Taxing consumption as a whole unduly affects poor people, because a larger percentage of their income goes to necessary consumption (food, clothes, transportation, etc.) than rich people. It would hit the poorest people the hardest.

That's why taxing consumption is not a good idea. As a whole.

However, taxing unnecessary (or luxury) consumption, like the proposed tax on iTunes downloads, doesn't have the same negative effect.

"Go ahead, tax the rich. And, as in the case of NYC, they are moving out in droves."

Do you have any data to back that off, or are you just inventing facts to support your ideology?

The rich are moving out? I sure as hell haven't noticed. In fact, Manhattan real estate market for upscale (as in multi-million) homes is still very healthy. Meanwhile the real estate market in the burbs for working class homes is not. It's the poor and middle class people who can't afford to live in New York City. It's been this way for a LOOOONG time, but it's getting increasingly worse in recent times.

As for the rest of your post, a lot of the social/welfare program funding is cost effective, because it's preventive in nature.

For example, funding healthcare makes sense, because it improves the general health of the population reducing the need for REALLY expensive healthcare options (ER visits, hospitalization, etc.) and reduces the rates of serious illnesses (diabetes being #1 in NYC right now). It also reduces business losses by reducing the amount of sick days.

Funding the police prevents crime, which is MUCH cheaper than housing criminals in prisons.

It's exactly the same for practically every single social program that's government funded. It's a fairly simple cause and effect formula. You don't even have to think really hard about it. You just have to think.

I'm really sick and tired of hearing people complain about governments spending money on welfare programs. It's typically coming from neo-cons and other free markets advocates who don't seem to understand, or conveniently omit mentioning, the fact that most government funded welfare and social programs are cost effective on the long run.

I really don't understand the rationale of these people. You want governments to cut costs, but yet you advocate policies that would increase costs in the long run. What is it that you really want? I have a pretty good idea, but I still want to believe that people are fundamentally good, so I'm trying to not think about it.

Increased regulation causing the State budget shortfalls? How is making decisions on tax rates regulation?

You might also want to read up on a certain Mr. Madoff, who took full advantage of a regulatory vacuum. This is the world you want?

Private right of action got stripped out of it due to complaints from the direct marketers. That was strike one. With so much spam it's completely unreasonable to expect anyone to enforce the law. Crowdsourcing the enforcement through private right of action would've worked. And the direct marketers knew it...

The second strike was that the bill didn't anticipate the success of botnets and Russian organized crime. The law doesn't do jack s*** about that problem.