Category: Economic

We should eliminate the unnecessary Federal Income Tax and just have a consumption (sales) tax

I heard on the radio earlier this afternoon and stumbled upon this article at Fox…

House Republicans to vote on bill abolishing IRS, eliminating income tax

Personally, I’d say just eliminate and do get rid of the income tax Federally and implement the consumption or national sales tax on consumers.

Let’s keep it simple, we can easily wipe out the fed debt in 25,000 sales transactions, give or take a few sales transactions. They should have the consumption tax across the nation at 4% – and I’m being nice at having the national sales tax / consumption tax at only 4% per transaction.

If we got 385 million (+/-) people in our population in USA…. and they buy $500 worth of stuff = $192.5 billion worth of items.

Taxed at 4% consumption tax = $7.7 billion taxes collected on 1 this transaction only.

If 5,000 transactions happened of that same amount, then there’d be $38.5 trillion in consumption tax revenues collected.

There’d still be some IRS people that would be employed to make sure that this is collected and brought it. But that’s about it, no need for other additional people to look into “income tax” making sure you reported this, etc. etc.

I’d like the simplicity of this, and I’d go for it.

Hey if we eliminate the income tax, then we have more money in our pockets! And we do already have the ability to choose to buy things or not!

I say, this is a win/win.

But of course… the politicians will make it as complicated as much as they can. Just freaking keep it SIMPLE!

“In this world, nothing can be certain except death and taxes” – Benjamin Franklin

58 Years ago today… and one of the greatest speeches I’ve ever heard.

“…the full power of centralized government. THIS was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things.

A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose…”

“When the government tells you, ‘You’re depressed’. Lie down and be depressed…

…So they’re going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning… well now if government planning and welfare had the answer and they had almost 30 years of it shouldn’t we expect government to read the score to us every once in a while?

Shouldn’t they be telling us about the decline each year and the number of people needing help, the reduction of need for public housing? But the REVERSE is true, each year the need grows greater, the program grows greater. We were told 4 years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night, well that’s probably true – they were all on a diet. But NOW we’re told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty stricken and on the basis of earning less than $3,000 a year. Welfare spending is 10 times greater than it was than the dark depths of the depression. We’re spending $45 billion dollars on Welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, you’ll find that if we divided the $45 billion up equally among those 9 million poor families, we’d be able to give each family $4,600 a year AND this added to their present income should eliminate poverty. DIRECT AID to the poor, however, is running at about $600 per family… Would seem that someplace there must be some OVERHEAD.”

Tax Law is created by Congress, not by the IRS

Just sitting here and reading some social media posts makes me laugh when I read about, “Oh you should go after the IRS…  It is the IRS’ fault… IRS this… IRS that…”

Stop just a few minutes here and think about it.   Who creates tax laws?  Who then votes certain bills to make such a tax become a law?   IT is Congress itself.  Not the IRS. The IRS has to “enforce” the tax laws passed by such Congress in order to collect the taxes THAT CONGRESS created and voted for and therefore passed to become a law – that then affects the local US Citizens.

It is very similar in comparison to judges and even supreme court justices… local, state and federal officials create(s) and pass(es) laws… Then it is up to the people in law enforcement (local police, Sheriffs, lawyers, judges, supreme court judges, etc.) to interpret and apply such law to each individual case.

Oh, but of course – the regular citizen, regular folks don’t even seem to bother to understand the above. And just attack the people who are trying to enforce the laws (again I say) created by and passed by “elected officials”.

Here is where I want to visually show everyone what our current Federal Income Tax System looks like when we pay our file and pay our taxes every April 15th (each year). Courtesy of Nerdwallet.

2021-2022 Tax Brackets and Federal Income Tax Rates:

I want to refer back to my previous blog simply explaining the “Laffer Curve”. This blog was posted back on January 11, 2021.

Tax Rates – The Laffer Curve

Our current Federal Tax system is a progressive tax system just by looking at the tax rates above from Nerd Wallet. They basically took it directly from the IRS website and obviously is confirmed by Congress. It looks complicated, right? Because Congress made it complicated.

Again, Congress has made these tax laws.

I mean if you want another source here’s the tax rate table / tax schedule from T. Rowe Price…

IRS Tax Rate Schedules – T.Rowe Price

The Federal Income tax was made via the 16th amendment back in 1913 – “Passed by Congress on July 2, 1909, and ratified February 3, 1913, the 16th amendment established Congress’s right to impose a Federal income tax.

We all pay taxes one way or another… Whether it be through sales taxes, property taxes, estate taxes, federal income taxes, local taxes, state income taxes… That would be another whole discussion topic on it’s own – a Pandora’s box if you will.

Here’s my questions to you:

1 – Since we all pay taxes (one way shape or form) would you still want a ‘progressive federal income tax’ or a ‘flat tax’?

2 – Again, is it the IRS’ fault that our tax system is the way it is or is it Congress who made the actual laws for these taxes?

Visually here’s what a flat tax would look like versus the other Federal Income Tax table I showed to you, up above.

Two different videos on Socialism – Navajo and Venezuela

I’ll start off with these two quotes:

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”  (e.g.  CONTROL) – Gerald Ford

“The problem with Socialism, is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” – Margaret Thatcher

Defying a media ban, this reporter goes undercover in the one-time socialist idyll of Venezuela. Now why is that…?

In reference to the video above, for Venezuela:

Hugo Chavez giving a speech in early 2000’s
So Hugo Chavez is basically saying to the general populous… That there is no actual God and that Socialism IS GOD – this is straight out of the Communist Manifesto

Here it is from the actual book written by Karl Marx, himself, “Communist Manifesto” . IT states in the exact book, “…Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality…it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experiences…”

Continuing on with the 2nd video about Venezuela —

Local citizens in the basically the barrios interviewed – talking about the current President Nicolas Maduro (Chavez’ successor).

13:55 minute mark – on who to vote – “One’s no better than the other. At this point, we don’t even know who we’re going to vote for.  Now, this country is practically destroyed… They’ve done nothing to make us vote for them. For my part, I would not vote.”

And that is saddening to hear from a citizen in Venezuela, that they lost all faith in their governmental official or people who want to run – that they do not bother to vote.   However, let’s think critically about it… If you don’t vote – the people with the same ideology will continue to run or stay in power and your government will continue on as is and your country will remain the same.

15:00 minute mark – the irony of it all… Venezuelan gov’t says she tried to plot to kill the Venezuelan President… However, caught on camera that the gov’t supporters or officials tried to kill her…

23:48 minute mark – opposition parties staging demonstrations – Some individuals are arrested, put in prison or under house arrest because they are speaking out against the Venezuelan gov’t.  Keep that in mind – that this is not new – it happens in every Socialistic or Communistic gov’t.

Now my question to everyone out there in the United States… are we going down the similar rabbit hole into Socialism –> Communism? Or are we already there and that it’s only going to get much worse? Please think about that.

I do not want our country to deteriorate.

And please try not to be one of the people who’ve I heard say, “Everyone else did it the wrong way.”

Okay, sure let’s try that approach shall we – go ask the people who left Vietnam, who was able to flee North Korea, who left Cuba, who left Venezuela, who left… I can go on and on. And ask them WHY did they leave if “Socialism” and “Communism” is “so good.”

The Energy Industry arguments

Let me just start off by saying… Make it make sense to me everyone. I am NOT against ANY resource being utilized to provide some type of energy.

But seriously everyone, you have to think about what is going and think about it.

First, what is going on currently with Ukraine and Russia is terrible. War sucks regardless. The saddening part is that there’s always money to be made when there is a war. Largely the entities that benefit from wars going on is most of the time government’s, elites and elected officials – regardless. There’s always money made to be somewhere between the lines of wars. It’s what they call “smoke and mirrors” because us regular people do not know what actually happens behind the scenes. I will just leave it at that.

Second, the always unanswered question(s)… Why are we still paying to foreign countries to get oil/fuel from them? Why are we still IMPORTING oil/fuel from other countries? Why isn’t the United States of America producing, drilling, fracking, etc. the oil domestically? Forcing people to go to only one direction and only one resource or product (basically limiting the availability of options), hmmm. How has that ever helped any country when they only have 1 product and no freedom of choice of other options?

My main image cover for this particular blog is why I’m asking:

There was detailed report and research conducted back in 2011 (possibly earlier) through 2013 from the Institute for Energy Research. A report was prepared on October 29, 2013 and provided before the Subcommittee on Energy and Power Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on the North American Energy Infrastructure Act.

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. IER believes that freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and effective solutions to today’s global energy and environmental challenges and, as such, are critical to the well-being of individuals and society.

The president of this non-profit organization has stated a searchable fact that was conducted over time and makes me think twice (A LOT) of why people are trying to push only 1 or 2 types of a resource to use for energy. Here’s an excerpt from organization’s president, Thomas J. Pyle:

“In the last 100 years, America’s population has tripled. Life expectancy has increased by 70 percent. The productivity of the American people, measured in terms of real per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), has increased by 600 percent. At the same time, we have consumed more than 340 billion barrels of oil, almost 60 billion short tons of coal, and more than 1,090 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. These things are linked. Affordable and reliable energy is a crucial factor in making these and many other significant human, social and technological achievements possible.

Yet even with steadily increasing rates of economic and population growth, as well as increasing energy consumption, the United States today possesses greater recoverable supplies of oil, natural gas and coal than at any point in its recorded history. How can that be? Have vast new sources of hydrocarbon fuels magically materialized beneath our feet over the past 100 years? Or is it possible that, despite what you’ve read, heard and have been told, our continent has always had a lot more energy available to it than some would have us believe?

The answers lie in the data. In 1980, official estimates of proved oil reserves in the United States stood at roughly 30 billion barrels. Yet over the past 30 years, more than 77 billion barrels of oil have been produced here. In other words, over the last 30 years, the United States produced more than two and a half times the proved reserves we thought we had available in 1980. Thanks to new and continuing innovations in exploration and production technology, there’s every reason to believe that today’s estimates of reserves are only a fraction of what will be produced and delivered tomorrow—not only here in the United States, but across the entire North American continent.

Unfortunately, even as updated data show plentiful future supplies of domestic energy, driven by new technologies, a significant movement has emerged. This movement’s mission is to advance and perpetuate falsehoods and inaccuracies with respect to the volume and availability of energy resources in and under our country and continent.

The movement is coordinated, orchestrated and well-funded to create the illusion of scarcity that empowers government to deny citizens access to affordable, reliable and much-needed energy. Furthermore, using supposed scarcity as an excuse, politicians and government agencies justify increasing the power and budget of government while substituting their politically-favored energy choices for those chosen by consumers.

“If America only possesses two to three percent of the world’s oil,” they ask, “why bother to unlock additional acreage for future exploration?” If the world is running out of hydrocarbon fuels, why not insist that government spend billions of dollars to subsidize politically well-connected sources of “alternative” energy? This, they argue, is the justification for spending and mandating the use of energy supplies that otherwise could not survive in a market economy where consumers make their own energy decisions based upon availability and price.

For some, the benefits associated with advancing this agenda are financial. For others, they are ideological. Access to affordable, abundant energy is, fundamentally, a means of freedom. But for those seeking to create a crisis that provides an opportunity to direct the way we live, work and act, affordable, reliable, abundant, domestic energy is a threat. In a very real sense, the more energy we have, the less power they will have. Energy abundance ends the justification for central energy decision-making…”

So what stuck out to what Mr. Pyle has said in the above paragraphs caught my eye: “Access to affordable, abundant energy is, fundamentally, a means of freedom. But for those seeking to create a crisis that provides an opportunity to direct the way we live, work and act, affordable, reliable, abundant, domestic energy is a threat. In a very real sense, the more energy we have, the less power they will have. Energy abundance ends the justification for central energy decision-making.”

Again, referring back to my second topic of “unanswered question(s)”… Why are we still paying to foreign countries to get oil/fuel from them? Why are we still IMPORTING oil/fuel from other countries? Why isn’t the United States of America producing, drilling, fracking, etc. the oil domestically? Forcing people to go to only one direction and only one resource or product (basically limiting the availability of options), hmmm. How has that ever helped any country when they only have 1 product and no freedom of choice of other options?

Let me paint you the picture of some people out there who are out of touch with reality, who cannot understand regular folks who strive, persevere and try any means necessary to make an honest living…

Another interesting report I stumbled upon from the IER – The 100 Percent Renewable Energy Myth

On page 4 of the 100 Percent Renewable Energy Myth report PDF

Even Elon Musk said this…

Again, I say… Make it make sense to me everyone. I am NOT against ANY resource being utilized to provide some type of energy. I’m all for having an availability of options and choices for me and EVERYONE else to freely choose what we all want to use. Technology now is a WHOLE LOT different as it was before and in the past.

I will end here with some interesting news articles and opinions I’ve come across:

Venezuela could be a fill-in for Russian oil, but critics fear aiding another strongman.

Opinion – Biden’s Bizarre Oil Diplomacy

U.S. Officials Meet With Regime in Venezuela, to Discuss Oil Exports to Replace Russia’s