Quote:
Originally Posted by swagger
Pros/cons of eliminating all federal taxation, replacing it with taxing States directly?
Obviously income tax is the biggie, but there are a ton of federal taxes out there.
What would this accomplish?
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It would mean the States would tax the holy snot out of you.
Very obviously, you don't even understand the problem, which is the US government is way too friggin' big because it's engage in activities that are unconstitutional.
Department of Agriculture: Disband it. It is unnecessary. Are the conditions the same today as they were 150 years ago?
No, sorry, wrong answer. 90% of the labor force is not engaged in agriculture. 90% of the population does not live in rural areas. We do not plow fields with horses, mules, donkeys, or oxen. We have artificial fertilizers, plus pesticides and herbicides, and more advanced farming techniques, with hardier seeds. We no longer have massive crop failures that lead to strife and we feed everybody with just 2% of the labor force engaged in agriculture.
The food stamp program? Cities, counties, and States had a food stamp program before you sat idly around letting your government pull a Lenin/Trotsky/Mao/Cardenas/Allende/Mossadeq/Faisal/Gaddafi/Castro/Great Britain and nationalize those programs.
The SNAP program is a massive fail because it doesn't even account for the Cost-of-Living. If you think $520 buys the same amount of groceries in every State you thought wrong, because in some States $520 will buy 2 month's worth of groceries.
The only office you need is the one that tracks agricultural land use and production. You can put that in the Department of the Interior or the Commerce Department.
Department of Education: 100% unconstitutional. Education is solely the purview of the States. You sat idly by and let the government run amok. The States can create their own student loan and grant programs. All States have grant programs. They could give more money out if their residents weren't being taxed to death by the federal government. States can set aside loan/grant money to recruit the best and brightest students from other States to attend their universities.
HUD: 100% unconstitutional. HUD's policies are the reason housing is unaffordable in many cities. Cities, counties, and States had housing programs, and many still do, in spite of the federal government pulling a Lenin/Trotsky/Mao/Cardenas/Allende/Mossadeq/Faisal/Gaddafi/Castro/Great Britain and nationalizing those programs. States can create their own FHA loan programs. The federal government needs to get out of the housing business.
Transportation: Unconstitutional. The federal government claims it has the authority under the Commerce Clause yet the federal government can show no instance where a State banned planes originating in another State from flying through their airspace or landing in their State, just like the federal government cannot prove any State attempted to ban trains or cargo vehicles from entering their State or levying taxes, duties, or tariffs on them in a manner that was arbitrary or inconsistent. End the federal excise tax on gasoline and allow the States to increase their gasoline tax to pay for roads.
Note that DOT policies in conjunction with HUD policies are the direct cause of unaffordable housing in many areas.
Department of Labor: Also unconstitutional. It exists because of a perverted interpretation of the Commerce Clause. States are perfectly capable of setting their own labor laws and many do. There is no federal law that governments breaks or lunches. You get at least a 20 minute lunch break thanks to a 1932 New Jersey Supreme Court decision. In Ohio, you're not entitled to a paid break. In Kentucky, you get a paid 10-minute break for each 4 hours schedule. In Indiana, you get a 12-minute paid break for each 4 hours worked (which is not the same thing as being "scheduled").
Before someone screams, "Minimum wage!" the law prevented 90% of workers from being paid the minimum wage because they worked in agriculture which was exempted. In 1961, most, but not all, agricultural workers were included but by that time only 20% of Americans worked in agriculture. In 1964, the law was changed to cover nearly everyone, but not 100% of agricultural workers.
According to HUD, people who live in some places in the US and get $14,400/year make way too much money to qualify for HUD Section 8 benefits yet people who live in other areas can get $56,655/year and still qualify for HUD Section 8.
Why? HUD takes Cost-of-Living into consideration while the Department of Agriculture does not concerning SNAP benefits, and the Labor Department does not concerning minimum wage.
So, if we applied HUD's policy, then minimum wage would be $6.75/hour in some places and $27.23/hour in other places.
Likewise, if we applied HUD's policy to SNAP, then some people would get $281/month in food stamps and others would get $822/month.
Those are all reasons why the federal government should not be doing anything the Constitution doesn't mandate.
Health & Human Services isn't constitutional, either. The federal government needs to do these things:
1) Withhold Medicaid funding from States until the States repeal the enabling laws enacted in the 1930s
2) Withhold Medicaid funding from States until the "Out-of-Network" laws that the American Hospital Association bribed legislators into passing is repealed
Once that's done, the federal government needs to enact an employer healthcare tax. For each employee enrolled in an employer-sponsored health plan, the employer pays a tax of $500,000. That will restore things back to 1945 when employees chose their own health plan coverage and the employer paid all or a percentage of it as a non-taxable fringe benefit. That moves healthcare back to the Free Market because employees have choices and freedoms they don't have now.
Congress needs to repeal that part of the 1954 IRS Tax Code incorporated into the 1986 IRS Tax Code to allow Americans once again to profit off of their own healthcare.
Note that Congress enacted that part of the IRS tax code at the behest of the American Hospital Association whose Blue Cross market share had dropped from 80% to 20% in just 3 years and was continuing to free fall, and it barred Americans from creating wealth and passing it on to their children and grandchildren.
Within 40-60 years of that, Medicare (not Medicaid) can be eliminated or transferred to the States.
Department of Homeland Security. Totally unnecessary. To suggest that the entire airline industry would collapse because it had to pay a plainclothes security guard armed with rubber bullets to sit on each flight is absurd. Homeland Security is just another way the government can abuse and control people, and increase its stranglehold.
The number of phone and internet scams keeps increasing year after year, and the majority of perpetrators are outside the US. If Homeland Security can't even protect Americans from those, how are they going to stop terrorists?
Once the government is restored to its constitutional duties of defending the country, coining money, engaging in commerce and diplomacy, and managing the interior, you don't need an IRS or high taxes.
Y'all got it backwards. Instead of paying 1%-3% to your State and 10%-35% to the federal government you ought to be paying 1%-3% to the federal government and 5%-15% to your State.
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