Paul Volcker has lost his f'ing mind
4 CommentsNot as toxic as it has been in the past? He can’t be serious. Can he? The architect of Reaganomics is trying to tell the American people that the VAT is less toxic today than it was in the past?
Volcker, answering a question from the audience at a New York Historical Society event, said the value-added tax “was not as toxic an idea” as it has been in the past and also said a carbon or other energy-related tax may become necessary. Though he acknowledged that both were still unpopular ideas, he said getting entitlement costs and the U.S. budget deficit under control may require such moves. “If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes,” he said.
What? Where could he possibly have gotten the idea that the biggest tax increase in history is “less toxic” than it was in the past. This is one of the dumbest things I’ve heard yet this year.
The stupidity of that statement notwithstanding, the VAT is coming folks, make no mistake about it. There is simply no other way to pay for this monstrosity. I don’t know if Obama can raise income taxes high enough to cover the $2.5 trillion price tag. He has to find the money elsewhere. The VAT will do nicely.
For information on the VAT go here and here.
And if you didn’t see it last year, watch the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and CATO’s video on the VAT:
European socialism. It’s a reality, it’s a disaster and it’s here.
All you have to do is be one notch above comatose to recognize that this gigantic tax increase is more toxic today than it ever would have been in this Country’s history. The reason is that we’ve never been as close to complete financial collapse as we are right now.
Like I said, Volcker has lost his f’ing mind. Time to put Paul out to pasture.
Russ
Ed links to a good article from Krauthammer that I wanted to include:
Hence his deficit reduction commission. It will report (surprise!) after the November elections.
What will it recommend? What can it recommend? Sure, Social Security can be trimmed by raising the retirement age, introducing means testing and changing the indexing formula from wage growth to price inflation.
But this won’t be nearly enough. As Obama has repeatedly insisted, the real money is in health care costs — which are now locked in place by the new Obamacare mandates.
That’s where the value-added tax comes in. For the politician, it has the virtue of expediency: People are used to sales taxes, and this one produces a river of revenue. Every 1 percent of VAT would yield up to $1 trillion a decade (depending on what you exclude — if you exempt food, for example, the yield would be more like $900 billion).
It’s the ultimate cash cow. Obama will need it. By introducing universal health care, he has pulled off the largest expansion of the welfare state in four decades. And the most expensive. Which is why all of the European Union has the VAT. Huge VATs. Germany: 19 percent. France and Italy: 20 percent. Most of Scandinavia: 25 percent.
American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care. Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation.
We’re in for a world of shit dear readers.
A world….of shit.
Russ
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Reader Comments (4)
"The architect of Reaganomics ..."
You give him WAY too much credit. After all, Volcker is central planner.
He wasn't in the 80's. But that's fair enough I guess. I have to remember to breathe when I'm writing because I get so fired up at shit like this.
"There is simply no other way to pay for this monstrosity."
Pay? You want me to pay? Debt death spiral initiated.
We ARE in a world... of shit.
He was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve! You can't be more of a central planner than that! Well, other than dictator.