The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by yuubi:

>>2

Advocates of this sort of system suggests that the government could mail subsidies to the poor to make the tax less regressive. But one of the reasons they advocate this tax is so that they can abolish the IRS. In that case, who's going to keep track of who gets these subsidies and how much they get?

Advocates of the one detailed proposal I've heard propose that the government mail "prebate"[1] checks to everyone with a Social Security number. This reduces the problem to maintaining a list of everyone, which the Social Security department already does. It probably is cheaper to generate 12 checks even for rich people who can wait until the end of the year than to set up a system to send monthly checks only to the poor.

It nets out to be progressive: people get a check to cover the tax on the first ~$10k/year of spending (so they don't pay the sales tax out of pocket), then they pay the tax on everything else. Details here.


[1] What an ugly neologism.

[2] The 23% number advocates throw around actually means that 23% of the retail price of everything is tax. This is parallel with how income taxes are figured now (income tax percentages are based on gross pay, not net), so it's fair, but if you started with the net sale price the merchant gets to keep, then you'd get a 30% tax.

The International Earth Rotation Service doesn't oil the axis each year; pity.

>> 17 KristianB
>> 61 Linkmeister

Is Houseplants of Gor as good as Norman's stuff?

cat-vacuuming sighted.

I got some oxycodone/ibuprofen (`Combunox') when I had my wisdom teeth out 2 months ago. The pharmacy didn't have a generic for it, and one doctor hadn't heard of oxycodone with an NSAID but thought it was a good idea, so the stuff may be relatively new.

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