Hell no, I'm not linking it

Drudge is worse than InstaPundit.

Ezra at Pandagon linked to it, though;

According to the magical website of Republican trial balloons, also knows as the Drudge Report, Hastert will, in a book to be released next week, call to eliminate the IRS and the income tax and replace it with a national sales or flat tax. That means ripping up progressive taxation and instituting extremely, extremely regressive taxation.

I'm linking to Ezra because because he's pretty clear about how absurd this is, and why.

Posted by Prometheus 6 on August 2, 2004 - 8:58am :: Politics
 
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How about a national sales tax that excludes food and other items that everyone, including the poor, must buy. Going further, it can be made progressive by bumping the rate up as the purchase price goes up. It seems possible that a national sales tax could work without being regressive, but I'm no economist and don't play one on TV.

Personally I don't see any of it getting fixed until we fix the two-party system.

Posted by  Michael Miller (not verified) on August 2, 2004 - 12:14pm.

By "fix" you mean "get rid of," right?

Posted by  P6 (not verified) on August 2, 2004 - 12:51pm.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but IMO, a cursory examination of the political systems of other countries suggests the 2 party system is not the problem. Canada developed its health care system, for example, under a two party system (with lots of tiny, regional parties). Germany, the Scandanavian countries, and the Netherlands are 1.5-party/2.25-party systems (that means the 2nd party has a slim chance of ever forming a government; in Germany, a 2.25 party sysytem means the 0.25-party has 0 chance of forming a government but can swing the majority in the Bundestag to one party or the other under certain circumstances.

Real >2.5 party systems, like the 4th Rep. in France, were bitterly unpopular and famous for incompetence. In the mid-90's, Italy had a disastrous experience when its two central parties, the CDP and the SDP, were exposed as corrupt and lost to the extremes.

The real problem is with the massive devolution of power to the states. It looks like it restricts state power; in reality, it erases credibility since it's impossible to know whose fault anything is.

Posted by  James R MacLean (not verified) on August 2, 2004 - 8:39pm.