, but here&#8217;s my epiphany:<\/p>\n<p><b><i>A consumption\/sales tax rewards people like Scrooge McDuck who throw all their moneys into savings and vaults but don&#8217;t purchase things, which keeps the economy going.<\/b><\/i>  Of course, when Scrooge McDuck dies, the inheritance tax kicks in and the heirs get less than the sum of Scrooge&#8217;s savings, which they can save or spend (with applicable consumption taxation).  Holy cow, Taxman!<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps less taxes would spur the economies.  But less taxes means less government dole, and how can one get elected with the latter?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Robert J. Samuelson column in the Washington Post about The Future of the Welfare State (registration required) triggered a thought. When Samuelson says: But Europe relies heavily on a sales tax &#8212; the &#8220;value-added tax&#8221; &#8212; that, in theory, falls on consumption and not investment or work effort. I think, you know, some people [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22720,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions\/22720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}