Huckabee supports 23% national sales tax

The more I read about Republican presidential hopeless Mike Huckabee, the more I can't stand the guy.

The former Arkansas governor is often portrayed as a "Pat Buchanan lite", featuring a blend of fiscal populism and cultural conservatism (though more nuanced than Buchanan's bigoted tirades). But as long as it's under the modern Republican banner, this alleged economic populism always seems to fall to rack and ruin under closer scrutiny.

Huckabee's supposed populism thumps false. Fuckapee is a cultist of the so-called FairTax, a perennial cause celebre of the Far Right that would establish a confiscatory national sales tax to replace other taxes - not just personal income taxes but also corporate, capital gains, and estate taxes. Detect a pattern here? Capital gains and estate taxes are generally paid by the wealthy, and those would be abolished. Corporate taxes are paid by major corporations, and those too would be history. By contrast, the proposed sales tax on all goods and services - which has no exceptions even for food - would hit the poor and working class harder.

So much for Huckabee being the great working-class champion!

The amount of the sales tax that would be charged under the UnfairTax plan has varied over the years, but has generally inched upward. Fuckapee's version would establish a 23% sales tax. Yes, 23%! But it'll end up being even worse: William Gale of the Brookings Institution says that for a national sales tax to generate as much revenue as the current tax structure, the sales tax may run as high as 50%.

If you thought (whoosh...whoosh) inflation was bad now under idiot Bush, wait until you have to spend another 50% every time you go to Kroger. On the other hand, Gale says the tax will end up being so high that stores and consumers will just evade it anyway - so the government won't even bring in any revenue from it!

Either way, that would pretty much do in the economy for good: If people obey the tax, they have far less buying power. If they don't, the government goes further into debt and forces everyone to pay for it later.

But that doesn't deter the FairTax movement that uses talk radio and right-wing websites to draw its small but loudmouthed group of followers to public rallies and Internet forums.

I do my own taxes. There have been easier tasks, but I ended up not paying nearly as much as I would under the UnfairTax. In some years, I actually got a refund. I think this underlines the thrust of the FairTax cult: The Movementarians who support the UnfairTax want to see elimination of the tax brackets that exist under a progressive taxation system. This shows that the UnfairTax and the Huckabee campaign aren't supported by the working class but by the phony populists who are economically secure but self-righteously scream about being "robbed" by the government (even though they never have to worry about becoming poor). The proposed sales tax isn't even designed to bring in more revenue. It's just designed to make the poor pay more. The modern FairTax movement itself was begun by an organization called Americans for Fair Taxation, which was founded in 1995 (when else?) by a group of millionaires from Texas.

The FairTax is regressive because if a person who earns $10,000 a year buys an item, they pay a much greater percentage of their earnings on the tax than someone who makes $10,000,000 a year buying the same item. If that isn't soaking the poor, what is? I don't see how it can possibly be any clearer.

If Huckabee's UnfairTax passes, individuals and the smallest businesses would in effect be tax collectors who would form the personal IRS benefiting each wealthy person or corporation.

How does Mike Huckabee expect to win support from the average American who has to work hard for a living? Right now he doesn't need to, because he's running in the Republican primary. In fact he has to work harder at supporting it. Most of the other Republican contenders support a hefty national sales tax too (despite their lies about being the party of lower taxes) - but only Huckabee makes it central to his campaign.

However, even the usually conservative economist Bruce Bartlett said of the FairTax, "Anyone who supports it should not be taken seriously." That the Republican faithful take Fuckapee seriously is proof of how far outside the mainstream his party has become.

Outside the GOP fold, nobody believes the FairTax cult's mindless blatherings. That frustrates them, and it makes them crazier. But it's gotten old. A 3-year-old who throws a tantrum eventually gives up when they realize they're not getting their way. The UnfairTax crybabies are different in that they haven't given up yet. Don't give in to this zillionaire cult that tries to brainwash people into thinking the poor have it so easy.

(Source: http://www.latimes.com/la-na-salestax24dec24,0,5286232.story?coll=la-home-center)