Third Party Watch

15 Responses to “Bob Barr on Taxes and Spending”

1. G.E. Says:
   April 30th, 2008 at 11:58 am

   We need to reduce federal spending! Let’s get down to only the REALLY IMPORTANT things, like fighting narco-terrorism! Government will always spend exactly what it gets in taxes, and not a penny more—we don’t need to worry about the Federal Reserve System, just switch to a FairTax and repeal the 16th amendment so that all income except that derived from profits on rental properties can continue to be taxed along with all sales!

   Now if that isn’t a libertarian message, I don’t know what is. Barr/Cheney ‘08.

   But seriously: Who is feeding Barr the misinformation that repealing the 16th amendment would outlaw income taxation? It wouldn’t, and anyone who knows anything knows this. Put Barr outside of that camp.

2. Bill Woolsey Says:
   April 30th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

   Barr has another video calling for the abolition of the Federal Reserve.

   Barr doesn’t come close to saying that implementing the Fair tax will solve everything.

   Cutting federal spending will tend to solve all the problems—taxes, money creation, and debt.

   While I agree that the 16th amendment is less important than some people seem to think, I am 100% in favor of repealing it before introducing a national sales tax. I think it would make reimplmenting an
   income tax difficult. (I think approtioned by state is a nonstarter, and current precedent, crazy as it might seem, prohibits taxing anything but wages.) Regardless of the likelihood of wage taxes being implemented with property income exempt, I am more than willing to wait for the amendment process to be completed before seeing a national sales tax
   implemented.

   I saw nothing in this video about using tax money to fight narco-terrorism.

   I think this message is great. We must cut the size of government, and then we can consider tax reforms like the fair tax, the flat tax, or something else. Perfect.

   Is it just this site, or has discussion of LP policy really deteriorated so much? Lots of cursing. Childish name calling. And just a very low level of analysis.

   The old email lists could be prettty bad, but they were better than this.

3. G.E. Says:
   April 30th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

   Mr. Woolsey – Your scholarship is incorrect. Courts have held that taxes on wages are indirect, and thus need not be apportioned. The 16th amendment did nothing but empower Congress to tax incomes on rental properties—Congress already had the authority to tax wages and salaries. The 16th was important at the time because there were many more renters and much more class division between renters and landlords. By extending the tax to rental incomes, it became politically palatable. Oh, and let us not forget that the income tax was intended to replace tariffs, which were even higher than before the income tax just a few years after its implementation.

   Barr recently opined that we need to step up the fight on narco-terrorism. Not only is this wasteful, it is unconstitutional and entirely undesirable. . . and thoroughly unlibertarian.

   Oh. Whoops. Is that “name calling”? Sorry to offend.

   If the deformers have their way, the LP will become the Politically-Correct-Don’t-Offend-the-Regime Party. The PCDOTRP.

4. Trent Hill Says:
   April 30th, 2008 at 2:37 pm

   You know, the PCDOTRP would gain alot of attention on the ballot,lol.

5. Bill Wood Says:
   April 30th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

   Bill Woolsey, thanks for the comment about the discussions here. I have had members tell me that they are quitting the LP because of the bad taste poor arguments and flat out kookiness you find here. Also I have had people tell me that they’ll never join the LP after reading this section. TPW is great with the reporting that is done here, however,alot of the posters tend to scare people away from the LP. I tell people to avoid reading the response section.

6. George Donnelly Says:
   April 30th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

   Scared of LP kooks? You should see some of the kooks in the Republicrat parties!

   One guy wants to keep us in the Iraq war for 100 years.
   Somebody else is a habitual liar.
   Another tolerates racism.

   Don’t forget all the socialist and theocratic nutcases too!

   This is just a rehash of people not having enough self-esteem to join a party with principles they believe in, but instead wanting to join one that they consider might be “respectable” or “reasonable”.

7. Deran Says:
   April 30th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

   A national sales tax? What a scam. Sales taxes are inherently unfair because they tax the wealthy and poor at the same rate; thus the poorer you are the more of your income goes to sales tax. They’re even more regressive than “flat” real estate taxes. Any taxation that is not progressive based on wealth is a scam, and a rip-off of working people. Period.

8. Free Al. Says:
   April 30th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

   Deran wrote.

   Any taxation that is not progressivly based on wealth is a scam and rip off of working people.

   I would have to agree. If we are to reform the tax system, I would support a flat tax rate, a set percentage of income over a certain level. Say we set the rate at 10% of income at 1.5 times the poverty line. This would be fair to all involved. If you make 10,000 a year, you pay 1,000 in taxes. If you make 1,000,000 a year, you pay 10,000 in taxes. The rate stays the same no matter how much your income goes up. This is by far the fairest tax system I could think of, in terms of equal applicability. While I despise taxes, I would support making taxes simpler and fairer as a first step, then reducing tax rates and spending until they are both as low as possible. Then we can work on the ellimination of taxes altogether.

9. Lidia Seebeck Says:
   April 30th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

   IF—and this is an incredibly important IF—I HAVE to have a tax system—I think a fair tax is preferable to a flat tax, so long as there is an exemption on essentials. Why? Because you choose your tax rate. It’s a tax on spending. So if you save your money, you’re not taxed but if you want that super-spiffy new DefLeppard album then expect to pay some tax. If you hate taxes, live frugally and you won’t pay very much (hopefully, if it’s done right) If you insist on being a social trendsetter then, well, maybe you will pay a good bit more. I think it would help reform our spending habits in this country which could have numerous benefits. The one place I can see this fouling up is the expenses inherent in even a frugal homestead—dozens of pullets and pounds of seed do add up.

10. Susan Hogarth Says:
    April 30th, 2008 at 4:42 pm

    I think a fair tax is preferable to a flat tax, so long as there is an exemption on essentials. Why? Because you choose your tax rate. It’s a tax on spending. So if you save your money, you’re not taxed but if you want that super-spiffy new DefLeppard album then expect to pay some tax.

    I’ve never understood this argument. In the same vein, you also ‘choose’ your tax rate for the income tax. Simply don’t work, or work around the revenuers, and voila! no tax.

    I think it would help reform our spending habits in this country which could have numerous benefits.

    Stopping inflation will do much more.

    The one place I can see this fouling up is the expenses inherent in even a frugal homestead—dozens of pullets and pounds of seed do add up.

    Well, at least you can grow or swap pretty easily for grain and hens, but just try buying solar panels on the black (=free) market under such a system. Energy-independent folks would be screwed (more).

11. G.E. Says:
    April 30th, 2008 at 6:01 pm

    “Barr has another video calling for the abolition of the Federal Reserve.”

    Can someone point me to this?

12. Jonathan Cymberknopf Says:
    April 30th, 2008 at 6:44 pm

    Somebody please organiza a money bomb for Bob Barr like the ones done for Ron PAul. Please blogg everywhere

13. Wes Benedict Says:
    April 30th, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    I think Bob Barr did great here. Barr’s clearly not going to propose radical solutions, but he clearly outlined the direction things should move and did it with policies that could appeal to many factions. It’s almost as if I had written this script for him myself—which I didn’t. I’m just saying that it worked for me.

    Here’s the kind of message I’d like to see from him (and every other candidate) on global warming:

    I reject Global Warming hysteria – Scientists have alternated between predicting global warming and ice ages for decades. I’m not a scientist, but like many Americans, I am concerned that some alarmists have tried to silence others who question doomsday theories. And it’s not just university professors that are the problem. Many large corporations stand to benefit from policies that would subsidize alternative energy sources. I’d rather the government not start handing out subsidies to big businesses that stoke the fears of global warming for profit.

14. Bill Woolsey Says:
    May 1st, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    He says that we should not have a federal reserve in
    this video. It is on his campaign website.

    http://www.bobbarr2008.com/media-center/play/78/

    G.E. doesn’t quite have it straight about the income tax. It isn’t just income from rental property that was at issue. It was all investment income. Interest and profits from all business activity. The Supreme Court believed that taxing the income from capital, as well as land, was equilivalent to taxing the capital or land itself. So, adding capital to the traditional “land,” and making this innovation that taxing income from a thing is like taxing that thing, the result is that only wage income can be taxed without apportionment. (And, actually, I guess, cannot be apportioned must be taxed uniformly across the states) I don’t understand how GE appeared to think that the only types of income are wages or income from rental property.

    Without the 16th, all “capital” income must be taxed at variable rates in different states. Labor income, must be taxed at a uniform rate. The 16th amendment allowed campital income (interest, profits, etc.) to be treated like labor income. And so, the income tax we have.

    It would be politically difficult to create an “income tax” without the 16th. We are only going to tax wages is a political nonstarter. (Though, many versions of the flat income tax amount to this!)

15. G.E. Says:
    May 1st, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    Bill Woolsey – I don’t think it’s a “non-starter” to abolish taxes on dividends and capital gains. I don’t even think it’s a “non-starter” to exempt rental income. I think it is quite possible to have an income tax on only wages and salaries—or for the Supremes to overruled precedent and all for taxation on these sources even with the 16th repealed. This is not 1913 where there is class antagonism on the verge of riots in the streets. The people are sufficiently mollified and ignorant enough to accept whatever the government tells them to.

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