...as long as China has nothing to do with it.

But the ChiComs have the ability to watch and listen to everything that comes across. Some airhead teen says her Navy Dad is on a nuke sub and docking at XYZ overseas port in 3 weeks and they're going to meet him, and that's information that China shouldn't have, at least not that easily.

And it can work the other way, the ChiComs create 1000's of bots to spread lies about solar panels leaking toxic substances or wind turbines being coated with toxic substances and then you get people believing the nonsense and then they're protesting and blocking roads and so forth.

Just get the damned thing out of the hands of the Chinese and everything will be cool. Sell it to Musk or something. But China must get out of our phones and computers.

"What you're saying is that you consider living in a manner consistent with being above the poverty line to be a luxury,"

Exactly. If you're buying something you don't absolutely need, then you're buying a luxury.

"raising taxes on the middle class "

Nooooo.... try again. Product you are about to buy has just lost all the income tax expenses that it had during its manufacture. That means its price goes DOWN. Then it is FairTaxed, which brings it back up to approximately what it was before the FairTax. You approach the cash register with not only your prebate check from the government to pay for all your FairTax up to the poverty line, but also the amount of your payroll taxes that you were paying that are now in your paycheck, plus the amount of your individual income taxes that were being withheld from your paycheck, that you also now have in your wallet. Your taxes are going down. The only way to sabotage that is for you to go buy foreign stuff. That will be 30% or so higher than it was before the FairTax. Simple strategy is don't do that. Buy American. And in a few years, after 100's of 1000's of factories that were located overseas are built in the US, there won't _BE_ many foreign-built products for sale, they will all be being built here in the USA.

The FairTax is going to make up the difference by nailing the tax cheaters. You do realize that if all the taxes that were owed were actually collected, the US Treasury would be about a trillion dollars richer, each year, don't you? There are millions of people that are working in the "underground economy", getting paid under the table, and never sending a dime to the US treasury, right? Well, that shit would cease when they walk into Walmart and buy their big screen TV. They are going to get nailed with FairTax, so they pay more, as they should, and we-all, who have been paying our taxes honestly, will pay less.

Yeah, it's expensive to go to the movies IF you get refreshments (almost $25 total), but the ticket is only about $10, and $5 on Tuesdays.

Yes, there needs to be more content, but there needs to be more quality. Just saw 2 in a row that were very unsatisfying, "Civil War" and "Arcadian". Both the stories were really flawed, the 1st boring and the 2nd just not making a lot of sense.

The 2nd was like "A Quiet Place" with unknown monsters that come out at night and try to eat you. Nick Cage and on-screen offspring barricade themselves in the house every night, but don't seem to have a plan to get things back to normal. The monsters are not Godzilla, because they can be hurt and killed, where firearms do a good job, but there aren't that many firearms in the movie. The NRA said a couple years ago we have 450 million guns in American society, so where are they? I mean, guns are really durable, and people living in rural settings are famous for having multiples.

But do survivors decide to go hunting and do it to extinction? Or have any other plan for normalcy? Nope. Unsatifying.

There's a predominance of horror flicks maybe because "anything goes," there are no rules, but good quality enjoyable movies are I think more scarce than they used to be, and movies in general are more scarce than they used to be. Saw "True Grit", the remake, last Wednesday in the local theater, with the theater owner trying to give us some moving lights on the screen other than the current "already seen it" stuff to give me a reason to come back and spend more money. It worked with me, but there were not a lot of folks in the theater, not like Fathom Events putting on "Casablanca" and the place was packed.

And there's more foreign films too. Theaters are hurting for content. No question.

A tax on electricity or food s a tax on basic ,living expenses and included in the calculation of the poverty level. That is, if electric and food prices increase, the government's calculation of the poverty level and that "prebate" check that is sent to you every month will increase to pay that tax on them. That's just in case you don't have the ability to analyze that yourself, although I rather think that you are just playing dumb to have something to argue about.

Ah, a luxury tax on things that people do not need somehow bankrupts the middle class. Ludicrous. Do you have tin foil hats in matching designer colors too?

Some may have been as shocked as I when, during the last decade, Walmart arbitrarily significantly raised their employees' wages. News reports told us that Walmart had studied why they were not doing better, and found that their employees, who comprise a significant portion of the US public, were not making enough money to shop at Walmart. Walmart increased their employees wages and made more money.

In light of such information, it would seem that a policy to allow over-competitive goods into the American market from any outside source would be repeating the Walmart experience and exacerbating the problem of the Nation's budget deficit as it's citizens cannot provide the revenue necessary to abolish it.

Fortunately, there is a strategy to rectify this. But the 1st step to implementing it is to understand that worker wages in the US are not the primary component of US built cars high prices. Industry experience is that it takes 30 - 33 person-hours to build a US built vehicle at our level of automation. During the meltdown of 2007, when some US car makers required assistance from the government to stay in business, it was revealed at that time that labor expenses to the company for US labor was on the order of $78 / hour. So, multiplying, we get $78 X 33 hours = $$2574 as the labor expense in the average US-built vehicle. That was quite some time ago, so we can expect that number has increased, so lets say $3000 for labor.

In "The FairTax Book" by Neil Boortz and congressman John Linder it was revealed that 22% of the price of goods manufactured in the US is composed of the total expense of income taxes incurred in such manufacturing inside the USA. Is it a wonder that manufacturers have relocated their manufacturing operations outside the US borders? What could we do to bring them back? Logically, lowering manufacturing costs in the USA would be the answer.

But there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. Reducing wages and pauperizing US workers would be the wrong way. The right way would be to zeroize the US income tax expense incurred by manufacturers. That would be employees' individual income taxes that makes their labor more expensive, employees payroll taxes that does the same thing, capital gains taxes that make monies with which to expand more difficult to obtain, and so forth. Nuking the income taxes would seem to be the way to go. Replacing them with a luxury tax on goods and services bought new at retail above the poverty line, as the FairTax does, would seem a much better approach to keeping and expanding manufacturing in the USA.

Circling back to the 22% of the price of goods manufactured in the USA, that means that a $60K Jeep Grand Cherokee manufactured in Toledo, Ohio would be carrying 22% of that $60K as nothing but tax, most of which would disappear if the 16th Amendment were repealed and income taxes in the USA were abolished. 22% of $60,000 is $13,200. So, the Jeep drops in price for up to $13,200, for a price approaching $46,800. After that, the FairTax charges a 23% inclusive rate, meaning that if you buy something for $100 under the FairTax, it sends $23 to the US Treasury. Looked at another way, the price of the Jeep goes back up to very close to its original $60K, so in effect the US built vehicle remains the same price.

Foreign goods would end up similarly without getting the big price reduction from losing the cost of the US income taxes in their manufacture since they don't pay them. So, 77% of what is $60,000? $77,900. The foreign-manufactured vehicle's price would rise from $60K to about $77,900. So, note the pseudo-tariff that is not a WTO violation that is effected by the FairTax. Would US manufacturing do well? Would manufacturers from all over the planet rush to build factories here to take advantage of the tax-free manufacturing environment? The stampede created would cause labor shortages that would drive up wages. Nobody would need target China with tariffs. The US produced goods would be over-competitive in the world marketplace, and we would be able to nuke the budget deficit and begin paying down the debt with the taxes from the spending of relatively richer workers in US manufacturing who would be spending for everything from bobble-head dashboard dolls to better homes and vehicles.

"You're still completely ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that the same amount of revenue has to come from somewhere, and that the proposed 23% tax on spending is just plain staggering, whether the government sends you a check for that back or not The poor are still having to float almost a quarter more spending for the month"

Good grief, were do you get this stuff?

The poor are maybe making $12K a year, maybe less. If they're making $10K, they're sending $1530 per year to the US Treasury. Plus, under the FairTax, the price of the AMERICAN PRODUCED food will be the same before and after the FairTax is instituted, so the poor person buys a box of Corn Flakes for $X before the FairTax, and will pay $X for that box of Corn Flakes after the FairTax, AND the gov't has sent him the $$$ to pay the FairTax on it so he's really only paying 77% of $X, while the gov't is paying the 23% of $X that is FairTax, PLUS the poor person is ALSO getting the 7.65% employee's share of the payroll tax in his paycheck on top of that, PLUS he MAY get the "employer's share" of the payroll tax too, depending on how his employer handles it. If his job is as janitor at a church, the pious folks there may just elect to give him the entire $1530 that was going to Washington before the income taxes were repealed.

The Poor person at the absolute minimum breaks even, and in all probability stands to gain a significant boost in spending power due to the FairTax.

"Everyone has to eat. And unless you can buy used food, it's taxed. And it's "choose to", not "too".
Alternative response: Could you please tell me where I can buy used toilet paper? I choose to not pay the tax at all."

You're not paying attention. The US gov't sends everyone legally here a sum of money sized to pay the FairTax on their spending up to their personal poverty levels. That is, if a single person ha a poverty level of $12K, the gov't sends 12 checks a year big enough to pay the FairTax of on spending up to the poverty level each month. If a family of 4, that check would be bigger, because the poverty level is probably somewhere around $30K. The gov't pays FairTax up to the poverty level, meaning the poor person pays $0 FairTax up to the poverty level.

"Even if you massively expand the definition of a sale as you're doing"

I'm not expanding anything, that's just how it's written in the proposed legislation of HR25.

"makes your tax scheme regressive"

Impossible. The FairTax is 100% avoidable for those who care to try. Nobody is coming thru the front door with guns drawn and leaving with your assets. Regression is impossible with the FairTax. Nobody pays more than they choose too. And, BTW, most everyone's taxes go down EXCEPT those that are currently gaming the system, such as working in the underground economy and getting paid under the table, or otherwise not reporting their income. There's a WHALE of a lot of those, whom I will be happy to see get their comeuppance. Plus, the tax base is greatly expanded from just 160 million or so paychecks, to the entire population here legally plus some 40 million foreign tourists per year that, being on vacation, spend disproportionally also. But again, the FairTax doesn't steal. You decide you agree to pay it by buying taxed goods and services. The old oppression of too high taxes is not possible as it is with the income taxes. Income taxes can't be avoided legally, so they can be oppressive. The FairTax can be avoided, 100%, if one cares to go about it diligently.

"No, that's a bad thing. That means that the wealthy can earn huge amounts of income without ever paying tax on a penny of it, "

OK, I think we're done here. You appear to be stuck on the idea that it is necessary to punish the successful by stealing their money from them, IOW charging income taxes. That is what's wrong with our economy. The only consideration SHOULD be whether the FairTax will fully fund the government, as those who first proposed it calculated that it will. If "the rich" accumulate billions of untaxed dollars, then it sits in some bank, and is used by that bank to make loans to people that need capital for anything form personal expenses to starting a company. Right now, due to the income taxes, trillions of such wealth is held outside the country to avoid income taxes, and therefore not available to US citizens for such things as loans to start a business.. I disagree with stealing in principle, it is evil and against God's 7th Commandment. No, it doesn't matter that it is the government doing the stealing. This country was founded on individual rights, including the right to property, and the 16th amendment is a betrayal of that. It's long past time that we abolished it and got on with the business of promoting prosperity, rather than attempting to squelch it.

"Poor people spend all their money. They pay tax on everything."

One more time, poor people spending below the poverty level pay $0 FairTax.

"Another way would be to have a wealth tax."

The 16th amendment provides for taxing income. Simply stealing from folks may not be covered.

And simpler, just tax their egregious spending. Lots easier.

"Income tax is not how you tax the ultra wealthy."

You got it.

"What you need is a minimum tax rate. Look at global income "

You ace question 1, and now you're going to tax..., income???? When you just said that isn't the way to do it? Slow learner, or what? The rich aren't going to tell you about their global income, they're going to have it sequestered outside the US, and you're going to play bloody hell finding and collecting anything.

OTOH, their consumption is blindingly easy to detect and tax. Sales tax. Easy. What I've been saying.

"Housing is the biggest budget item in most households,"

Houses are items for sale. New ones are Taxed. Used ones are not.

"Transportation is the next biggest item. Unless you remove the fuel tax, the biggest chunk of that expense is unlikely to be independently taxable"

Gasoline is a new item for sale at retail, so is taxable under the FairTax. Its price, due to being produced in the US, would fall about 20%, and then be taxed up to about what it was before the sales tax is instituted. Its a wash for the fuel buyer. Plus, fuel of the future is electricity, also produced in the US, and would be cheaper due to the removal of income taxes incurred in its production. Consumers, of course, have significantly more money to pay for it with because of the removal of the income taxes, both individual income tax and payroll tax, from their tax burden. Win-win for the US consumer.

"Taxes are the third biggest item. You're not going to charge a sales tax on that."

Correct. Paying taxes is not taxable under the FairTax.

"Utilities are the fourth. Also not a sale."

Utilities are water and electricity, both produced in the US, so the income taxes that are about 22% of their price would be removed due to the abolition of Federal income taxation, and then the FairTax would put the price of each back to about what it was. Again, the consumer would pay with considerable more money than he had before, due to the income taxes being removed from his personal tax burden.

"Food is next. And most attempts at creating a sales tax that isn't heinously regressive do not tax food."

Food is taxed under the FairTax, but the FairTax uses a mechanism called the "Prebate" that sends a US resident all the $$$ he needs to pay the FairTax on subsistence items up to poverty level spending. That is much better than we have now, where the income taxes take the money from the person before he even sets foot in the grocery store. Income taxes tax food, the FairTax does not, at least up to a poverty level. So, the guy existing at low income and eating beans doesn't pay FairTax, but the rich guy eating an expensive plate of truffles is going to bust out of the "poverty level" and his prebate is not going to cover the tax on the truffles, and therefore he pays the FairTax on his rich-living food tastes.

"Health care is next. Also not a sale."

Health care is a service, and taxable under the FairTax. Drugs are new items for sale at retail, and therefore taxable under the FairTax. The dodge here is that you buy health insurance, that is FairTaxed (as it would be taxed by the income tax taking its bite out of your money before you get to the insurance counter and pay for your insurance) and then paying the doctor or buying the drugs is done for you by your insurance, and becomes a busines-to-business transaction, and therefore not retail, and therefore not taxed under the FairTax. Much better than having the income taxes taxing the money you need to either pay insurance or buy drugs and doctor services yourself directly.

"So now what's left at the bottom is entertainment,
Taxable

cash donations to charity (not a sale),
Not taxable

clothing,
Taxable if bought new, not taxable if bought used in a thrift store

services,
Taxable

education (not a sale),
A special category of sale not taxable under the FairTax. It is treated as an investment in yourself. Investments are not taxable under the FairTax.

  alcohol and tobacco, and personal care.
All taxable, as they currently are under the income taxes when you pay with your income-taxed salary.

" Is there any way your 'fair tax' isn't ass about backwards?"

We're talking about a very small portion of rich people that might care to buy a very specific item, a vehicle, in, say, Italy and attempt to enjoy it without paying US sales tax on it. OTOH, big-box stores, a very small part of the economy, sells on the order of 90% of things sold in the US. Inside the store, the US goods offered for sale are going to be about 20% cheaper than they are now, while foreign things in the store stay the same price, and then the FairTax is applied. US built things return to approximately the price they are now, while foreign-built things gain 30% in tax to their price. People approach the cash register not only with their former expense of payroll tax removed, but also their individual income taxes also removed from their "withholding." IOW, the person is much more well-endowed with $$$ and the US-built stuff is about the same prices that it was before the FairTax.

New cars. $60K SUV, 1 a Jeep Grand Cherokee built in Toledo, the other an SUV built outside the country, say Mexico. Toledo-built SUV drops in price about $12K when manufacturer-incurred income taxes are removed. Foreign-built SUV remains at $60K. The FairTax is applied, the $48K Toledo-built Jeep returns to about $60K, the foreign-built $60K SUV is taxed at $18K, and becomes $78K. Everyone buys the Jeep, up to the time that the foreign manufacturer wises up and builds a factory in the US and can once again sell for $60K. The US citizen (and those legally living here) experience a serious increase in their disposable income from both the payroll tax and the individual income tax withholdings being removed, and approach the cash register with significantly more $$$ than they had before the FairTax, to buy the Jeep for the same price as it was before the FairTax. Win-win for the middle class vehicle buyer.