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
Pass a Congressional Review Act to go after the trial lawyers. To defund the trial lawyers which the trial lawyers say theyre anticonsumer. So you have a United Republican Party sitting around and voting, flake, mccain, corker, everybody. Just after this sort of dustup. The press covered the dustup and missed the dramatic cra that overrode the doddfrank regulationing that had just had been in and we now took it out. Just an example. Within hours of the dustup, it affected nobodys vote. We lost two people because the trial lawyers have a lease on them. Not ownership perhaps but youre going to lose those anyway whether they were best friends with the president or not because of their relationship with the trial lawyers. So cheerful news. Going to pass. I think some people will make a case as to all the cool things it will do for the economy. Lower marginal tax rates on capital and labor is selfevidently good for the country. Thanks. Thanks very much. Were off to a good start. Grover had
[inaudible] will get started here. Welcome. Im pe peter and i think you all for coming today. This is entitled the homestretch for major tax reform. We crossed a hurdle today and house as they agreed to the Senate Budget proposal which paves the way for reconciliation for tax reform package. The Cato Institute released the eighth edition for our recommendations begin on page 45. Therefore the chapters that deal with fiscal policy. Mark copies please contact me. You can also go to cato. Org. Ryan born occupies the chair. Hes written on Economic Issues including fiscal policy, minimum wages and rent control. Before joining us he was head of Public Policy at the institute of economic affairs. He has extensive broadcast and print media experience and has appeared on bbc news and he also writes weekly columns for both the Daily Telegraph and the london paper. We will leave time at the end for q a. All have a short announcement before he leaves. But for now lets welcome brian form. [applause