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Jewish World Review May 25, 2010 / 12 Sivan 5770 Big Brother picks your pocket By Glenn Garvin
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
——— MALIA: Daddy, it's great that you're raising everybody's allowance. But OBAMA: Dammit, Joe, you're fired as the First Bedtime-Story Reader! SASHA: Oh, Daddy, don't do that! We love Uncle Joe's scary stories — remember the one about how we were all going to die of the swine flu? BIDEN: Girls, you forgot to tell your dad that the deficit story had a happy ending, where we raise taxes 25 percent to pay for everything. OBAMA (snorting): Great idea, Joe. Why don't we just call the legislation the Tea Party Recruitment Act of 2010? PELOSI: Mr. President, what if I told you we could raise everybody's taxes 25 percent and they wouldn't even notice? OBAMA (intrigued): Is this like one of those Vegas hypnotist shows where the guy gets women to take their clothes off? PELOSI: This is even better. It's called the value-added tax. MALIA Progressive politicians taking policy advice from Nixon — now that's a scary bedtime story! Yes, boys and girls, a Nixon boogeyman has returned to haunt us, and the Obama administration summoned it back from the grave. For the past several weeks, The president has done nothing to discourage the talk. Asked directly about the possibility of a VAT during an interview with CNBC, Obama blandly replied: "That is something that has worked for some countries." When Obama and other spend-first, ask-questions-later politicians say the VAT "works," what they mean is it permits them to enact voracious tax increases in nearly invisible ink. Unlike income tax, which shows up as a specific deduction on your pay stub, or sales tax, clearly marked on your receipt, the VAT is a stealth bomber that swoops in without showing up on the radar. With a VAT, goods are taxed not just when a consumer buys them but at every single step of production. That pair of jeans you pick up at The Gap would have been taxed when the fabric was milled, when it was dyed, when it was cut, when it was sewed and when it was purchased wholesale by the store. Now that pair of jeans you would have bought for The subtleties of the VAT mean the government can collect staggering amounts of money — the A federal VAT would impose on top of state and city sales taxes, which run over 10 percent in some parts of The VAT was invented in Before the VAT went into widespread use there in the mid-1960s, government spending in As much as Obama supporters may like the idea of handing over half of America's wealth to the government, they ought to think twice before unleashing this tax holocaust. One good reason is the VAT's political antecedents: Its first big U.S. advocate was Another is that the VAT is as regressive as taxes can possibly come; poor people who largely escape income taxes will be hammered by such a giant levy on consumption. And a third is that imposition of a VAT would make
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Glenn Garvin is a columnist for the Miami Herald
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