I wrote a series of articles about the Fair Tax in 2011 but never got them put out.  I sent them to a few politicians but never got a response and had forgotten I wrote them until recently.  I hope they resonate with people and the Fair Tax will be implemented.

A couple of years ago I began hearing about a new concept in taxation. This new concept is called The FairTax. I didn’t pay much attention because I thought “how is any tax fair?” when some pay and some don’t. At first I dismissed it as another scam to throw me off the track of an out of control government looking for another way to hoodwink me into paying more of my hard earned money into their grand spending plans.

I have long since grown tired of paying so much of my money into ever growing but useless government programs that pay people to sit on their butts and spend my money. Welfare expenses keep going up as more and more people find ways to game the system by having babies, faking injuries, working for cash under the table, etc. The ultra-rich hide their money in “foundations” or overseas to avoid the taxes I have been paying for 45 years. All of them, rich and poor are getting over on the other working stiffs who are too stupid, too honest, or unwilling, to do these things. These money pits keep growing as the amount of available income to tax drops.

One of my pet peeves with income tax is those who don’t pay any. While I was paying 32% in my working years the local drug dealer was paying nothing. The local prostitutes who hang out on street corners in the bigger cities or work out of high priced hotels were paying nothing. The welfare cheats who sit around finding ways to game the system for their own benefit have no intention of doing anything to benefit society, or themselves for that matter. The illegal aliens who were working for cash were paying nothing. I had noticed the illegal aliens especially. They were everywhere and driving much nicer vehicles than I was, or am now driving (I don’t hang out where the hookers hang out). I was paying a 25% income tax, a 7.5% social security/Medicare tax, plus state taxes, and being told the government couldn’t afford for me to retire while those not paying taxes lived the good life. I struggled, they flourished. That is when The FairTax began to make sense to me.

I heard Neal Boortz one day talking about this new plan on his radio show. I listened with interest and thought it sounded good but never really did any more to learn about The FairTax. In the last election cycle, the 2010 mid-terms, I kept bumping into Carol Chouinard and she kept handing me literature about The Fair Tax. I took the information and looked it over without really spending a lot of time educating myself on this new concept. Interesting but, ehhhh!!!!

One day I was going through a stack of papers that had accumulated over a few months, actually several months, and found the literature Carol had given me. As I read through the brochures and leaflets I began to realize that this was not the run of the mill scam to get more of my money. This was an idea that made sense to me once I really looked at it.

Carol is the local guru on The FairTax. She lives in Rogers County, 2nd Congressional District, State of Oklahoma. She travels throughout Eastern Oklahoma, or anywhere else for that matter, presenting The FairTax to any group or person who will give her a chance to enlighten them. I ran into her again the other night and we got to talking about political issues and The FairTax came up. Well, I was complaining about the current debt ceiling debacle and how to deal with it. Carol began to explain some more about how The FairTax was the answer to much of the problem.

As I listened to her a light bulb came on in my head, the squirrel began to spin the cylinder. The things I had read came back to me and began to make sense. I began to remember about the way our tax system keeps hard working honest people in bondage while those who don’t mind cheating skate by without paying anything, only taking from those of us who do things the right way. Carol gave me a book about The FairTax. It is the second book called FairTax: The Truth. The first book, The FairTax, came out in 2005. This book was published in 2008 so is 3 years old as I start this article. Much of the information I will include in future articles about The FairTax will come from updates from the FairTax web site as I want to give you the most up-to-date information and statistics available.

One solution I see to our fiscal problems in this plan is the title, The FairTax. From everything I have read and the research I am doing, this plan solves many of the financial problems we face as a nation, the issue of money paid in taxes. I find that this plan is aptly named. I often hear Democrat and sometimes Republican politicians, especially those in Washington, cry about how “the rich” get over by not paying enough taxes. Yeah, like the politicians pay “their fair share”. Remember the hullaballoo a few months ago about Senator John Kerry, the one who parked his multi-million dollar yacht, $7 million yacht to be exact, on the far side of the bay because the state taxes on that yacht were cheaper there than on his side of the inlet?  $500,000 per year cheaper to be exact.   So much for Washington’s multi-millionaire insiders being concerned about paying their fair share of taxes. Hmm, I wonder where I am going to park my $7 million yacht. Oh, never mind, I don’t have one.

I also hear many “poor” people make the same statements, “the rich need to pay more taxes”. The problem with the “poor” complainers is that most of the ones I know don’t pay any taxes at all either. Most of the “the rich need to pay more taxes” crowd, at least the ones I know personally, are on the dole. They are drawing welfare, food stamps, social security disability, state aid, etc. Many of them either don’t work at all or work part time. They pay nothing and spend much of their time complaining that they don’t “get enough help from the government”. They have cell phones for themselves and their children, several have big flat screen HD televisions, complete with the latest game consoles, cable TV service, cigarettes, and are usually well stocked with beer in the fridge. Actually, I need the “rich” people to continue to be “rich”. They are the ones who will hire me, hopefully, so I can make a little money. Poor people never seem to hire me for anything.

In the spirit of “transparency”, my wife and I both have cell phones, we have cable TV service, and one 37 inch flat screen HD television set.   Before you say “AHAH!!!” let me offer a caveat to this. We don’t get any help from the government and are not exactly in the “rich folks” category. I am retired but not old enough to draw social security, my wife works a full time job, and we have a small Mom & Pop business that gives me a little work and usually provides us very little in the way of profit. As a matter of fact, if the business doesn’t make a profit in 2011 we are going to have to shut it down. I work part time for a friend when he needs help on a project but the rest of the time I spend working on and around the house. We have a 1976 Chevy pickup that my father-in-law gave to us when he became unable to drive. We have a 1995 Ford Escort that my mother-in-law gave to us when she became unable to drive. We also have a 2004 Dodge PT Cruiser with over 100,000 miles on it (it was a demonstrator model). We don’t owe any money on our cars, and live in a 101 year old house with a $60,000 mortgage. Not exactly Beverly Hills here, closer to Green Acres, but we don’t get any government assistance either.

To get back to the point of this article, our nation cannot keep going the way it is financially. We cannot continue to borrow and spend, drive businesses out of the country, and raise taxes on the “rich”, those making $250,000 per year or so, the small to medium businessman/family who provide the bulk of the jobs in this nation. We have to do something to bring the jobs back to the United States. We need to make it feasible for those who hide their money to use that money to provide jobs so those who desire to work but can’t find a decent job can get back to work. Giving people unlimited unemployment pay is not the answer to prosperity, it is a handout not a hand up. Many of those drawing that unemployment would work if they could find a job. Some of them are lazy bums that are looking for a handout but most, and I do mean MOST, are honest hard working people who just want to provide for their families.

The FairTax is a method to accomplish this task of financial recovery and prosperity. In the next installment of this series I intend to delve into how our current tax structure is designed to inhibit rather than enhance prosperity. I will cover the costs of enforcing and complying with the current tax code and how it affects every person in America, tax payer and non-taxpayer. The FairTax books are a treasure trove of information about how our financial system works, or doesn’t work, and what We the People can do if we will stand up and demand that the politicians change the way they do things. Other installments will cover more aspects of The FairTax plan and how we go about getting it implemented by politicians that are more concerned about themselves than We the People. Elections are only 11 months away, so let’s get to work changing our future. God Bless America

I submit this in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, in faith, with the responsibility given to me by Almighty God to honor His work and not let it die from neglect.

 

Bob Russell                  Claremore, Oklahoma                        November 25, 2011