Sunday, August 19, 2012

Ron Paul

Thumping for Republican Ron Paul for even party nominee is a hopeless task. Paul’s deep in political purgatory with only 55 delegates. He’d need 1,144 to win. He’s toast.

But that “no Fed, no IRS” pitch resonates with a lot of young people and the long-in-the-tooth anti-taxers who’ve always claimed that paying federal income tax is voluntary, not mandatory. Of course the ones with taxable income who don’t volunteer generally go to prison. But did you know that last year 46 percent of Americans did not owe any federal income tax? Yep, we 54 percent are keeping the country going!
But listen to what Paul proposes:

“I want to abolish the income tax, but I don’t want to replace it with anything. About 45 percent of all federal revenue comes from the personal income tax. That means that about 55 percent – over half of all revenue – comes from other sources, like excise taxes, fees and corporate taxes. We could eliminate the income tax, replace it with nothing, and still fund the same level of big government we had in the late 1990s. We don’t need to replace the income tax at all. I see a consumption tax as being a little better than the personal income tax.”

Wow!! No income tax, no consumption tax and everything is hunky-dory. Obviously, we’d have to quit funding Medicare, most government offices and the military.