Only people who love their neighbors.

Whether this is a responsibility of the Federal government is, however, debatable.

There are only 2 issues involved with people “living off the radar”.

1) Are they getting more than they’re paying for?
Taxing all supplies of everything would account for this, but so would repairing or eliminating entitlements that are currently badly matched to people’s “radar on/off status”.

2) Are they getting enough, or do they know how to get enough?
This is less of a concern to most people (do to that ever-so-human greed and self-centeredness that we all have), but it’s important that folks have a way to get on the radar if they want to. (not an unlimited way, and not necessarily an easy way)

I understand your point of view, but using the tax system as a vehicle of social change is what got us here in the first place. This is a very slippery slope and I’d rather not allow anyone to set foot down it. I would rather let States establish the “social cost” taxes. They are smaller and in that sense more representative, and do it anyway.

In general, the Federal government should “do what the People and States cannot themselves do”, and since the States can tax cigarettes, manage healthcare, etc., the implementation of these types of taxes should not be at the Federal level.

As to the VAT, I have seen it work (and not work) in Europe. I believe that the chances of passing a VAT is vanishing small primarily because it is a ‘fair’ tax which translates as ‘horribly regressive’ to 40% of the current political spectrum. Another aspect which people tend to neglect is the effect on the supply chain. If you recall Blagojevich’s business VAT, he wanted to tax every good and service component of a product by a ‘mere 1%”, which when added to the supply chain at each stage (raw material, production, services, transportation, distribution and retailing) accumulated to a retail product tax approaching 12%.

You are correct that a VAT would eliminate the problems with the ‘off-the-radar’ economies.

I have one major disagreement in all this, and thats your statement about forbidding social reform and manipulation through taxation. Taxation is a powerful tool that a responsible goverment can use to pass on “social costs and benefits” to the individual. For example, cigarettes have been taxed heavily, because smoking has a cost to society that is not inherited in the cost of the pack of smokes. I imagine gasoline, if CO2 becomes regulated, will soon bear a similar tax. The issue becomes not whether a government should do social manipulation through taxation, but how it should do it. Taxes are levied agianst goods and services to disuade a consumer from procuring them. What effect does this have on incomes, then, when you tax them?
A national sales tax seems to me to be a more moral way to tax citizens. A sales tax would move your tax burden from what you produce to what you consume, which, in a world with limited resources, seems like it should be the activity which is disuaded.

People on a whole seem to miss the important link between immigration and tax reform. Who cares if people live “off the radar,” if everything they consume is taxed? They contribute to society the exact same as everyone other consumer, except by remaining illegal they rob themselves of many of the benefits which a government could offer (won’t get into what those should be here).

1. Signed the Partial Birth Abortion ban, which Clinton repeatedly vetoed.
2. Reversed Clinton’s move to strike Reagan’s anti-abortion Mexico Policy
3. By Executive Order (EO), reversed Clinton’s policy of not requiring parental consent for abortions under the Medical Privacy Act.
4. By EO, prohibited federal funds for international family planning groups that provide abortions and related services.
5. Upheld the ban on abortions at military hospitals.

These may seem insignificant to you, but to those of us who consider the unborn to be human beings, every life is priceless, and a measure that saves just child is worth the vote.

Of course in this case, there’s far too much sense here.