Zonkerbl wrote:Poor people don't spend money on frivolous crap - they're poor. A lot of what we rich people view as frivolous isn't - if you can't afford a house, you focus your personal consumption on things you can afford - nice clothes, jewelry, a nice phone.
What I can tell you as an economist is that when we give poor people more money, *most of the time* they spend it on things they need, not coke and whores. That's us rich people projecting - we frivolously spend our copious extra money on coke and whores, and we think that's what poor people do too. Shame on them for wasting our precious tax dollars on expensive steak! Pay penance for your poverty, which has clearly happened to you because you are morally inferior! I don't care that your mom died and it's for her funeral wake!
There's a lot of prosperity gospel running through our current politics - if you have a lot of money, it's because God is smiling on your good behavior. It's not because you have a ton of built in institutional advantages because you're white, and your parents are white. It's not that your dad committed tax fraud to gift you $400 million - no! Trump is a good person because he is wealthy. Poor people are poor because they are bad people who spend their money on frivolous things. If only their behavior were as right and proper as mine, they would be wealthier.
To answer your question, income taxes tend to collect more money from rich people than consumption taxes. Eliminating an income tax and replacing the lost revenue with an increase in a consumption tax means more revenue is going to have to come from poor people, and rich people will pay less. Yes, a consumption tax provides an incentive to consume less, so you'll have to crank up the consumption tax even more to get the same amount of revenue. Income tax is a penalty on earning money vs leisure, so it encourages consumption of frivolous leisure activities. So eliminating the income tax will decrease consumption of frivolous leisure activities like naps and video game playing.
Sorry but I don't agree with you on the immoralities of the consumption tax according to what you just mentiioned above. As someone who is the child of two Haitian immigrants, and grew up in low income areas of PG County and Northeast DC, I can tell you that poor people spend their money on frivoulous crap all the time, and those things you rattled off are indeed frivoulous, whether you are rich or poor. As far as home ownership is concerned, many poor people don't want to be homeowners because they don't want the responsiblity of home ownership, their credit is shot, or they are simply irresponsible with their money. Home ownership isn't just accessible by rich people...that is complete white liberal nonsense. If my parents, two immigrants from the poorest country in the western hemisphere, were able to buy TWO houses and send my sister and I to private school on $40,000/year salaries in PG County, then most Americans can afford at least one house. Access to home ownership is available to ANYONE who wants to be a homeowner.
Poor people are poor because many have a poverty mindset (and yes it has to do with quesitonable morals), which is indeed what you just said--focusing your personal consumption on things you can afford - nice clothes, jewelry, a nice phone. That is a selfish, shortsighted, and greedy way of living life. I've known a few people who lived this way, and it just created a cycle of poor decisions that they passed down to their kids.
Anyway, a consumption tax, if implemented properly, makes sense to me. Hell, Canada has a consumption tax, and no one is living high of the hog there. They have one of the biggest middle classes in the world.
