Your apples are ripe. It is time to harvest them. What is the best way to harvest those apples . Do you pick them from the tree or do you chop down the tree . Apples are income. The trees are capital. The reason we want a socalled, consumptionbased tax because we dont want to mistreat capital. But to understand why it is so foolish, dont think about marxism, socialism, free market theories think about it this way, if you chop down the tree or more accurately what the current tax system does if you harvest apples by sawing off branches of the tree, what does that do for your longrun prosperity, your longrun income . You obviously will have fewer apples next year. It doesnt make sense to quadruple and triple tax capital. On this issue marxists and socialists are right they agree with sensible economist. You need capital for long run growth. We should have a tax system treats all income equally. No longer tax income saved and invested. You want neutrality in getting rid of all the loophol
Of these tax changes. So no net cost to the government over time. And you have peoples income up about 10 and additional jobs so more people are working. Now that is close to a free lunch as you can get. And thats the damage done by the current tax system. All the neutral tax systems are a means of getting the three layers of tax. Some are collected at business level. Some collected only at retail. Now my favorite, the personal expenditure tax is put down your income subtract your savings pay tax and whats left . That way each year you sit down and fill out a form and you say, they took what . And then you dont vote for them again. Where laz the retail sales tax might be nickelled and dimed and you may not save all your sales receipts and realize what has happened to you. But there are conveniences of doing it one way or the other. We have to take a look at those. These are all efforts to get away from the horrible horrible effects of the income tax and moving to a more sensible neutra
Prosperity. And you heard alvin just say over and over again, consumption based tax. My job on the panel is to try to explain why thats important. Its important because the current tax system treats income that you sai and invest much much worse than the income you can consume. Think about it in this very simple fashion. You make some money. You pay tax on that money. Whats left . Disposable income. Aftertax income. You have two choices of what to do tw the aftertax income. You can consume it right away, or you can consume it in the future. Whats consuming in the future . Its saving and investing. Now, lets think about how the federal tax system theets though two choices. If you consume your aftertax income right away, the federal government, by and large leaves you alone. Yeah we have a federal excise tax on gasoline. We have a federal excise tax on bows and arkansas rowrows, but theres really no federal tax on your income. What happens if you save and invest your income instead . Bet
In the 1940s and putting together the concept of income we now use today under the income tax they were neglecting the adverse effect on the labor force and it wasnt unknown. The godfather of the income tax henry simons and one of the two leading godfathers admitted that it would damage the economy and his current disciples dont want you to remember that or theyve forgotten it. Heres what simons said about Income Taxation. Income taxation is broadly an instrument of economic control. A means of mitigating economic inequality which well assume that moderation of inequality is an important objective of approximately see and perceived income tax is devices for effecting it. The case for drastic progression in taxation must be rested on the case of inequality on the ethical or aesthetic judgment that the prevailing distribution of wealth and income reveals a degree and or kind of inequality which is distinctly evil or unlovely. Not particularly scientific. In fact, it is reasonable to expe
By little you send them back as agents for their intelligent service. I think you need to have somebody who is well versed that can sit down and and look at propaganda, counter propaganda. Very important point. When we talk about the islamic state, again, you can defeat of some capabilities, but you cannot eliminate the ideology. Some places like morocco they try to encourage dialogue and train even women to discuss this issue with religions from other countries. Its a long process. I think the point that you made is a practical, a very important one. We are looking at the clock and the clock is ticking. Im going to ask general gray to make the final remarkses for todays seminars. I want to add my thanks to what i think was a great panel today and certainly many, many very fine comments. I think, again, we have to remember that, you know, we are a great country and with great people in the United States, but there are other great countries in around the world, all of them have many plu