Why aren't any of you supporting the fair tax plan? Best way to tax the rich.?

gilian... where's my job thanks to the rich? I'm unemployed and struggling to find a job. My state's unemployment rate is up to 9%. And you know what I see when I'm walking down the road, or driving in a borrowed car, looking for places to apply? Small businesses. Places run by people like me and you, who the only difference is that they had an idea, and they got a loan. Most business that you see aren't run by the rich. They're run by people that typically are making maybe 50k / year off of it. Don't buy into that claim that the rich are the ones creating the jobs, because they're not. The rich are the businesses that are giving people 4 hour weeks because that particular store didn't make enough of a profit over the last quarter, they're the one's that lay workers off because even though the customer count demanded 2 workers, the profit shows they only needed one... Pick a road and drive down it, and really look at how many businesses there are small business or a franchise, and really get an idea of exactly who is the one's creating the jobs.

Now, one of the main points to taxing the rich is the fact that our economy is based on a finite amount of money (privately owned too). It's not the rich's fault, but every dollar that's taken out of the economy has a negative effect on it, and the people who are going to get hit the hardest are the ones working two jobs and still struggling just to afford a cheap one bedroom apartment and food, who walk to work, and don't have cable.... A lot of the obsession with telling the rich that they need to spend that money or get taxed is because we're running out of options. Our economy is becoming so weak because that money just isn't there. So, unless the rich are going to go shopping at walmart, so their workers can afford to go eat at taco bell, so their workers can go see a movie, so the theater's workers can go buy gas for their car, there needs to be something that's bringing that money back into the whole system.

For the same reason, the deficit can't be solved by just giving someone money. That's what got us into this mess. Technically, we have about $2 trillion in circulation, with a $15 trillion national debt, with a growing trade deficit, and a GDP that's a lot too close to what our debt is.

So, how do we fix this? We start looking at money that just shouldn't exist, we look to money that's not getting put back into our economy, we start paying attention to the fact that our country's personal debt is higher than our national debt, and eventually something clicks and we realize our country, and mainly our consumers, are broke. So where do we look? To the billionaire that's barely spending anything that he's making. There's only so much physical money in our economy. It's not the rich's fault, but they have to understand that they have to spend that money or it shuts our economy down... we just got through this whole occupying wall street thing over that exact fact, just aimed at the banks who are hurting us a lot more than someone like bill gates ever could.

That said, the problem with the fair tax plan is that it hurts us even more, because unless the rich spend that money, they're not taxed on it. It's far from a perfect idea. It's a start, but we still need our government to make money. The real problem is that one person is taxed for every penny they ever get, while someone else can have millions that he never payed any tax on... THAT is what we need to fix.

Marty, you seem to be ignoring the biggest flaw in your argument. Only those with enough money open businesses which employ people and pay their wages. Take away the rich man's money and the business closes down - leaving 'all Americans' even worse off! When they tried that in Britain (under the Labour Government in the 1970's) the richest people left the country! That meant that NO taxes could be collected from them. How does that help anyone but the rich?

The rich are all in favor of the fair tax. Poor people spend all of their money, so they would pay taxes on all of it. The rich spend only a small fraction of theirs, investing the rest to make even more money. So they would pay very little compared with what they pay now. No matter how much money the government steals from us, they will manage to spend even more. That will never change until we cut up the credit cards.