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Time for a Tax Jubilee Year: An Idea whose time came about two months ago and is still viable

10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you, and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. 11 A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed. 12 For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. 13 In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession. Leviticus 25

Forget Pelosi’s Boondoggle Bill — Take Taxes to Zero Instead | by Steve Cortes   The scale of the present economic inferno almost defies belief, with over 30 million Americans newly unemployed. Even worse, many of these job losses will be lasting. According to the Becker Friedman Institute of the University of Chicago, about 40% of the job losses will be systemic and permanent, not temporary. Among Americans still working, an April AP poll showed that 55% report they have had either hours or pay reduced during the crisis.

Given the scope of this problem, our response must be big, bold, and swift. So, in contrast to Pelosi’s government leviathan blueprint, I propose a simple, elegant, and immediate economic propellant: eliminate all federal taxes for a recovery year.

Putting the Internal Revenue Service on furlough would provide an immediate pay raise for the 120 million Americans still working. Even the still-employed badly need reaffirmation, and allowing our citizens to keep virtually all of their earnings can rebuild and reinvigorate the psyche of a country badly damaged by the coronavirus and the concomitant wide-scale societal shutdowns. As many parts of America reopen, the surest way to add vigor to the restart is cash in the bank accounts and pockets of workers. But rather than some centrally planned, top-down command structure, taking taxes to zero will empower millions of Americans to make their own informed decisions about spending, hiring, and investing.

RTWT AT Forget Pelosi’s Boondoggle Bill — Take Taxes to Zero Instead | by Steve Cortes

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • James ONeil May 14, 2020, 11:03 AM

    Tax Jubilee Year? Not a passable, workable solution.

    On the other hand, even throwing the idea out for discussion might get folks thinking about anarcho-capitalism, a way way out in right field idea that is looking more interesting to me as I watch our crony-capitalism’s (Bad, very bad) rapid morph into crony-fascism (Worse, far far worse).

    Milton’s son, David Friedman, has written a number of intelligent, thoughtful books and essays on the subject, anarcho-capitalism, over the years.

  • ghostsniper May 14, 2020, 11:32 AM

    The biggest obstacle for ALL working people is the gov’t.
    So, eliminate ALL taxes immediately and permanently.
    Fire 80% of ALL gov’t employees and eliminate ALL benefits.
    Auction off 90% of ALL gov’t assets.
    Bring EVERYTHING gov’t back to the scope it is supposed to be.
    ALL of the gov’t is unaffordable in ALL ways, as it currently exists.
    The gov’t is the largest criminal organization the world has ever know, yet some how everyone has become blinded to it and even used it, many others believe it is intolerable and go way out of their way to avoid it. Corporations and criminals benefit by the existence of gov’t and all the rest of must suffer the burden of it’s existence that we rarely, if ever, have use for. Even at it’s best the gov’t is barely a shadow of what the free market is capable of.

  • tim May 14, 2020, 11:41 AM

    Instead of that completely unrealistic idea, how about we completely eliminate any all foreign aid, close any and all military installations and bring everyone home, stop all payments to all those useless international organizations such as the U.N., the W.H.O, etc.

    Stop any and all payments to any illegals and kick them ALL out.

    Cut the budgets of ALL departments in half. If the need more they’ll need to prove it as in going through congress, the senate and the president. Just like all the rest of our budget.

    Let every all U.S. corporations or individuals bring back their money tax free, no questions asked.

    Start bombing our enemies,– Iran, North Korea…anybody else?…they’ve been a pain in our ass for too long so nothing like some war to kick start the economy.

    Perp walk Comey, Mueller, Schiff, et al to the front of the capital and hang ‘em high. We could all use some good, clean entertainment and let’s face it, they fucking deserve it.

  • Vanderleun May 14, 2020, 12:48 PM

    “Instead of that completely unrealistic idea, ”

    HUMM, step into my time machine and lets go back to December 31 2019 where I tell you, “Hey, there’s going to be a new and not at all understood virus about to come out of China and infect people in the US and the World and, get this Tim, the way we’re going to handle it is we are going to turn off the economic system of the world and tell everybody to stay inside their homes for at least two months, maybe more than a year. What do you think?”

    “I think that is a completely unrealistic idea… ”

    Then there’s this idea recently floated by….

  • ghostsniper May 14, 2020, 1:16 PM

    Seems some people are in agreement with criminals as long as they commit the crimes they like.
    I’m against all criminals.

  • Bunny May 14, 2020, 1:24 PM

    Silly ghostsniper, without government who would protect our rights and our borders?

  • JoanOfArgghh! May 14, 2020, 1:56 PM

    A favorite verse of scripture declares, Ps 130:4 “But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.”
    The psalmist understood something about totalitarianism: that even God isn’t a fan of it. He knows how dispiriting is debt and He wishes for humankind to thrive unburdened.

  • John Venlet May 14, 2020, 2:03 PM

    A little searching indicates that the tax jubilee idea is not just ancient history.

  • ghostsniper May 14, 2020, 5:28 PM

    OK Bunny, I’ll bite.
    Who protects our rights and borders now?

  • Bunny May 14, 2020, 6:12 PM

    Government’s got some splainin’ to do, Ghost. Maybe they haven’t been complete abject failures, but…

  • ghostsniper May 15, 2020, 4:37 AM

    I’ve never seen anything useful out of any criminal enterprise.

  • tim May 15, 2020, 6:14 AM

    Gerard,
    I’ll stand by it being unrealistic. We all like to look at the Federal Government as being incompetent, useless and intruding on our lives. No doubt that occurs.

    But we tend to forget what it does, and what it does very effectively. Unless of course you don’t like safe meat/food to eat and safe medications to take. The Feds are the border patrol, the National Guard in times of need and the Coast Guard to keep ships/boaters from dying. The VA hospitals to the Border Patrol to all the agencies that enable to sleep soundly in our beds at night. To name but a few examples.

    I get that we all get fed up with government, hell I’m one of ‘em. But to say we don’t need them, overlooks a plethora of things they do right, things we all take for granted. Just like the local police or, we complain when they fuck up but don’t realize all that they do, all that goes on behind the scenes, the sausage making that we don’t want to know about much less want to actually see and acknowledge. Just do it, take the garbage, and get it out of my sight, I don’t care what your do with it…just don’t put it in my back yard.

  • Vanderleun May 15, 2020, 8:49 AM

    Okay Okay… I am persuaded.

    But… but…. can we at least get rid of the EPA?

  • ghostsniper May 15, 2020, 10:19 AM

    Ah yes, the old “what if” scare tactic.

    How did american citizens know their meat was edible BEFORE the creation of a gov’t monopoly?

    How in the world did anything at all ever get done in world history without the US gov’t on the scene making sure everything was hunky dory?

    Anyone that requires a gov’t in order to have a decent nights sleep is either brain dead or spineless or both.

    The record is clear, the MORE gov’t you have the MORE disaster you have.
    What in the hell do you expect from a criminal enterprise that cannot be held accountable for it’s crimes?

  • James ONeil May 15, 2020, 11:23 AM

    No children (and I use the term pejoratively) requiring a government issued license to style fingernails, does not a safer world create.

    Reading all the ‘OMG we really really need big government else we won’t have safe food on the table’ postings here is really really pushing me to think even more favorably about anarcho-capitalism.

  • ghostsniper May 15, 2020, 3:02 PM

    Jim, after I wrote my comment above and was going about my afternoon business I thought about you. Something you wrote here awhile back, and Terry’s insistence we need gov’t to protect us from bad foods and a host of other needless and vastly expensive services. You said you ate an elk’s heart for supper. Were you not scared witless that that heart was not safe? Did you pay the gov’t huge sums of money to certify it was safe?

    Me neither, when I caught a giant sailcat and filleted it and slammed it on the grill with budda and salt and peppa and ate the whole dam thing.

    I’ll go so far as to say that because the gov’t is involved with safe guarding the nations food it makes all of it unsafe. Why? Because EVERYTHING this rotten assed gov’t is involved with turns to shit and any sane person over the age of say 20 is not aware of this is beyond my comprehension. The most dangerous words in the world, “We’re from the gov’t and we’re here to help.”

    Now, it’s suppertime and I’m gonna go put some meat on the fire and eat all of it and not give one shit if it’s safe or not. I mean, srsly?

  • James ONeil May 15, 2020, 4:20 PM

    Hey Ghost, it was caribou heart, not elk, and my only fear was that after my granddaughter tried it with home made high bush cranberry catusp, that I didn’t cook enough to go around!

    Today’s supper will include a steak, from my daughter’s Highland cattle herd, & nope that piece of beef never saw a government inspector.