ANTI-DESANTIS AD

 

AN ANTI-DESANTIS AD CLAIMS HE SUPPORTED 23% SALES TAX. The truth is that DeSantis supported the Fair Tax several years ago.  I did too.  It would replace the entire income tax with a 23% tax on retail sales, but every person is sent a government check each month for 23% of about $40,000 (1.3 times the poverty rate).  Add these two and the result is people who are low income then pay no net tax while those who are upper incomes pay nearly 23% tax on things purchased.  Very low income people get a bigger check than the amount spent on the sales tax—hence a benefit.  Meanwhile the rich would gladly accept a 23% tax rate. No tax forms to fill out--businesses who already fill out state sales taxes would find it only a minor burden to fill out another for federal. Frugal seniors who don’t buy much, pay far less tax. Everybody wins with a Fair Tax. But the lying asses who made the ad against DeSantis don’t tell the whole story, claiming that he only wanted to raise sales taxes to 23%.

   In 2019 I and a few others successfully introduced a plank in the State Republican Platform to replace state income tax with Fair Tax.  To cover the amount raised by state income tax it would require about 2.5% increase of sales tax.  The people who really hate a Fair Tax are the people who have a fabulous exemption and pay little or no state income tax—big shots for whom the legislature has written narrowly targeted exemptions in the past. It’s a corrupted system. Oklahoma has by far the most tax exemptions of any state. Those of us who pay state income tax, are just suckers, I guess.

Why bring this up? When I was young I concluded that when I retired there likely wouldn’t be any social security for me.  I was wrong—but not by much. And unlike other young people in the anti-war era, I had a lot of sympathy for seniors—people who had worked very hard and if they had savings, inflation reduced it constantly. Worse, in order to cash out their savings they have to pay Uncle Sugar high taxes. Didn’t seem fair.  Nor is it fair to make tax arguments that are simpleton and wrong. Here’s facts about seniors.

     Most recent census, nearly half (43%) of seniors have no savings.  Some have pensions, but about 1 out of 4 have nothing but Social Security.  Seniors spend avg. $4000 per month but avg. SS is $1800 per month. Next time you are in a room of gray heads, just count, 1,2,3, 4^th one has nothing but SS to live on. 11% over age 75 are still working. Avg. future long term care costs are $120,900.  Now you can say, “People didn’t save like you did, Dave!”  True but financial planners say you need 10 X annual salary saved to maintain that lifestyle.  That’s about $700,000 per typical household. But median retirement account for retirees is $104,000, down from 134K since Biden.

    It will take years or a rough recession to flush inflation out of our system. I guess we’ll have to live with this and defeat Biden and socialist Dems.  But I wish the Republicans will remember the serious lessons of inflating long after that, instead of making circular firing squad, jib-jab campaign cartoons.