I don’t necessarily know if Wenzel promotes it in the same way you do, as he said nothing about the states being the intermediary between the Feds and the Federal tax revenue, he just said basically count everyone over 18 years old, and just divide.
I would also be interested to see the proof that Jefferson recommended this type of tax system, as one of Schiff’s points was that the Founding Fathers didn’t like the capitation method, which he talks about here. Again, I recommend you listen to that interview and go through that thread.
A lack of decentralization doesn’t exactly seem to me to be the most harmful aspect of the tax system. Not to mention, I fail to see what that has to do with anything you’re talking about. How exactly does taxing the states based on population, (and essentially forcing the states to do the dirty work of collecting) bring about less harm done to the taxpayer?
And what’s more, if anything, just off hand it would seem the Federal government would be free-er to get larger, as it directs the tax rate, but then gets to turn around and shove the collection costs onto the state governments. I.e., it collects all the revenue, but doesn’t even incur any of the cost of enforcing and actually collecting the tax.
Great plan. Take away 25% of the income of someone who makes $20k/yr (and fully half of the income of someone who makes $10k/yr).
Yeah. Least harmful.
Good luck selling that to the people who have incomes in that ballpark, and those who care about them.
I think that’s a very naive and simple way of looking at things. If you’re going to invoke ethics I think it’s quite ridiculous to simply say “least amount of money taken overall = most ethical. Method doesn’t matter.”
Jeez you’re just like Wenzel. Yes, we could make the argument there shouldn’t even be a state (period)…that doesn’t do anything to inform how to go about moving in that direction or improving things.
Yes it would be great if “the state wasn’t printing/coining/creating money.” It would also be great if it wasn’t collecting any taxes (i.e. if there was a 0% tax rate). But you’re not going to get there over night. So simply resting on the laurels of “well the state shouldn’t be printing money” and “well taxes should be as close to zero as possible” is completely useless.
And besides, if that’s the argument you’re going to use against the idea of competing currencies, then I’ll just use your same argument against you and your suggestion of a gold standard.
I don’t think you’ve really thought about this all the way through. Do some reading on banking suggestions offered by Austrians. You might start with the Mises Wiki page for free banking (and the links provided in the “see also” and “links” sections).
MMMark offers an important message on that.
P.S.
Your hero Dr. Ron Paul advocates competing currencies.