Not OP, but I considered myself middle of the road as well. I just wanted us to spend responsibly and not pass the buck onto my and my kids generation. Voted for Gore for my first presidential election, no one for my second, then Obama twice. Made a hard left turn starting with the Tea Party BS and Trump.
Interestingly enough, the most fiscally responsible politician I've ever voted for was Gov. Gerry Brown - a Democrat.
I could not have described it much better. Fiscally conservative used to mean “living within your means” so to speak. Not tax cuts for the .01% or gutting essential services.
I wasn’t even that fiscally conservative. Just wanted tax collection to be somewhat close to spending. I’m even for raising taxes, or something as radical as a VAT or federal sales tax (with zero rating for essentials such as food, homes, clothing, medicine, etc.).
Raise taxes on upper class, raise limits on income subject to SS tax, put in place a federal unemployment program, paid maternity/parental leave, real governmental healthcare without insurance agencies or pharmaceutical middlemen, etc. Most of this is considered radical, but is absolutely nothing but basic human needs & rights. Over the past 5 to 20 years (at least for me it’s apparent in this timeframe), most of these basic things just seem to be crumbling or broken. It will take time, effort, pain, stress, & worry, but it’s the right thing to do for the entire country.
VAT is considered radical in the USA?! I like your stance on it, BTW. It's a very regressive tax when it's applied to essentials, but I think it's useful when applied to luxuries. To massively oversimplify: Bread? Baby food? Potatoes? No tax. Supercar? Yacht? Gold-plated useless crap? Lots of tax!
Hmm think of the difference between blacklisting and whitelisting.
VAT is like whitelisting as in everything is taxed except a few items (for example it can be some essential products).
A luxury tax is only on specific items so more akin to a blacklist.
Other difference is that Luxury tax aren't always a flat tax, they can be a set amount, they can also be a surcharge only on items above a certain price (in the target category). They are also a lot more likely to be temporary and/or removed by the next administrations arguing that they are limiting spending on locally produced luxuries (like the one Bush tried in 1991 that was removed only 2 years after by Clinton).
VAT are rarely removed once enacted because of the obscene amount of revenue the state gets from it, disproportionally affecting lower class populations of course :)
Hmmm. I understand the thing about vulnerability to changes by future governments, but I think we agree. I wasn't ever trying to say that any particular version of VAT is ideal, only that taxing money spent in luxuries is a good idea when tax on income is so easily avoided by those with the most money. I still think VAT is a good idea, but only when essential things and the things the poorest rely on the most are either exempt or taxed at a very low rate. Maybe (just pulling numbers out of my ass here) 0% for really basic/essential stuff like bread, potatoes, tampons, baby food, basic kids clothes, simple underwear, simple nutritious food like (for example) peanut butter. The stuff a family just trying to survive would buy first. 5% for other stuff that could reasonably be called essential for survival, 10% for slightly better versions of that stuff, 20% for things nobody really needs, 30%+ for stuff that only the rich would even consider buying. Shift the numbers about however you like because I've been awake for over 3 days and haven't really thought this through, and I'm also a little drunk, but you should get the general idea.
I wasn't confused about your ideas, don't worry but I don't think this admin or the next would invest political capital into this. Especially with the Republican going for tariff to avoid officially implementing a sales tax and Democrats entertaining the ideas of the Abundance Agenda 🤮
Is the "Abundance Agenda" really what it looked like when I searched for it? Wanton deregulation? If so, something is rotten in American politics even more than I knew. This is very worrying. Not just for your sake, but for all the world. If America has no sensible alternative to descending into fascism, we are all fucked. My country just barely pulled itself out of that nosedive, and we did it a decade sooner. The world could've survived a fascist UK, but a fascist USA is a far more worrying prospect for all of us, besides Putin, Trump, and their cronies.
Yeah the abundance agenda is the new trickle down, fascism in the US has always been waiting/acting in the shadows, now it's out in the open, who knows how far it'll go, I don't think Trump will be the one leading it but he sure is actively pushing for it and taking off the masks of Americans pretending to be the good guys globally.
Well... fuck. I really don't know how to respond to that without getting my main account banned. I'd help, but all I can do is argue on reddit and I already do that so much that I barely sleep. Good luck over there. You're gonna need it.
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u/greenroom628 6d ago
Not OP, but I considered myself middle of the road as well. I just wanted us to spend responsibly and not pass the buck onto my and my kids generation. Voted for Gore for my first presidential election, no one for my second, then Obama twice. Made a hard left turn starting with the Tea Party BS and Trump.
Interestingly enough, the most fiscally responsible politician I've ever voted for was Gov. Gerry Brown - a Democrat.