"What do you do for income spent on goods outside the US? "

The tax is owed. Responsibility for paying it lies with the purchaser. Enforcement would be done by customs in most cases.

"A consumption tax would eliminate much of the IRS. "

By the FairTax law, 100%.

"A pure consumption tax is regressive"

The FairTax is not a pure consumption tax.

"Income-tax regressivity is fixed by exempting the first ~$25,000 or so of income."

The payroll tax component of the income tax is probably the most regressive tax on the planet, and would be eliminated by the FairTax, as would Capital Gains, Corporate, individual, alternative minimum, self employment, gift, estate, etc.

...advocate a 100% personnel reduction at the IRS, since it is entirely unnecessary when replaced by a voluntary system where everyone contributes as much tax as they agree to pay. It's called the FairTax.

"Selfish Americans."

Everyone is going to buy the vehicle that best suits their wants and desires. If someone has a big boat or travel trailer to tug around, they're not likely to buy an EV. If like me they have a lot of driving where few chargers exist, they will not buy an EV. If we want to make the country 100% EV, we have to make the EV to be the best choice for everyone's driving situation. Gas cars achieved it and got everyone off their horses. Now it's EV's turn to blow away the convenience of gas cars with better convenience. EV's have to improve some more to do it.

"If you're driving greater than 300 miles in a day,"

I not rarely drive in excess of 1000 miles in a day. That is, several times a yeart. Adding significant time for charging would preclude such achievement.

"Also, I think every EV has a route planner,"

As I said, sometimes I can't plan it, I just have to follow a route that someone else has planned. For instance:

I sometimes put on SCCA National Road Rallies. When they are put on, it is customary to put on 2 on a weekend. They are a minimum of 180 miles by the rules. I would attempt to make mine about 250.

Road rallies involve legal speeds on open roads and highways, but have a driving profile that dramatically lowers miles per gallon. They repeatedly start and stop, and tend to accelerate more rapidly than normal driving, as well as being on roads that often climb and descend hills while containing tight turns. These features make my 25 mpg highway mileage into about a 16 mpg rally mileage car.

I assume that the 64% mileage attribute would be reflected in an EV as well, so a 900 mile EV would likely be a 576 mile rally car.

There are no “fast” public chargers in my town of residence, a 12,000 population town with supposedly a fast charger on a Chevy dealer’s lot, but that is closed most of the time. Plus, the charge rate is 75 cents per KwH, which is pretty outrageous considering home charging in the area is about 16 cents per KwH.

So, the car would have to run the 2 rallies which would consume 500 miles of the 576 rally miles it could drive, by fast charging in the nearest city with one which is 35 miles away, run the first rally with no opportunity to charge overnight except for maybe 1 level 2 charger at one motel that I could find, and then run the other 250 mile rally. After that, they would have to start the next day and drive the 35 miles to the fast charger after checking out of the headquarters motel, so they would have 76 miles of driving range, which luckily would be actual 118 miles of range under normal, non-rally conditions, so it would be barely doable.

And that’s with a car rated at 900 miles of EV range.

So, I either need a car with an insane amount of range, or I need a fast charger for every gas nozzle in the country, located where the gas nozzles are currently located, even if it is outside the Ma and Pa General Store in Bug Tussle.

"You don't take a reasonable break every 4 hours?"

Sure, but I don't always refuel and there are lots of breaks where there is no fuel, like interstate highway rest areas. I get close to 400 miles on a tank of gas, sometimes a bit over 400. So I only have to have a gas station where I need it once in a 700 mile trip like 'Vegas to El Paso. And there's tons of gas stations. I'd need maybe 3 - 4 chargers, and they are like hens teeth to find the fast ones without consulting an app. I can consult an app when following interstates, but not when charging around the countryside all day. There just aren't many fast chargers outside big cities. My 12,000 population town here has gas in walking distance of my house, but a 24 hour fast charger is a 35 mile drive. If I had just happened upon my home town when cutting cross-country, not on interstates, I better have 35 more miles of juice or things will get ugly.

Either we have a fast charger for every gas nozzle in the country so we don't have to plan gas stops (because some folks are following courses set by others without regard to charging), or the cars themselves have to have insanely long ranges like 750 - 900 miles so's we can make do with the rare density of fast chargers.

I say fast chargers because nothing else is any good when you're trying to cover 100's of miles in a day. You can't sit around for an hour every 200 - 250 miles and have an equivalent-to-gas-car experience. Lots of folks do long drives at least once or twice a year, and will be reluctant to buy a car that won't do it, or does it poorly at hours added to the trip. They'll just buy a gas car and not look back.

I desperately want to own and EV due to the blindingly cheap fuel, but I do unusually long trips unusually often. Just a few weeks ago, I drove central Texas to Las Vegas to flee the predicted ice storm. 1300 miles in 2 days. Do I want to recharge every 250 miles or so? No. My current ride, on the way back ('cuz it's the one I remember fuel stops for) refueled south of Phoenix, at the overnight in El Paso, and once between El Paso and home. I didn't have to plan the refuelings, I just looked up in the air and there was an "Exxon" or "Speedway" or "Circle K" sign. Planning refuels would be a PITA, so no thanks.

...I'm here to help...

Another way to avoid overconsumption would be for the snack food industry to not package snacks up to such high calorie content. Someone buys a snack like a bag of peanuts will likely eat the whole thing. When the bag is over 800 calories, fatty mischief is afoot. King size Payday candy bar, 450 calories, is always easier to find than the standard size at 250 calories. For many who were taught as kids that to waste is sinful will eat the entire snack even when it feels excessive because it feels "right." Lifelong experience of tracking calories I eat because obese is too easily achieved if I don't. Best weapon is elliptical crosstrainer sitting where a table should be in my dining room, and riding it for over an hour a day. Avoiding drugs to stay slim, but the size of the package of goodies is a thing to make it more difficult.

Exercise is the fountain if youth, literally. No, you wont regress dramatically to your original weight of 6 lbs 7 oz, but wow, it is amazing anyway.

I developed "Dual Pulmonary Emboli", 2 blood clots, one in each artery to each lung 11 years ago. I survived only because for the previous 10 months I had been pumping the dinghies out of elliptical crosstrainers at a health club in Fredericksburg, Va., and so my heart was amazingly strong, at least for someone who was 67 years old. I was told the same thing by 2 nurses and a doctor that had my heart not been as strong as it was, it would have gotten tired and quit from pumping blood with great difficulty past those 2 clots. My cardiologist said I was "hanging by a thread" and that I surprised a lot of folks at the hospital with being able to get out of bed and take a shower that I had been demanding for days! I could, when released from the hospital, not walk up much of a grade, or across the movie theater parking lot without stopping and resting, and not up the incline inside the theater to the seats. I even got a handicap tag from the state. But my doctor gave me serious blood thinners that dissolved the clots over time, and in several months, I could throw the handicap tag away and pump the elliptical some more.

I'm sitting here with socks, shoes, a Casio ProTrek and a Garmin VivoSmart 5, and a MatMen wrestling brief akin to a postage stamp, and nothing else, about to go into the next room and mount my own personal Life Fitness XL95 and pump the dinghies out of it, again for weight management as well as fitness. But I'm 78, live alone which might depress some, but not me, I'm happy as hell about it. There are moments every few weeks where I would really like some company, but don't much get depressed over small stuff, and it's all small stuff... unless they say you have cancer. Got that in 2008. Again, survived with flying colors, possibly / probably because of my frequency of the gym.

I can't think of much more to say to boost the idea that exercising aerobically will make your life much better before you even realize it. Oh, hey, another thing. I have arthritis in my left foot. It flared up recently because I laid off exercise first because of surgery on both big toenails, cutting the one because it was ingrown, removing the other because it was destroyed by toenail fungus. I didn't much feel like pumping my elliptical, and then I just sunk a foundation excavation for my Heights Aluminum 60 ft crank-up tilt-over tower, 5 cubic yards of it. Spent about 3 weeks distributing most of the dirt removed from the hole while the concrete is curing for the tower and then I noticed that my left foot was hurting from the effort and... as it turns out... from not pumping the elliptical. Last week, I resumed pumping it, and 3 days in a row now I've walked from discarding the sack from the McDonald's Big Breakfast at their outdoor trash receptacle, across the parking lot to the car with absolutely zero pain in my left foot.

Additionally, about 8 years ago, an orthopedic nurse said they detected arthritis on the inside surface of my right kneecap, it would deteriorate, they could inject it a couple times, and then I would need knee replacement surgery. But I kept pumping the elliptical anyway, wise to the fact of its great benefit.

So far, over the last 8 years, I've had virtually no degradation in that knee. Yeah, I can occasionally feel a little twinge. Being astonished at both this and my left foot, I asked ChatGPT whether exercise could cause these happy outcomes, and it said yes, the exercise strengthens and tones muscles, which causes bones to snap back into their proper alignments, and so things hurt less.

Exercise, baby! That's really where it's at. I will until I physically absolutely can't any more. IOW, dead, or terribly injured or something.

"Do you realize how depressing it is to see things you strongly disagree with online, but be banned from expressing yourself?"

Well, there's your problem, injecting your opinion at all. Don't do that. I used to have a Karma of "Terrible" and was also restricted. Then I started posting about raw science that I did know something about, got uprated reviews, and my Karma is now Excellent. I have opinions on lots of political things, but use Facebook to annoy my friends, rather than posting here. Try it that way, see what happens. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

As for Facebook, I've managed to lose one of my oldest friends of over 40 years, a friend of his and mine that I've known for almost that long, and there seems to be several folks that sneaked off without even announcing themselves. Fine. I unfriend no one. Everyone can believe whatever they want, it's fine with me. I may express how I think they're going wrong, but unfriend someone for a different opinion? Naw...

My 2019 Ford Edge ST has a CD player that now only says "Track 1", "Track 2", "Track 3", etc. I do think that it will still tell you the name of the album, but am not sure of that. Annoying, but not devastating. I think it used to work correctly when I first got it, but the system gets updates sometimes. Yeah, the CD player does get some use. I've still got a large disk carrier of audiobooks burned to disk because the MP3's don't play well in this particular player. They play just fine on the computer, but not on the car's stock entertainment suite. So when I want to listen to Tom Clancy's "Threat Vector", it now comes from a rotating optical disk with mp3's on it.

Thanks. Am now considering it. It's looking good, maybe affordable, a much longer vacation with the 10 days just at sea, maybe 5 - 6 in the islands, more than I need actually. Haven't found an actual ride yet, but will be researching it this weekend.

"For me, pizza delivery is just getting too expensive to justify."

It was about 5 years ago that I was stuck at an auto dealership that was working on my car and thought of ordering a pizza. I called, got quoted a price, and figured out a different way to eat. It was fairly breathtaking.

And lately, my favorite pizza place, Pizza Hut, is not the great experience it once was. The local place barely has sit-down service, which is just not what it used to be. I get carry out, the pizza itself is good, and since I come get it, not too terribly expensive. I could get a lot better pizza at some local places, but the Pizza chain stores have pre-measured everything and you can look up the calories, which is a reason to prefer them because I can stick that info in my weight management spreadsheet and maybe stay on time of my propensity to tend toward the Goodyear Blimp, size-wise. Local place "Mama's Pizza" is insanely delicious but dang, far too much of it. I guess I could chop it in 3's, take home 2/3rds, pop in the freezer, and get it out and nuke it later. But labor intensive, y'know?

Wish for cheaper pizza, better pizza.

No, if you're talking "Learjet" it is much better. Even a turboprop King Air, and not putting up with the various abuses of dignity administered by TSA as well as "the rulz" for TSA that they themselves violate anyway (personal experience, so yes, it happens, and was moderately expensive) will be a probably unsuspected driver for people to abandon scheduled airlines altogether in search of some comfort and tranquility undisrupted by "the authorities."

I'm not in the same stratosphere of those that fly 1st class and would seek a better way, but I can seek a better way by flying "Ford" on the "Interstate Airlines" and avoid all contact with "the authorities." Additionally I get to experience unusual foods along the way as well as some really nice scenery that is totally invisible at 29,000 feet. Last year, I needed to be in Minneapolis to "work" an event that would have paid my airfare and rented me a car in Minneapolis. But, instead, I drove my Ford from Granbury, Texas to Minneapolis, 1025 miles, starting in the morning about 6, and arriving that night about 11. I haven't been on an airline for quite some time, measured in years, and have been having trouble getting my mind around having to fly to get to Hawaii, the last state that I have yet to visit. I'm 78, and time is getting short, so the bucket list item may occur this summer. But I will dread what may happen while I try to transport $13K worth of camera equipment I consider necessary for a pleasant vacation destination.

But flying is the pits. Flew to a road rally in Oregon. Rent a car, rig it to run rallies with all the rally electronics, and compete. Well, one of my electronics was a lead-acid battery, a sealed unit, that is specifically allowed by TSA rules. Didn't matter, the TSA guy in Oregon didn't like it, and I had to abandon it there, costing me about $40 for a new one later, plus the hardware and time to connect it all together to once again power my rally electronics. Plus, doing that, I'm always terrified of them forcing me to "check it" in the hold rather than in my carry-on bag, which cannot survive the mechanical bruising that it would receive if travelling like that, so I would instead be forced to exit the plane with my fragile electronics, miss the event I was travelling to, and probably ruin the entire year's effort at winning the championship. Sooo... much easier is to get in the car, throw everything I need inside it, and drive. NY to LA, it doesn't matter, anything is better than flying commercial. A nice bizjet as a private thing with no TSA, sure, I'd do that. But I am not so inclined to throw $$$ around like that. But there's lotsa folks that would, and there goes the pollution that they're trying to reduce by cramming everyone into everyone else's lap. It's all going to go really badly, I think.