chet wrote: Thats Mike Gravel who wants to get rid of the income tax and replace it with a greatly-increased sales tax. You have a point there about Gravel; it would tax the lower/middle class more than the upper class with a sales tax.
Then Paul is even more insane than Gravel. Here's a quickie economics lesson for you guys:
The trade deficit is ballooning out of control. I think it's hovering at somewhere around $7 to $8 billion. This figure represents the amount of money that foreign governments and businesses loan to us. They do this in return for our purchasing of cheap foreign goods.
Here's the problem. Because our deficit is getting out of control, foreign investors are losing interest in the dollar and starting to encourage exports to up and coming countries such as China and Europe.
The eventual result of this process may be a mass devaluation of the dollar as other currencies take their positions as fluid world currencies. This situation, needless to say, would be horrible for the U.S. economy, and our ability to consume at the rate we have now generated would be weakened significantly.
Here's the kicker: Ron Paul wants to get rid of the one major avenue that could help to balance the deficit: Income taxes. Specifically, income taxes on the wealthiest segment of American society--which should be INCREASED. Doing the latter would be a reversal of Bush's policies and a return to the Clinton era of (relative) financial responsibility.
So, Paul is apparently of the opinion that, if he ends taxation while simulataneously doing away with government programs--i.e., cutting revenue while also cutting spending--he will somehow contribute to the lowering of the deficit and the concomitant strengthening of the dollar which such a move would imply. But this would not occur. Basic math tells us that 0 + 0 = 0. The deficit would be right where it was. And we'd be even more fucked than we were before, because we'd have no way to hammer away at it.
What do you guys think will happen when, as would inevitably occur, our economy is severely weakened by foreign disinvestment, AND we have no public programs with which to battle the hardships that would ensue? Just think about it for a moment, although I know that thinking is not ya'all's strong suit.
And all of this nonsensical talk about how I want "more government in our lives"? Give me a fucking break. You guys sound like you're at a kindergarten level of understanding how government works. Try to put together the implications of your lunatic ideas:
Cutting federal regulatory commissions such as the FCC, the SEC and the EPA? You would then see even more radical corporate domination of the media, business practices and environmental destruction. Take away the restraints that exist, and you take us back to the 19th century, when minimum wages didn't exist, people's health was destroyed by pollutants, and the stock market was allowed to rage out of control.
Doing away with public education? That's a genius notion. Then we'd have the top one percent of our population sending their kids to religious preparatory schools while the other 99 percent had to have their kids work for a living to support the family, which is now hamstrung by the fact that food is more expensive (thanks to the relinquishing of price control mechanisms), basic services such as electricity, running water, the quality of the roads, public legal defense, etc. are either too expensive or unobtainable, and the jobs at which they work pay them three bucks an hour and feature horrible safety regulations. Sounds like a pretty world, doesn't it.
Again, you guys are talking out of your asses. You and all of Ron Paul's supporters live in a fantasy world that has no connection to real world exigencies.
. I was speaking about politics. Since physics, linguistics, and biology doesn't involve corruption and propaganda, I doubt politics can be as it on paper. 