3dGameMan
08-17-2005, 06:38 AM
Shrinking Detroit has 12,000 abandoned homes: ~source (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050814/ts_afp/uspopulationdetroit_050814210312)
http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/afp/20050814/capt.sge.uct70.140805210159.photo00.photo.default-384x222.jpg
DETROIT, United States (AFP) - Rats or lead poisoning. When it comes to the threats from the broken down house next door, Dorothy Bates isn't sure which is worse.
"When it's lightening and thundering you can hear the bricks just falling," the 40-year-old nurse said as she looked at the smashed windows and garbage-strewn porch. "If you call and ask (the city) about it they say they don't have the funds to tear it down."
There are more than 12,000 abandoned homes in the Detroit area, a byproduct of decades of layoffs at the city's auto plants and white flight to the suburbs. And despite scores of attempts by government and civic leaders to set the city straight, the automobile capitol of the world seems trapped in a vicious cycle of urban decay.
Detroit has lost more than half its population since its heyday in the 1950's. The people who remain are mostly black -- 83 percent -- and mostly working class, with 30 percent of the population living below the poverty line according to the US Census Bureau.
The schools are bad. The roads are full of potholes. Crime is high and so are taxes. The city is in a budget crisis so deep it could end up being run by the state.
And it just got knocked off the list of the nation's ten largest cities.
"Detroit has become an icon of what's considered urban decline," said June Thomas, a professor of urban and regional planning at Michigan State University.
"The issue is not just getting people in the city. It's getting people in the city who can become property owners and stay property owners and pay taxes."
Perhaps the biggest challenge to luring the middle class from the area's swank suburbs is overcoming racial tensions, said Stephen Vogel, dean of the school of architecture at University of Detroit Mercy.
"Suburbanites are taking the bodies of their relatives out of cemeteries because they're afraid to come to the city," Vogel said. "There are about 400 to 500 hundred (being moved) a year which shows you the depth of racism and fear."
Most American cities have experienced a shift towards the suburbs.
What made Detroit's experience so stark was the lack of regional planning and the ease with which developments were able to incorporate into new cities in order to avoid sharing their tax revenue with the city, said Margaret Dewar, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan.
The fleeing businesses and homeowners left behind about 36 square miles (58 square kilometers) of vacant land. That's roughly the size of San Francisco and about a quarter of Detroit's total land mass.
While a decision by General Motors to build its new headquarters smack in the middle of downtown has helped lure young professionals and spark redevelopment in some of the more desirable neighborhoods, there is little hope the vacant land will be filled any time soon.
In his state of the city address, embattled mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said even if 10,000 new homes were built every year for the next 15 years "we wouldn't fill up our city."
And Detroit is still losing about 10,000 people every year.
One solution Vogel has proposed is to turn swaths of the city into farmland. In the four years since his students initiated a pilot project dozens of community gardens and small farms have popped up.
But first the city has to get rid of the crumbling buildings that haunt the streets, luring criminals, arsonists and wild animals and creating a general sense of hopelessness.
"It's partly a resource issue and it's partly a bureaucracy issue," said Eric Dueweke, the community partnership manager at the University of Michigan's College of Architecture and Urban Planning...
bejohnson
08-17-2005, 08:58 AM
I know many of y'all do not like Neal Boortz but Boortz along with Congressman John Linder of Georgia have written a book titled "The FairTax Book" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060875410/103-3418873-4735002?v=glance).
This book champions a system of abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and replacing all federal taxes including Social Security and Medicare with a 23% retail tax end user tax. A full discussion of the plane can be found on the Fairtax website. (http://www.fairtax.org/)
The book has been selling out everywhere and is number one on Amazon.com.
I just hope this is an idea that will take root and flourish.
Here is one of the reviews of the book:
If you ABHOR paying income taxes, then you'll ADORE this book!
August 2, 2005
Reviewer: KAB (Columbus, OH)
In this book, author Neal Boortz and his cohort, congressman John Linder, write about the solution proposal aimed at forever settling America's tax burden caused by the current system of federal income taxes by describing in detail what is known as "The FairTax Plan," in which the basic idea is to have taxpayers pay taxes on what they spend as opposed to what they earn. The goal of the FairTax Plan is to replace federal income taxes including personal, estate, gift, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment, and corporate taxes by including an additional 23% federal sales tax (including one's state sales tax), which works by charging 23% on all consumer purchases for taxable goods, excluding used items (already taxed when new) and purchases made by businesses.
Boortz not only shows that the FairTax would be fairer than the current tax system, but he also provides examples showing how it would be superior. For instance, it is a well-known fact that aristocratic persons spend more than other individuals on such items as expensive clothes, jewelry, yachts, etc., and under The FairTax Plan, they would get charged a significant amount for those items. However, should they use their money for things that would improve the standard of living for other individuals such as the funding of charitable events, the construction of job-building factories, and financing for the creation and development of new products, then under the Plan, such activities would be tax exempt. We learn that the FairTax would be better than our current system of income taxes because not only is that system making it much more difficult than it ought to be for the average person to maintain a sound standard of living while posing a threat to that of the next generation, but also because it wastes vast resources (i.e. trees) by having taxpayers fill out unnecessary paperwork. This tax would be collected in a way which is similar to how the state sales taxes are collected in 45 of the nation's states as of yet. It would add an extra line to the current sales tax reporting form, and then retailers would collect the tax, which would then transfer to the state taxing authority. Collection agents businesses as well as the states would receive a collection fee, and then tax revenues from the states would go to the U.S. Treasury.
The FairTax calls for an additional sales tax; most persons fall into an income tax bracket of 15%, and all wage earners pay 7.65% in payroll taxes, which is where the 23% originates. Also to be considered are the hidden taxes embedded in everything that one buys from goods to services, which garner taxable rates of 22% and 25% respectively (a figure that was determined by Dale Jorgenson, former chairperson of the Economics Department at Harvard University). This 23% rate accomplishes the following tasks: pay the universal rebate, raise the same amount of federal funds raised by the current system, and pay collection fees to state governments and retailers. Although the FairTax rate is 23% when compared to current income taxes, the rate of the sales tax at the retail counter would actually be 30%, which may seem a little confusing at first, but one must take into consideration that sales taxes are quoted tax-exclusive, while the income taxes are quoted tax-inclusive when compared to the FairTax. What this means is that since the FairTax would replace the federal income tax, the 6.75% exclusion still gets factored, which amounts to approximately 30%. For instance, let's suppose that you want to buy a pair of shoes for $100, then under the FairTax Plan, out of the 30%, 23% would go to Uncle Sam, while a quarter percentage of that amount would go to the store collector, meaning that you would need $130 in order to actually spend the original amount price.
With regard to the Social Security System, we learn that this plan changes neither Social Security benefits nor its structure, although its proposal would benefit any forthcoming SS reform proposals. The Social Security System would still operate in the same fashion as it does today, except that its funds would come from the progressive sales tax, as opposed to the regressive payroll tax. All it would accomplish is facilitating the reformed Social Security system, in that Social Security/Medicare funds would no longer be taxed three times: the time at which payroll taxes are first withheld, the time that those withheld taxes are counted as taxable income tax purposes, and finally when one gets the desired benefits. Furthermore, it has been researched that consumption is a much more stable source of revenue than income. The study was completed by American Farm Bureau economist Ross Korves, which showed that the FairTax was less variable than the income tax base, because during a loss of a job, people will have little to no income at all, meaning that even though they still borrow money for savings, they still consume. The FairTax rate could be reduced if it impedes the government's need for revenue caused by the privatization of Social Security. For instance, should the government mandate a system requiring people to save 10% of their income, then the 23% tax rate would be reduced to 13% so that it would match the payroll taxes.
`The FairTax Book' should not be approached as another tax scheme by conservatives or liberals, because the plan is gaining support from at least 600,000 people in various careers as well as political parties. These supporters have one thing in common, which is the belief that this plan is a simpler, much more efficient method of raising federal revenue, while delivering more than just benefits to the American people. If this system becomes a reality, then numerous changes (for the better) are likely to occur. For instance, the new tax system will be less susceptible to special interest groups; it will make it easier for those less fortunate to get ahead, and finally it will provide an honest, real tax relief to those who really need it. Should the FairTax be given around ten years to work miracles, it is also likely that Americans will be anywhere from 10 to 15 percent better off than they would be under the current system, meaning that the average household would probably garner an average increase between $2,000 to $3,500 per year. Also noteworthy is the manner in which the Plan would protect low-income and lower middle-income families and individuals. Under the FairTax, persons with limited means would pay no net FairTax up to the poverty level, and those that spend twice under the poverty level would only pay a tax of 11.5%, a much lower rate than that which they pay today. On the other hand, the current federal income tax has caused lower-income families to endure excess hardships caused by slow economic growth and recessions, increasing the likelihood of the breadwinners of said families to lose their jobs, or decreasing the likelihood that they will have the resources to counter the effects of potential downfalls in the economy (i.e. inflation). Boortz shows that maintaining the present system makes economic progress needlessly slow, while making it most difficult for those families with low income.
Boortz and Linder go into great detail on this plan as it relates to possible tax evasion. Some are likely to question whether or not this FairTax would improve compliance while reducing tax evasion. However, we soon learn that tax evasion is actually a side effect of the present system due to its gargantuan perplexity. Statistics show that as of today, in terms of gross domestic product percentages, tax evasion is beyond 2.0% as compared to 1.6% in 1991. Furthermore, one learns from the IRS that almost 40% of the public is out of compliance with the current system (not including taxes lost on illegal income sources estimated to be a trillion dollars). One other reason that the present system needs to be changed is caused in part by this noncompliance, in that it decreases its viability in basing its tax collection upon self-assessment. The FairTax plans to fix this problem by introducing a system aimed at becoming fairer, more transparent, more legitimate, and more simplistic, thereby reducing the likelihood of non-compliance. The simplicity aspect lies within the fact that businesses would need only know how much was sold to customers in order to determine the tax due. Since the FairTax would allow tax rates to decrease, evading it would become less profitable, and perpetrators would render themselves both easily traceable and vulnerable to getting caught due to the significant reduction of tax filers.
Boortz and Linder do not overlook income tax preparers, accountants, or government employees. While the FairTax would more than likely cause these persons to lose their jobs, the projected 10.5% growth in the FairTax's first year would offer a plethora of new jobs, meaning that those IRS employees, tax preparers, and tax lawyers would have to use their knowledge and transferable skills to find more productive means of work, which, for the most part, would probably be less than challenging.
Senior citizens, retired persons, or anyone living on a fixed income are also sure to find plenty of praiseworthy aspects of the ideas behind this book. For instance, Boortz shows that low-income seniors would be better off under the Plan than they are under the current income tax system. Under the current system, those who live off of Social Security funds still must pay what are known as hidden taxes, that is, corporate income taxes, that range from 22% to 25% on everything that they purchase. Under the FairTax system, they would break even from the very beginning since the 23 cents that they pay on every dollar would counter the hidden taxes that they still would have to pay upon receiving Social Security funds. The FairTax also calls for repeal to the income taxes associated with pension plans, 401K plans, and IRAs, which over ten years ago garnered combined assets equal to 6.5 trillion dollars. The current system of income taxes was implemented to pay for these plans, but under the Fairtax owners of such plans will not be required to pay taxes on these plans. Moreover, like everyone else, seniors would still receive a monthly rebate for the taxed necessity items that they bought in advance, and they too would not pay regressive payroll taxes or the federal income tax on earnings should they choose to continue to work. Because seniors tend to have higher home ownership rates than any other age group, they will more than likely experience large capital gains in estimation of 20%.
In order to abolish the entire income tax completely, a constitutional amendment repealing the 16th Amendment and prohibiting an income tax would need to work its way through Congress for ratification by the states. What this means is that we could not possibly end up with both the FairTax and an income tax (this would actually defeat the purpose of the FairTax), because the FairTax would lose its supporters unless the current system is repealed. Even if Congress does decide to pass it into law, they will still have the power to raise the rate, which would vary with the size of government. Because the FairTax is progressive, the larger the government, the larger the rate, and likewise, the shrinking of the government would cause the tax rate to fall.
Boortz and Linder address possible concerns that readers may have regarding the FairTax as it relates to home mortgage reduction, charitable giving, and the pre-tax prices for goods and services. The FairTax would have positive effects on residential real estate. For instance, the homeowners of today use their post-Security Social/pre-income tax dollars to pay their interest, and then they pay their principal with post-Social Security/post income tax dollars, that is, assuming that they choose to itemize. (Only 70% of the U.S. population chooses to do so). Under the FairTax, all homeowners would use pre-tax dollars to pay off their entire house payments. Furthermore, mortgage interest rates would fall by approximately 25%, which would then allow customers to garner enormous savings. For example, suppose that a $150,000, 30-year home mortgage has an interest rate of 7%, then the monthly mortgage payment would be $999.12. Suppose we take that same mortgage at a 5.25 (the aforementioned 25% drop), then the monthly payment would amount to $830.01, and over a thirty-year period, the 25% drop in interest rates would allow the consumer rake in an additional $60,879 in cost savings. Moreover, since savings would not be taxed, first-time buyers would be allowed to pay off their down payments much faster. In summary, the FairTax would give more persons the opportunity to become home owners, as opposed to renters.
In terms of pre-taxing for goods and services (including such things as medicine and health care), the FairTax would reduce the prices on these goods by an estimation of 22%, because these items are already factored into the embedded taxes under the current system. Since the FairTax would also lower compliance costs by an estimation of 95%, prices would drop even further. Charitable giving is an activity that depends upon the soundness of the economy above anything else, not tax benefits. However, this does not imply that charitable contributions would not also benefit under the FairTax, because for all of the money that goes toward charities and churches, only the 30% who choose to itemize would receive any tax benefits. Because of the FairTax, people would make charitable contributions using pre-tax dollars, and those less affluent taxpayers who chose not to itemize would be losing more money in charitable contributions. In contrast, the wealthy would make their contributions based on the cause, designed to maximize the gift and minimize the tax, which would play a key role in determining the structure of the gift, as opposed to the amount.
Boortz and Lender go into great detail on how the rebate would work under the FairTax Plan, and he also provides numerous charts and graphs that calculate the rebates for miscellaneous states that vary with family size, annual poverty levels for single and married persons, as well as monthly and annual rebates. The rebate would work by having all valid SS cardholders who are U.S. residents receive a monthly rebate equivalent to FairTax paid on necessary goods and services, also known as the "poverty level expenditures." The rebate would be paid in advance with equal installments per month, and its size would be determined by the tax rate multiplied by the poverty level of the Department of Health and Human Services.
From `The FairTax Book', we also learn a little bit about how the tax would affect government spending, the stock market, mutual funds, retirement funds, compliance costs, and value-added taxes (VATs). For the year of its operation, the plan is designed to be revenue neutral, meaning that it would raise the same amount of revenue as is raised by the current law. However, after the first year, revenue would be expected to rise as a result of the growth induced by the plan. This would put the American people, Congress, and the President in a position where they will have to decide whether to lower the tax rate or spend the additional revenue. The author further argues that the tax would make it easier to determine if your elected representatives are acting against you, because the plan would make it much more obvious to see if politicians are calling for increases in taxes or restraint on government spending as time progresses.
Under the FairTax plan, investors would endure great benefits because corporations would not need to worry about high operations costs, and more people would have more money to invest and save. It would even enhance the retirement spending power by Americans. Furthermore, treasuries, bonds, equities, and other investments would all become tax exempt, and while these tax-free bonds would still tax-free, they would now become direct competitors of corporate bonds. The plan would affect compliance costs by cutting them down by an estimation of 95%. As of right now, current estimations show that Americans spend at least $250 billion/year in order to comply with the tax code, which amounts to approximately $850 for every man, woman, and child in America (roughly the cost of three Iraq wars). Even worse is that while these compliance costs are wasted each year, Americans have nothing to show for it, in that they add virtually nothing to the wealth of the nation.
We also learn a little about value-added taxes, which are consumption taxes that work by taxing stages of production. The FairTax is not a value-added tax. On the contrary, such a tax is far more complex and generally remains hidden from the consumer. A value-added tax can coexist with a high-rate income tax, and it allows lobbyists to install loopholes to which the consumer would be unaware, not so with the FairTax.
The book shows that the FairTax would inflict no particular burden upon the retail industry. The 45 states that currently use a sales tax are already sales tax collector. The FairTax would play a role in having the retailers paid a fee that equals one-fourth of one percent of federal sales tax that they collect and remit. Furthermore, retailers would be free of pressure from the following: compliance costs with the income tax, uniform capitalization requirements, schemes involving depreciation, and employee benefit and pension rules. Things would also work out well for customers because not only would they have substantially more money, having dramatically lowered the income tax compliance costs thus enhancing economic growth, but they also would be presented a reasonable fee for collecting the FairTax. In possessing the freedom the keep every dollar that they earn without even having to work harder, the FairTax would unleash a new era of economic growth, in that the process of saving money would be facilitated along with investing by businesses, and capital formation. Furthermore, it is almost guaranteed that the FairTax would produce the following outcomes with regard to the betterment of economic growth: raise the economy's capital stock by 42%, raise its labor supply by 4%, raise its output by 12%, and its real wage rate by 8%. Thanks to increase in capital supply, real interest rates would remain low. Even better is the fact that international investors would be more than likely in America because not only would they avoid income taxes in their own countries, but in doing so, they would further enhance the growth of America's economy.
In this book, we learn that all states would have the opportunity to collect the FairTax, and that conforming their sales tax to the federal tax would produce beneficial results (though they would not be necessarily required to withdraw their income tax). However, the states that choose to conform would receive the one-quarter of the one percent fee by the federal government to collect the tax. Should the states choose to conform to the federal tax base, they would raise the same amount of state sales tax with a lower tax rate, which would more than likely be 50% lower, since the FairTax base is broader than that of the current base, also giving them the incentive to eliminate or lower property taxes. States conforming to the FairTax system would also find that collecting sales taxes online would be vastly facilitated.
Another area of concern that `The FairTax Book' addresses is interest rates. Included with interest rates is compensation to the lender for the taxes that they must pay on interest that you pay them, which is why taxable bonds influence higher interest rates than tax-exempt bonds. Since the tax on interest would be removed, interest rates would drop by approximately one-quarter, thus heading toward the current tax-exempt rate. Because of the FairTax, savings and investments would not be taxed at all, thus influencing huge increases in the pool of capital as well as dramatic drops in the borrowing of funds.
When approaching the ideas presented in this book, it is highly likely that some will question the likelihood of such a plan ever actually transforming itself into a passable law. However, it is essential to consider the success of past attempts by grassroots organizations to accomplish changes for better in this nation and the rest of the world, including the passing and repealing of Prohibition, freedoms of minorities beyond the diner and transportation systems, and equal enfranchisement opportunities. While most of these ideas may seem a bit too simplistic and radical, the efforts to convince the powers-to-be to pass such a law are not much different than passing the 16th Amendment and the income tax, which was also not exactly a simple task. It is a task that may require optimism as well as the support behind thousands of Americans willing to rectify the damage wreaked upon the country by the income tax. Here are just a few of the numerous benefits that one can almost guarantee will be the end of result of the FairTax should it get passed into law: financial services booming, job creation booming, enhanced civil liberties, booming exports, and an increase in the prosperities of churches and charities.
In summary, `The FairTax Book' is sure to appeal to the interests any American in the workforce who has ever endured the pressure of doing their taxes, paying them, or dealing with the IRS, and disliked it intensely. It is sure to provide some hope that the ideas will be considered and taken seriously as the powers-to-be decide whether or not they should enact the FairTax Plan. Moreover, this book will also be a valuable tool for young Americans who have never had a job before and thus have yet to deal with the current tax system, as well as students in introductory economics courses who may know very little about how the current American tax system works. As such, I would strongly encourage anyone in said categories to check out or purchase this book.
Reviewer: Baron.
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