Forum Post: Why Is Abby Martin Praising & Helping Jesse Ventura Promote His Libertarian-Capitalist-Idea of Abolishing The Income Tax...

Why Is Abby Martin Praising & Helping Jesse Ventura Promote His Libertarian-Capitalist-Idea of Abolishing The Income Tax & Transitioning To A National Sales Tax? [8:05-11:15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fkVgfqziso#t=759

“I wanted to bring up another interesting idea that you’ve promoted, abolishing the income tax, transitioning to a national sales tax, really fascinating…”

“Jesse, it seems like a genius concept, I wonder why it hasn’t gained more traction, because it’s totally true. And then people who are in poverty would just not have to take half of their earnings, give it to the federal government to perpetuate the war machine. I mean they can just go out and spend what they want to contribute to society. It just sounds so, so, smart.”

?????????????????????

I used to admire Abby Martin & take her seriously as a "Revolutionary Journalists", she exposes a lot of corruption, but she’s wrong here & her misunderstanding of Jesse’s tax idea (and even of American poverty itself) is so, so Not “totally true”! It’s so, so Not true that it’s not even true at all...

1. Under Jesse’s proposed sales tax plan, nobody, including those of us who live in poverty, would be allowed to pick and choose what we want to spend our given taxes on. And our so called “government” would still be able to misuse the people’s tax dollars as they always have, there would just be much less of it to spend, less money to spend on wars, etc., but also less money to spend on anything, including much needed social programs. Poor people (who don’t have any money to spend anyway) would only be given the irrelevant so called “choice” to not pay taxes at all by never spending over $10,000? How “never spending over $10,000” to keep from paying taxes is supposed to “uplift” those of us in poverty out of poverty is blatantly ridiculous.

2. People who are in poverty (poor people) Do Not give half of our earnings to the federal government. Since when did the federal government start holding out half of our checks? They don’t, they only hold out a relatively small fraction and we get most of that back at the end of the year in our tax-refund. The current average U.S. sales tax rate is 9.60%.

3. Poor people can’t just go out and spend whatever we want to contribute to society. It’s called “being poor” because there is nothing to spend. We can’t even afford an education or health care, many of us can’t even pay our rent, much less go on spending sprees.

4. It’s true that Jesse’s sales tax plan would alleviate the burden of paying taxes for poor people who are already more than burdened from being exploited and poor, we would no longer have to pay that 9.60% average sales tax on everything we buy anymore (under $10,000/year), and we wouldn’t have to wait all year to get back what’s currently held out of our measly under-paid “paychecks”, But We Also Wouldn’t Have To "Worry" About Our Already Insufficient Social Safety Net Anymore Either! -IT WOULD VIRTUALLY DISAPPEAR! -BECAUSE THERE WOULD NO LONGER BE HARDLY ANY MONEY FOR IT! What Jesse’s sales tax plan also fails to address is The Massive Overwhelming Amounts of Exploited, Hoarded Wealth & Ridiculous Incomes of The Top 1% Which They Systematically Syphoned Away From The Working-Class Over The Past Four Decades –That’s OUR Money And WE DESERVE IT BACK. And to ignore that is not very “smart”. He proposes that through his tax plan the U. S. government would run on only about 12% of the GNP. Compare that to how much it runs on now and how much more we would have to work with if we ended war, drastically cut military spending and if the 1% finally paid up their share.

U.S. GNP 2011 -$15.3 Trillion ( 12% of $15.3 Trillion = $1.8 Trillion )

U.S. BUDGET 2011 - $3.8 Trillion

U.S. Average National Security Budget - $1.2 Trillion

Subtract That $1.2 Trillion From The 2011 Budget $3.8 Trillion = Approximately What We Spend on Everything Else $2.6 Trillion ( $800 Billion Dollars MORE THAN $1.8 Trillion )

Even if we cut the national security budget in half to $600 Billion, we would still need $3.2 Trillion to run our current government ( $2.6 Trillion + $600 Billion = $3.2 Trillion )

Even in such a brightly optimistic scenario of cutting the average national security budget in half, Jesse Ventura’s sales tax plan would Impose About $1.4 TRILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF AUSTERITY EVERY YEAR ON AMERICANS!

HE WOULD CUT OUR SOCIAL SAFETY NET IN HALF!

But would he do it while still living in Mexico?

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175361

Kevin Potts ‏@KevinLynnPotts @RTAmerica @AbbyMartin @JesseVentura

1/2 So The BILLION$&TRILLION$ Worth of HoardedWealth&ExploitedIncome of TheTop1% should not be taxed?

2/2 #WhatchYouTalkinBoutWillis? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgqOl4qlXS4

Kevin Potts ‏@KevinLynnPotts @RTAmerica @AbbyMartin @JesseVentura

Firstly, It's Rich People Who Have ALMOST ALL OF THE MONEY AND ALMOST ALL OF THE INCOME, Therefore It’s Rich People Who Should Be Paying ALMOST ALL OF THE TAXES. Secondly, It’s Only Because of Tax Cuts And Loopholes That Rich People Don’t Already Pay Most of The Taxes As They Should And Would If Those Tax Cuts Ended And Those Loopholes Were Fixed. More Than $1 Trillion A Year In Tax Breaks http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/tax-code-break-by-break/ And They Would Pay Even MORE With A Taxation Percentage Scale Based on Income (The Richer You Are The More Percentage of Income You Pay). This In Itself Would Generate A-Whole-Hell-of-A-Lot-MORE-Revenue Than Any Sales Tax, As MOST of The So Called “Money” In This Country Exists In The Stolen/Exploited Ridiculously Outrageous Incomes (And Offshore Bank Accounts) of The Top 1%.

And Speaking of Generating A-Whole-Hell-of-A-Lot-MORE-Revenue, It’s Rich People (The Top 1%) Who Own ALMOST ALL OF THE LAND! They Have Basically Laid Claim To OUR Planet Earth And Said “This Is Mine!” A Simple LAND VALUE TAX Alone Would Generate MORE Tax Revenue Than Ever Before In the History of This Country…

‘End the 1 percent’s free ride: Taxing land would solve America’s biggest problems’ http://www.salon.com/2013/11/22/end_the_1_percents_free_ride_how_taxing_land_would_solve_americas_biggest_problems/

[Excerpts:] “At present, neither party advocates the tax code so elegant it can reduce inequality, mitigate poverty, stimulate productivity, prevent asset price bubbles, stem community-shredding gentrification and drain the distended Wall Street cabal of its ill-gotten gains – in just one tax.

Land value. If we want a real overhaul/simplification of the tax code, the way to do it is to tax land value. It might be the only tax we need. No sales tax. No income tax. No payroll tax to fill a Social Security trust fund. No corporate income tax that, as we can plainly see, offshores profits. No need to tax labor and industry at all. Just tax the stuff that humans had nothing to do with creating, and therefore have no basis to claim ownership over at all. You’ll find that almost all of it is “owned” by the fabled 1 percent.

And boy are they sucking a lot of money out of it. By far the most valuable asset form in the U.S. is real estate, and the majority of that is the value of the land, as distinct from the value of the human-made buildings. Economist Michael Hudson has assessed that the land value of New York City alone exceeds that of all of the plant and equipment in the entire country, combined. No one put any enterprise or cost into producing the land’s value – they simply bought it when it was cheap, sold it when it was dear, and waited for the check. “They” are the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, and they capture 40 percent of the United States’ profits, despite the complete passivity of their profit-accumulation method.”

“Nothing could simplify and demystify the taxation experience for Americans like making sure that the vast majority of us who don’t own the resources, who don’t collect rent and capital gains, who have to work to get our paychecks, wouldn’t ever have to mark April 15 on the calendar again.

In contrast to its tiny tax base, the amount of revenue that can be raised by taxing the land is huge. Enough, for example, to support truly liberatory social spending, like a universal basic income, without risking inflation.”

“If this sounds like it’s a little too far outside the box, the solution is to collapse the box. Capitalism requires pretending that individuals’ private ownership of the land, minerals, gases and oils that nature provided is not a completely ludicrous idea. And as long as our political parties are both capitalist parties, there is little hope for a land value tax. But the day is coming, and soon, when it will no longer be so.” [End Excerpts]

On a final note, any discussion concerning taxation methods or reforming the tax code without even talking about how that revenue should be used (or not) to benefit The People (or not) dodges the bigger picture and side-steps the ultimate ends of taxation itself. Considering our so called “leaders” Handed Over Almost $1 Trillion Tax Dollars To The Same Criminals Who Tanked Our Economy & Continue To Spend OVER HALF of discretionary spending on Never-Ending Illegal WARS For PROFIT (which We never see) & The Militarized Empire/Occupation of Nearly THE ENTIRE PLANET, its more than safe to say that if We only reallocated that revenue (even within the current system that is already in place) to heal instead of harm, to create instead of destroy, to use our technology to our greatest advantage and eliminate poverty and imposed-scarcity, to educate and make this world a better, humane place for ALL; it’s safe to say That Would Do More Good For Humanity than any reformation of any tax code ever could. What We Do With What We Have Is What Ultimately Matters. And there is no reason why We The People Should not Be Collectively Deciding Directly On The Issues of What We Should Do With What WE Collectively Have. There is no reason Why WE Shouldn’t Have A REAL DEMOCRACY And A HUMANE SOLIDARTY In America (other than anti-democratic plutocracy and oligarchy; fascist corporate-interests and the anti-humane greed of an elite group of abusive power-addicted, manipulative crooks).