For those who missed it <object width="425" height="366"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/EIyFg6_5xKk&rel=1&border=0"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/EIyFg6_5xKk&rel=1&border=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="366"></embed></object> http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/44245.html
Thanks for posting this......I hadn't seen it. It's so refreshing to hear a politician speak without doubletalk about really needs to be done in this country!
They'll bury him - both sides. They don't want this. It's power. If one side has it for a while, that's ok, as long as it stays in the "family". I widh he'd get in. How bad could it be?
I just made a donation to his campaign.....first time I've ever done that for a national politician. It may be a waste of money, but I couldn't help myself because I'm so enthused about hearing a national politician actually talk about the consitution and what government is really supposed to be doing and, more importantly, NOT doing. Every other politician just proposes new programs for this and that, all of which become a big waste of money and resources, expanding and feeding all the interests who stick their tentacles into the governmental money pot.
I'm not American but I think this Ron Paul guy is living in Lala-land. Zero tax? Asset backed dollars? Zero US military presence overseas? Good luck with that; he says he studied Austrian economics I wonder if he studied emperical testing of Austrian economics. Letting the market take care of everthing just doesn't work. Let's get technical here for a moment, the basic neo-classical benchmark model proves the real world is not Pareto-efficient and because there is market failure it consequently means there is a need for government intervention. This guy is just feeding people what they want to hear. Who wouldn't want to vote for someone who proposes the IRS gets scrapped.
OK, euro-socialist, let's forget the theoretical economics, and deal with empirical history. The U.S. grew to become the world's largest economy by 1900 without having governmental programs for everything under the sun and without an income tax, which wasn't enacted until 1913 (when it started out as a paltry 1 - 7% based on income level). Even the communist overseers of HK understand the benefits of a simple and low income tax (16%), not willing to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Of course revenues are needed to run a government (the LEGITIMATE, constitutional functions of government). Ron Paul isn't advocating to abolish all taxes, just the horrendously inefficient and inequitable manner in which the current income tax code distorts the taxation process - as enacted by all the special interests which control congress.
We had a decent system after the 1986 tax reform: two brackets, reduced number of deductions, and equal treatment of capital gains. Both sides of the spectrum got a little out of that, and the code was greatly simplified. A realistic proposal would be to go back to that 1986 schema. It's an attainable real-world goal, not pie-in-the-sky nonsense.
Oh no, we couldn't possibly let that happen....by taxing what we spend rather than what we earn, we might actually reverse our negative national savings rate.