FairTax a prudent idea

In response to Taylor Kessinger’s Wednesday opinion, “”It’s a good week for the Libertarian Party,”” FairTax is by far the “”least intelligent”” tax system ever devised. Its regressive nature, as you pointed out, is what makes it fair. True wealth cannot be measured solely in terms of annual income, but instead as a combination of income and consumption. Those with the means to consume the most would pay a larger percentage of the federal tax, proportional to their expenditures. FairTax does not “”punish the poor”” as you also stated, rather, affords them the opportunity to bring home untaxed income and do with it as they please. They can choose to invest this income into interest bearing accounts, a service not offered by the IRS, or they can choose to put it back into the economy and pay the same fair tax as the wealthy. All taxpayers under the approved poverty line would receive rebates for necessary goods. In actuality, FairTax would punish the rich, as the more you spend the more tax you pay. As a math major I will leave it to you to surmise what effects this could have on inflation as well as our ever-growing need to reduce the waste of our finite resources. What is not intelligent is borrowing $6 billion from China when dismantling the IRS would remove the need for its $11 billion annual budget.

Michael Merriman
creative writing sophomore