The "Fair" Tax is such a transparently scammy and dishonest proposal that it makes the most bizarre get rich quick schemes look like honest P&L statements from plodding, risk-averse firms that produce small but real returns.
It pretends a monthly cradle to grave welfare check for every man, woman, and child in the country is an "advance rebate," even though the check is not conditioned on any tax being paid at all.
It pretends that the IRS will be eliminated, when actually it will merely be re-named (there WILL be an agency to investigate evasion of the tax, cut the welfare checks, investigate welfare fraud, etc.).
It pretends to be 23% when it's actually 30% (its supporters calculate it "inclusively" so that they can pretend the tax is part of, rather than above and beyond, the actual price of the product -- a $1 item would cost $1.30).
Scam after scam after scam.
What I hate most about it is that when I have to debate it, I'm left with only two plausible conclusions about my opponents:
They're either the kind of people who look up when you tell them the word "gullible" is written on the ceiling, or the kind of people who have no problem lying about what they advocate to make it not sound as bad as it is.
And it makes me feel bad to know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that someone is one of those two things and have to try to to figure out which.
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