What if every Tax was a Sales Tax

Republicans have been pitching replacing the Income Tax and Property Tax with sales taxes for years, but we do need to debate these to uncover and analyze the “intended consequences” of these plans.

I wonder if our elected officials know that their current policies are reducing income levels and property values and they want to leave these sinking ships before we catch on. If our incomes and property values are heading down, most of us will be unemployed renters on welfare.  Politicians would need to look for other sources of revenue besides income and property to pay for welfare.

Consumers’ reactions to high sales taxes would include increased bartering and increased home maintenance to avoid buying things and services.  It will certainly result in people not buying anything new and trying to avoid buying anything at all.  Vegetable gardens would flourish and city dwellers would move to 5+ acre farms in the exurbs to include live-stock like chickens to save on food costs.

Lots of processing farms would spring up.  The guy with the wheat harvest would tool up to process the wheat into flour to sell to homeowners to bake their own bread.  This could get interesting. I wonder if the big food companies are concerned. Another farmer would start a micro-brewery and trade beer for flour and eggs. Others would set up livestock processing and join in the fray. The food police would go nuts. Our kids could do jobs on these farms and learn how to work. They could homeschool. This is probably a really good idea. Everybody would commute to work by walking to the back yard.

The UN Agenda 21 implementers would be upset if we all move to the rural counties and became self-sufficient.  They were counting on having our regional overlords take our property for the Wildings Project, so they could bring in wolves and bears and maybe lions and tigers.

The big questions are, how much sales tax would it take and who would make those decisions.  I’m afraid the federal government would want 25% and the states and local governments would want another 25%.

Given that most of what government does is harmful and useless, I vote to return to tariffs.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader