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Last year
I mentioned the rumor that the Obama
administration was plotting the
introduction of a tax new to the U.S.,
but an old reality in socialist
Europe—the Value Added Tax (VAT). The
name is likely the result of a long
study by Public Relations wonks as more
soothing than something more truthful
such as Taxpayer Taxidermy Tax. Whatever
it’s called, the bottom line is, the
taxpayer is going to get skinned.
Today,
former Federal Reserve Chairman and
Obama advisor Paul Volcker said the
United States may need to consider
raising taxes to control deficits and
that a European-style value-added tax
could gain support. Volcker said he knew
that the ideas weren't popular but that
the outlook on entitlement spending and
budget deficits was grim without some
changes. I take his remarks to mean
that because the government has gone
wild with uncontrollable spending and
entitlements, someone must pay the
piper--that would be you and me.
Value
Added Tax adds a tax to every stage in
the production of a product, all of
which are passed on to the consumer. The
term “value added” applies to the
federal government. To the taxpayer,
it’s actually a cost added tax.
The government gets the value, the
taxpayer gets the tax.
National Review Online
Editor-at-large, Jonah Goldberg makes
the point that if we are to become
Europeanized, then some country must
take our place. He recently wrote, “Europe
is a free-rider. It can only afford to
be Europe because we can afford to be
America. The most obvious and most cited
illustration of this fact is national
defense. Europe’s defense budgets have
been miniscule because Europeans can
count on Uncle Sam to protect them.
Britain, which has the most credible
military in NATO after ours, has funded
its butter account with its gun account.
As Mark Steyn recently noted in ‘National
Review’, from 1951 to 1997 the
share of British government
expenditure devoted to defense fell from
24 percent to 7 percent, while the
share spent on health and welfare
increased from 22 percent to 53 percent.
And that was before New Labour started
rolling back Thatcherism. If America
Europeanizes, who’s going to protect
Europe? Who’s going to keep the sea
lanes open? Who’s going to contain Iran
— China? Okay, maybe. But then who’s
going to contain China?”
The Obama
administration obviously hasn’t thought
of that. Obama apparently believes that
the hostile countries and terror groups
of the world can be whipped into line by
virtue of his golden-throated speeches,
thus allowing his administration to
spend all their time executing his plans
to squeeze every nickel out of the
taxpayers to pay for his notion of
fairness and equality of outcome for the
nearly 50% of Americans that pay no
federal income tax. Those on the
receiving end of Obama’s
benevolence
and
beneficence applaud his goals.
Goldberg
says, “Economists such as Stanford’s
Michael Boskin say Europeans have a
standard of living about 30 percent
lower than ours and are stagnating.
Others note that the structural
unemployment rate in Europe,
particularly for young people (it’s over
20 percent in many countries), is
socially devastating.” Is that what we
want, a lower living standard and fewer
people working? Remember we have
something the Europeans don’t—millions
of illegal aliens that will likely be
added as citizens during Obama’s term.
They will be added to the number of
people that don’t pay their own way, but
vote for whatever candidate that
promises them a free ride.
VAT is
just another step toward total
socialization of the United States. This
will be in addition to the other new
taxes hidden in the Obama Care law that
was just passed. On top of the other
taxes, there is the proposed Carbon Tax.
This will jack up your utility bill for
gas and electricity in order to “save
the planet.” Like state sin taxes on
tobacco; VAT, once in place, will be too
much of a temptation to resist
increasing by a percent or so whenever
politicians want an extra few billion
for their latest vote-buying giveaway
scheme. It should be resisted
vigorously. |
